“Mommy?” George’s cracked voice came over the line and I collapsed inside with relief.
“My big boy,” I said. “I’m waiting for you. Hurry . . .”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” he said. “The policeman even put on the lights and siren.”
“That’s still not fast enough,” I told him and I heard his laughter. God, his beautiful laughter.
I shook Daisy awake. “He’s okay,” I told her.
“What?” She lifted her face to mine and wiped at my tears with her hands. “I dreamed he was okay.” She closed her eyes again. “Piper found him.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, she did.”
I lifted my phone to call Tim, but it went straight to voice mail—he was probably halfway here on a plane.
Piper and my son were on the way, and did it matter where they’d found George? We would learn all the facts; we would find out how and where in time. What mattered—the only thing—was that my son was safe.
Out in the bookshop the crowd must have been told because I heard a cheer. I lifted Daisy onto my hip and walked into the main area. People hugged and high-fived and we watched the jubilation without yet being seen. Mimi, in one great act of triumph, tore down the map and posters. My dazed expression must have made me appear as though I’d come from a dream, or a long trip. I smiled out at everyone, but my eyes weren’t focused on anything but the front door.
Bonny and Owen came through the door first and her steps toward me were slow and unsure, but then I covered the ground with a run, threw my arm around her.
“Oh, God. I was so awful to you. I was scared out of my mind. Of course it wasn’t Piper’s fault. I’ve lost him so many times—in clothing stores, in the mall, at the park. He does that. He wanders off. Forgive me.”
“Oh, Lainey. There’s nothing to forgive.” She took Daisy from my arms and set her on the floor.
“Uncle Owen,” Daisy cried out.
He leaned down to her. “Hey there, bunny.”
Daisy yanked at Bonny’s T-shirt. “Look! It’s my uncle.”
“I know, Daisy. Isn’t it great?” Bonny said.
Owen picked her up and she wrapped her little arms around his neck. “Are they almost here?” he asked.
I stared at the front door. “They can’t get here fast enough.” I wiped at my face, at the leftover tears. “I want to kill him and smother him with kisses. I’m going to tether him to me with a rope forever. He’ll have to take me to college with him.”
Then we heard the police car. I ran out to it, opening the back passenger door to see George’s face burrowed in Piper’s shoulder. She held her hand over his head, protecting him. I grabbed my son from Piper and took him in my arms. He squealed in fright and twisted away from me, reaching for Piper, calling her name.
Piper leaned toward him and kissed his face. “Look, George. It’s your mommy.”
George’s hair was tangled, a white mass of curls. His cheeks red with sunburn and heat, his chubby hands and round feet crusted with sand. His sweet face swiveled around to see me and he cried out, “Mommy!”
Fresh tears started. He wept in that hiccuping way of a small child, without reservation, so full of relief and pent-up fear. I sank, slowly and with care, to a bistro chair outside the bookshop on the sidewalk, held my son against my chest and rocked back and forth, uttering his name over and over.
An older woman stepped out of the back of the police car, blinking in the sunlight and walking toward the bookshop. Slowly, one by one, the crowd moved outside. This was the exact moment they had worked toward for hours and hours. This was what they had whispered about and prayed for. There were tears and hugs and I absorbed it all. Bonny sat next to me. The older woman who had stepped out of the car stood there staring at us, her eyes filled with tears. I took stock of her: I felt like I knew her—but how? Piper stood next to her, holding Fletch’s hand, collapsed against him.
The old woman was tiny, a hummingbird. Her eyes were blue; her hair both platinum and curly and pulled back into a knot at the base of her neck. She wore a sundress, flowered and old-fashioned, a fifties throwback. Flat ballet shoes on her feet. I wondered why she stared at us with such a fixed gaze, unwavering even with the tears.
My breath hitched and stayed right there in that space under my heart with stubborn resolve.
The old woman took a few steps toward us and I saw Piper glance from her to me and then back again. “Ms. Loretta?” Piper asked. “Are you okay?”
Loretta, the woman, didn’t answer but stood before me.
“Lainey?” she asked.
“Yes?” I stared at her with a shuddering sense of familiarity. A dance at the square. A card game at the river house. A birthday party with other girls. What was it? My mind, already jumbled and scattered by the day’s events, couldn’t find a name.
“I’m Loretta Rogers,” she said.
I grasped onto the name like a life preserver, something to keep me afloat in the confusion. “Mom’s friend,” I said. “You were . . . Mom’s friend that last summer.”
“Yes, I was.”
I grabbed on to her arm with my free hand, still not releasing my son. Deep in my weary bones, I knew this woman knew where my mother was. “Where is she? Where is my mom?” I asked. “Tell me.”
She lowered her gaze. “Lainey Greer, not now,” she said. “Not now.”
“What?” I wrapped both arms around my son, pulled him closer. No one called me by my full name, not since Mom left.
“Go home with your son. We can talk another time.”
This wasn’t right. Mom was in Texas. Had I made a fool of myself? A crazy old lady and a horrible day. The fight with Owen; my lost son. I was going insane.
But I wasn’t. This woman knew my mom.
“I don’t understand,” I said. My hands shook. I came undone inside, traveling through time. “Who are you?”
Bonny’s voice joined the confusion. “You know Clara?” she asked Loretta.
Then Owen repeated me. “Our mom? You know her? What’s happening?” he asked.
The woman turned to Bonny. “Oh, look at you, Bee Moreland, a mom now yourself. It’s your daughter I’ve come to love so much.” Her gaze wandered to each of us one by one in slow motion. “Yes, I was Clara’s friend all those summers ago.”
Bonny reached for Piper behind her, took her hand.
“Mom?” It was Piper’s voice. “What’s happening?”
No one answered Piper and I asked again, “Where is she?”
“I can’t tell you everything now, Lainey. Get some rest and be with your son. Let’s meet tomorrow,” Loretta said quietly.
I clung to George even tighter. “Tomorrow. Where?”
“Right here.”
“Mommy, that’s Ms. Loretta,” George said in my ear. “She has a million crayons in her house. And juice boxes with dancing apples on them. And she plays pretty music. She gave me the big yellow flower . . .”
Loretta placed her hand on George’s chapped cheek and then withdrew it before speaking. “I wanted to find the right time to tell you about your mom, Lainey. But the longer I waited, the harder it became. When I met Piper I knew the time had come. I knew that it was finally the right time to tell you everything.”
“The time?” My voice wasn’t holding steady; I wasn’t holding steady. I fought two urges—one to shake this woman and make her tell me everything, force her to set the world aright, and the other to run. “Is she in Texas?”
“Texas?”
Just by her question I knew it was wrong. “Is she here?” My gaze shifted left and right, scanning the crowd.
“No. I have a lot to answer for, but there is time for that. Please just take care of your son right now.”
“Mommy.” George snuggled into my shoulder.
Bonny came to my side. “Let�
��s get you home. Okay?”
“Let me drive you.” Owen stepped up. “Please.”
But I still had more questions. “How did this happen?” I asked Piper. “How did George find this woman?” My mind moved and twisted, trying to find a landing spot.
“He walked for miles. He must have gone up to the road or behind houses for no one to see him. When he saw Ms. Loretta’s house he went there because we’d taken him there when we were delivering groceries, and before we went to the beach.”
“What were you looking for?” I asked George, running my hand over his body just to make sure he was really there.
“Treasure.” His little voice so scratched with fatigue.
“We’ve been hunting treasure all summer,” Piper said, and her voice broke again. “It’s my fault. It’s all . . .”
“I told you he runs away. It could have been any of us.”
“What if he hadn’t gone to Loretta’s?” Piper shook her head, imagining the worst, as I knew she’d do for a long, long time. As I’d done before.
“You know,” I said, empty and exhausted, turning back to the woman named Loretta, “yesterday, I would have given anything to find my mom. I’ve looked and looked for her all of my life. But to almost lose my son to find her, it was not worth the price. Wherever she is, you tell her that.”
The meanest part of me hoped I’d hurt her with my words. But she stood there prepared to take it. “All I ask,” Loretta said, “is that you let me try to tell you the story, to explain it all to you. Please.”
I nodded. Piper then sank to the curb and Fletch with her. She dropped her head on his shoulder and they sat there in the heat.
“I’m so tired,” Piper said. “I could die.”
“Let’s just all get home,” Bonny interrupted. “This has been a . . . day.”
Loretta touched my arm. “I will meet you here tomorrow at noon.”
I nodded and then glanced at my brother. “Please take us home.” We all moved toward the car, except Piper, who stayed seated on the curb.
“You all go on,” she said. “I’m going to stay with Fletch for a little while.”
Bonny spoke up. “You need to come back to the house with us. Get something to eat and drink. Some rest.”
“I will make sure she’s okay, Mrs. Blankenship,” Fletch said. “I promise.”
“This day does not seem real. Nothing about it seems real at all,” I said before I walked away.
“It is,” Loretta said. “It’s all very real.”
chapter 32
PIPER BLANKENSHIP
Fletch’s hand on my head was a weight of comfort. I was emptied out. I’d spent all day imagining the worst and praying the worst hadn’t happened. And now, with George in his mom’s arms, I collapsed onto Fletch, his body solid. The day had been wrung out with all it could hold. We sat on the curb outside Mimi’s bookshop and I rested my head on his shoulder. “That was the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me.”
“I know. But please don’t blame yourself or go crazy thinking of all the terrible things that could have happened, because they didn’t.”
“You never left me.” I lifted my face to him. “You could have left, embarrassed at my stupidity, and . . .”
“It was a mistake, Piper. One his mom has made before. One people make every day—to look away, to get preoccupied, to get lost . . . this is not new in the world.”
“But this . . . this could have been the end of everything. My dad once told me that I was just like Mom. And maybe he’s right—she screwed up because she was distracted, and so did I.”
“They call it an accident because it’s an accident. They don’t call it an on-purpose.” He pulled me closer and my body shaped into his, molded around him. I laughed just a little bit and started to feel the residual effects: the sunburn, the aching on the bottom of my bare feet, the blisters and scrapes.
“I hurt,” I said and closed my eyes. “Everywhere.”
“Let’s get you some water and then we can go back to my place if you want. Or do you want me to take you to your mom’s place?”
“Are you kidding? What could possibly be going on there? Lainey reassuring me that it really wasn’t my fault? My own mom looking at me with pitiful eyes because she feels so sorry for me? Owen showing up again while I try to figure out the weirdness between all of them? Um. No, thanks. I think I’ll go with you.”
He laughed and stood, helping me to my feet. We went into the bookshop, where Mimi was cleaning. Soft flute music, something Celtic and mysterious, played in the background. When she saw me, she dropped the pile of paper plates she was carrying into the trash and came to me with a hug.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
She took my hand and we sank to the little white couch. Fletch followed us, but stayed a few feet away pretending to be enamored by a pile of books on the front table.
“Do not beat yourself up about this,” Mimi said. “Not one little bit, dear. It was scary and yet it turned out all right. Everyone is safe.”
“I lost a child, Mimi. I didn’t get drunk and make a fool of myself.” I choked on my fear. “I didn’t fail a class. I didn’t . . . steal someone’s boyfriend. I lost a child.”
Mimi reached across the couch. “We all make mistakes.”
“Not like this we don’t.”
“Piper, life holds all the terrible and all the good in one place. And you can’t expect to never make a mistake.”
“I think I just need to sleep or . . . I don’t know, just get out of here for a while. But I don’t want to go back to the house. I can’t face everyone yet. I’m still shaking inside with the way it could have gone. And Ms. Loretta? I mean, what is that all about? I’m so confused.”
Mimi squeezed my shoulder. “Go get some rest, Piper.”
Fletch came then. “Let’s get something to drink and eat,” he said. “I promised your mom.”
“Yes.” I rested against him as he took my hand.
I hugged Mimi, stood and stretched, tired all the way inside to my heart.
The Jeep and the wind and the smoky smell of a bonfire somewhere on the beach lulled me to sleep in the few short minutes it took to get to Fletch’s house.
He kissed me awake and I opened my eyes to see we’d pulled into his driveway and parked around the back of his carriage house. He hadn’t brought me here before, yet he’d told me he lived behind his mom’s house in a separate place. My head lolled back in fear, a quick half beat because I thought George was still gone and I’d fallen asleep before finding him. I let out a small cry.
“It’s okay,” Fletch said and unhooked the seat belt, took me in his arms and gently placed me on the ground. I fell into his chest and then together we shuffled into his little home. He took the weight of my fear and I let him absorb it and negate it.
I had tunnel vision for only what was right in front of me—a narrow vision of bleached hardwood floors and a blue barn-style door that slid aside to a small bedroom with a huge rumpled and unmade bed. White and blue pillows, blankets and sheets were scrunched in the form of a human as if someone hid beneath them. Fletch laid me down, and I sank into the comforter and looked to the ceiling where a fan whirred with the soft noise of wind in leaves.
He brought me a glass of water and I sat to swallow the whole thing at once. He climbed into the bed and stretched out long next to me, drawing me close until his legs wound around mine and his arms encircled me from shoulders to waist. My faced rested on the notch between his warm clavicle and chest. His fingers ran through my hair and untangled the knots, gently like Mom would have done when I was a child.
“It’s all okay now,” he murmured. “He’s safe.”
Languid and dreamy, a comfortable safety fell over me. His lips swept across my forehead.
“You
feel like you have a fever,” he said. And then he kissed my nose and cheeks, my neck and ears until I was eager for him to kiss me. I took his face in both my hands and kissed him as if he could take away the fever and the fear.
My tongue lingered, not wanting to miss anything of him. Together we explored each other, not gently as I’d imagined but desperate.
Our clothes came off so smoothly, like it was a dance we’d practiced for years, choreographed for this moment. My skin no longer felt burned and hot. I wanted every part of me to touch every part of him—he was the cure. His hands and his fingers and his mouth found every tender part of me, and by the time we made love, I was fully awake. I drew him closer. Fletch offered all of himself to me at that moment and yet I still wanted more, and then more.
When I was little, I’d believed that the sun slept in the waters off Charleston, and then it rose to shake off the water and hang above us until it had to go back to sleep again. But of course that wasn’t true—the sun was merely lighting another part of the world.
So many things weren’t what they seemed, and I’d learned that slowly—when the sky looked on fire with sunset it wasn’t; when the horizon appeared like the edge of the world it wasn’t; when a star fell, it wasn’t falling to earth. I thought of all the other things, the adult beliefs, that weren’t what they looked like either.
Mom and Lainey and Owen. Mom and Dad. Ms. Loretta. Was anything as it seemed? My mind wasn’t making sense, my thoughts mixing up words and language, useless.
It was night dark in Fletch’s room, his shades closed and the fan whirring overhead. Fletch lay on his side, facing me on the pillow, his face soft with sleep. I did have a fever; I burned with it. My mouth felt scorched and my eyelids like sandpaper against my eyes. I moved slowly from the bed; I needed water. I stumbled in the dark, crashed into the side of a dresser and let out a yelp.
A light flashed on and Fletch stood quickly, naked in the dusky room. “Baby, you okay?”
“I think I’m really sick,” I said.
He bent over and yanked on his boxers and shorts, still crusted with sand from the previous day. He took my hand and led me, still naked, to the kitchen and on the way grabbed a blanket from the couch, threw it over my shoulders. I tossed it off. “I’m so hot.”
The Bookshop at Water's End Page 23