The Sea Glass Sisters

by Lisa Wingate

  So far, Uncle Butch has threatened everything from a legal filibuster involving easements on the farmland to the equivalent of a family shunning. It won’t do any good. Aunt Sandy is the baby of the family, and only slightly over five feet tall herself, but she is a force of nature. The rebel. She won’t cave, no matter how much everyone espouses the logic of finally letting go of the beachfront retirement dream that has kept Aunt Sandy and Uncle George away from the family compound for the past eighteen years.

  I haven’t ever seen her little store by the sea, even though it’s just a day’s drive away. If I did anything to encourage this post-empty-nest life my aunt and uncle have carved out for themselves, I’d never hear the end of it, especially now that they’re getting older. My mother can’t fathom why anyone would want to live more than a stone’s throw from their children and grandchildren.

  But lately I understand it. Sometimes when I’m coming home after a long third shift on the boards, I want to run away to the beach myself.

  I watch the fight across the street until it finishes. Uncle Butch stalks off to his vehicle and drives away, spewing gravel and burning rubber all the way up the street, a skill he undoubtedly perfected as a high schooler with Elvis hair, cruising in his ’57 Chevy. The maneuver loses some of its effect when it’s done in an old, potbellied Suburban and you’re only going a half mile up the street.

  The next thing I know, I’m laughing, and I wonder if I’ve really lost it this time. Maybe this is the final tipping off some invisible cliff.

  You’re just tired, I tell myself. You need to catch a few hours’ sleep, then go to work. Stay on the routine. Keep up the hope. Dispatchers aren’t supposed to get involved with the cases that come through the 911 phone lines, but the truth is, the calls stay with you. You go into the profession because you want to help people. You can’t just turn that on and off.

  A blonde curl peeks from the shadows of my purse—the photograph on a flyer seeking any news of Emily. They called off the search for her today. There’s simply nowhere else to look.

  I remind myself again to have hope. If you give up, it’s like saying that little girl isn’t coming home.

  But the tears press anyway, and I pull the shades, slide into bed, and close my eyes. I’m just . . . so . . . tired. . . .

  The doorbell rings downstairs as I finally start to drift. Who in the world? No one in the family would bother ringing the bell. They’d come in through the garage.

  I ignore it, hoping it’s just a package delivery, something Robert ordered online for the cabin. With so much vacation built up after seventeen years with the auto company, he has plenty of time to work on the place.

  The doorbell rings again. Twice. Close together. Insistent.

  I get up, put on a robe, and head downstairs. Before I reach the front door, I recognize the halo of auburn hair on the other side of the leaded glass. Mom. Why she’s ringing the bell, I can’t imagine.

  I open the door, and she thrusts a white pet carrier my way. She has her cat, Honey, dangling under one arm and a sack of kitty chow under the other. “You’ll have to keep Honey for me.” As usual, it’s an order, not a question. She jabs the pet carrier outward again. “Here. Take this.”

  I relieve her of the carrier and the cat chow as she breezes past me into the house. “Mom, what are you talking about?”

  She strokes Honey’s head so hard that the cat’s eyes bug out with every pass. “I’m going to Sandy’s and talking some sense into her. It’s the only way. I am not having this family, or this farm, torn apart so my sister can sink the last of her money into that stupid shop of hers. Mother and Daddy didn’t give us this land so we could sell it and run off to some hut on the beach.”

  “Mom, in the first place, it’s a store, not a hut. In the second place, she’s a grown woman. And in the third place, she’s been there for almost twenty years now. She knows what she wants.”

  “She doesn’t know anything. She’s sixty-five years old, for heaven’s sake. How much longer does she think she and George will be able to stay there anyway?” Mom paces down the entryway, Honey’s rear end swinging against her hip. The cat’s feet flail, searching for a toehold. I know the feeling.

  “Mom, you can’t make Aunt Sandy and Uncle George pull up stakes and come back. Maybe they never will. Maybe when they finally can’t run the shell shop anymore, they’ll just . . . retire there on the Outer Banks.” It sounds nice. Retiring on an island.

  Mom pulls a sheet of instructions from her pocket and leaves it on the dining table as she passes. Honey braces a claw on my mother’s hip, tries to retract herself from the elbow hold. Mom hasn’t even noticed so far.

  “I’ll tell you what’ll happen. She’ll sell that property and throw the money into that shop, and then when another storm comes along, or she or George experience a health crisis and they can’t live in such a remote place anymore, they won’t have anywhere to come home to. And we’ll be stuck with strangers building houses right in the middle of all of our places. Butch doesn’t have the money to buy the land from her, and neither do I.”

  Honey has finally gone into full-out escape mode. My mother releases her, and she jumps to the floor and skitters away, skidding on the tile as she disappears around the corner.

  Mom barely gives the cat a second glance. She has bigger fish to fry. “I’m going there to talk some sense into her, face-to-face. That’s all there is to it.”

  That’s the second time she’s said it. And this time, it genuinely worries me. “Mom, you’ve never once been out to Aunt Sandy’s place in all these years, and now, suddenly, you’re going? And then what? You’ll kidnap Aunt Sandy and Uncle George and force them to come back to Michigan?”

  Her green eyes flare, then narrow beneath windblown shocks of hair. She’s not used to being talked to like this. No one talks back to the principal. It’s hard for her to get used to civilian life. Even harder, since, after nearly thirty years of dedicated service, she was caught in the squeeze play of an unpleasant consolidation between two schools.

  Retirement isn’t suiting my mother. That school was her heart and soul. “George isn’t even there with her right now. He’s in Kalamazoo, taking care of his mother. He has been there off and on for months. The poor man is commuting back and forth between Michigan and Hatteras Island, trying to see to his mother’s care and help Sandy keep that shop afloat. It’s ridiculous. Their family is here. Their children and grandchildren are here. Someone has to force Sandy to see reason.”

  “Mother, you cannot fly to North Carolina on your own.”

  “I’m not flying. I’m driving.”

  “You definitely can’t drive to North Carolina.” I’m guessing that trip would take twelve to fourteen hours. Just a couple months ago, Mom ran her car into a ditch during a three-hour drive to my great-aunt’s house. I think she fell asleep at the wheel, but she won’t admit it.

  “Oh yes, I can. There’s some worry about a storm on the East Coast mucking up the airports. I don’t want to fly and end up trapped out there.”

  “So your solution is to drive?” Like Uncle Butch burning rubber in his old Suburban, this would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

  “Yes, that’s my solution. And if you’re so worried about it, you can come with me. We’ll only be gone a few days.”

  Her gaze catches mine, and suddenly I realize this is why she’s really here. This is what she’s had in mind all along.

  CHAPTER 3

  He’s there in the woods. I hear him moving in the shadows. A sense of warning slides under my sweatshirt—cold, visceral, trailing along my skin like the edge of a blade. Not deep enough to cut, just touching in a way that makes me shiver.

  I pull up the stick I’ve been using to probe leaves, then whirl around, catch a breath, but I can’t see anyone.

  Is he there? Is it just my imagination? Where have all the other searchers gone? We are supposed to work in pairs. Always in pairs. There’s a danger that he might come back, see
king to snatch the evidence left behind and relocate it. If there is any evidence . . .

  “Who’s there?” I whisper.

  “Elizabeth . . .” He knows my name. His voice sends another shiver through me.

  What if he knows where I live? Where are Jessica and Micah? Could he come to my house, take them away like he took little Emily? Has he been to my house already? Stood over the beds of my children while they were sleeping?

  “Who are you?” My voice echoes through the woods, bouncing off shadows and trees, rising into the canopy of birch and pine, startling birds into flight. “You give her back, do you hear me? You give Emily back!” Suddenly I am bold. I expect him to do as I have commanded.

  I scan the forest, checking for the blonde girl from the photo on the flyer. I can almost see her, running through the trees. I think I do, but then she’s gone.

  “Elizabeth!” He calls my name again, louder than before, insistent. His voice seems to come from the sky, from everywhere. “Elizabeth!”

  He grabs me then, seizes my arm, shakes me. The back of my head strikes something solid yet soft. His shoulder, I think. He has me now.

  How will the news reach my family? How will they find out? Who will help Jessica pick out her dress for the prom? Who will make sure that Micah doesn’t get left out of all the festivities, since he’s decided to graduate this year?

  I picture them rattling around the house, alone, while Robert spends his time in the north woods. Will he come home and pick up the slack after I’m gone?

  I fight, jerk an elbow back, flail my arms, try to grab something—his hair, his nose, his eyes. I go for the most vulnerable targets, the things I’ve learned in self-defense classes offered by the department.

  “Elizabeth, for heaven’s sake! Wake up!” The voice rings high, echoes. It’s a woman’s now. My mother’s.

  My head bobbles side to side, bumps into something hard this time, and I wake just as the car is wobbling from the shoulder back onto an old two-lane road.

  Around the ribbon of blacktop, pine, maple, and sweet gum trees stretch skyward like the pickets of a privacy fence, concealing all but glimpses of what lies beyond—a house, a barn, a cotton field, white-crested and ready for harvest, and the sky darkening toward the first evening hues.

  Beside me, Mom is wide-eyed, both hands back on the wheel. She sends a concerned look my way, but mostly she’s irritated. “What in the world is wrong with you? You’re lucky we didn’t end up in a wreck.”

  I stretch the stiffness from my neck and sit up, surprised that I’ve let myself fall so deeply asleep. I’d intended to stay awake, to watch for any signs of Mom dozing at the wheel or zoning out and doing something dangerous. If she shouldn’t be making car trips anymore, I need to know. But even that seems strange—my questioning my mother’s competence in anything. She’s always been the one in charge. Of the school, of the family. Of the world, really.

  I don’t want to take over the world, or even the running of the family compound. Or the running of her. It’s all I can do right now to hold my own house together and keep from committing mayhem in the daily struggle of parent versus teen.

  There’s a town ahead, and I spot a Dairy Queen billboard. “Let’s stop for an ice cream.” I’m surprised when another sign informs me that we have driven through a whole state since I fell asleep. “We’re in Virginia? How long was I out?”

  “Three hours at least, maybe four.” Mom rolls the look my way, frowning. “I’ve been trying to tell you that you don’t get enough sleep. I had to go up to the school and sign Micah’s permission form the other day. You stretch yourself too thin. It’s no wonder you forget things.”

  “They would’ve waited for it.” I really don’t need the bad-mother guilt trip. Does this woman have any idea how many times I forged her signature because she was tied up with football game crowd control, school board meetings, the courses for her doctoral degree, the task of working out class schedules for five hundred kids? It was just a good thing that my siblings and I went to a different school and that our administration never bothered checking the signatures.

  In my eighteen years as a parent, I’ve attended fifty times more PTA meetings, sports practices, and school plays than my mother ever did for us. It’s funny how family histories seem to differ, depending on whom you ask.

  “The school administration needs things when it needs things. It’s hard enough coordinating hundreds of students without tracking down every little thing for every individual kid,” Mom lectures. So far, this trip across four states is like being stuck in a cave with a bear waking from hibernation. She’s ramping up for the confrontation with Aunt Sandy and using me for sparring practice.

  I’ve really had enough of it. “You know what, Mom? I rearranged everything on the spur of the moment to come on this trip with you. I took four days off work and stuck Carol with a weekend shift. I made arrangements for the kids. I called Robert home from the cabin. I really don’t deserve this. And to tell you the truth, I don’t need one more person complaining about me, okay?” The last words are out of my mouth before I realize that I have fully snapped and started digging a little too close to the pool of angst I’ve been trying to ignore. I’ve revealed more than I meant to.

  A curious eye slants my way. “Who’s complaining about you?”

  “You just were. That’s all I meant.” Deflect. Distract. Sidetrack.

  “You said you don’t need anyone else complaining about you. Clearly there’s a larger problem here.”

  Suddenly I wish I’d stayed asleep. “No. Nothing. It was just a figure of speech.” We pass the Dairy Queen, and I watch it go by. I really need an ice cream cone right now. Chocolate. Anything chocolate. Maybe chocolate ice cream dipped in chocolate. I need comfort food, the kind of thing I would not normally allow myself to eat.

  “Is it Robert?” For months now, she’s been nibbling around the situation with Robert and me, trying to sniff out the reasons he’s gone so much.

  It’s never occurred to her that if there is something going on, I don’t want to know. At least not yet. Two kids graduating in one year and the end of family life as we know it is enough to handle. I refuse to let some big upheaval blow my kids out of the water during their senior year of high school. I wonder if this is the reason Micah has decided to hurry up and graduate. Maybe he’s afraid that something bad is coming and thinks he’d better get out of the house while he can.

  “Oh, look! There’s a Piggly Wiggly!” Mom cheers, and I’m glad we’ve veered off course. Literally so—Mom turns in to the parking lot. “Remember when we lived in Biloxi? You used to get all excited about going to the Piggly Wiggly.”

  “I don’t remember.” The family compound is the only life I’ve ever known. My father’s stint in the military ended when I was three years old. “I was just little.”

  “I always thought that was the strangest name for a grocery store. . . .” Her face turns solemn as she leans forward to get a better view of the Piggly Wiggly sign. For a moment, there’s a mist in her eyes. “You were such a cute little thing . . .” The sentence goes unfinished as if she knows that I’ve reached a point in life where a sense of yearning for the past strikes me too. There’s something magical about that time when your babies are small, when you’re the center of their world, the person they love the most.

  “We always used to sing a little song, remember?” Mom offers. “‘To market, to market, to buy a fat pig. To market, to market, jiggety-jig . . . ,’” she sings. Having taught preschool for several years before she had children, my mother always had a song or a nursery rhyme to suit any occasion.

  It plays in my mind, a long-lost track I didn’t know was there. I join in on the second stanza. “‘To market, to market, to buy a fat hog. To market, to market, jiggety-jog.’”

  We laugh together at the end, and I have a flash of a memory. Heat boiling off asphalt around my white Mary Jane sandals, Mom and me sitting on a bench in front of a store, eating ice cream
. There’s a scent in the air, and I smell it again today. It’s not a Michigan scent.

  “I guess I do remember after all.” An image wavers in my mind, heat-washed and misty—my mother as a young homemaker, before my little sister came along and then my brother. Before Mom decided the June Cleaver life wasn’t for her, that she wanted a career.

  But before all that, there was just a young mom and a first child and a quiet summer day with ice cream cones. There will always be those memories that tie us together, those invisible strings. The careless stitches of mother and daughter.

  Suddenly I’m glad I’ve come along on this trip. The Piggly Wiggly seems healing in some way, though I can’t explain it.

  “Oh, let’s go back and get an ice cream.” The car wheels around in the parking lot, and we head back to the Dairy Queen. “Dinner can wait. We don’t have a schedule to keep.”

  The last words trouble me a bit, because I know my mother. She never makes a trip without a schedule in place. She never arrives late or unannounced.

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that she might be making this trip without having ironed out the plans ahead of time, but those words, We don’t have a schedule to keep, clue me in.

  This is a stealth attack. Aunt Sandy doesn’t know we’re coming.

  CHAPTER 4

  Evening is setting in as we drive over the wide, four-lane bridge from the North Carolina mainland onto the Outer Banks. The highway is strangely quiet heading onto the islands, but it’s busy going the other direction, crowded with vehicles stuffed full of possessions and trailers piled high with sofas, mattresses, ATVs, shelves, and store fixtures with tarps tied over the top. Even though the last miles after looping Norfolk are fairly rural, we’ve already passed numerous homes and businesses boarded up with hurricane shutters. I’m starting to feel the insanity of what we’re doing, and living in Michigan, I know nothing about hurricane evacuations.

  The crazy meter is ringing off the charts in my head. It does this often when my family is involved.