The Sea Glass Sisters

by Lisa Wingate

  “Mom, grab my phone for me.” I take one hand off the wheel and try to reach my purse on the passenger-side floorboard near her feet. “I want to check the weather.”

  “Not while you’re driving.”

  “Give me my phone.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Elizabeth. Have you looked around? What if you get distracted and drive us off into the drink?” She indicates the waters of Currituck Sound below us. They are perfectly placid this evening, slightly pink-tinged as the day works toward its end. It’ll be dark before we can travel all the way down the Outer Banks to Hatteras Island.

  “I just want to make sure you’re not about to get us stuck in a hurricane.” The horror stories I’ve seen on TV come to mind. I’m way out of my element here, and Mom only knows whatever she learned during those three years living in Biloxi. Which, presumably, is practically nothing.

  Her arms cross, and her foot slides the purse far out of my reach. Our Piggly Wiggly peace evaporated about the time the Dairy Queen faded from sight in the rearview mirror, and we’ve been butting heads ever since.

  She snorts. “I checked the weather before we left. What do you think I am, some kind of addle-brained idiot?” The claw of deeper issues scratches up a morsel. Once again, we’re feeling our way through this difficult dance of changing roles. And stepping on each other’s toes. “We’ve got almost forty-eight hours before it is supposed to even be in the vicinity, and it’s only supposed to pass by here, not make landfall. Those people are just taking precautions.” She waves blithely toward the vehicles going the other way, heading for higher ground that’s not surrounded by water.

  “This is stupid,” I mutter under my breath. Overhead, a formation of pelicans wings its way toward the mainland. The birds know. They are smarter than we are. The word birdbrain comes to mind.

  I keep driving because we’re here now. What other choice is there, really? We might as well see Aunt Sandy.

  But in the morning, I am insisting. If I have to hog-tie my mother and throw her in the car, we are leaving. Preferably with Aunt Sandy safely in the backseat. I’ve heard the stories of Hurricane Irene hitting the Outer Banks. Of Aunt Sandy’s shop flooding, the roof of her house being blown partially off, and the bridge to Hatteras Island washing out, cutting the island off from all highway traffic for weeks.

  Aunt Sandy shared the details with us when she was home last Christmas. She made the hurricane sound like one ginormous adventure, filled with heroic acts of neighborliness and personal sacrifice. She always makes her life sound idyllic, partly to counteract all the family disapproval, no doubt. The relatives consistently provide a united front against this runaway island existence of hers.

  It’s a form of bullying, I guess, but it’s what we do. We keep our own close to home. Period.

  I give up on the phone. I’ll check as soon as we get to Aunt Sandy’s place, and if there’s anything dire, we’ll just get back in the car and drive the other way. After the long nap this afternoon, I feel pretty good. I could drive for several hours tonight if I had to.

  But as we pass through the intersection that allows us a choice of turning north toward Duck and Corolla or south toward Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head, Rodanthe, Avon, and eventually the tip of Hatteras Island, where Aunt Sandy lives, I hope we really do have a day or two to spare. The windows are down, and the scents of salt breeze and sand slip into me. I need this.

  Maybe now the nightmares about Emily will stop. I haven’t turned the whole situation over and over in my mind for a couple hours or tried to mentally rewrite the way things happened. Here, with the live oaks bending over the road, the Spanish moss dangling in lacy chains, and the palm trees swaying, Emily seems like a story on the evening news. Something terrible but far away.

  I ignore homeowners shuttering windows and crews covering storefronts with plywood as we pass. It’s hard to believe anything could be wrong in a place like this.

  We drive by the giant sand dunes of Kill Devil Hills, and I can’t help slowing down. I’ve read about this place in books.

  Mom leans toward the window. “Oh, how beautiful! Maybe tomorrow on our way off the islands, we can stop and visit the Wright Brothers Memorial, see where Wilbur and Orville took their famous first flight.”

  I don’t know whether to agree or look at her like she’s crazy. This trip isn’t a vacation. At the same time, I’d like to pull over, throw my arms out, and run wildly up that giant dune, see what the view looks like from the top. I’ll bet you can watch the water on both sides of the island from up there. What kind of freedom would that be?

  I can taste it, almost, that burst of something unplanned and completely different. Something I wouldn’t normally do. My heart quickens for the first time in a long time. Maybe that’s what I need, I decide. Maybe that’s the secret to surviving this change in life, this ending of all the things I’ve put my heart and soul into, of motherhood as it has been. Maybe I need to plan a vacation—go bungee jumping or zip-lining or skydiving. Something wild.

  “Well, that’s a faraway look if I’ve ever seen one.” Mom’s observation breaks into my thoughts, and I realize some time has passed. “What’s that about?”

  “Nothing.” The whole thing is a can of worms I’m not ready to open yet. With my mother or anyone. It’s like I’ve been stuffing emotions into a bottle for a couple years now, and if I open the cork, everything will rush out at once.

  “Oh, there it is!” She’s distracted by a glimpse of the ocean. The waves, white-tipped and frothy, brush against the shore with a different kind of power than I’m used to seeing in Lake Michigan. They seem determined to pick up this place and move it bit by bit.

  A lit sign echoes my thoughts: Life on a sandbar. It’s beachy!

  We continue down the Outer Banks, pointing out beautiful multistory vacation homes, interesting shops, and glimpses of the water that quicken my pulse each time. No wonder Aunt Sandy has run away to this place. It’s incredible. I wish I’d come sooner, brought the kids all those years she invited us to visit.

  The sun sinks lower as we drive, and the last blush is gone by the time we finally reach Hatteras Island. Overhead, a spray of stars seems close enough to reach for. My mother has relaxed in her seat, gazing at the sky. She tells me about a time she and my father went on a picnic to Lake Michigan. The day he asked her to marry him, and she said yes. They lay beneath the stars for hours, making plans, talking about their future. A young couple in love.

  Mom has dipped her toe into the waters of the past now. As we drive through Buxton and Frisco, she tells me about her wedding. The day, the dress, the conflicts with her own mother that seem petty now. “Sandy was only fifteen then, and your grandma was convinced that she was too young to be a bridesmaid. I think that was the first time my mother and I ever went head-to-head about anything. But I was almost twenty, I’d been out on my own working, and I was paying for a lot of the wedding. I wanted my sister in it.”

  “Did you get your way?” The GPS on the dashboard shows us drawing ever closer to Sandy’s house, and I almost regret it. I’m enjoying the conversation. It’s amazing that the GPS knows its way to places like this, so far off the beaten path. We’ve been driving down the Outer Banks for roughly two hours. From near the top, almost all the way to the bottom, where the ferry landing leads down to Ocracoke, the last of the developed islands. I know these places because Aunt Sandy has told me stories about them. They already live in my mind.

  “Yes, I did. My sister and I had slept in the same bed since she left the crib in my parents’ room, and I couldn’t imagine not sharing that day with her.”

  “That’s really nice.” I picture my mother and my aunt, a little over four years apart in age, curled up in the same bed, sharing innocent games of Let’s Pretend. It makes the present situation seem that much sadder. Should geography and real estate signs outweigh the bonds formed by the shared milestones of childhood?

  The pressure of that question grows as we continue down the island
and finally wind through a small neighborhood toward my aunt’s place. Around us now, the houses are a combination of historic clapboard homes built closer to the ground and more modern ones constructed on stilts where historic homes have undoubtedly surrendered to the wind and the floods.

  “Mom, maybe you shouldn’t do this. Maybe you should forget what Uncle Butch says and just let it go.”

  The profile of her chin is stiff. “I won’t have this family torn apart.” I recognize the stubborn look. I’ve seen it many times in my daughter, who is her grandmother’s spitting image—in personality and mannerisms, if not in appearance.

  What if this is the thing that tears the family apart? I wonder. We’re pulling into the driveway now, so there’s no time to ask. The house is a gray, cedar-shingled structure on stilts with a carport underneath. Hurricane shutters cover the windows, but over the front door, a cheery sign, just visible in the glow of the headlights, proclaims, Sandy Feet Welcome Here.

  The house is dark. It’s obvious that no one is home.

  “Maybe she has evacuated already,” I suggest, grasping at a hope that perhaps this ill-fated journey will end in a missed connection. Somewhere on the road I learned that Aunt Sandy has quit answering calls from my mother and Uncle Butch, hence this wild trip.

  “She’s down at that shop of hers. You can bet on it.” A frustrated huff punctuates the words. “Let’s go.”

  We drive back to Highway 12, then wind our way past more shuttered houses, through Hatteras Village, and a short distance toward the ferry landing, where my aunt’s shop comes into view as we round a corner. It’s just like the pictures on the postcards she sends us at Christmas. An antique clapboard house in the I-style that’s traditional in the Outer Banks, painted yellow and converted to a shop. The wide front porch looks like a perfect place to sit and watch the traffic headed to the Ocracoke ferry. In back, the water of Pamlico Sound twinkles beneath the full moon, and some sort of outdoor lamps cast a colored glow onto the grass. The lights are on in the shop, the upper dormers reflecting against a carved sign that labels the place.

  Sandy’s Seashell Shop

  An Ocean of Possibilities

  It looks like the showdown of the O’Bannion sisters will happen after all.

  Mom doesn’t even wait for me to put the car in park. She flips the lock and is out the passenger door, climbing the steps before I can turn off the engine, but she stops on the second stair from the top.

  Exiting the vehicle, I hear music. Mom has tipped an ear toward it too. She glances over her shoulder at me as if she needs backup. I don’t want to be backup. I’m realizing how completely I hate this mess. And I wonder how much of this is happening because my mother wants it and how much is because Uncle Butch is a bully and my family is set in its ways?

  The shop door is open, but no one is around when we walk in. Furniture and store fixtures have been stacked in the main room, with soft things like chairs and sofas raised onto metal shelves and wooden tables. Clearly someone has been preparing for the possibility of floodwater. But even in its present condition, the shop is adorable. There’s a coffee bar along the left wall, an antique display case bearing a vintage cash register, an actual indoor sandbox in the middle of the store, and a bay window on the front wall with beautiful stained-glass suncatchers hanging inside. Hummingbirds. Dozens of them.

  The well-worn plank floors of the main room and the beadboard wainscoting are clearly original to the house. Above the wainscoting an array of shell art and signs offers beach-related bits of wisdom, ready for tourists to take home. A rack of hats and sarongs makes me want to stroll a few miles down the shore and see what the tide might wash up. The music seeping from outside adds to the mood. It’s an island tune, heavy on the steel drums and wooden flutes.

  “She must be out there.” Mom turns toward the light spilling through the back doors that lead to what appears to be a deck. The accordion paper shades are lowered partway over the glass, so all we can see is the first foot or two of weathered wood. “She has her stained-glass workshop in the old garage building in back. She told me.”

  My moment of beach nirvana evaporates as we cross through the shop and open the French doors. The deck comes into view, and of all things, it looks like there’s a party going on. At the patio tables, a dozen or so people are laughing and talking and feasting on piles of food dumped unceremoniously atop splayed-out newspapers.

  Mom stops in the doorway, clearly surprised to have walked in on a gathering of some sort. She’s not at all prepared for this. From where I’m standing, it looks like we’ve shown up at a convention of old hippies. The people on the deck are an eclectic collection of long hair, grungy T-shirts, sagging tattoos, and leathery skin. They range in age from perhaps forty to seventy or so.

  Aunt Sandy spots us, and her eyes fly wide. She stops with a crab claw halfway to her mouth, a cracker still dangling in the other hand. She blinks, blinks again. I have a feeling she’s hoping we’ll disappear. But of course, we don’t.

  Here come the relatives, like it or not.

  Finally she sets down the crab cracker, which I figure is a good sign, and stands up. Her round cheeks rise beneath her spiky blonde hair, and a measure of relief trickles through me. At least we’re not going to have all-out war right here and now.

  To the contrary, she waves us outside, like she’s not a bit surprised to find us on her doorstep. “Well, don’t just stand there!” she bubbles cheerfully. “Come on out here! Grab a plate! We’re having a hurricane party!”

  CHAPTER 5

  I open my eyes, stare at the evenly spaced metal bars above my head, wonder where I am.

  For once I’ve slept the whole night, rather than spending the hours dozing and waking, dozing and waking in a sweat. I haven’t tromped the woods in my dream, stirring the leaf litter and hoping to find a little blonde girl running through the trees.

  The realization should come with relief, but instead it comes with guilt. If I give up on looking for Emily, even in my dreams, isn’t it the same as accepting the worst?

  I don’t accept it. I won’t. Little girls shouldn’t be stolen from their mothers in the middle of the night. They should be safe at home in their beds, tucked in after a storybook and good-night prayers.

  I figure out two things as I look up at the bars. The first is that I’m in the extra bedroom at Aunt Sandy’s house—the one with two sets of bunk beds, where her grandchildren stay when they come to visit. Mom has already vacated the bed across the room, but the quilt is turned back and rumpled still. She must have gotten up in a hurry. Probably to go argue with Aunt Sandy some more, before my aunt can escape for her morning walk along the shore. There’s a path out the back of the house, and it eventually leads to the ocean side of the island.

  Yesterday morning, Aunt Sandy slipped away before Mom could catch her. They’ve been locked in mortal combat for over twenty-four hours now. Today we have to leave, and sooner rather than later. We’ve pushed the timeline as far as we dare.

  The second thing I realize—with startling clarity, as I listen to see if I can catch the rhythm of the waves far off in the distance: I am angry with God. So incredibly, bitterly, hotly angry. I’m boiling over with it.

  Why? I want to scream. Why? Why? Why? Why is evil allowed to come in the night and snatch up an innocent little girl? The world shouldn’t be this way. And if it is this way, maybe I don’t want to live in it anymore. . . .

  I know that is a selfish thought. I brush it away as soon as it comes.

  I wonder if the advice Carol has been giving me at work is more spot-on than I’ve realized. She thinks I need to see somebody—a doctor or a shrink. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, she says. This job is stressful, Elizabeth. You deal with people’s worst situations, year after year, and it adds up. On top of that, major life transitions are hard. They can knock you completely off-balance. And then sometimes it’s all as simple as hormones and body chemistry. You should go get checked out. Life’s too short to
be walking around with one foot in the ditch.

  I sit up, catch a breath, remind myself that my problems are small. I know where my children are, for one thing. They’re both safe. There’s never been a time when I couldn’t kiss them good night, at least over the phone. And even though these years of tearing away are difficult, there’s a part of me that knows it’s normal enough. Kids are supposed to grow up and cut the apron strings. I just never dreamed those sharp scissors would leave so many wounds. Who am I, now that I’m not Mom-in-charge anymore?

  I put on sweats and tennis shoes, grab a jacket in case my mother and Aunt Sandy are outside, engaging in an early morning battle. Yesterday, the only peaceful moments were those when Aunt Sandy brought out her sea glass, shells, and freshwater pearls and showed my mother how she makes one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces. Jewelry from the sea, she calls it. She almost lured my mother into the idea of being a long-distance designer of artisan pieces before Mom realized that she was unwittingly being pulled into the Seashell Shop dream. After that, she pushed away the salt-frosted glass and said, “For heaven’s sake, I don’t have time for this kind of thing. I came here to talk about the property, Sandy.”

  Then the war was on again. It lasted all day and kept us from leaving last night.

  Maybe they’ve gone down to the water together this morning, but I hope not. We need to get on the road, and from the sounds of the conversation after the moments of sea glass sisterhood, it will be just the two of us leaving. Mom and I. The taproot holding my aunt to this place reaches straight through the salty soil and all the way to the floor of the ocean. And with Uncle George gone, there’s no way she’s leaving their house and the store without someone watching after them. She has a generator, bottled water, batteries, nonperishable food, Uncle George’s old ham radio, and all the other hurricane necessities, including numerous cans of gasoline.

  Besides, she doesn’t expect the storm to be that bad. The last thing we heard on the television was that it was expected to pass by Cape Hatteras, not coming onshore until farther north. The greater fear seems to be that it will strike hard around New York City and up the Jersey coast.