The Sea Glass Sisters

by Lisa Wingate

  I watch the water slide by, and I do that thing I’ve mostly left out of my life these past few years, in favor of covering all the other bases. I pray and pray and pray . . .

  I lose track of time. Maybe I doze off, standing there. I’m not sure. The adrenaline seeps out of my body, bit by bit, and I’m boneless and weary.

  A guy I’ve never seen before hands me a protein bar and a bottle of water. “Here,” he says, smiling at me. He can’t be over twenty years old. Not that much further along in life than my own kids. A laid-back beach bum type. “They were handing them out from a Walmart truck. I figured if I took it, I’d come across someone who needed it. That’s how it rolls, right?”

  I nod and thank him and take the gift.

  I figured if I took it, I’d come across someone who needed it. The wisdom of that strikes me in a new way.

  I think of those weekends of advanced emergency training given to me by the county over the years. Of the relatives and friends who watched my children so I could go. The Red Cross volunteer who taught the classes. My long-ago high school health teacher who tested all the students to see who could react in a disaster. That teacher encouraged me to pursue something in the medical field, maybe think about becoming a doctor. When Robert and I made an immature decision on prom night and ended up coping with pregnancy, marriage, and the financial implications, that teacher helped me get into the 911 dispatcher training program with the county. Big dreams became smaller dreams, and life went on.

  Sinking down against the railing, I rest my head and think of Aunt Sandy’s advice to me about starting off on a new adventure in the second half of life. It comes back now, that long-ago dream of becoming a doctor. The idea resurfaces, dull and moss-covered, like something that’s been trapped underwater for years. I pull it out, wipe it off, look at it from several angles, and think . . . maybe . . .

  Could it be time now? Is this the time to reinvent?

  Is survival sometimes about death and rebirth? Egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly? Is this, this ending of our family as I know it, not the death season but the birth of the butterfly season?

  If a woman who’s never owned a shop or lived by the sea can become Sandy of Sandy’s Seashell Shop, what can I do?

  If . . . when Aunt Sandy makes it through this scare, I won’t try to persuade her to give up the Seashell Shop and move home, where the family can monitor and supervise and babysit her. A butterfly should live as long as it can in its natural habitat. This place of sand and water, of seasons and storms and challenges, has become who she is.

  The thoughts seep through me, percolate like water through coffee grounds, producing something new, thick with tantalizing aroma. What would Robert say if I suggested all this? What would the kids think? You’re not the only ones heading off to school. Mom’s got plans. . . .

  I close my eyes and let the thought drift like a raft just floating wherever the current will take it. I doze and wake and feel the water swaying beneath me.

  I’m surprised when I finally climb to my feet and we’re within sight of land. I remember my phone and pull it out, but then I turn and catch a glimpse of Mom standing on her bench. She’s already on her cell, waving at me, trying to give me the high sign.

  I let out the breath I have been holding. The news must be good.

  My phone chimes as the texts from the past few days rush in. There’s Jessica in a cheerleading photo, smiling alongside the friend she’d been fighting with. Miss you, Mom! the message says underneath. Micah reports that he’s pulled a B on his first calculus test. Robert must have made him send the text—Micah would never do that on his own. There’s a note from Robert, offering the rundown of activities around home. Knew you’d be wondering, it says.

  Another from Uncle Butch, several days old. He’s worried about his sisters after the storm. He wants someone to send him more information. How dare the cell service not do his bidding. This is ridiculous. He just wants to know that everyone’s all right, for heaven’s sake.

  Beneath that, Carol has sent an update, written during the graveyard shift as my mother, Aunt Sandy, and I huddled together through the heart of the storm. TOD 6 hr b4 call-in. 10W mom and boyfriend. Wanted u 2 know.

  I close my eyes, take in a breath of salt and sand and driftwood drying in the sun. Tears squeeze out and trail along my skin, the breeze cooling the heat of sorrow. Little Emily was gone from this world six hours before her mother called 911. A bedtime battle, perhaps—that terrible hour of the evening when unstable homes erupt and unspeakable things happen. A plot by the mother and her boyfriend to stage a kidnapping to cover it up. Little girls should be safe in this world, in their own homes, but the fact is that sometimes they’re not. By now that felony warrant for the mother and the live-in boyfriend has been executed. The baby still strapped in Trista’s car that night is somewhere safe. Even though I ache with this news, there is that much to be thankful for.

  Emily is safe now as well. I know it. She isn’t cold or alone or hungry. She is not lost in the woods, running wildly as in my dreams. Seeking rescue.

  She is home.

  All around her, there is nothing but love.

  A hand touches my shoulder, and I jump, then realize that Mom has pushed her way through the crowd to me. The lines have loosened around her eyes, and her brows have relaxed a little. “She made it there in good shape. They were able to clear the blockages with an emergency angioplasty and stents. They may do bypass surgery later, after she’s had time to get better, but she’s stable now and in recovery.”

  My mother stretches out her arms, and we fold together and cry and rock and breathe. I don’t close my eyes but instead watch the sun specks through a watery rim of emotion. But for the floating debris, Pamlico Sound is beautiful today. A pod of dolphins plays in the distance. They seem jovial and untroubled, as if they’re saying, What storm? It’s over. Let it go. Let’s celebrate life.

  Mom finally releases me, then gives me a serious look. “I’m not going home after Sandy’s surgery. I’m staying, and I don’t know for how long. I already called and talked to George about it. Sandy needs someone to make her take care of herself the way she should, at least while she heals up.” But there’s something in her voice that tells me this relocation may be more than temporary.

  I feel a sting of separation. As much as our rough edges may rub blisters on each other from time to time, my mother and I have never been more than a few miles apart since the Piggly Wiggly years. Now she will be halfway across the country.

  I bite back a sudden wave of insecurity and the bleak but selfish thought that she will miss all the kids’ senior-year milestones.

  “I think you should.” I have to force myself to say it.

  “But I’ll be home for all the kids’ things. As many as I can catch.” She reads my mind the way mothers and daughters do. “I have frequent-flier miles.”

  “The school will miss having you for all those volunteer hours.” I’m searching for something innocuous that won’t stir up more emotion. I know this is the right thing for my mother, and I don’t want to mess it up.

  She flips a hand in the air, swatting a man behind her, then turning to apologize before answering me. “Phooey on that school system. They should have appreciated me while they had me.”

  Her answer leaves me dumbfounded. This is the first time I’ve heard her actually let it go, not rehash all the reasons it was wrong for the district superintendent to make staffing decisions based on age and gender rather than years of experience.

  Another milestone. Maybe we are both stretching our wings. Maybe this is a butterfly season for both of us.

  Perhaps this rebirth from one thing to another happens repeatedly in a lifetime. Maybe life is a series of little deaths and rebirths, of passages and rites of passage, of God teaching you to stop clinging to one thing so you can reach for another.

  A death grip doesn’t reach very well.

  I think of that tiny woman in her big white hous
e in Fairhope. Aunt Sandy’s friend, Iola Anne Poole—ninety-one years old, yet still surviving on these shifting bars of sand.

  What she said makes sense now, as I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my mother and watch the dolphins play in the sunlit water. The storms come and it’s water and wind as far as the eye can see for a bit. But winds calm and the waters drain. We find our feet again, and the ground under us sprouts a new crop of seed. That is always the way of it.

  I don’t suppose this storm will be any different.

  About the Author

  Lisa Wingate is a former journalist, speaker, and the author of twenty novels, including the national bestseller Tending Roses, now in its eighteenth printing. She is a seven-time ACFW Carol Award nominee, a Christy Award nominee, and a two-time Carol Award winner. Her novel Blue Moon Bay was a Booklist Top Ten of 2012 pick. Recently the group Americans for More Civility, a kindness watchdog organization, selected Lisa along with Bill Ford, Camille Cosby, and six others as recipients of the National Civies Award, which celebrates public figures who work to promote greater kindness and civility in American life. When not dreaming up stories, Lisa spends time on the road as a motivational speaker. Via Internet, she shares with readers as far away as India, where Tending Roses has been used to promote women’s literacy, and as close to home as Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the county library system has used Tending Roses to help volunteers teach adults to read.

  Lisa lives on a ranch in Texas, where she spoils the livestock, raises boys, and teaches Sunday school to high school seniors. She was inspired to become a writer by a first-grade teacher who said she expected to see Lisa’s name in a magazine one day. Lisa also entertained childhood dreams of being an Olympic gymnast and winning the National Finals Rodeo but was stalled by the inability to do a backflip on the balance beam and parents who wouldn’t finance a rodeo career. She was lucky enough to marry into a big family of cowboys and Southern storytellers who would inspire any lover of tall tales and interesting yet profound characters. She is a full-time writer and pens inspirational fiction for both the general and Christian markets. Of all the things she loves about her job, she loves connecting with people, both real and imaginary, the most. More information about Lisa’s novels can be found at www.lisawingate.com.

  When trouble blows in, my mind always reaches for a single, perfect day in Rodanthe. The memory falls over me like a blanket, a worn quilt of sand and sky, the fibers washed soft with time. I wrap it around myself, picture the house along the shore, its bones bare to the wind and the sun, the wooden shingles clinging loosely, sliding to the ground now and then, like scales from some mythic sea creature washed ashore. Overhead, a hurricane shutter dangles by one nail, rocking back and forth in the breeze, protecting an intact window on the third story. Gulls swoop in and out, landing on the salt-sprayed rafters—scavengers come to pick at the carcass left behind by the storm.

  Years later, after the place was repaired, a production company filmed a movie there. A love story.

  But to me, the story of that house, of Rodanthe, will always be the story of a day with my grandfather. A safe day.

  When I squint long into the sun off the water, I can see him yet. He is a shadow, stooped and crooked in his overalls and the old plaid shirt with the pearl snaps. The heels of his worn work boots hang in the air as he balances on the third-floor joists, assessing the damage. Calculating everything it will take to fix the house for its owners.

  He’s searching for something on his belt. In a minute, he’ll call down to me and ask for whatever he can’t find. Tandi, bring me that blue tape measure, or Tandi Jo, I need the green level, out in the truck . . . I’ll fish objects from the toolbox and scamper upstairs, a little brown-haired girl anxious to please, hoping that while I’m up there, he’ll tell me some bit of a story. Here in this place where he was raised, he is filled with them. He wants me to know these islands of the Outer Banks, and I yearn to know them. Every inch. Every story. Every piece of the family my mother has both depended on and waged war with.

  Despite the wreckage left behind by the storm, this place is heaven. Here, my father talks, my mother sings, and everything is, for once, calm. Day after day, for weeks. Here, we are all together in a decaying sixties-vintage trailer court while my father works construction jobs that my grandfather has sent his way. No one is slamming doors or walking out them. This place is magic—I know it.

  We walked in Rodanthe after assessing the house on the shore that day, Pap-pap’s hand rough-hewn against mine, his knobby driftwood fingers promising that everything broken can be fixed. We passed homes under repair, piles of soggy furniture and debris, the old Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station, where the Salvation Army was handing out hot lunches in the parking lot.

  Outside a boarded-up shop in the village, a shirtless guitar player with long blond dreadlocks winked and smiled at me. At twelve years old, I fluttered my gaze away and blushed, then braved another glance, a peculiar new electricity shivering through my body. Strumming his guitar, he tapped one ragged tennis shoe against a surfboard, reciting words more than singing them.

  Ring the bells bold and strong

  Let all the broken add their song

  Inside the perfect shells is dim

  It’s through the cracks, the light comes in. . . .

  I’d forgotten those lines from the guitar player, until now.

  The memory of them, of my grandfather’s strong hand holding mine, circled me as I stood on Iola Anne Poole’s porch. It was my first indication of a knowing, an undeniable sense that something inside the house had gone very wrong.

  I pushed the door inward cautiously, admitting a slice of early sun and a whiff of breeze off Pamlico Sound. The entryway was old, tall, the walls white with heavy gold-leafed trim around rectangular panels. A fresh breeze skirted the shadows on mouse feet, too slight to displace the stale, musty smell of the house. The scent of a forgotten place. Instinct told me what I would find inside. You don’t forget the feeling of stepping through a door and understanding in some unexplainable way that death has walked in before you.

  I hesitated on the threshold, options running through my mind and then giving way to a racing kind of craziness. Close the door. Call the police or . . . somebody. Let someone else take care of it.

  You shouldn’t have touched the doorknob—now your fingerprints will be on it. What if the police think you did something to her? Innocent people are accused all the time, especially strangers in town. Strangers like you, who show up out of the blue and try to blend in . . .

  What if people thought I was after the old woman’s money, trying to steal her valuables or find a hidden stash of cash? What if someone really had broken in to rob the place? It happened, even in idyllic locations like Hatteras Island. Massive vacation homes sat empty, and local boys with bad habits were looking for easy income. What if a thief had broken into the house thinking it was unoccupied, then realized too late that it wasn’t? Right now I could be contaminating the evidence.

  Tandi Jo, sometimes I swear you haven’t got half a brain. The voice in my head sounded like my aunt Marney’s—harsh, irritated, thick with the Texas accent of my father’s family, impatient with flights of fancy, especially mine.

  “Mrs. Poole?” I leaned close to the opening, trying to get a better view without touching anything else. “Iola Anne Poole? Are you in there? This is Tandi Reese. From the little rental cottage out front. . . . Can you hear me?”

  Again, silence.

  A whirlwind spun along the porch, sweeping up last year’s pine straw and dried live oak leaves. Loose strands of hair swirled over my eyes, and my thoughts tangled with it, my reflection melting against the waves of leaded glass—flyaway brown hair, nervous blue eyes, lips hanging slightly parted, uncertain.

  What now? How in the world would I explain to people that it’d taken me days to notice there were no lights turning on and off in Iola Poole’s big Victorian house, no window heat-and-air units running at night when the spring chi
ll gathered? I was staying less than forty yards away. How could I not have noticed?

  Maybe she was only sleeping—having a midday nap—and by going inside, I’d scare her half to death. From what I could tell, my new landlady kept to herself. Other than groceries being delivered and the UPS and FedEx trucks coming with packages, the only sign of Iola Poole were the lights and the window units going off and on as she moved through the rooms at different times of day. I’d only caught sight of her a time or two since the kids and I had rolled into town with no more gas and no place else to go. We’d reached the last strip of land before you’d drive off into the Atlantic Ocean, which was just about as far as we could get from Dallas, Texas, and Trammel Clarke. I hadn’t even realized, until we’d crossed the North Carolina border, where I was headed or why. I was looking for a hiding place.

  By our fourth day on Hatteras, I knew we wouldn’t get by with sleeping in the SUV at a campground much longer. People on an island notice things. When a real estate woman offered an off-season rental, cheap, I figured it was meant to be. We needed a good place more than anything.

  Considering that we were into April now, and six weeks had passed since we’d moved into the cottage, and the rent was two weeks overdue, the last person I wanted to contact about Iola was the real estate agent who’d brought us here, Alice Faye Tucker.

  Touching the door, I called into the entry hall again. “Iola Poole? Mrs. Poole? Are you in there?” Another gust of wind danced across the porch, scratching crape myrtle branches against gingerbread trim that seemed to be clinging by Confederate jasmine vines and dried paint rather than nails. The opening in the doorway widened on its own. Fear shimmied over my shoulders, tickling like the trace of a fingernail.

  “I’m coming in, okay?” Maybe the feeling of death was nothing more than my imagination. Maybe the poor woman had fallen and trapped herself in some tight spot she couldn’t get out of. I could help her up and bring her some water or food or whatever, and there wouldn’t be any need to call 911. First responders would take a while, anyway. There was no police presence here. Fairhope wasn’t much more than a fish market, a small marina, a village store, a few dozen houses, and a church. Tucked in the live oaks along Mosey Creek, it was the sort of place that seemed to make no apologies for itself, a scabby little burg where fishermen docked storm-weary boats and raised families in salt-weathered houses. First responders would have to come from someplace larger, maybe Buxton or Hatteras Village.