by Cheryl Kerr
Aunt Meg restarted the movie and then sank back on the sofa in the flickering light with a large pad of paper on her knees. Lea started to speak and then stopped. On the screen were two little girls, arms around each other with big gap-toothed grins.
"This is Christmas when I was nine," Aunt Meg spoke. "Want some hot chocolate?" She nodded toward the pot on the table.
Lea nodded and poured herself a cup. The warm sweetness felt good all the way down. She licked marshmallow foam from her lips and asked, "Do you have more?"
"Help yourself."
"No, I mean pictures. Do you have any of my mom?" Lea's voice was wistful.
Aunt Meg moved forward and dug through the boxes on the floor. Even upside down Lea recognized her grandmother's handwriting.
"Here." She held one up marked with a faded tag that said "wedding".
She put the reel on the projector with a click, pushed a button and the movie began whirring. The figures on the screen were smiling and waving. They looked so familiar.
"Do you know who they are?" Aunt Meg asked her.
"It's Mom and Dad!" Lea exclaimed and sat up fast. The couple came closer, as though hearing their names, smiling and looking straight at the camera. At Lea. Their steps were a little jerky and as they got closer the picture grew fuzzy.
"Movies have come a long way." Aunt Meg laughed and tried to adjust the focus.
"That's okay," Lea said. "Just seeing them is great. Can you stop it?"
"I think so." Her aunt pushed buttons and the picture froze. Two smiling faces looked back at them.
"They look so happy," Lea said, softly. Mom looked wide-eyed and excited. Dad was smiling. These days, thought Lea, he always seemed to be frowning. "They look so young. They've changed a lot."
She sighed.
Aunt Meg said, "People do change." They were quiet for a moment. "You haven't said very much about them."
"Neither have you," Lea said. "Tell me about growing up with my mom."
"We shared a room. Your mom was always going out, always busy and she had a lot of friends." She stared into the fire as though seeing images in the dancing flames.
"And you?" Lea asked.
"Oh, not me." Aunt Meg waved a hand. "I wasn't like that."
"What were you like?" Lea persisted. "You weren't very old," she said and looked closer at the film.
"No, I was eighteen. Your mother got married right out of college. She moved home again just for the few months before they got married."
"Not much older than me," Lea said. "After all, I'm almost a teenager." She looked again at the picture. It was weird to think of her mother as a kid, a teenager, Lea thought.
She said so to Aunt Meg. "I mean, she's older, an adult. I guess I think she's always been that way," Lea finished lamely. She had a sudden idea. "Like those big sea turtles that live two hundred years. They look the same at almost any age."
Aunt Meg burst out laughing. "Somehow I'm not sure your mother wants to be compared to an old turtle. No matter how wise you think it looks," she said.
"Oh, well."
"I was quiet. I was shy and didn't do nearly as much as your mom did."
"Like me," Lea said quietly. "I'm shy and I don't have a lot of friends."
"Well, your mom and I grew up to be very different people with very different lives. We probably wouldn't fit into each other's worlds very well." She studied Lea for a moment. "Your mom may be missing those times. You and I find peace in quiet. She may be unhappy." Aunt Meg glanced at the clock on the table. "Now, it's almost ten-thirty. Time for you to be in bed, I think."
Lea nodded. "I liked watching the films," she said.
"Me too." Aunt Meg turned to a fresh page on her drawing pad. "Now, off to bed with you."
Lea went upstairs and slid between the cool sheets. She felt good. It had been fun watching the films, but the very best part hadn't been old movies. It had been having Aunt Meg talk to her as if she were a grownup. She was glad she hadn't brought up asking if she could camp out at the dig. Things here were a lot better when she and Aunt Meg were getting along.
She sighed, feeling more homesick than ever. She missed her parents. Maybe it was being an artist, she thought, that made Aunt Meg only pick out what she wanted to see. The difference was that Mom and Dad encouraged her and T.J. to have their own thoughts. Aunt Meg didn't seem to have much patience for Lea's.
A knock sounded at her door. Aunt Meg stood there with a portable phone in one hand. "It's your dad." She handed Lea the phone and left the room.
"Daddy," Lea said.
"Hi, sweetheart," Dad's voice echoed and faded in her ear. "How's it going?"
"Fine," Lea said.
"I'm flying out tomorrow. We're at Grandpas. T.J. is fine. We wanted to see how you were. Hang on just a second."
Lea waited, then a voice said in her ear, "Hi, Lea!"
"Hi, T.J.!" she answered. "How's it going, squirt?"
"Good, I'm going to go to computer camp. Grandma says she can't keep me busy enough."
Lea smiled into the phone. T.J. was hard to put up with. It wasn't his fault, he just couldn't stay interested in anything for very long.
"And I've been fishing and stuff. You know Grandpa." He stopped talking and for a moment the lines hummed in their pause. Then he said, "Hey, Lea." He sounded like he did for a moment when a storm blew the lights out, and little brother or not he was just a little brother afraid of the dark.
She remembered the first time T.J. had explained something to her. A storm had blown the lights out and he had called, "Hey, Lea," from down the hall. She had taken her flashlight and padded into his room by feel. "It's okay," she said. "Just a bolt of lightning. My batteries are burnt out."
"I know how lightning works," T.J. had sounded calm. "I just don't like the dark." That night he was just a little brother, her little brother, who didn't want to be alone.
"Yes," she said now.
"It must be the sand or something in the air, but I sort of miss you."
"Yea, there's a lot of sand here, too," Lea said. Her eyes felt prickly and her throat got all tight. She tried hard to swallow. Just then there was another hum on the line and a click and then the line went dead.
Lea listened for a second and then put the phone back carefully in its cradle.
"Bye, T.J. Bye, Dad," she said into the silence.
She went outside and sat on the steps feeling more alone than ever.
She sighed. In some funny, unexplainable way she knew the girl was trying to tell her something. What was it that the girl wanted her to find?
She watched the waves wash the sand in the moonlight. This time the beach was empty. She would just have to try to do this on her own. Lea sighed.
Maybe that was what was meant by growing up and learning to make decisions. Well, then, she had made one. She would keep on trying to find out who the girl was, and where the little sand figures came from.
Chapter 6
An old and battered Jeep pulled up beside the new one and a young man in jeans and a T-shirt got out.
"That was fast," Mrs. Simon murmured. He looked around, spotted them, and walked unhurriedly their way, studying the ground as he came.
"I'm Paul Taylor from the Historical Commission," he said and smiled at all of them. "We got a call that you found something on the beach. I was in the area and volunteered to take a look."
Paul was young. His dark-blond hair was streaked where the sun had bleached it. He had a beard and wore glasses. Behind the glasses his eyes were kind. Lea liked him. Lea was glad he wasn't like some archaeologists she knew; hurried, distracted men who always seemed more at home with dead people than with live ones.
Teri's mother introduced all of them. Lea nodded. Paul came and sat down beside her. "So you're Lea, the one with the find?" he asked her easily. He leaned forward to shake her hand and the camera around his neck slid forward suddenly. Teri dropped beside her, cross-legged on the sand, to listen.
Lea nodded and to
ld him about the metal detector and she and Teri digging and finding the log.
"We didn't move it, though," she said.
"That's good, I'm glad you didn't. Do you want to show it to me now?" They led him to the spot. Gently he began to scoop the sand to one side. Soon the knobby end of the log could be seen sticking out of the ground.
They hollowed the sand out from around the log until they could reach all the way underneath it. It rested on each end with a slight bow in the middle.
"Should we turn it over?" Teri asked
"First, let's take some pictures of it the way it sits." Paul began snapping shots from each side.
They bent and looked closely. "Okay, let's roll it up on one side a bit and see if there are any markings on the underneath." His fingers ran over nothing but the splits and seams always found in an old, dry log.
"What kind of wood is it?" Teri asked.
He ran expert fingers across the surface. It felt dry and slick under his fingers. "I think perhaps it's a type of mahogany," he said. "The grain looks right for that.
"Okay, put it back down." Gently they rolled it back into place.
Paul dusted his hands off and sat back down next to Mrs. Simon.
"This is exciting for us," he told the girls. "We always enjoy finding something new about Texas history."
Both girls nodded. "Okay." He sat back and steepled his fingers. "Tell me about the other things you found?" He made it into a question. "You think that you saw something on the beach recently?"
Lea nodded.
Lea looked up at him and frowned. From behind her Teri said, "The story about the girl, tell him about the girl."
Lea shrugged and felt her cheeks grow warm. "I saw a girl in a blue dress here on the beach. Then she disappeared really fast. I didn't know where she went."
He listened, looking out to sea. When she stopped he turned and smiled at her. "We hear lots of different things in our work. Stories of people seeing unusual things are told all over the world. Go on."
Lea warmed to her story. "I told Teri about it and we got to looking into it."
He nodded.
She shrugged. "So we came to see what we could find."
"And you found this." Paul gestured with a hand. "That's exciting. Now, do you know what we're going to do next?"
Both girls shook their heads.
"Well, we're going to take a better look at the site. We'll mark it off and with better equipment, and more of it. We'll look again at what you found and then we'll look some more. Often, if there was anything washed ashore it is spread out across a pretty good-sized area."
"What happens if we find something? Will we get to keep it?"
"That depends on where it is," he said. "The state may claim part or all of it. They may not claim any." He studied her. "Okay?"
Lea nodded again.
"Now, would you like to help us out?" The girls looked at each other, speechless. They were going to help on the dig for treasure?
"Unless, of course, you don't want to," Paul said casually. Teri turned to her mother, eyes enormous. "Can I?"
"We'll be camping here while we start looking. That way if we find anything, no one can come and disturb it until we know what it is that we have found."
He raised a hand and waved. A slender dark-haired woman rose and came to stand beside him. "This is Carol, she's a student that will be on the dig and can kind of help the girls if they need it."
Mrs. Simon smiled. "How exciting. Yes, I think you can come."
Teri beamed.
"We better go get me ready." She pulled her mother to her feet. "See you later," she told Lea. Lea watched them drive off.
"How about you?" Paul asked Lea.
Her heart sank. She didn't know how Aunt Meg would answer.
"I'll take care of asking," she said. "I live at the cabin just down the road a bit."
"Okay." Paul nodded.
"I'll call the office and arrange for a team to come down." He started making a list. "I don't have enough notebooks with me." He frowned. "I like for each person to have one to keep with them to take notes in. We come across things unexpectedly."
"I can bike into town and get some," Lea offered. She wanted to find Teri anyway.
"Okay, we won't need them before you guys are out here tomorrow anyway. That will be fine."
Lea hopped on her bike and started for town. She watched the ground slide by. Already she was beginning to recognize hummocks of seagrass all along Shell Ridge Road.
In town, Lea bought the pens and notebooks she needed and then headed for the library, swinging her drugstore bag in one hand. Teri wasn't there. She and Mrs. Simon were probably out buying something for Teri's stay on the beach, Lea decided. She climbed on her bike and headed for home. It was a good time to check in with Aunt Meg and keep her from wondering what Lea was up to.
A horn honked behind her. She pulled over and turned to see the Jeep on the road.
"Hey," Paul greeted her. "Everything okay?"
"Everything is fine," she answered, feeling a twinge. She knew what he meant; had she gotten permission to be there?
She realized Paul was still talking to her, "...then you can bike out when you're ready. Okay?" Paul asked.
Lea nodded. "Fine."
With a wave, he pulled ahead of her. She watched him pull away and then suddenly lost her breath. At the mailbox stood her aunt, sifting through the mail which had just been left. She looked up and, with horror, saw the brake lights on the Jeep come on as Paul stopped next to Aunt Meg. She began to peddle harder. Harder. Her breath came in gasps. Her heart banged in her ears as she saw them walk slowly to the cabin together, but she was too late. Lea rode fast but she was puffing hard when she rode down the hill to the cabin.
On the deck Paul stood with one foot up on the deck railing, talking to Aunt Meg. Neither one of them was smiling.
Her stomach like lead, Lea parked her bike and walked towards them.
Meg turned and said, "Lea, come sit down." Lea did, feeling her stomach tighten up.
"Mr. Taylor tells me you've been having an exciting time," her voice even. Lea couldn't decide if she sounded upset or not. She settled for a nod.
"When I saw someone at the mailbox, I figured I'd stop and say hi. I wanted to go on and introduce myself and get things squared away for you guys to come out tomorrow. I was surprised to find out your aunt didn't know anything about what we're doing," Paul said with a frown.
Aunt Meg studied her. "Well, the dig sounds very exciting. But I think we have bigger things to work out, Lea, than whether or not you can camp on the beach."
She turned to Paul Taylor. "I need some time to think this through. Can we give you an answer this evening?"
"Of course.”
"See, Lea is staying with me for the summer. I’m not sure how to deal with this. I want to think it over before I decide on how to handle this with her."
Paul left his goodbye to Lea cool.
Aunt Meg came back in. "Lea, we’ll talk tonight about this." She turned toward the deck and Lea trudged upstairs.
The day passed slowly; each minute seemed an hour. Lea sat on the window seat gazing down the beach. A couple of times cars passed and she wondered if, every minute, that was the second they were digging up a chest dripping with rubies and gold coins. In her trying to be allowed to do it had she worked herself out of getting to watch the dig at all?
At last, the sun started down. True to her word, Aunt Meg appeared at the door. She sat on the end of Lea's bed and said, "Well?"
"You didn't want to talk about what I saw," Lea started in a rush. "But I did see it and Mrs. Simon and Paul Taylor both listened to me. I figured that you wouldn't let me go because it had to do with that. I figured you wouldn't like people that thought like that." She stopped.
Aunt Meg was silent for long minutes. What came next surprised Lea.
Aunt Meg looked at Lea. "I think I owe you an apology," she said. "I should have listened to you when
you brought me this story. I didn't react very well, did I?"
Lea looked at her. Was she supposed to comment? She decided to take a chance. "It made me feel bad," she admitted. "I don't make things up." Lea took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, too. I should have told you what we were doing."
Her aunt nodded. "Well, you did tell Mrs. Simon. I thought about that all day today. I think that might mean you and I need to get to know each other better."
She looked intently at Lea. "And I think you should let me decide what I think of people, okay?"
Lea nodded. She understood that.
Her aunt smiled. "I know I've learned something. That I may not believe in something, but that is not the same thing as not believing in a person.
"Now, you can go to the dig. It sounds like a really good thing to get to watch. But that's on the condition that I take you out there and check things out. Your mother left me in charge and I can't just hand you over to people I don't know. How about if we drive out now?"
Lea sprang up from the bed like a jack-in-the-box.
Only Paul was at the beach, sitting on the tailgate of his truck. He spoke to both of them. Aunt Meg talked to him for a while.
"Lea can stay and help if you still want her. I'm responsible for her. This is too exciting to miss."
"I'm glad," Paul Taylor said from his perch on the stool. He slapped his hands on blue-jeaned thighs. "Now, we need to have our first planning meeting. The team is going to be here in about an hour, a lot faster than I had planned. You eat dinner and come back after suppertime, alright? We'll finish getting things set up and then we'll know what everyone is going to do."
When Aunt Meg drove over the dune that evening, several tents and parked Jeeps met her gaze where before it had been empty.
Paul Taylor came striding over to meet them. "I'm glad you're here." He greeted them. "Let me show you what we are going to do." He led her over to the table where the plans for the site were taking place.
Together, they all walked over to where the first of the tents was pitched. Inside the door was a whiteboard on folding legs. In its tray rested a fat black pen. "Whatever we find we'll put on this board so that anyone can come and pretty much find out all we have put together. That makes the work go faster for everyone because it keeps everyone in touch."