Riley squeezed her hand. “They’re both on their way. Adalee is driving down from the university this morning; I talked to her last night. Maisy is flying in tomorrow afternoon, five days earlier than she was supposed to come.”
Kitsy’s eyes opened wide. “Maisy is coming early? You mean, all this time, all these years, all I had to do was fall down the damn staircase to make her come home? So, all my girls will finally be here.”
Riley laughed and released her mama’s hand, dug into her purse for a muffin wrapped in a napkin. “I brought you contraband—your favorite cranberry muffin from the store.”
Kisty attempted to scoot up in bed, but with her ribs wrapped and her wrist in a cast, she couldn’t move. She exhaled. “Thanks, darling. Now give me updates on the party.”
“Mama, you’ve only been here for one day. There’s nothing new to report.”
“I will delegate responsibilities to each of you girls,” Kitsy said as she held her muffin in the air. “I have sorted it in my mind and I want to tell each of you what to do. I can still write. Thank God I sprained my left wrist.” She held up her muffin. “You’ll help me and take notes, Maisy will stay for the summer and Adalee will run—”
“Whoa, Mama. Your only job right now is to get better. We can handle the rest.”
“No, you can’t. I’m the only one who understands the big picture.”
“Just prepare yourself for a couple of reality checks. I highly doubt Maisy will stay for more than a week, if that long, and Adalee sounded like we’d ruined her summer. I’m not sure how much help she’ll be.”
“Oh, that will change when I talk to them.” Kitsy took a bite of the muffin. “You’ll see.”
Riley leaned back in the hard metal chair and breathed in the scents of multiple flower arrangements around the room. “It’s all under control, Mama.”
“Now you listen to me, young lady. Just because I’m all tied down in a hospital bed does not mean that I am not in charge. It does not mean you can sass me back or tell me what to do. Do you understand?”
“Mama, quit it. Don’t talk to me like I’m twelve years old.”
Kitsy closed her eyes. “God, sometimes I wish you were. Then I could change so much about what has happened.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Riley stood up, offended.
“You know exactly what it means. I would never have let you go out that night with a boy who forced himself on you. I would have made sure you finished college, got a degree.”
“Mama, I’d like to blame this tirade of yours on some kind of drug you’re on, but sadly, I can’t. Your hurtful words aren’t softened just because you’re lying in bed with casts and bruises. No one ever forced himself on me. So stop it.”
Mama’s anger was legendary. There were rants at the dinner table about her daughters’ grades, fiery speeches in the town hall over the installation of the new stoplight and public outcries about Mayor Friscoe’s affair with his son’s second-grade teacher. The storms always passed as quickly as they came and Mama’s remorse was genuine each time.
“Oh, baby. You know I don’t mean it. My hip is throbbing with some kind of new pain I’ve never felt before. I can’t roll over. My ribs hurt every time I take a breath and they won’t give me any more pain meds until Doc comes in this morning. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.” Tears formed in the corners of her eyes.
“I know,” Riley said, as she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. God, how many times had this scene been repeated? Somehow Kitsy Sheffield managed to apologize without ever saying “Sorry” or “Forgive me.”
Dr. Foster’s presence at the bedside startled Riley. “Where did you come from?”
“Snuck in while you two were bickering.” He smiled.
“How is she?” Riley pointed to Mama.
“Don’t be talking about me like I’m in a coma,” Kitsy warned. “I’m right here.”
Riley rolled her eyes at Dr. Foster. “Please tell me that the drugs you’re giving her are what’s making her so mean.”
He laughed, picked Kitsy’s chart off the end of the bed. “The meds and the pain—the combination often puts patients in foul moods.”
“Stop it,” Kitsy hollered, slammed her free hand on the metal bed rail; muffin crumbs landed on the floor. “I’m. Right. Here.”
Dr. Foster slipped his stethoscope under her hospital gown and listened to her chest, then looked up, spoke directly to her. “I was worried about your lungs, but you sound fine and the scan is normal. You can go home tomorrow, but you’ll need plenty of help. We’ll have to arrange for home care . . . unless . . .” He looked directly at Riley. “Unless you can take care of her full-time.”
“No.” Riley exhaled the word with more force than she’d meant to show.
“Absolutely not,” Kitsy said in unison. “We can hire help. Riley has a son, a store to run and a week’s worth of parties to finish arranging.”
Dr. Foster looked down at Kitsy over his glasses, which were perched on the end of his nose. “Now you be sweet to your daughter, and I’ll send the social worker in to help make arrangements.”
Kitsy batted her eyelashes at Dr. Foster—Riley swore her mother had just flirted with the doctor.
Kitsy’s eyes filled with tears again and Riley saw, as she often did, the needy woman underneath the tough exterior. Mama had learned early how to use her wiles to get what she wanted. But there was another side to her that appeared when she and Riley discussed books and running the store together. If Riley lost the store, she feared that she would also lose that sweet connection with her mother. No matter what Mama said, Riley understood that saving this store was as important to Mama as it was to her.
The door swished shut and Riley sat down, pulled her chair up next to Mama. “You have to tell me everything about this chondrosarcoma. I will not let you ignore your health just for a party.”
Kitsy looked toward the window. “Listen, Riley. Waiting a week or two to get treatment won’t matter. It’s a rare form of bone cancer.” Kitsy smiled. “Of course I’d get the rare form. It’s only stage one because we caught it early. I need surgery—that’s the first step: remove it. I have decided to do it at a specialty sarcoma center. After that we’re talking about other treatment, depending on how I do. Fiddle dee dee . . .” She made a gesture of dismissal.
“That’s not funny, Mama.”
“Of course it is.”
“Where is this specialty center and when are you going? Why can’t I tell Maisy and Adalee? Why can’t you go now?”
Kitsy closed her eyes. “M. D. Anderson is in Houston, Texas. No, you can’t tell your sisters and of course we can’t go now. Maisy and Adalee are coming to see me.” She opened her eyes. “Don’t you see? They’re coming here, now. All of us will be together.”
“Okay,” Riley whispered. “But why Texas?”
“Because they’re the best, that’s why. Of course”—Kitsy’s voice lowered—“you know how we—you and me—choose the books we order for the store? How we know what the book clubs will want? You know how we don’t talk about it to anyone else, ever?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“This bone cancer is the same thing. It is ours to keep until we need to share it with everyone else. Okay?”
Riley nodded, swallowed the tears her mama hated to see fall. “That’s just it. I can’t run the store without you.”
Kitsy’s eyebrows lifted. “You have never, ever said that before, Riley.”
“Said what?”
“That you can’t do without me.” Mama turned her head away.
“I’m sure I have. I definitely have told you that. The store is . . . hollow without you. You’re its heart. I’m just its arms and legs.”
Kitsy didn’t look back at Riley. “You can go now, dear. I need to rest.”
Riley didn’t move, holding Mama’s hand in her own. A nurse entered the room, pushed a clear liquid into the port of the IV. Kitsy looked back at Riley, squinted.
“I think I’ll sleep for a bit. Don’t you dare go adding that stupid Create Bad Art Night to the week’s events just because I’m laid up in bed. No decent bookstore has a Create Bad Art Night.”
“Mama, relax. It’s called Artist Night.”
“That’s what I said,” Kitsy mumbled, and closed her eyes.
Riley gathered her belongings and kissed her mother on the forehead before she left the room. Of course she’d already added Artist Night, in which all local artists would come to display and sell their art—just one more chance for the bookstore to make some profit.
On the walk back to the store, Riley stood on the sidewalk that ran parallel to the beach, where sprigs of grass sprouted through the cracked concrete. The number seven lifeguard stand stood in front of Riley, blocking her view to the water’s edge. What if her mama was right? What if Riley hadn’t gone out that night? Maybe she wouldn’t have crawled into the vacant lifeguard stand while a bonfire roared farther down the beach, and inside her heart.
A broken heart, too much cold beer, ocean waves and a willing man were never a good combination, no matter what the country songs said. Riley walked to the lifeguard stand, touched its base and wondered if in every woman’s life, there was a night she didn’t talk about, a night that had changed everything.
FIVE
MAISY
Maisy stared out the window, dropped her forehead onto the double-paned glass, her ears popping from the descent into Savannah. Winding waterways carved the land into marsh-bordered islands. The water reflected the setting sun, throwing the light back in glitter. The beauty here felt bound to her soul. Perhaps she had only fooled herself into believing she had severed the tie. The four-and-a-half-hour flight from Laguna to Atlanta, and then Atlanta to Savannah was more than a passage from coast to coast, more than a three-thousand-mile journey. It was a passage through time back to her childhood, back to when she left twelve years ago.
Even high in the sky, Maisy sensed the pungent air of her hometown, the salt smell of sea and marsh. She closed her eyes and imagined her California comfort points: her apartment decorated just the way she liked it, Peter holding her and telling her he loved her, the beautiful fabric and furniture in the store. She had longed for Peter to come with her on this trip; she’d even been foolish enough to ask. But he didn’t know how to explain to his wife why he would make a trip to Georgia. Yes, his wife. Maybe, just maybe, this week away would make Peter miss Maisy enough to finally leave his wife.
Maisy reminded herself of all the reasons she’d left Palmetto Beach in the first place. Well, not all the reasons. First of all, who would want to live in a place that was practically empty three-quarters of the year? Her eyes swept to the east, toward Palmetto Beach, a blur on the horizon, a forty-minute drive from Savannah. Her hometown was meant for visiting. The population more than doubled by Memorial Day. Some of the houses where the townies lived full-time were smaller than those the summer people inhabited for three months.
Escape was all Maisy had wanted, yet she’d also loved the summer people because they made the town come alive. The school year had been a breath-holding wait for summer. Maisy had often wanted to be one of them—coming into town on Memorial Day with a car packed full of bikes, swimsuits, suitcases and beach toys on top of the car. She imagined they lived glittering, fabulous lives in Philadelphia, New York or Indiana in a mansion on a hill or a penthouse in the city.
The summer people came from someplace else, but in the end they all dug their toes into the same sand and bought ice-cream cones from the same shack next to the boardwalk. What was fleeting and dreamlike to the guests had once been Maisy’s mainstay. What had been their reprieve had been her permanent dockage. Not anymore.
When the cars would arrive on Memorial Day weekend—station wagons, Mercedes, Volvos, sometimes the dad following in his Porsche—the three sisters would gossip about each family, and joke about the silly names they called their cottages: Shore Thing; Big Chill; Merilee by the Sea; Sandity, etc. . . .
“Ah, the crazy Whitmans are here. I wonder if their aunt will skinny-dip in the country club pool again,” Adalee would say.
“The Murphy brothers came again. . . . I wonder if Danny is here or if he ended up in military school,” Riley would say.
Maisy and her two sisters didn’t need the movies; they had the summer people and their stories, their secrets: which wives cheated on their husbands when the men left for the week to work; whose “perfect” kids bought pot from the local boys; whose mother needed a scotch on the rocks by ten a.m.
To the vacationers, they had always been the Sheffield sisters, one entity. Back then Maisy would have followed Riley anywhere. And she had. . . . While the plane descended, Maisy remembered the night their sister Adalee was born and Maisy had followed Riley into the woods.
Ten and nine years old, Riley and Maisy had watched from the bedroom window as Mama and Daddy drove off to the hospital in the family wood-paneled Ford station wagon.
Maisy whispered to her older sister, who always knew what to do, where to go, who to be, “We’re alone. We’re not supposed to stay in the house alone. Not ever.”
“No.” Riley placed her hands on Maisy’s shoulders. “They wouldn’t leave us alone in the house. They sent for Harriet. I’m sure Harriet is on her way.”
They crouched beneath Riley’s covers and waited as evening turned to deep night and Harriet didn’t show. Maisy finally said the dreaded words: “They forgot about us.”
“No,” Riley said with a certainty that Maisy envied. She never felt certain about anything, always wavering.
Time passed and finally Riley threw off the covers. “Let’s go. We aren’t allowed home without a grown-up. Mama and Daddy said it’s very dangerous.”
“Where will we go?” Maisy fought back the sobs that wanted to rise from her stomach. She was counting on Riley to know the right thing to do.
“Outside. We’ll go outside. We just can’t be in this house alone.”
Maisy had often felt alone in the Sheffield house, even when Daddy and Mama were in the drawing room reading or talking. Mama’s attention went elsewhere after five p.m. when she had her first martini, while she waited for Daddy to come home. Daddy worked at the military base an hour away, and was often gone on trips. His absence was as palpable as his presence.
“We can’t go outside in the middle of the night,” Maisy said in a small voice, panic clamping her throat shut.
“We can’t stay here.” Riley sounded so like their mama that Maisy could only follow.
They took the quilt from Riley’s bed and walked out the back door to the woods behind their house. “Why can’t we go to the beach?” Maisy asked.
“Because we need to stay hidden,” Riley said.
“Yes. Hidden.” Maisy understood.
When the Palmetto Bluff police found them the next morning, curled into each other on a bed of pine straw under a quilt, the entire town had already begun a search. They returned to Daddy, who was standing on the back porch with fatigue and worry etched in deeper places on his face. “You have a new sister,” he said, and walked away, leaving Maisy and Riley with two officers.
The taller man spoke first. “You scared your father to death. What were you thinking?”
Riley stepped toward the officer as if she were older, taller than she was. “It’s quite simple, sir. We are not allowed to be home alone.”
The two men looked at Maisy and she nodded. “We aren’t.”
The officer patted Riley on the back. “You’re a good little girl, then, aren’t you?”
Riley screwed up her face. “Of course I am.”
Together Maisy and Riley walked into the house. Maisy reached for Riley’s hand and Riley squeezed her sister’s fingers. “Another sister. How much fun.”
Maisy never asked her parents why they were left alone that night, and the subject was never brought up again. Adalee came home and life continued. Whenever Mama told the story of the night Adalee was bor
n, she never mentioned the fact that the police were sent to look for her two older daughters; she merely spoke of the quick birth and her bravery in not requesting pain medication.
Those were the good days with her sister, Maisy thought, the days before the betrayal.
Maisy had been gone for many years now. Her excuses for not coming home were usually loud and insistent, but now they began to sound tinny, small, not really excuses at all. California had aided in her quest to stay away from Riley, from Palmetto Beach. The fact remained: Riley had betrayed Maisy and she had vowed never to speak to Riley again beyond what was required by family obligation. The anger she’d nurtured toward Riley now nestled dormant inside a corner of her heart.
The summer before Maisy ran away, right after high school graduation, while Mama and Daddy were preoccupied with buying the Logans’ cottage and adoring baby Brayden, Maisy had wandered the beach and partied with friends, miserable because her first real love, Mack Logan, had not returned for her as he’d promised. The last summer in Palmetto Beach had culminated in a night of losing her virginity with her best friend’s fiancé, Tucker Morgan, in the vacant Driftwood Cottage. Maybe she’d been looking for an excuse to leave Palmetto Beach; if so, she’d sure as hell given herself one. She’d done a terrible thing, and exile, self-imposed, was part penance, part pure running away.
Funny thing, she’d assumed the deed would eventually catch up with her. She didn’t expect she’d be the one returning to the scene of her disgrace.
The plane skidded to a stop on the runway. Maisy was the last to disembark, allowing the other passengers out while she gathered her belongings. She dragged her carry-on down the aisle, then stopped outside the gate to call Peter before she faced her sister downstairs at the luggage carousel. Her cell phone was crammed into the bottom of her purse, and she sat on a chair while she dug it out. She dialed his number and held her breath. This was always the moment when her stomach clenched and her heart raced—would he answer? Would he be with his wife and pretend it was a business call? Would he be alone and able to speak the words of love she needed to hear?
Driftwood Summer Page 5