“Hmmm . . . I think that was you.” Adalee rested her head back, and then sat up. “Who’s that?”
“Who’s who?” Maisy parked in the driveway, and then she saw what Adalee meant: a woman sitting on the back porch steps with three suitcases piled around her feet. Her elbows were propped on her knees, her head in her hands. “Lucy,” Maisy whispered.
Adalee opened the passenger door. “What’s she doing here?”
Maisy ran to her old friend’s side and hugged her. “What happened?”
Lucy’s voice shook. “You were right. I’m sorry for all the terrible things I said to you. I’m—”
“Don’t. . . . You have absolutely nothing to apologize for.”
“He was . . . Maisy, he was having an affair, but he says ‘this time’ he’s in love with her. He even used the words ‘this time.’ I am such an idiot. Waiting to have kids, waiting on him . . . wasting my love.”
Maisy hugged her friend and waited for the tears to finish before she asked, “What can I do to help?”
“Let me come to California with you.”
“Well, I have a better idea—why don’t you stay here with me?”
“You’re not going back to California?”
“Not for a while.”
Lucy smiled. “Really?”
“We will figure this out together, Lucy. We won’t run away. . . .”
“Okay.” She swiped at her face. “I promise I won’t be a burden. You know, you said something the other day. When you told me the truth about Tucker, you said you’d always tried to fill up the empty place inside you with something outside.”
“I said that?”
Lucy wiped her eyes again and laughed. “Yes, you did. And I know you were talking about yourself, but you were also talking about me. I have never believed I’m good enough on my own. It was never who I was—it was who I was with that made me feel worthwhile.” Lucy slumped forward. “You know, he’s never even let me have a real job—he said my real job was to be his wife. And I don’t know what else to do. My mother insists that the Bible says I have to stay with him and pray, but I know I have to leave him. . . .”
Maisy lifted a suitcase, opened the back door and held it open for her oldest and dearest friend. “Stay for a while. Stay for as long as you need.”
Four Sheffield women were gathered for breakfast in the formal dining room. Lucy was on the back porch meeting with the lawyer Mama had arranged to come to the house before the day even began. The night before, Maisy had already made two important phone calls: to Peter to tell him it was over and to Sheila at work to ask for more time off to sort through her family issues. Sheila told her to take as much time as she needed; Beach Chic would wait. Peter, on the other hand, didn’t take the news so well.
Harriet had opened all the windows, shoved the curtains aside to allow the breeze from a gathering storm to enter the room. Adalee took a bite of brown sugar-coated bacon and leaned back in her seat, moaned. “This cannot be good for me.”
In her wheelchair, Mama laughed with such joy that Maisy turned to make sure it was really she making the noise. “Listen, girls, I need to talk to you.”
Adalee’s moan became a groan. “Mama, the party is over.”
“I know. But in some ways it has just begun.”
“Huh?” Adalee scooted up in her chair, Riley closed her eyes and Maisy held her breath.
“I need to share something with you and I don’t want you to panic, burst into tears or run for cover.” Mama was laughing at her own joke as Dr. Foster entered through the side door and came to stand next to her.
Adalee jumped up. “Dr. Foster, why are you here?”
Mama cleared her throat, ran a finger across her lipstick and forced a smile. “A few weeks ago, after some tests, I discovered that I have this vile thing called chondrosarcoma. Dr. Foster found it when he forced me to have a CT scan of an annoying lump on the back of my knee.” She took a breath, and held up her hand to let them know she was not to be interrupted.
Adalee went to Mama’s side. “What does this mean?”
Riley and Maisy looked at each other.
“It means I have to have surgery for sure. Then maybe some radiation. And then lots and lots of tests. I’ll need your love and care and, of course, your endless adulation.”
Maisy laughed despite the fear closing her throat—Mama was still here, still alive, still making fun of her own need for attention. Now. Right now—it really was all they had.
Mama pursed her lips and squinted at Maisy. “You knew,” she said.
Maisy stared ahead without admission or denial.
“Doc?” Mama looked up at Dr. Foster. He shook his head.
Riley grabbed Maisy’s hand, and confessed, “I shouldn’t have told Maisy, but I couldn’t bear being the only one to know.”
Mama pointed at Maisy. “That’s why you’re not going back to California. Well, I won’t have it. You’ve always been very intent on living your own life and that’s why I waited to tell you. I won’t have you staying out of guilt. Only stay because you want to stay.”
Maisy went to her mama’s side. “I’ve always made my own decisions. And I’m making one now. I’m staying for a while. You can’t talk me out of it.”
Mama rolled her eyes with laughter. “When have I been able to talk you out of anything?”
Adalee glanced around the room. “Am I the only one who didn’t know? Doc?” She turned to him, grabbing the sleeve of his suit jacket. “Tell us the truth. What does this mean?”
“Exactly what your mama told you.”
“But . . . what about statistics and all that?” Adalee asked.
Dr. Foster took a step back. “Kitsy? You want to talk about this?”
“I don’t believe in statistics.” She made a motion of dismissal. “But the plan is that Doc and I will travel to M. D. Anderson in Houston, which is the best sarcoma center in the country. They will remove the tumor and then maybe I’ll have to have proton therapy, which I don’t fully understand yet. I won’t be gone long. And I’ll recover at home. I want Adalee to go with me while Riley takes care of selling the store. Maisy, I don’t want you to lose your job. . . .”
“Mama, I won’t lose my job. I’m here.”
“We will not talk about percentages of survival or statistics or any of that—do you understand me? Right now, this moment, I have a one hundred percent chance of being here to drive you crazy, to love you, to listen to you bicker and holler and love and live in my house.”
“That is good enough,” Maisy said. “Absolutely good enough.”
THIRTY
RILEY
Books were scattered across the floor of the storage room. They would be packed and returned to the publisher. Riley’s every new breath brought a combination of heartbreak and heart-healing thoughts. If only she could have saved this store . . . for Mama, for herself. But as she’d told Brayden when she’d explained that they’d have to move in with Grandma for a while, every ending also contained a new beginning.
Riley turned over each possibility, looked at it from all angles. She could ask Lodge for a job at the newspaper covering local events—who knew the town better than she did? She could register for classes at the local junior college and work on her English degree. She could offer her services to whoever bought Driftwood Cottage, if they kept it as a bookstore. New beginnings . . . she had to look at this time as a chance for exciting new beginnings.
She glanced out the window at the prominent for-sale sign on the lawn. The Realtor Mimi Bennett had pretended to be dismayed at having to slam the post into the ground, but Riley knew she was anticipating the commission. After two weeks, no one had put in an offer. Finally Mimi had told Riley to pack up some of the books so prospective buyers could better see the character of the house. They had hoped someone would buy the bookstore as a business, but some prospective buyers might want just the cottage.
Riley had left Adalee’s history boards on display, and many custom
ers came to read them over and over again, apparently finding something new in them each time. Just that morning, Riley had read the last line on the boards—All connects. . . . The story continues. . . .—and she’d realized that what she was going through now was just a new chapter in a never-ending story—her life story and the story of Driftwood Cottage.
The day after Mama’s news, Adalee had run to the local USC satellite campus and registered for a huge load of classes with the intention of completing her degree by December. Maisy and Lucy had officially moved into Mama’s house, and seemed to be having a great time together. Lucy was waiting for Tucker to sign the divorce papers, which he swore he would never do. His love for Lucy had suddenly and inexplicably returned two days after she left him. Her feelings for him had not.
Riley did her best to keep her spirits upbeat. Everything about the cottage took on greater import, more meaning than it ever had before. The dent in the hardwood floor where Brayden had dropped the iron urn while trying to help move it; the bookshelf with the crooked middle shelf that Daddy had built; the refreshed furniture and decorative touches her sisters had added. Anne had made Riley another pair of wings, larger ones that said Believe. They were prominently displayed on the front counter.
Afternoon sunlight fell across Riley’s lap when Brayden ran in and dropped his tackle box on the floor. Summer seemed to live in his blond curls and brown cheeks.“I’ve decided what I want to do for my birthday that we never celebrated. Remember you said . . . after the book party?”
“Does this require extreme planning on my part?”
He sat next to her on the floor, crossed his legs one over the other and leaned back on his elbows. “I want to go visit Pops and Grams in Edisto. They say I’ll love it and that the fishing there is just as good as here, and that there is a thirteen-year-old boy living next door, and Pops bought a Boston Whaler, and—”
Riley laughed. “Of course you can. But don’t you want a party, too?”
“Am I allowed to have both?”
She poked at his propped arm so that he fell over. “Why wouldn’t you?”
He sat back up. “Because we’re, like, totally broke.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s what Susie Muller is telling everyone. She said her mother said that we have to sell the bookstore because we don’t have any money and we’ll be living on the streets. I told Susie we’ll be living with Gamma.”
Riley grinned at her gorgeous son. “Actually I’m considering a tent on the beach.”
“Very funny, Mom.”
“Brayden, we couldn’t keep the store going, but there are other things we can do.”
“Mom, I know. I know.” He jumped up. “I’m gonna go fishing with Kenny.” He ran off.
Ethel called across the store. “Riley, phone . . .”
“Can you bring it to me?” She pushed aside a pile of books.
Ethel walked up, looked down at her. “It’s that woman.”
Riley smiled at Ethel, knowing she meant Mimi, the real estate agent. “It’s not her fault,” she whispered to Ethel, her hand over the receiver.
Mimi’s voice came over the line in rapid staccato. “Riley, you have just got to hear this. This is so fabulous. . . .”
“What?”
“We have an absolutely amazing and perfect and outrageous offer for the cottage.”
Riley almost asked Mimi how many adjectives she could possibly use in one sentence. “We do?”
“Yes. I don’t know why we didn’t think to target this group, but one of the book clubs has been so distraught about losing this mainstay of the town that they got together, and they want to buy Driftwood Cottage. Dixie Plume is the main investor and they are going to run it together as a bookstore.”
Riley closed her eyes. The Page Turners Book Club, the one whose members constantly complained about everything as if it were written in their club bylaws that they had to find at least six things that made them unhappy before they started each meeting. She had to sell, and she was grateful the bookstore could be saved, but she wished the new owner was someone she liked. But as her daddy told her after she’d traded her Schwinn for Macy Lane’s Barbie dollhouse and then changed her mind, once you sell something, it ain’t yours anymore.
“Well,” Riley said, her eyes closed, “fax me over the offer and I’ll look at it this evening.”
Mimi’s enthusiasm bubbled over. “I think you are going to be very pleased, and they want the store as soon as possible.”
Riley stood and closed the phone, then walked it over to Ethel. “I’ll be back in a little bit. Okay?”
Ethel nodded as Riley headed toward the back of the store, grabbed Brayden’s fishing pole from the porch and slammed the screen door on her way out. She reached the end of Pearson’s Pier without any memory of the fifteen-minute walk. She talked a man standing next to her into letting her have one piece of bait. She stood in bare feet. Her rolled-up jeans were covered in dust from sitting on the floor and the Driftwood Cottage Bookstore logo on her T-shirt was streaked with dirt.
Her fishing pole bobbed with the outgoing tide and Riley exhaled as though she’d been holding her breath for days, months, years.
Time rolled backward over hazy memories until she remembered the last time she’d fished here with her dad: the last day of summer before she left for college, before the night of the bonfire.
Was life like this for everyone? Inconsequential events, ordinary moments occurred all day, all year, and then the smallest decision shifted the course of your life?
The fishing pole pulled, and Riley jerked it backward in an instinctive maneuver. She held on with her left hand, turned the reel with her right. Riley felt something lift inside her, as though another part of her that had been hiding below, way below, now came bobbing to the surface even as she dragged her catch onto the pier.
The redfish’s scales shimmered in the sunlight. The man who had given her the bait lifted his baseball cap in a salute. “Musta been the bait,” he said.
“Oh, I think it was my expert fishing,” she said with a smile. Bending over, she yanked the hook out of the fish’s mouth and held it up by the gills. “You want it? I can’t cook it tonight.”
He shook his head. “Me neither. I’m just here for the peace and quiet.”
“Me, too.” She tossed the fish back into the water and watched it dive out of sight. Then she tucked her pole under her arm and thanked the man as she walked to the start of the pier and sat down on an iron bench until the pattern pressed into her thighs. Finally she stood and headed toward the cottage, where an offer to buy it would be waiting on her fax machine.
THIRTY-ONE
RILEY
The real estate attorney needed only two days to get the papers together and now she was due any minute at the bookstore. Riley waited in her office, which was full of boxes, and leafed through the newspaper until she found Lodge’s last article about the bookstore. He summarized the good that had come out of Driftwood Cottage Bookstore, of the connections made and the beginnings fostered: how Mrs. Harper was traveling now; she’d planned a trip to Italy with her best friend. How Brooks had moved to Nashville to actively pursue her music career. How Mrs. Lithgow—in her lucid moments—was working with Adalee on a narrative of life in Palmetto Beach in the nineteen twenties. Lodge even wrote of Mama’s cancer, of her recent trip to Texas with Adalee.
Riley put the newspaper down; she’d save this article for the last page of the Driftwood Cottage scrapbook. Even if the story of the bookstore was over, her own story was not. She reminded herself of this again and again. She would find new ways of living that weren’t dependent on the past. Mama’s tumor had been removed successfully and there was no metastasis. Mama and Adalee would come home in the next week, and therapy, nurses and home care would begin again.
The real estate attorney’s cough made Riley look up from her desk. The woman gazed at Riley through bifocals, her bangs falling forward. “You ready?�
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Riley nodded.
“Everything is in order. You have negotiated a wonderful deal here, Ms. Sheffield. You should be able to take this money and open any kind of store in any of the new storefronts downtown, but you do understand it can’t be a bookstore, right?”
“Of course.” Riley exhaled and attempted a smile, not wanting to explain that the money would go to repaying her debts. She took the papers from the lawyer. “I’ll show these to Mama and return them to you in the next day or so.”
“The buyers are anxious to close this deal. They’d like to take over in the next month.”
“I know, I know. But Mama’s name is on the ownership papers, so they’ll have to wait until she can read them.”
“But I thought she was . . . gone—you know, cancer treatment or something.”
“She’s fine now. She can read, for God’s sake.”
The attorney nodded, rose and left before Riley realized she had rudely not thanked her or said goodbye. She sat back on the café chair and folded the papers into a rectangle, shoved them into the manila envelope.
Anne stood behind the café counter wearing a T-shirt with a slogan Riley couldn’t see under the apron. She called out, “Your cell phone has been ringing for a half hour back here. Your sister’s name keeps popping up on the screen. You want to get it?”
Riley stood and tucked the envelope under her arm. She looked at Anne, sorrow grabbing her gut—how she would miss Anne and Ethel. Snatching up her phone, she shoved the papers under the counter and dialed her sister’s number.
When Maisy answered, she was out of breath. “Where have you been?”
“Meeting with the attorney. What’s up?”
“You didn’t sell it, did you?”
“Maisy, we’ve been over this. I have to. Unless you know of buried pirate booty, the situation is what it is.”
Driftwood Summer Page 28