by Nancy Star
When she came to, she was sitting in a chair across from a woman whose long gray braid was draped over the front of her shoulder. The woman held out a glass of water. “Take her to the hospital,” she said. “And don’t just drop her off, Thomas. Wait with her till they’ve seen her.”
Ginger sat up straighter. “I’m okay.” She took the glass and drank the water in big gulps, stopping only to reassure them. “Just dehydrated. Thank you.” When the glass was emptied, the woman went to get more. “Thanks,” Ginger said when she returned. She finished the second glass and put it down. “That’s better. I should have brought water. I’m such an idiot. I never thought I’d end up lost. I’m sorry for the bother. I really am fine.”
“Your color is back,” the woman admitted. Then, as if she’d been waiting to make sure the danger had passed, she put her hand to her mouth and gasped. “Look how beautiful you are.”
It was the hand Ginger recognized first, the strong hand, and then the wide face, the kind eyes, the nose, slightly turned up at the end. “Evelyn?” She stood up fast and grabbed the back of the chair for balance.
Evelyn reached a hand to steady her. “Oh my,” she said, and then, “Oh my,” again.
“Why don’t you two sit outside for a bit,” Thomas said. “It’s cool in the shade out back.”
Evelyn agreed and led Ginger by the elbow through the house to the patio outside the kitchen door. She waited till Ginger sat before slowly lowering herself into one of the wrought iron chairs set around a small café table. Ginger noticed a shiver of pain cross her face.
“Be a dear,” Evelyn told Thomas, “Get us some lemonade from the fridge. And something to eat, if you don’t mind.” Her eyes followed her son as he went inside. “He’s so good to me.” They sat in silence. Evelyn stared into Ginger’s eyes, searching. “Do you hate me? It’s okay if you do.”
“Why would I hate you?”
Evelyn lifted a shoulder. She couldn’t quite manage a full shrug. “When you didn’t write, I assumed”—she studied Ginger’s face—“you didn’t get my letters.”
Letters. Plural. “No. I didn’t get any letters.”
Evelyn sank back in her chair. “I wondered about that. I asked your mother once. Didn’t want to upset her. Kept it casual. Haven’t heard from Ginger. Did she get a chance to read my letter yet—like that. Your mother was hard to fool. Got offended immediately. Told me if she was going to be a thief, she’d go for diamonds, not stamps. I should have known. She didn’t really want us to stay in touch.” And then she remembered Glory was gone. “Sorry. I don’t mean to speak ill of her. Your mother was a fighter. She had a ferocious will. If she believed something was wrong, she’d fight like anything to make it right.”
Thomas came out with a tray. He set it down and asked his mother if she wanted a pillow. She shooed him away, and he took it with a look of genial exasperation.
“Fusses over me endlessly,” Evelyn confided after he’d gone in. “I’m perfectly fine. I’ve got old bones is all, and there’s nothing he can do about that.” She took a sip of lemonade and Ginger noticed the tremor in her hand. “Thomas tells me you have questions.”
Ginger decided to begin with the newspaper in the suitcase. “We had no idea there was someone else in the hole. We thought Charlie was the only one who”—she forced herself to finish the sentence—“died. And the article didn’t say who the other boy was.”
“Oh, that article. The other boy. You can’t imagine how many people thought Thomas was the other one in the hole. For the longest time after, we’d be going about our business, and people would run over and grab him, like he was back from the dead.”
“Who was it?”
Evelyn picked up her glass but her shaking was worse now, so she put it back down. “No one told you.” She seemed to be struggling to understand. “You don’t remember anything?”
“I remember a lot. I remember people digging, people crying, people trying to help. But I don’t remember the kids. Other than Thomas.” It was unnerving, how Evelyn was looking at her now. Despite the heat, Ginger started shivering again. “What don’t I know? What happened to the other boy?” She couldn’t imagine what could be worse than what happened to Charlie.
“There was no other boy.” Evelyn folded her hands.
“Thank god. That would have been too much to bear.”
But Evelyn didn’t look at all relieved. She reached across the table and placed her hand on Ginger’s. “It was your sister. Callie was with Charlie when the hole collapsed.”
“No,” Ginger corrected her. “Callie was at the far end, on the other side of the cliffs, getting clayed. Thomas went to get her. I saw them coming back. Minty wanted me to go with her, but I wouldn’t go until I saw Callie.” Much was a blur, but not that. That memory was clear.
Evelyn nodded. “Thomas told me he went to get her. But he never found Callie because she wasn’t there. You must have seen him walking with one of the cousins. Thomas told me he came back from the cliffs, from looking for Callie, right when she was pulled out of the hole.” She dropped her voice. “They tell me when the hole collapsed, Callie fell in on top of Charlie.” She dabbed at her eyes. “Charlie was buried beneath her.” She whispered the next. “He didn’t have a chance.”
For a moment Ginger was still. Then she asked, “How long? How long before they got her out?” She knew every factor that affected prognosis. She’d spent years parsing this out from the news stories she read about sand-hole collapses. What she’d learned was that nothing, not the density of the sand or the temperature of the air or the expertise of the doctors or the equipment at the hospital mattered as much as duration without air. How long the child’s brain was starved of oxygen determined life or death or damage.
“I wasn’t there,” Evelyn reminded her. “They got her to the hospital in time.”
And then Ginger remembered it, the moment she looked back at the beach and saw Casper carrying a body. A body limp and small, an arm that reached out to give a fluttery wave, a delicate hand that confused her. She remembered thinking, Charlie looks so small, his hand like a little girl’s. Because it was a girl’s hand. It was Callie’s hand. Glory didn’t take Callie with her so that Charlie would wake up to the cutest Tangle. Callie had been admitted. “And the hospital discharged her. They wouldn’t have sent her home if she wasn’t okay.”
“It was a different time,” Evelyn pointed out. “Callie seemed okay enough. You saw how she was. You see how she is. What did you think?”
“I thought”—Ginger corrected herself—“we thought, Mimi and I, we were led to believe Callie had a bad reaction. From being at the hospital. From seeing something when Charlie died.”
“He didn’t die at the hospital. He died in the hole. With Callie on top of him.”
“Did she suffer brain damage?”
“We didn’t ask so many questions then. Callie, anyone could see, she wasn’t the same. But no one talked about diagnosis or treatment. Your parents tried to do right by her. They really did. But no one knew what the right thing was. And there was a lot of anger. Finger-pointing. At your mother. At your father. At Casper. At me.”
“Why you?”
“I’m the numbskull who suggested your mother come to the island in the first place. And I’m the one who introduced her to my brother. Casper tried to make up for what happened. He did. He took very good care of Callie when she came. Looked out for her until she could look out for herself. After that, he stayed on as caretaker. Really, his whole life was about caring for Callie. Until he couldn’t. Then Thomas took over.”
“Caretaker of the house or caretaker of my sister?”
“The house.” Evelyn thought about it. “Maybe both.”
Ginger let this sink in. “How did Callie end up here?”
“I’m still not sure I understand everything that happened. I know after your father died, your mother struggled. Trying to take care of Callie, and you and Mimi. What was it she used to say? When you were
together, you girls were like a tropical cycloon.”
“Cyclone? Typhoon?”
Evelyn shrugged. “Something like that. Casper was the one who came up with the idea about moving. He thought all of you should move here. That Callie would have an easier life. The house Callie lives in, your house, that was Casper’s. Went from my mom to him, and then he sold it to your mom. For Callie.” Evelyn wiped at her eyes.
“But we didn’t move here. Just Callie did. Why?”
“Your mother’s the only one who could have explained that. I didn’t understand. No one did. Minty and the rest of them, they thought she was awful, sending Callie here and keeping you and Mimi with her. There came a point I couldn’t say your mother’s name out loud in front of them.”
Thomas interrupted. “Mimi just called and asked me to tell you she’s been worried to death and if you don’t come home now, she’ll call the police. I think she was kidding, but I’m not sure. If you want a lift, I can take you. I have to go that way anyway to check on a house. Marauding turkey on the loose.”
Evelyn reached over and tapped Ginger’s hand. “Go ahead. Go see your sister.” She stood up, holding the table for support. “We’ll talk again soon.” They embraced for a long moment, neither wanting to be first to let go.
In the car Ginger asked Thomas when he took over as caretaker for the house.
“I’ve been helping my uncle for a while,” he answered. “It’s about a year since I’ve been doing it on my own. Uncle Casper didn’t want to stop. Even after he turned eighty. But then he fell. Broke his hip. After that, something changed. He wasn’t the same. Been in a wheelchair ever since. Still, working till eighty—that’s not too bad, right? We just moved him to a place in town. His mind, it’s going. Not fun to watch.” He blurted out the next. “I was there. The night they had the big fight about Callie coming. I wasn’t supposed to be, but I was there.”
“You remember it?”
He nodded. “I’ll never forget it. It was a big deal. I was out in the backyard on the tire swing. Tire swing’s still there. I check on it now and then—make sure the rope’s still good. Callie is a big fan of that swing. But that night, it was just me, alone on the swing, when all of a sudden a pack of adults comes marching out on the deck like someone called a meeting. They were rough on your mom. And on Uncle Casper. Your mom, she didn’t say anything. Not at first. She just took it. I was sitting on the tire swing trying not to move, trying to make myself invisible. But I couldn’t make myself deaf. They were shouting all different reasons why Callie coming without the rest of you was an awful idea and your mom just sat there. When she finally did speak—it was dark by then. I couldn’t see her but I could hear—she said, Callie’s like a flower. A special flower that needs to be transplanted somewhere it can grow right.”
Ginger struggled to take this in. “But we didn’t all move. Did she explain that?”
“No. No one explained, not to me. But things were crazy. For years after the accident my mom and my aunts would drag me and my cousins to all the town halls to give out flyers to the summer people. The summer people would be lined up to get beach passes, all vacationy, wearing sun hats and smelling of coconut oil, and my mom and aunts would shove flyers in their faces about how dangerous the beach was. We didn’t win any popularity contests. I mean, here’s the town trying to get people to go to the beach, giving out brochures for restaurants and for how to get a clamming license, and along come these wild women yelling, Danger, danger. Don’t let your kids play in the sand.” He let out a rueful laugh. “At the time, us kids, we didn’t understand. I get it now. They were just trying to make sure no one else went through what your family did. You know, Callie is like a sister to me. My mom and Uncle Casper were like second parents, when Glory couldn’t be here.”
“How often did she come?”
“Depended. Sometimes a weekend. Sometimes a week. Summers she’d come longer. Where did you think she was when she was here?”
Ginger laughed. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure that out.”
“I guess the accident turned everything topsy-turvy. You know, your mom used to kid around that Callie didn’t really need her. That she just tolerated her. And Callie would agree. I guess it was true. Callie never did know how to lie.” He pulled into the driveway of the Tangle house and turned to face her. “You ask me, Callie turned out pretty good. Maybe your mom knew what she was doing, after all.”
Mimi came running out of the house. “Finally. I was about to send out a search party.”
“I told you where I was going. You remember Thomas, right?”
Dimples on, Mimi extended a hand. “Nice to see you. Want to come in? I put up coffee.”
“I’d love to,” Thomas said. “But I have to go check on a house down the road. I can stop by after, if that’s okay.”
As soon as Thomas drove off, Ginger filled Mimi in on what she’d learned, that it wasn’t a boy who fell in the hole with Charlie. That it was Callie. Suddenly, she noticed Callie’s car was back. “Is she home?”
Mimi swung around and saw it too. “She must have come in while I was upstairs.”
They rushed in the house, calling out their sister’s name, but there was no answer. When they got to Callie’s room, they stopped at her closed bedroom door.
Mimi was about to knock when she heard something. “Listen.”
Ginger listened and heard it too, a muffled voice from inside the room. The words were impossible to make out, but the melody was familiar. She heard a laugh and her stomach clenched at the sound of Glory.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The sliding door to the backyard was open, the glass streaked where someone had cleaned. Ginger noticed wadded paper towels and an empty bottle of Windex in the wastebasket. She stepped to the door and called out. “Callie?” She slid the door closed. “Gone.”
“Look who’s here.” Mimi stood in front of Callie’s desk; the laptop was open and Glory’s face filled the screen, a video of their mother frozen, midword.
“Callie must have just been here watching this,” Ginger said. She pressed a key and Glory came to life.
“We can go over this as many times as you need. You are an excellent memorizer, Callie Claire. Am I right? Course I am.”
Ginger clicked back to the beginning and there she was, her mother, white-haired and frail.
“Sit where I can see you, Callie Claire. Over to my side. Can you see me?” Glory smiled. “Goody, goody good.”
“Callie’s not here,” Ginger told the image on the screen because in that dizzying moment her mind failed to sort out that Glory could not be Skyping in for a chat because Glory was dead.
“Listen.” Mimi turned up the volume. “You can hear Callie in the background.”
“Do you have your notebook, Callie Claire?” Glory asked.
“I don’t need it,” came Callie’s muffled reply.
“Course you do. There’s nothing wrong with writing things down. It’s a scientific fact. You write things down, you remember them. Not just you. Everyone.”
“Okay,” Callie said. “I’ll write things down.”
Ginger stared at the screen. “When was this made?”
“You sure that’s pointing at my face?” Glory leaned in closer. Her forehead grew distorted. “Is that thing set up right?” The image jiggled. An arm—Callie’s—stretched across the screen to fix something. “That’s better.”
They were in the kitchen, Ginger realized. The kitchen in New Jersey. She tried to place it in time. Her mother’s white hair was in disarray, and her eyeliner had been applied with a shaky hand to only one eye. “This must have been right before we moved her into the Meadows. Callie was in New Jersey. And Mom didn’t tell us.”
Glory smiled. “Bored of me yet?”
Callie’s voice, offscreen. “I’m never bored.”
“Course you’re not. Now, remember. Once we make this thingamajig, you can listen to me whenever you want. Over and over is perf
ectly fine. But do it in private. Remember we talked about privacy? Maybe you should write that down in your notebook. That way you’ll never forget. Do you have a pen?”
Offscreen: “I don’t forget anymore. I don’t need a pen.”
“Everyone forgets, sometimes. Go get a pen. I’ll wait.” Glory closed her eyes and counted to ten. “Got it? Goody, goody good. Now, when I talk about privacy, it’s not because your sisters don’t love you. Believe me when I tell you, they love you a lot. Stay there. I’ll be right back.” She moved out of sight, but Ginger could hear her singing. “I know you’re in here. Can’t hide from Glory. Oh, my, what happened here?” She came back and smiled at the camera. “Better?”
“Fresh lipstick,” Ginger observed. “Eyeliner on the other eye.”
“Let’s go over what you are not going to do. Remember, you can go over this as many times as you need.” Glory blinked hard twice, what they used to call “eye hugs.” This was the moment where the video had been frozen when they first came in. “You are an excellent memorizer, Callie Claire. Am I right? Course I am. Now about the house. Stay in it. Be firm no matter what the sisters say. They’ll have plenty to say. Especially Mimi. But she’ll come around. If the choice of who gets the house is you or the land bank, believe me, she’ll pick you.” She smiled, proud of herself.
Ginger glanced at Mimi, who was watching through narrowed eyes.
“She means well,” Glory said. “It’s just Mimi thinks I’m not fair. Nothing you can do. Been that way since the day she was born. If she starts up with the It’s not fair business, just sing a song in your head. Not out loud. Out loud doesn’t work as good. Try the ‘Swiss Navy’ one. Song’s perfect for getting into the brain cracks. Pushes everything you don’t want to think about out. Not just you. Works for everyone. Keeps the brain crisp.” Glory cleared her throat and started singing, alternating shoulders thrusting forward to a beat no one else could hear. “‘We don’t want to march with the infantry. Ride with the binfrantry.’” She stopped. “Do the motions. That’s what makes it fun.” She looked disappointed, and then smiled. Callie must have finally done what she’d asked. She started moving too—standing up, stomping her feet—but since the camera couldn’t follow her, all that Ginger saw was a flash of her mother’s stomach, of her hips, of her neck. “‘We don’t want to fly over Germany.’ Okay, now you try. Just in your head.” Settling back in her chair, Glory stared out with piercing eyes. “Are you singing?” She joined in, singing silently, exaggerating the movement of her lips so Callie could see what the words were. “‘We’re in the Swiss Navy.’” When she was done, she applauded. Then she turned serious. “It will make me very happy to know you’ll be living in this house with your brother. His memory, I mean. And don’t worry. If you need help with the house, you have Casper. He’ll always be here for you. Well, not always.” A look of distress passed over her face, but she shook it away. “Otherwise, ask Thomas. What a sweet boy, that Thomas is. A real lifesaver.”