by Jenny Hale
Isabella waited for the tide to retreat back to the sea before she squatted on the wet sand and began filling her bucket. Faith leaned over and filled her own bucket. Another wave rolled in, the foam rushing up around their ankles. Isabella held her bucket up high to keep the surf from stealing it.
“Is this good?” she asked, holding it out toward Faith.
“Yep! I think we have everything we need.”
They took their buckets back to a spot close to their chairs. Faith used a shovel to pack down the sand in her bucket. “You have to get it really packed in there. Can you do yours?”
Isabella watched intently, imitating every move Faith made.
“Then, you turn your bucket upside down like this.” With a thud, Faith tipped her bucket over onto the sand and patted the sides of it with her hands.
Isabella did the same.
Gently and carefully, Faith removed the bucket to reveal a perfectly round cylinder of sand.
“How did you learn how to make these?” Isabella asked in awe. She’d stood up and was walking around the little mound of wet sand, scrutinizing it. She bent way down and turned her head sideways. Then, she patted her own bucket and lifted it off. It was perfect, just like Faith’s.
“I don’t know. I just practiced.” She picked up a different size bucket and offered the beach bag to Isabella to retrieve more shovels. “We’re going to need to fill the buckets again. What shape do you want this time? I’m going to make a smaller one next to this big mound I’ve just made.”
Isabella dug around inside the beach bag until she found the one she wanted. It was a purple bucket with a white handle. They walked back to the water together.
On the way, Isabella stopped short. “Oh!” she said, bending down and picking something up. “Look what I found!”
Faith went over to inspect. It was a twisted little shell that was hollow inside. She turned it over in Isabella’s open hand to examine the beautiful stripes of light brown against its creamy colored body. It was in perfect condition. “Do you know what this is?” she asked, lifting it out of Isabella’s palm to see it more closely. “You’ve found a Scotch Bonnet. It’s the state shell of North Carolina. Not many people get to find them. How pretty.” She handed it back to Isabella. Faith had bought a book about seashells to read on her way to the beach when she was twelve years old. As Faith hunted for shells, she would look them up and see if she could find them in her book. She was surprised that she remembered the name of Isabella’s shell after so many years.
“Can we keep it?”
Faith couldn’t help but smile at this gorgeous little girl. Casey was right. Her personality was like Faith’s. Watching Isabella and seeing how she was like her family members made Faith think about her own children. What would they be like? Would they play with Isabella, build sandcastles with her? Would they be like Faith? She wanted a house full of children to care for, but until then, she was truly enjoying being with Isabella.
“Sure. We’ll put it in the beach bag.”
They walked, filling bucket after bucket and building their sandcastle. Each time, Faith tipped her head up on the way back to see if Jake’s truck was gone yet, and every time, it was still sitting right where it had been. Part of her looked forward to seeing him again. She wanted to feel out the situation, see how he responded to her, continue their discussions from last night. And she just wanted to talk to him again, see him smile at her. But another part of her thought it may be best if she didn’t. He’d made it clear that he only wanted to be friends and perhaps he was right. There were obviously some issues between them. She’d been just fine by herself until now. Surely all of these feelings and thoughts she was having were just because she was on vacation. Soon enough, she’d get back to her real life and she’d be just fine again. There was no need to make her life any more difficult.
“Hey, y’all,” her mom called out, waving to them as Faith helped Isabella carve out the moat with a shovel. Her mom was at the top of the dune, a beach towel and a novel under her arm. If Faith squinted her eyes, from that distance, the new cottage almost looked like the old one, and her mother like the young mother who had raised them. It made her homesick for those times before everything had gotten so complicated.
“Hi, Mom,” she called back to her.
Her mom trudged through the sand toward them, stopping at the western edge of the castle. “Wow, that’s wonderful,” she said with a big smile, her cheekbones making her sunglasses rise up on her face a little higher. “Your Aunt Faith used to make those all the time. Remember that big one you made when we were all here with Nan last time? It took you all day.”
“I do.”
Isabella was on her hands and knees, a hot pink shovel in her hand as she crawled around the edge of their castle digging the moat so deep that the sediment underneath was a dark grey color. “Do I need water now to fill it up?” she asked, looking up at Faith.
“You can try, but the water may sink into the sand. You may want to get two buckets full. That’s what I always did.”
Isabella grabbed the purple bucket and another green one and ran, one in each hand, toward the water.
“Faith, honey,” her mother said once Isabella was out of earshot. “I’ll watch Isabella. You might want to check on your sister. She hasn’t come out of her room. I knocked, but she didn’t answer. She’ll talk to you…”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. But what I do know is that whenever Casey is quiet, there’s something wrong. And, when you two were younger, she’d never talk to me. I’d have to get the scoop from you. Go up and see if you can figure out what’s going on.”
Faith nodded, knowing how Casey wasn’t the best at divulging her feelings. But her mother was right: She’d talk to Faith. She called goodbye to Isabella, who was already chatting animatedly to her mom as Faith crossed over the dune toward the cottage. Jake’s truck was still there. She hadn’t thought about that when agreeing to come up and talk to Casey. Now, she paused at the bottom of the steps, trying to figure out how she was supposed to greet him if she saw him. He was probably right there in the front room, painting the built-in. Should she be breezy and cool, or should she walk over and make conversation? It made her feel out of control a little bit, and she hadn’t felt like that in a long time. She started up the steps, trying to keep herself as calm as possible.
ELEVEN
Faith tentatively opened the door. Jake was tapping the lid of the paint can with a mallet. The built-in was beautiful—book shelves on the top and a double cabinet on the bottom, all painted a glossy white. But her eyes didn’t stay on it long. Her attention was on him. She was anxious to talk to him again. She wanted to see him, to look for any sign of how he felt about last night. Jake slipped the paint-filled paintbrush into a plastic bag, the hands that had held a glass of wine last night now spotted with white paint.
“Hey,” he said as she walked over to him.
“Hey.”
“I’m all done. No more work to do on the cottage, so I’ll be out of your hair.”
He was finished?
His words surfaced: I’ll be out of your hair. Faith was hoping the answer was no. She wanted to have more time with him. She wanted to have more time with him. To get to know the Jake she’d been with at the lighthouse and back at his cottage more. And she wanted to show him what this place meant to her, why she’d reacted how she had to learning about his work and what he was missing out on. Would he give her a chance to do that?
“There’s no more work to do? The cottage is complete?” She felt a stab of anxiety at the idea of not having Jake around. She enjoyed him popping by.
“Yep. It’s totally finished.” His words seemed flat. He wasn’t his usual, happy self.
“Oh…” She hadn’t meant for her disappointment to slip out.
“I’ll be back tomorrow, though, when I pick up Casey and Isabella to go fishing.”
With that statement, it was clear that he wasn’t
planning to see her, in particular, again. And the fact that he was seeing Casey made her chest ache. She would have loved to try and lengthen the conversation to work in the fact that she wanted to see him again, but she had to go check on her sister. That was the whole reason she’d come in.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she said, trying to put on a believable smile.
As Jake started to leave, Nan came into the living room, wobbling the box of photos.
Jake immediately took it from her and walked with her over to a chair where she sat down.
“Thank you, dear. That was kind of you.”
“You’re welcome. Is this good?” he asked, setting the box on the floor beside her and righting himself next to Faith.
“Yes.”
Jake was standing so close his hand brushed Faith’s, and her stomach did a little twirl. He didn’t seem to notice their proximity. He took a step toward the door. “Do you need anything else before I go?”
“No, Jake. Thank you so much.”
He offered his perfect smile and said goodbye, his eyes fluttering over to Faith momentarily and then away. Then, he turned around and headed toward the door. She wanted to run after him and ask him to stay but she watched him let himself out instead.
“I was going to look through these photos,” Nan said.
“I want to look at them with you, but I have to check on Casey.”
“Yes. Do that first. You know I’ll still be here,” she said with a wink.
Faith nodded and went down the hall to Casey’s door. She knocked twice and then let herself in. Casey was face down in the pillow, the covers yanked up around her. Gently, Faith lowered herself down onto the edge of the bed. She waited. She waited for Casey to cry a little, sit up, tell her what was bothering her, and get on with the day. That was how Casey operated. But this time, as Faith sat there—the blinds drawn, the room dark, the only light coming from the screensaver on Casey’s laptop—Casey didn’t move. She cried silent sobs—big and heaving—and she didn’t stir one bit.
Faith rubbed her back.
“He sent my list to his attorney,” Casey said into her pillow, the words broken by her sobs. “They want to meet when we get back.” She started to cry again, louder. “I don’t want this,” she said as she sat up and faced Faith. “I want to be with Scott. I miss him.”
“Do you think he misses you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve never asked him?”
“I think the divorce proceedings speak on his behalf. He isn’t interested in being with me.” She sobbed again.
For the first time ever, Casey seemed lost. She didn’t look sure of herself like she always had. She looked nervous, defeated, sad, and vulnerable. It was an unexpected sight, and Faith wasn’t sure how to handle it. The only thing she knew was that she had to be the strong one; she had to work Casey through this. Faith felt the loss deep within her chest. She ached for her sister. She knew what it was like to love Scott, and she knew what it was like to lose him. She could only imagine what it was like to lose him after experiencing his love in return. Casey and Scott had created a family together, they’d made a life, and they’d become one unit. Now that unit was broken. And so was Casey.
Faith couldn’t say it would be okay, because she didn’t know if it would be. She knew there was nothing to do but bear this pain with her sister because there was no way to make it any better. She looked at Casey, tears spilling over the rims of her sister’s eyes. Casey had always been so confident that now, when faced with something like this, she didn’t know how to cope, but Faith did.
“Reach out to him and talk to him. Tell him how you feel. He might not realize you still love him, and I’m sure he wouldn’t throw all of this away if he knew,” she said carefully. She wanted to get the words just right. “But if it doesn’t work out, you’ll learn how to manage without him. Then, you’ll learn how to be happy without him. And, eventually, he will become a memory like one of Nan’s photos—something great that you had for a little while but that you couldn’t keep. Remember our cottage? We had a lot of good memories there, but a storm came—one that wrecked it so badly that it couldn’t recover—and now it’s a memory. The good thing is that we get to keep all those memories and we can think back on them whenever we want to. Life moves forward whether we want it to or not. You are resilient. It hurts. But you’ll figure it out.”
They sat in silence for quite a while. Casey’s sobs subsided, and she sat up. She asked, “Where’s Isabella?”
“Mom’s got her. They’re decorating her sandcastle.”
Casey stood up and ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m going to get myself ready, and then I’ll go down with her. You know what?” she asked as Faith reached for the doorknob. “There is a quiet determination to her. You’ve always had it too; I’d just never taken the time to see it until now. Thank you for being there. I’ve never said that, but thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She shut the door behind her and went to find Nan.
Nan was sitting in her chair where Faith had left her, a pile of photos in her lap. They were sliding around a little on the baby blue afghan she had draped across her legs. She caught a runaway photo with her hand just as Faith sat down on the floor beside her. She turned it around to show Faith.
“This was when I was twenty.”
Faith looked more closely at the photo of two women wearing dresses with fitted waists, heels, and handbags dangling from the crooks of their arms. Their skin was milky white as if it had been airbrushed, both of them so beautiful that she couldn’t believe one of them was actually her nan. She could’ve been a model. Nan had always been lovely, but she saw her differently now. She was a woman with fears, losses, victories… Faith wanted to find out more about the woman Nan had been, what she’d been through in her life, what she’d endured. She realized that she should have done this sooner but there was nothing she could do to change that. She’d just make the most of it now.
“This one’s you, right?” Faith pointed to the woman on the left in the photo.
“Yes. And the other woman is Clara. She was twenty-three. It was the last photo taken of her.”
It was clear that the two women were sisters, not only because they favored each other, but it was the way they were standing together, their affection for one another evident. “What happened?”
“She died in an accident.” Nan shifted in her seat, wincing a little. It seemed to be her hip. She moved around until she looked relaxed. “Her train derailed. We don’t know, to this day, where she was headed. I should’ve known, but I wasn’t speaking to her.”
What must it have been like to lose a sister? “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Why weren’t you speaking to her?”
“She’d told me that she didn’t think John and I were right for each other. He was known as a sort of playboy, you see. What Clara didn’t know, though, was that John told me that the minute he met me, he knew he didn’t want to be with anyone else. We understood each other in a way that many people don’t. It’s a rare thing to find someone who you can spend your years with who makes you so excited every day that you can hardly believe how lucky you are. I found that with John, and the fact that Clara wouldn’t accept him had offended me.”
Two sisters, arguing over a guy. Faith could certainly relate. While she’d never told Casey not to marry Scott, she had spent a lot of time away from her sister when she should have been with her.
“I refused to speak to her. I was so angry because Clara always seemed to get everything right in life. She had a way about her that made people like her, and I was the one who had to work for everything I had. So finding someone as wonderful as John had taken me by surprise. I was thrilled that he noticed me, and that he liked the person he saw both inside and out. It annoyed me that Clara couldn’t be happy for me. She was ruining the one great thing that had happened to me. I should’ve just ignored her comment and let time tell the story, bu
t I didn’t. I was too loyal to John. I didn’t want anyone talking badly about him.”
Nan reached out for the photo, so Faith handed it to her. She studied the faces in the picture for a few quiet seconds and then shook her head.
“Clara sent me a letter. She said she wanted to talk. I had the chance right then to respond, tell her I’d love to see her, and make it all better again. But I didn’t. I let her request go unanswered. I still have her letter at home. I was too proud to admit that I’d overreacted. A few months later, I got word that she’d been killed in the train crash. I wish I’d gone to see her…”
“You’ll get to see her again,” Faith said, trying to reassure Nan in the best way she knew how. “She’s up there with Grandpa. She’s with him because now she knows. Time did tell the story, and they’re both waiting for you.”
Nan smiled, her eyes glassy with emotion. “Yes. And I will tell her I’m so sorry the minute I see her. But she’s had to wait an entire lifetime to hear it and I’ve had to wait an entire lifetime to tell her. That’s why I told you that things could be disastrous if we don’t take chances. Life is full of them. Don’t settle in life. If you do, you may miss a golden opportunity. The very worst feeling to carry with you isn’t sadness. It’s regret.”
TWELVE
“Isabella, are you ready?” Casey called out, grabbing Isabella’s sandals. They dangled from her fingers as she slipped her handbag onto her shoulder and slid on her sunglasses. Casey looked amazing. Her outfit was casual but a little over the top for fishing with Jake and his friend. It was probably the most dressed down Casey could be for a fishing trip. Faith sat next to Nan in the breakfast nook as Casey gathered things for their day out.
There was a knock at the door and Faith’s heart started rattling in her chest. Casey opened the door and Jake walked in, his eyes finding hers immediately. His face lifted and he broke into a brilliant smile. It made her heart beat harder. It was so silly to get flustered around him. He wasn’t there for her though, and he’d made it pretty clear that he wasn’t going to ask her out again, so she should just get over it. But for some reason, she couldn’t. She remembered the way he’d looked at her, how he’d smiled as she told him stories, that moment when she’d thought he was going to kiss her and what it felt like when he had. Could that feeling be enough to overpower the niggling worry about the rest?