The Uncertain Season

by Ann Howard Creel

  OTHER BOOKS BY ANN HOWARD CREEL

  The Magic of Ordinary Days

  While You Were Mine

  The Whiskey Sea

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Ann Howard Creel

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477809044

  ISBN-10: 147780904X

  Cover design by Rachel Adam Rogers

  Cover photography by Laura Klynstra

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE GRACE

  Chapter One THE GIRL

  Chapter Two GRACE

  Chapter Three ETTA

  Chapter Four THE GIRL

  Chapter Five GRACE

  Chapter Six ETTA

  Chapter Seven GRACE

  Chapter Eight ETTA

  Chapter Nine THE GIRL

  Chapter Ten GRACE

  Chapter Eleven ETTA

  Chapter Twelve THE GIRL

  Chapter Thirteen GRACE

  Chapter Fourteen ETTA

  Chapter Fifteen THE GIRL

  Chapter Sixteen GRACE

  Chapter Seventeen ETTA

  Chapter Eighteen THE GIRL

  Chapter Nineteen GRACE

  Chapter Twenty ETTA

  Chapter Twenty-One THE GIRL

  Chapter Twenty-Two GRACE

  Chapter Twenty-Three ETTA

  Chapter Twenty-Four THE GIRL

  Chapter Twenty-Five GRACE

  Chapter Twenty-Six THE GIRL

  Chapter Twenty-Seven ETTA

  Chapter Twenty-Eight THE GIRL

  Chapter Twenty-Nine GRACE

  Chapter Thirty ETTA

  Chapter Thirty-One GRACE

  Chapter Thirty-Two THE GIRL

  Chapter Thirty-Three ETTA

  Chapter Thirty-Four GRACE

  Chapter Thirty-Five THE GIRL

  Epilogue GRACE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  GRACE

  As a child, I believed there were no other places like Galveston, no other islands like mine. But in fact the Gulf Coast is ribbed with barrier islands formed by silt carried from as far away as the Mississippi River. Such islands are transitory places, simple sand spits, and unreliable pieces of earth. God tests us here, every season sending the sea’s wrath to shift the ground beneath our feet.

  The earliest inhabitants, the native Karankawas, understood this. They visited Galveston Island but never built homes here; in fact, during any given year they never stayed longer than a season.

  And yet this island life was all I had lived, and all I had ever wanted.

  But it is not the island’s story I plan to tell. It’s Etta’s and mine, Jonathan’s and Ira’s. And even more so, it’s the story of a girl whose name I never knew.

  Chapter One

  THE GIRL

  When the 1900 Storm hit Galveston, she was aboard a shrimp boat with Harry Gobinet, her brother’s best friend and a fisherman’s son, a sixteen-year-old sailor who already knew the sea and its signs. Harry sensed something over the shoals, in beds of oysters dug into the sandbars that ribbed the shallows of Galveston Bay, in the rising thick and gray seas, in gulls flying overhead in high spirals, and he felt it in a brisk offshore wind.

  The girl and her brother, Anson, often took Saturday-morning boat rides with Harry. Now, as the girl ate oranges and tossed the rinds to imaginary mermaids who swam in their wake, she studied Harry. Normally he was a happy soul, but today he squinted up at the sky and looked around the boat in every direction, as though he were expecting a ghost to blow in. Or maybe he was aggravated that Anson hadn’t been able to go out with them today and so he was stuck with her. Something was on Harry’s mind, and the girl figured that, at age eleven, she was grown up enough to hear it.

  “What’s eating at you?” she asked.

  Harry, his sun-streaked hair tossing in the wind, only shook his head and kept on watching things he couldn’t yet name. The tide was rising, while the winds were blowing against it. High water along with opposing winds was most unusual, but Harry eventually figured out what it was: a storm tide.

  Therefore he never put out his net, and he headed not back to the docks on the island’s north side, instead tacking the boat across Galveston Bay toward the Texas mainland. He stood braced at the tiller, his eyes glistening with watery apprehension, his tanned face bleak with concern, and at last he explained the storm signs to the girl as he plunged the bow through the beginning chop. The girl, used to the sea’s moods and not concerned yet, held on with one hand as they pitched onward, and with her other hand she floated orange wedges on the blustering wind that tousled and twisted her lobster-red hair.

  Harry Gobinet knew something huge was blowing in, but even he didn’t foresee the magnitude of the storm coming their way. Still, he saw enough to save them.

  And that is how the girl came to live through it, even though after the storm swept across Galveston Island, high tides surged ten miles over the Texas mainland, and she and Harry had to scramble from the boat and leave it in the muddies of Buffalo Bayou and run for dry land. Three days later, while they searched for any remains of his father’s boat—they found nothing—the girl saw the body of a dead boy caught in a tree, his face the color of horse’s teeth and his limbs black, his feet dangling out of the branches like a bird’s broken wings.

  In a dazed state of fatigue and fear about what had happened on the island, she and Harry made do on the mainland with shelter and help from charities and churches, then returned to Galveston Island eleven days after the storm, when the railroad bridge was finally repaired, and by that time everyone unaccounted for was presumed dead. Boatloads of recovered and mostly unidentifiable corpses were dumped into the gulf or, if they washed back onto the beaches, burned in funeral pyres. The girl saw those fires as she and Harry crossed the bay by train, and from a distance they looked like candles burning golden in the gloom of that dim, gray morning. As they entered the stricken city, however, grim reality set in. Bodies were still washing back onto shore from the gulf, and many still lay in twisted piles. The girl stopped walking and stared. But Harry grabbed her arm and steered her away.

  “Don’t look,” he said and forced her to walk on.

  They passed heaps of splintered wood left behind from what had once been houses, bloated corpses of animals, and haggard people wearing threadbare clothing camping out in crumbling schools, churches, hospitals, and the convent. Huge piles of debris lay everywhere. Not even the stench of burning and decaying bodies and stagnant water or the black scum that covered everything had shattered the girl’s hopes yet. She imagined finding her family alive and telling them how she had survived.

  Their first day back on the island was perfectly still; blades of grass were already sprouting amid the rubble and shining a vibrant green, and as the cloud cover cleared, the sun beamed down yellow light, the sky sweeping and unmarred, altogether cleansed. She and Harry located the street that had been Avenue Q and found it, like most of the city, in shattered ruin. They could not even know for certain where the girl’s house had stood.

  Realization came to her in one clear and vicious moment. Even in that bright sunlight, she felt th
e absence of them in her chest, her ribs, and her every breath.

  She stood without moving, her hands numb and clenched at her sides.

  She and Harry searched for his house, too, but found nothing but wreckage, and then checked at various shelters and camp-out spots, but no signs of either family surfaced. Along with six thousand other islanders, plus thousands of others elsewhere along the coast, their parents and siblings had perished. She and Harry didn’t even bother to search for her father’s souvenir shack, which had once stood on pilings down on the beach.

  The girl opened her mouth to say to Harry, “They’re gone,” but no sound came. A big, hard stone sat in her middle, making it difficult to breathe. Their families had simply vanished. She drew a tight breath and tried to speak again, but her voice had gone strangely missing, too. She needed to say the words aloud; she needed to say them in a voice bold and big enough so that she would have to believe it.

  Harry tried to console and comfort her, but to no avail. And so they wandered more, then came to the steps of City Hall, which was badly damaged but had withstood the storm. They sat side by side, their losses soaking into their cells even as the last of the storm water finally evaporated.

  She tried to say those terrible words again, and then she tried to say anything, anything at all, but her mouth refused to work. She could force her lips into the shapes of words, but no sounds ever emerged.

  Harry asked, “What is it?” He leaned down close to her face and peered into it. “What’s happening to you? Come on and speak up about it. You’re safe. And we’re going to figure it out together, you and me.”

  She opened her mouth and tried again. For his sake, for the worry etched into that weary face that no longer looked as if it belonged to a teenager. She wanted to tell him she understood. She was breathing; she was alive. She wasn’t knotted in those piles or lost to the deep legions.

  God or the heavens or someone had decided that she and Harry should live. But why? The question pulled her air away. If only Anson had come along out on the boat with them that day. He had stayed behind because their father needed help in the souvenir shop. Always generous, always giving.

  Anson. Mama. Papa.

  “They’re gone on to a better place by now,” Harry said quietly, as though he could hear her thoughts. He wiped away his tears and then gazed at her haltingly, hands trembling. “That’s what people will say.”

  But all the promises she’d once believed were doubtful now. People did not live, even when you needed them most. Maybe they lived on in eternity, but life after death was nothing she could see or hold in her hands. It could not hug her, tuck her in at night, read her poetry, or run and play with her in the yard. She swallowed several times and then tried to speak once more, for Harry’s sake. But she couldn’t even hum the beginning of a word, and after that resignation arrived quickly. The hard stone that had settled inside her had absorbed her voice. She could not repeat her father’s seaside stories, recite her mother’s favorite poems, or confess the antics that she and her brother had engaged in. She could not sing their songs, call to birds, or whistle—something Anson had been trying to teach her.

  An emotion previously unknown to her, grief had arrived and taken the form of complete silence.

  Chapter Two

  GRACE

  On June 3, 1903, the day my cousin Etta came to stay with us, my mother had one of her sinking spells and caused a bit of an emergency in our household. Mother had planned to meet the train with me but instead took to her chambers, and therefore I was required to go to the Union Passenger Depot, accompanied only by our carriage driver, Seamus.

  And so it was that we generated no fanfare at all for the arrival in Galveston of Miss Etta Rahn, the youngest daughter of my aunt, from Nacogdoches, Texas.

  Seamus, my mother’s most trusted servant, brought the carriage around to the front of our house on Broadway and awaited me there. My mother had arranged herself on the settee in her private parlor, the exterior shutters having been closed and the louvers adjusted to allow in fresh air, hot as it was. Her favorite maid, Clorinda, was tending to her with damp cloths on her forehead and fanning her with a large paper fan, a gift for herself my mother had purchased on our last trip to the Orient.

  Some people might say that Mother was self-indulgent, lying down and allowing herself to be fanned, but in truth she rarely succumbed to feminine frailties. I remembered Clorinda once long ago mumbling, “Too soft for dis here world,” but Clorinda, despite her wisdom and constancy, didn’t know Mother as well as I did. Normally Mother was as well preened as a show bird, and with her fierce eyes and penchant for wearing her hair high on her head, she often reminded me of a plumed falcon. Mother ran our household and held court over all of our activities just like that bird of prey, searching for sustenance. She had to be in bad sorts to miss Etta’s arrival.

  I tiptoed into her parlor to tell her I was leaving. She opened her eyes, and then, with a mixed expression of regret and exasperation on her face, she lifted a hand to her forehead. “Dear Grace. What a calamity this is. Do explain to your cousin why I was unable to meet her train with you.”

  I took her hand and stroked the white skin, as pure and as soft as mine, a lady’s hand that had seen little hard work, thanks to my father’s family money, made in the slave market before Emancipation. But I had never shared those details with anyone, certainly not during my years at the Ursuline Academy, where I had been a day scholar. In fact, Mother and I never mentioned the original source of our wealth, and now we were partial owners of banks, import-export businesses, and real estate. I held her hand and said, “Calamity might be a bit of an exaggeration, Mother.”

  She sighed with great heaving movements of her chest and shoulders. “You’re still cross with me.”

  My mother, with her sculpted face and brown hair streaked with silver and raked up with tortoiseshell combs, was an imposing figure, even while ill.

  “No,” I lied. “I’m certain it isn’t my place to know the reason that Cousin Etta’s coming. I trust your judgment completely in the matter.”

  “You’re such a jewel. Such a dear, dear treasure to me. But I don’t believe a word of it.”

  I dropped her hand.

  “Promise me that you’ll be considerate of her. Welcome her. Take her under your wing.”

  “She’s two years older than I am. I hardly think she’ll require my guidance, Mother. But of course I will.”

  My promise lacked sincerity, and my mother knew me too well not to realize that. For the last fourteen years, it had been just the two of us, ever since my father died while he and my mother had been traveling in Louisiana. He had perished in his sleep of some undiagnosed miasma when I was but five years old, and I could barely remember those days when there had been three of us in the Hilliard household instead of just two. All I could evoke of my father were a few hazy scenes and sensations on the other side of clear memory. Of course I recalled with cruel clarity when my mother had told me of his death. She had explained his end to me with pinched eyes and her palms turned upward, as if she held the power to lift him into Heaven.

  “Listen to me, Grace,” she said now, her eyes boring into mine, pleading.

  “I always do.”

  “Etta hasn’t had the privileges you have had. She hasn’t grown up within our sort of society. You must be gracious. She will need your assistance.”

  “I have already agreed.”

  “You’ve never experienced living in a new place, either.” She shifted her weight on the settee and untied the bow at the neck of her peignoir to let in more air. “Etta hasn’t been here since she was eleven years old. Do you remember? We took the carriages for a picnic down on West Beach, and Etta nearly drowned right in our midst. We were all standing at the water’s edge, and a large wave simply slammed into the beach and swept her down. You were only nine at the time, but you were the first to reach her and lift her from the surf.”

  Naturally I remembered the event,
especially the sight of Etta’s dark eyes, which I recalled as being wide open under a foot or so of foaming water that was drawing back toward the open sea. Pulling her up was instinct, pure and simple, and besides, she was never in true danger. The surf of our island is usually modest, and the slope out to the depths is gentle. But to a young girl like Etta, it must have felt like a storm swell.

  I said to Mother, “I do remember the incident. It must have been most distressing to Etta. She and Aunt Junie never came again.”

  “No,” said Mother in a wistful voice. “Not after that episode. They did come once before, however, when the two of you were only three and five, and during that visit you climbed into the attic playroom with a pair of scissors and chopped off each other’s hair. Right before Easter.” Now she looked slightly amused. “You and Etta together,” she said and nodded once. “You were trouble.” Her tiny smile vanished. “But this cannot be the case during this visit. You’re young ladies now, nineteen and twenty-one. I’ll expect you to behave like gentlewomen. No antics or larks. You know how I abhor gossip.”

  I tried to make my voice sound sweet, not syrupy. “How long do you suppose Cousin Etta will be with us?”

  “We’ve been over this before.”

  “Any idea? A guess? A hunch?”

  “No, and I won’t venture a guess. We’ll simply have to see.”

  I said a curt “Very well,” then kissed my mother’s damp cheek and turned to leave. As I walked away, my footsteps were silent, and my back was held utterly straight, stacked high with my building frustration.

  Despite my inquiries, the reason for my cousin’s sudden arrival had remained undisclosed. It had started with a flurry of telegrams and letters exchanged between my mother and my aunt Junie, which was most unusual, as they’d never been close. An unfortunate marriage on the part of Aunt Junie to Uncle Ralph had caused much family discord. Mother had once explained to me that her older sister had married far beneath her, to a common “square-head” German who knew nothing but how to repair timepieces. Her words could have come directly out of my grandmother’s mouth, as she was the one who had started the dissension before her death.