by White, Karen
“That’s only because of something my mama told me. You have to face your fears. It’s the only way to overcome them.”
Jillian sighed into the salty air. “Are you still afraid?”
“Yeah—a little bit. I’m afraid of drowning. But each time I dive into the ocean or strap on my water skis, I’m that much closer to getting over it. Some things take time, you know? I guess you and Mama have rubbed off on me a little bit. I simply couldn’t accept that I would never enjoy the water. So I just jumped in. You do it every day of your life, Jilly, whether you realize it or not.”
They stayed on their backs, and Lauren pointed up at the sky. “What are we supposed to be looking at?”
Jillian grabbed her hand and moved it to the right. “You can’t really see it well without binoculars, but that’s Sagittarius.” She swept their hands in a circular motion, and Lauren squinted to see better. “He’s the archer, and Linc says it’s supposed to look like Sagittarius is shooting at the giant scorpion, Scorpius.” Jillian snorted and let their hands drop. “I told him I thought it looked more like a teapot. I think he got mad at me.”
“Sounds like Linc.”
“Yeah, well. He said that the center of the galaxy was tucked inside Sagittarius—but twenty-seven thousand light-years farther away. He said it was a lot more dignified to find the center of the galaxy inside a warrior than at the tip of a teapot’s spout.”
They laughed again, then Lauren reached into her pocket. Holding it up over Jillian, she said, “Look what Linc made for me.”
Jillian took the small object from her and held the tiny wooden heart close to her face. “Wow, it’s beautiful.”
“Yeah. He said he was going to carve something for you from the same piece of wood—but it wouldn’t be a heart. It’ll be something that reminds him of you. I bet it’ll be a star.”
Jillian cupped the heart in her hands as if memorizing it, then handed it back to Lauren. “Will you always keep it with you?”
“Definitely. It means a lot to me. I think I’m going to varnish it, then have a necklace made out of it with a gold chain my parents gave me last Christmas.”
They fell into silence, listening to the surge and retreat of the waves. After a while, Jillian jumped up, spraying Lauren with sand. “Let’s go inside. I’m in the mood to bake something.”
Lauren laughed. “You always do that.”
Jillian snatched up the blanket and snapped it in the air to free it of sand. “Do what?”
“Make food for people. It’s like your way of giving them a gift for no reason at all.”
“I don’t hear anybody complaining.”
Lauren looked a few feet ahead of them and saw the water creeping up the shoreline. “The tide’s coming in.”
Jillian finished folding the blanket and tucked it under an arm. Something seemed to catch her attention and she pointed to the water. “Look—glowing fish!”
Lauren moved closer to watch a cluster of tiny phosphorescent fish glowing like they had swallowed moonlight from the surface of the water. They moved back and forth, as if dancing to the ancient rhythm of the tides, performing for no one but themselves and the moon.
Jillian stood next to her, staring in awe at the beautiful fish. “It’s a little bit of magic, isn’t it?” She found Lauren’s hand and squeezed it. “I’m going to remember this night. Always.”
“Me, too.” Lauren squeezed back. “You’ll always be my very best friend, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
They gathered up the blanket and cooler, then struggled up the thick sand of the dunes toward the house with the light in the kitchen window, leaving behind glowing fish and a ribbon of stars that led far out into the galaxy, taking with them youthful wishes and memories that would last a lifetime, and maybe even beyond.
Linc pulled his car up behind the house and turned off the engine. He sat for a while, willing himself not to move while he berated himself for returning to Pawleys before he had made much more than a dent in the work waiting for him at his Charleston office. He rubbed his hands over his eyes. Jillian. He’d missed her. He wanted her. He could almost believe that he needed her.
He opened the door and climbed out, and found himself heading next door before he’d so much as checked to make sure his own house was still standing. After knocking on Jillian’s door and receiving no answer, he found Jillian and the children on the beach, farther down from where they usually were, far beyond the pit in the dunes behind his house.
Jillian turned toward him before he had called out to them, almost as if she had sensed him. She wore a pale pink sundress, the skirt long and flowing around her calves. Her hair was swept back in a ponytail, one that matched Grace’s, with loose strands that danced around her face. Her hands were coated with wet sand, and as he watched she scratched her nose, leaving a streak of sand on her sun-browned skin. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.
He shoved his hands into his pockets, clenching them in a vain effort to staunch the rush of desire that seemed to propel him forward. He stopped in front of them, patting Grace’s head first before directing his attention toward her mother. He’d needed to do that first so he could find his voice.
She smiled at him, her eyes glowing in the sunlight. “You’re a bit overdressed for the beach, aren’t you?”
He realized for the first time that he still wore his suit and tie and that his Italian loafers were caked with sand. He blew out a breath of air and smiled ruefully as he loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “I’m sure somewhere in the world this is appropriate beachwear.”
She gave him a knowing smile as he squatted down to pat Ford in his infant carrier and greet Gracie. “What are you girls up to?”
Grace regarded him with wide brown eyes for a moment. There was something in the way her eyes widened and the color of sun reflected in them that reminded him of someone else. Not her mother; someone else he couldn’t recall.
She put a sandy hand on his pants leg. “We just brought back a turtle egg and put it back in its nest. Her name is Tammy. Mommy brought Ford so he could help, but he’s pretty useless. Mommy and I did all the work, as usual.” She finished this with a heavy sigh.
Mommy? He looked over at Jillian with raised eyebrows, and she smiled back at him. His thoughts were interrupted by the feel of sandy hands on his neck. “You wore your sand dollar necklace I made you.”
He tried not to wince at the feel of sand grains dropping from the neck of his shirt onto his chest. “I wanted to bring a piece of the beach with me to the city—to remind me of the ocean until I could get back. Otherwise, I’d miss it too much. And you, too, of course.”
Gracie giggled, then wiped the remaining sand on her hands off on his pants legs as she helped herself up. “I’m gonna go look for shells.” She spread out the skirt of her sundress, showing them the large front pockets. “I’ll put them in here, okay, Mommy?”
Jillian nodded, and they watched as she raced off and began searching for treasures. He reached for her then, cupping her face in his hands and kissing her. Her lips tasted of salt and sand and warm sun, and he kissed her again, lingering longer.
“She’s calling you Mommy.”
Jillian nodded, her eyes shining. “She didn’t ask or anything—she just started doing it.”
“Is it a good thing?”
She didn’t pause. “Yes. Definitely. It’s almost like waiting your whole life to open a present—and when you finally get to, you’re not disappointed.”
Jillian bent to pick up Ford, lifting him to her shoulder and adjusting the baby’s hat to protect him from the sun. The sun skipped under a thick cloud, creating intermittent patterns of darkness and light on the water and dunes. “Let’s walk,” she said, and started in the direction Gracie had gone.
“I missed you.” She didn’t look at him.
“I bought y
ou some pans.” It was so inadequately stupid he wanted to pull the words out of the air and swallow them.
Her cheek creased in a smile. “Really? For me?”
“Yeah, for your new kitchen. They’re the blue porcelain-coated ones you were admiring last week. I thought you’d like to have them.”
She turned to him. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that, you know, but thank you.” Then, keeping her eyes focused ahead of her, she said, “Rick is spending the afternoon with Gracie again, if you want to come over later.”
He looked at her and saw the telltale pink of a blush creeping across her cheeks. “I’d like that.” He realized that they had been walking in the direction of his house and toward the dune with the yellow safety tape still stretched around it. Grace had halted suddenly, making them stop short so they wouldn’t run into her. She was staring over the dunes, and he followed her gaze. “What the . . . ?”
A swarm of seabirds had settled around the yellow tape, a few of them flapping their wings and cawing to each other.
Jillian put her hand on his arm. “Mason was looking for you yesterday. He thinks your workmen have been dumping garbage in the pit, and wanted you to take care of it before the birds became a nuisance.”
“Damn,” he said before he remembered Grace’s presence. He bent his head to apologize to her, but stopped when he saw her face. Her eyes were wide with terror, her face the color of a sand dollar bleached by the sun.
Jillian was looking at her with worry. “Are you all right, Gracie? Are you sick?”
Gracie shook her head slowly. “No. I want to go home now.” Her small voice sounded strangled.
Jillian knelt in front of her, feeling her forehead. “She’s a little warm. She got a little too much sun yesterday, and it must be catching up with her. I’m going to take her home and let her get some rest before her father comes.”
Gracie continued to stare at the damaged dune, her eyes wide and unblinking. It almost looked as if she were listening to somebody speaking to her.
Jillian tugged on her arm. “Come on, sweetheart. Can you walk? We’ll go home now.”
Slowly, Gracie’s eyes drifted to her mother’s face. “She can’t breathe. There’s water over her nose and mouth, and she can’t breathe.”
Jillian’s face paled to the same shade as her daughter’s. “Who, Gracie? Who can’t breathe? Is somebody in trouble?” She looked into her daughter’s face. Quietly, she asked, “Is it Lauren?”
Linc felt a chill pass through him as Grace nodded, before her head dropped so that she was staring at her bare feet, the pink nail polish chipped and faded. Linc reached down and picked the little girl up in his arms, noticing how light yet how solid she felt. “I’ll carry her up to the house.” Gracie looped her arms around his neck and laid her head down on his shoulders. There was something so right about the way she felt in his arms—something so right in the way that he was able to help make her hurt go away. He realized with some surprise that he still thought of Gracie as a young Jillian. He had always wanted to take away Jillian’s hurts, and now maybe with her daughter he had been given a second chance.
They moved across the sand and boardwalk and then up to the house, where Jillian held open the door for them to pass. Grace had fallen asleep, so he followed Jillian upstairs to Grace’s room. He held still while Jillian did the best she could to wipe the sand off the child’s feet before pulling back the sheets and gesturing for Linc to lay her down.
They stood for a few moments, their shoulders touching, and watched the sleeping girl. Spot leapt on the bed and crouched next to the child in a protective gesture, a movement so doglike it almost made Linc smile. Jillian had turned to say something to him when Gracie sat up suddenly, her eyes closed as if still asleep. Her voice was soft and languid and not her own. “I’m sorry, Linc. I’m so, so sorry.”
Grace fell back on the pillows, her chest rising and falling in the soft rhythms of sleep. She turned on her side, grabbed Bun-Bun and snuggled it under her arm. With a faint voice, she said, “I love you, Linc. I never stopped.”
Her brow softened and she burrowed further into the pillow, as Linc felt an icy blast blow down his spine. He glanced at Jillian and saw that she was crying silently, the tears wetting her cheeks. She held the baby closer to her as he touched her elbow and took her from the room.
They descended the stairs without speaking, and he led her into the kitchen. For once, she sat down at the table and he put the kettle on to boil. Neither of them said anything until he’d put a steaming cup of tea in front of her. Her eyes were red and swollen when she looked up at him. “Is this really happening? Could she really be talking to Lauren?”
He put his hand on her arm and noticed how cold she was. “I think . . . yes. I think she could be. I believe that Grace might . . .” He stopped, unsure of how to go on. He pushed his fingers through his hair. “I think she might have heightened awareness—a sort of sixth sense. She might be able to see things you and I can’t. I’ve read about things like this before. There’s nothing at all wrong with her—that’s the most important thing you have to realize. You might want to take her to a child psychologist just to help you both understand it better.” He squeezed her arm. “You have to believe me—there’s nothing wrong with Gracie. She’s a wonderful little girl with a very special gift. And I know that you’ll handle this.”
Jillian put her cup down slowly. “I think you’re right. I think I’ve known it for a while now. I just didn’t want to accept it—I still don’t. Because not only does it mean my daughter communicates with ghosts, but it also means that Lauren . . .” She couldn’t finish.
He nodded, then touched his forehead to hers. “Yes. I think she is.”
She clenched her eyes for a long moment, then stood and adjusted the baby on her shoulder. “I can’t deal with this right now. I just can’t. I’m going to get the baby changed and down for a nap, and then take a long, cold shower. Then I’ll think about it. But I know one thing—Gracie will not be singled out or ridiculed. If Lauren somehow talks with her and tells her something we need to know, I will not allow anyone to know that it came from Gracie. She is my child. I will not let her suffer for this.”
Linc had the oddest urge to stand up and shout, “Bravo!” It was the first time he’d ever witnessed the true Jillian he knew stand up and let the world see it, too. Instead, he kissed her gently and patted Ford on the head. “We won’t let that happen, all right?” She looked at him, and her eyes were warm. He touched her cheek. “I’ll come back later, okay?” Gently, he added, “You and I have to decide what we need to know about Lauren from Grace.”
She nodded, and he left. An odd prickling sensation in the back of his neck prodded at him as he crossed the sand between the houses. He had reached his car and was about to lift his overnight bag out of the trunk when he heard the combined cry of birds, a raucous sound that seemed to rise on the salt-drenched air and burst over his head like confetti. It chilled him to the bone.
He dropped the bag and ran to the back of his house and moved down to the boardwalk to see the birds. The collapsed dune was peppered with gulls, their dirty white-and-brown feathers like shadows on a palette of sand. He began to walk closer, and as he approached he got a better look at the ground around the yellow tape and saw it move, each grain seemingly covered with crabs and other seaside scavengers. The skin tightened over his shoulders, the fear plucking the air from his lungs. She can see the sky now. But she can’t breathe. She just wants to breathe.
“Oh, God,” he whispered, stumbling forward, not wanting to go but compelled to do so, anyway. He ducked under the yellow tape and stood at the edge of the pit for a full minute before moving closer and peering in, knowing what he would find before he’d even looked.
Half covered by water and sand lay the smooth, curved bone of the top of a skull, the lower jaw missing, the water and sand like a gloved hand pressing tight against what had been a nose and mouth, smothering out air and life. The sight
less sockets stared up past him at the blue South Carolina sky, where the moon and stars could not be found.
CHAPTER 22
JILLIAN SAT AT HER KITCHEN TABLE IN SILENCE, THE ONLY SOUND THE swish of the ceiling fan. She twisted her grandmother’s ring on her finger, the gold warm beneath her touch. Holding her hand out in front of her, she thought for a moment it was her grandmother’s hand, warm and knowing and capable. It was with a small jolt that she realized that the hand she was staring at was her own.
She had just decided to make crab cakes for Mason, as a sort of peace offering, and had her head buried in the cabinet where she kept her pans when she heard the short bursts of a siren. At first she thought she’d left the television on, because the sound was so completely unexpected in her little world out on the dunes of Pawleys Island. But when she pulled her head out of the cabinet and listened, she could tell that the sirens were outside and very close by.
After quickly checking to see that Gracie and Ford still napped, she headed outside, not bothering first to find her shoes. She felt an inexplicable urgency pressing her forward, and she didn’t want to waste any time.
She recognized Mason’s vehicle first. The sirens had been turned off but the lights were still on, the bright flashes nearly surreal in the sun-lit front yard of Linc’s house. Behind the patrol car was a dark brown sedan and an ambulance, and Jillian’s heart raced when she spotted it. Ignoring the pinching of broken shells on her bare feet, she raced to Linc’s door and began hammering on it with her fist.
When no one responded, she tried the knob but found it locked. Trying to keep her panic in check, she raced to the rear door. As she rounded the corner of the house she caught sight of movement on the dunes and walked down toward the boardwalk. She stopped there, trying to find her breath and almost crying with relief when she spotted Linc near the collapsed dune, his hands thrust into his pockets.
He still wore the clothes she’d seen him in last, his loafers completely covered in sand now. He was staring inside the pit, his face calm and serene as if he were asleep. But she could see the tenseness in the fall of his shoulders and the line of his jaw. He looked so much like the vulnerable and lost young boy she had known, and her heart lurched in her chest. He needed her now. She felt it as strongly as if he had just said the words out loud.