Sanctuary Cove

by Rochelle Alers

  Crystal went still, her gaze shifting from her mother to Janelle. “Okay, Mom.”

  Deborah extended her arms, kissing her daughter’s cheek, then Janelle’s. “Sleep tight—”

  “And don’t let the bedbugs bite,” the two girls chorused.

  “I’m going back to bed, too.” Whitney pushed off the rocker. Closing the distance between them, he leaned down and dropped a kiss on Deborah’s hair. “Good night. Or, should I say, good morning.”

  “Good morning, Whit.”

  Waiting until she was alone, Deborah stared at the television, thinking about her new life ahead. As a widow and a single mother she would have to balance running her business with taking care of her home, because now she wouldn’t have Louis to pick up the slack. He had always left home at six-thirty to work with students who needed extra help and usually returned before the bus dropped Crystal and Whitney off from school. Her Charleston-based bookstore was open Tuesday through Saturday from ten to six. Thursday was the late night when she stayed open until eight. Most days Deborah prepared dinner, set aside in oven-proof dishes with cooking instructions, and when she didn’t Louis and Crystal had concocted gourmet dinners that rivaled those served in upscale restaurants.

  When she opened the bookstore on Sanctuary Cove, Deborah realized she would have to hire an assistant. She was certain she would be able to get a retiree or a college student to cover the store when she had to take care of things at home. Her children didn’t need a babysitter, but they did require supervision. Although she hadn’t had a problem with Whitney and Crystal becoming involved with drug use or underage drinking, she didn’t want to present them with the opportunity to experiment if they were left unsupervised. Deborah was a firm believer in little children, little problems. Big children, big problems. And she was firm and uncompromising when it came to no kids in the house without a parent present, and no entertaining in their bedrooms.

  Her children weren’t perfect, but at least she hadn’t had to bail them out of jail or send them to rehab. What they hadn’t known was she’d worn out her knees praying they would reach adulthood without making mistakes that would impact negatively on their futures.

  She had not known when she recorded Whitney’s birth in her journal that seventeen years later she and Louis would not attend his high school graduation together, or see him off to college. Over the years Deborah had recorded entries in her journal: chronicling births, deaths, earning her graduate degree, opening the bookstore, Whitney getting his driver’s license, and Crystal making the cheerleading squad.

  When Barbara had suggested she join her children in their grief counseling sessions, Deborah’s response was she didn’t need a counselor when she had her journals in which to record her innermost thoughts. However, she’d told her friend a half-truth. The last entry she’d written was on the day Louis died.

  December 4th—The police came to the house today to tell me Louis had drowned. They haven’t recovered his body, so there is still hope that he will be found alive.

  Her journal was in the drawer of the bedside table at the house in Charleston. She made a mental note to bring it to Sanctuary Cove to record all that had happened since that tragic day in early December. She watched two more episodes of the marathon, then turned off the television and settled down on the pile of pillows cradling her shoulders. It was a new year and she’d made only one resolution, and that was to make the transition of relocating from Charleston to Sanctuary Cove as uneventful as humanly possible.

  “Mom, look what we found in the last trunk!”

  Crystal’s strident tone shattered the quiet in the kitchen. Deborah, who’d spent the past half hour sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, and flipping through the pages of magazines, stared at her daughter. The household hadn’t begun to stir until noontime. Deborah had awakened as slivers of sunlight pierced the fabric of the woven blinds that covered the porch’s windows and French door. Somehow she forced herself to remain in bed until ten, then showered in the half-bath off the kitchen. As she was cleaning up the family room Barbara came to tell her she was planning to prepare brunch.

  Deborah hadn’t wanted to think about food—not after all she’d consumed the night before. She had made certain to sample every dish, unable to believe the quality of the food hadn’t diminished in all the years she’d eaten at Jack’s. This morning, while everyone ate slices of sweet smoked ham, grits, eggs, and biscuits, she’d drunk two cups of coffee with a serving of soft-scrambled eggs. Another one of her resolutions should be to cut back on her coffee consumption. Lately, she’d been drinking at least four cups a day when normally one or two would suffice.

  After brunch Barbara and Terrell had taken Whitney’s car for a tour of Cavanaugh Island, leaving Deborah to savor a few moments of solitude. Although the island was only eight square miles, with a total population of approximately twenty-three hundred, there were unpaved roads with no markers and people had been known to get lost for hours.

  “What did you find, sweetheart?”

  Crystal, cradling a plastic envelope filled with letters and newspaper clippings, spilled the contents on the table. “Whitney has more.”

  Picking up a letter, Deborah recognized her grandmother’s neatly slanting writing. She smiled. The letter was addressed to James Williams, while the return address read Sallie Ann Payne. Payne had been her grandmother’s maiden name. She counted more than twenty letters. “How many does Whitney have?” she asked Crystal.

  “These are journals,” Whitney said as he entered the kitchen with six hardcovered books. “They belonged to Grandma Sallie.”

  Crystal picked up an envelope. “Can we read them? We finished emptying all the trunks,” she added quickly.

  Deborah knew Crystal and Whitney had spent the better part of two hours going through four steamer trunks filled with old quilts, hardcover books, and sets of dishes, and another filled with sweet-grass baskets. Everything was neatly packed and stored in plastic to ward off mildew in the tropical heat. Whitney had carried the empty trunks down the ladder that led to the crawl space and placed them on the front porch to air out, while their contents were stacked in an area off the kitchen that doubled as a pantry.

  “You can read the newspaper articles,” Deborah said. She didn’t want her children to read their great-grandmother’s letters or journals until she read them. Perhaps there was something in them that wasn’t appropriate.

  Whitney flopped down on a chair at the table and began unfolding the clippings. “Some of these are real old.” He held up a clipping that had yellowed with age.

  Deborah smiled again. “Your Grandma Sallie read everything. Remember, when she grew up the radio and newspapers were her only link with the outside world.”

  Crystal scrunched up her nose. “Mom, how did everyone get along without a computer and texting?”

  “Quite well, thank you.”

  “How did you talk to your friends?” she asked.

  Deborah’s eyebrows lifted with her daughter’s query. “I picked up the telephone and called them.”

  “What about Grandma Pearl?”

  “She, too, picked up a phone and called her friends. However, Grandma Sallie told me she didn’t get a telephone until the mid-1950s, when the island was wired for telephone service. If she had to contact someone in an emergency she would go to the store that’s now the pharmacy and post office, where the telegrapher would send a telegram to someone on the mainland.”

  “What about television?” Whitney asked.

  “My grandmother always had a television. It was nothing like the thin flat-screen high-definition ones we have today, but I can remember watching soap operas with her during the summer months when she wasn’t teaching.”

  Deborah watched Crystal tunnel her hands through her short hair, and then lift it with her fingertips. Crystal was a much softer feminine version of her late father, but Deborah wished she would let her hair grow out a little longer so she could style it differently.
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  Whitney stared at the article’s headline. “This says that Grandma Sallie was the first Negro teacher to integrate the Cove’s white school. She never mentioned anything to us about it.”

  Crystal stopped touching her hair. “You didn’t have a problem when you came here as a young girl, did you Mom?”

  Reaching across the table, Deborah rested her hand atop Crystal’s. “Why are you asking questions about the Cove? Are you having second thoughts about moving here permanently?”

  “No. We like it here,” Whitney answered, speaking for himself and his sister. “It’s just that you never told us what it was like for you to spend your summers here.”

  “Whenever I tried talking to you about it you claimed you didn’t want to hear about what I did back in the day. All you were interested in was playing with your friends and hanging out on the beach.”

  Crystal affected a sheepish expression. “We want to hear about it now.”

  Deborah leaned back in her chair. “I can remember coming to the Cove the summer I celebrated my fourth birthday. I used to get up early, put on a pair of boots, then go to gather eggs from the chicken coop for Grandpoppa’s breakfast before he went out in his boat. I’d watch my grandmother make lunch for him, and then she would make breakfast for us. After that it was working in the garden before the sun got too hot.”

  Crystal’s eyes grew larger. “How far was the coop from the house?”

  “It was far enough away from the house so we didn’t have to smell it,” Deborah answered with a laugh. “Grandpoppa had put up a large structure made of wire like those on the window screens to keep out unwanted critters and to keep the chickens safe when they were out in their yard. Even the bugs couldn’t get through. We’d had problems with snakes stealing the eggs and foxes eating the chickens.”

  Deborah told them about planting, weeding, and harvesting homegrown vegetables. Then the canning process began. The best part was seeing the many labeled jars lining the pantry shelves. “We had and still have a lot of fruit trees on this property and Grandmomma would gather apples, pears, cherries, and peaches to make jellies, preserves, and marmalade.”

  With wide eyes, Crystal clutched her mother’s hand. “Mom, can I go fruit-picking and put up a garden?”

  “You may, but only after I get someone to cut back the underbrush. I don’t want to think of what may be hiding under a pile of leaves.”

  Crystal rolled her eyes upward. “I’m not afraid of snakes.”

  “You don’t have to be afraid of them,” Deborah countered, “but I still don’t want you bitten by one—especially if it is venomous. You could die before we could get you to the mainland, even if you were airlifted there. I’ll ask Hannah Forsyth if she knows of anyone willing to do some yard work.”

  “Isn’t Ms. Forsyth the librarian?” Whitney questioned.

  “Yes, and she’s also the island historian. She knows everyone on the island, and if you want or need something she’s the one to go to. I’ll also let her know I want to clear some land for a garden. Just what do you intend to plant?”

  Crystal pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “I don’t know yet.”

  “You’re going to have to know,” Deborah said quietly, “because if you want to put in collards or watermelon you’ll need to have enough room for them to grow without choking the other veggies. My grandmother divided her garden into sections for tomatoes and peppers because they grew on stakes. Another section was for leaf vegetables: collards, green and white cabbage, kale, and lettuce. Peppers and tomatoes were together as were root vegetables like carrots, beets, and turnips. That left green and wax beans, cucumbers, and melons. And you can still find the strawberries, raspberries, and blackberry bushes right before you get to the fruit trees.”

  “Can I put in an herb garden?”

  A beat passed before Deborah said, “If you commit to putting in a garden, then I don’t want you to be so consumed with it that you neglect your schoolwork. And don’t forget you have cheerleading—”

  “I can do it, Mama. Please say it’s okay.”

  The last time Crystal had called her Mama was when she’d been told that her father had died. It was the only word she’d been able to utter as she cried herself to sleep, with Deborah lying beside her and comforting her whenever she woke to begin crying again. It was a full sixty seconds before Deborah said, “Okay, Crystal. But if your grades slip, then I’ll pay someone to oversee the garden.”

  “They won’t,” she promised.

  Whitney folded the newspaper clipping, placing it gently back into the plastic envelope and securing the clasp. “Did you make any friends?” He and Crystal were familiar with the high school students who lived on Cavanaugh Island, but didn’t hang out with them.

  “Yes. Mabel Davis, who lived down the road from here, and I were thick as thieves. You rarely saw one of us without the other. She’s now Mabel Kelly and she and her husband own the Muffin Corner near Moss Alley. The Davises had several horses and Mabel and I would ride them down to the beach and race each other along the sand.”

  Whitney and Crystal shared a glance. “You never told us you could ride a horse,” he said.

  “You never asked, son. The highlight of my summers was when my grandfather took me with him when he went out before dawn to drop his nets and traps for shrimp, oysters, crabs, and lobsters. The first time I boarded the boat I nearly gagged from the lingering smell of fish, then after a while it was like the most expensive perfume. The only time I freaked out was when they caught a squid.”

  Resting her elbows on the table, Crystal leaned closer. “What did they do with it?”

  “It was sold to a fish store in Charleston where it was tenderized and cut up for calamari. Most of grandfather’s catch was sold to fish stores on the mainland, and some to Jack’s Fish House. The rest Grandmomma stored in the freezer. We usually had fried chicken or baked ham for Sunday dinner, and pork on special occasions. But fish played a big part in our daily diet.”

  Crossing his arms over his chest, Whitney leaned back on his chair. “Didn’t you get tired of eating fish?”

  “Never. We had fried shrimp, garlic shrimp, fried crabs, crab cakes, broiled lobster, and shrimp and grits, Frogmore stew, shrimp and crab gumbo—and then there were the fish salads and soups. My favorite dish was jambalaya with shrimp and ham.” Deborah smiled. “I have my grandmother’s recipe,” she said in singsong.

  Crystal jumped up, nearly upsetting her chair when she raced over to a drawer under the countertop to get a pen and paper. “What ingredients do you need?” she said, her voice rising in excitement.

  Deborah’s expressive eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Do you intend to make it?”

  “No, Mom. I want you to make it for next Sunday’s dinner.”

  “And, what makes you think I can duplicate my grandmother’s recipe?”

  “Stop playing,” Whitney drawled. “You know you can cook even if you don’t like to.”

  Her son was right. She was a more than adequate cook, but had much preferred to let Louis do the cooking. “Okay. Next Sunday’s dinner will be jambalaya with shrimp and ham.”

  Deborah didn’t want to be reminded that next Sunday would be the first time since Louis’s drowning they would sit down together for dinner as a family in this house. It had taken a month, and she was ready to start life anew; this time without her husband. And if she hadn’t had her children Deborah knew she would’ve continued to wallow in a maelstrom of self-pity. She knew she had to be strong not only for herself but also for Crystal and Whitney, because they still were dependent upon her for emotional and physical support.

  Chapter Five

  Are you certain you don’t want me to drop you off?”

  Deborah picked up the fob for her car. “Very certain, Whit.”

  “It’s not going to be a problem, Mom. You can call me when the meeting is over and I’ll come and pick you up.”

  “I’ll see you later,” she said over her shoulder as sh
e walked out the front door, closing it behind her.

  It had taken Deborah less than a week to figure out what her children were up to. She was certain they were attempting to keep an eye on her lest she’d undergo an emotional meltdown.

  They hadn’t seen her cry or get hysterical and they wouldn’t. What they didn’t know was that she did cry. She cried at night, in bed and in the shower, or when she locked herself in the bathroom to take a bubble bath. She cried until spent or until dry heaves made breathing difficult.

  With the end of the New Year’s holiday weekend, she had returned to Charleston to supervise the dismantling of her bookstore, and to confer with a moving company to pack up the contents of her household she wanted shipped to Cavanaugh Island. She’d given Sherilee a key to the house, informing her that she could take all red-tagged items and boxes.

  Her grandmother’s trunks yielded a treasure trove of first edition books she’d listed on The Parlor’s website under rare and collectible editions and the response from various collectors was overwhelming. A new mattress, bed dressing, towels for the bathroom, and window shades were scheduled to be delivered Friday morning, and Deborah projected the bookstore would be open for business by the coming weekend.

  Whitney read the many newspaper clippings and had surprised her when he announced he wanted to write articles for the Sanctuary Chronicle, the Cove’s biweekly newspaper, about his great-grandmother’s extraordinary accomplishments and contribution to the children who’d grown up on the island. He’d placed a call to the newspaper’s editor to set up an appointment to meet with him to discuss his project. Deborah had no doubt the articles would be well-written because Whitney, editor of his school’s newspaper, planned for a career in communications.

  Touching the car’s handle, she opened the door and slipped behind the wheel. Minutes later she maneuvered into a parking space behind the library. It would be the first time she would attend a monthly town council meeting. Now that she was a permanent resident and business owner she needed to know what was going on in her new hometown. There was a monthly newsletter, recapping events and activities, but Deborah wanted to see the proceedings in person.