Reunion Beach

by Elin Hilderbrand

  I see you’re writing. I am so glad. It was my salvation. It’s only right that your own mother gave you the keys to your own version of salvation. Keep at it. You’re so talented, Victoria, much more than me. You’re more beautiful, funny, and stylish than I ever was. That’s as it should be. A mother pours herself into her children and hopes for the best. You’ll see how you feel about Thea when she grows up and becomes a young woman that astonishes and amazes you, in the same way you astonished and amazed me. You were your own person, and you were mine.

  I loved your brother equally, but you know boys. Thank goodness you had our Teddy first, because that makes little Thea seem like an angel by comparison. Teddy is your firstborn, but he’s also Italian, which makes him an instant prince with or without title. (Add my one-eighth Italian genes and you have a future king on your hands!)

  Every mother should have at least one daughter, and now you do! Don’t share this with your friends who have boys. God bless those mothers of sons—they have to pretend to love sports. I would send your father with your brother. I can’t think of a worse way to spend an afternoon even if the hotdogs are delish and the beer is cold. Mind numbing boredom! Those poor girls will never have the joy of ransacking a mall with their daughters. How sad! Don’t forget those daughter-deprived women. Be sure and bring them along whenever you go ransacking with Thea.

  I left you some recipes in the old card box.

  Don’t forget your Charleston roots. You’re married to a wonderful Italian chef, and that’s all well and good, but sometimes, the only cuisine that can fill you up proper is from the American South. By the way, if you see JL written in the corner of the recipe card, it means Junior League, which means you can take that recipe to the bank. Those ladies play to win.

  Make my cornbread recipe. Serve it hot out of the oven slathered in butter or crumble it into a bowl and pour milk over it. Serve those babies that South Carolina Lowcountry mush and one day Teddy and Thea will thank you. They don’t know it yet, and maybe you don’t either, but trust your mother: that which sustains you, binds you together. And yes, that includes cornbread. And if you’re too busy, and there will be times you are, just get that box of Jiffy cornbread, follow the instructions on the box and stir in a can of creamed corn, and you’ll be home again.

  Love you for all time, Momma

  * * *

  In Memoriam

  Pat Conroy

  October 26, 1945—March 4, 2016

  Dorothea Olivia Benton Frank

  September 12, 1951—September 2, 2019

  Julia Evans Reed

  September 11, 1960—August 28, 2020

  About Adriana Trigiani

  Adriana Trigiani by Tim Stephenson

  ADRIANA TRIGIANI is the New York Times bestselling author of eighteen books in fiction and nonfiction, published in thirty-eight languages, making her one of the most sought-after speakers in the world of books today. Adriana is also an award-winning film director and screenwriter, playwright, and television writer and producer. Adriana co-founded The Origin Project, an in-school writing program that serves over seventeen hundred students in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. She lives in New York City with her family.

  Adriana Trigiani met Dorothea Benton Frank at the Book Expo of America ten, twelve, or fifteen years ago and had been dear friends ever since. It turns out that hilarity is the gift of friendship that lasts. Adriana remembers Dottie with joy.

  Also by Adriana Trigiani

  Stand-Alone Novels

  Tony’s Wife

  Kiss Carlo

  All the Stars in the Heavens

  The Shoemaker’s Wife

  Lucia, Lucia

  The Queen of the Big Time

  Rococo

  Big Stone Gap Series

  Home to Big Stone Gap

  Milk Glass Moon

  Big Cherry Holler

  Big Stone Gap

  Valentine Series

  The Supreme Macaroni Company

  Brava, Valentine

  Very Valentine

  Viola Series for Young Adults

  Viola in the Spotlight

  Viola in Reel Life

  Nonfiction

  Don’t Sing at the Table

  Cooking with My Sisters (co-author)

  Screenplays

  Big Stone Gap

  Very Valentine

  Mother and Child Reunion

  Mary Alice Monroe

  Dedication

  This story is dedicated to

  Dorothea Benton Frank

  beloved author, wife, mother, friend and to

  Christiana Harsch

  dearest cousin, friend, and brave soul

  Chapter One

  Mother

  A lazy sun rose reluctantly over the horizon. Elinor Earnhardt stood on the precipice of a sand dune overlooking the great breadth of beach, ocean, and sky. She crossed her arms, giving herself a hug, as a winsome smile crossed her face. The first rays of pink light brought a faint blush to the sand. Dawn was her favorite time of day. No matter how sad or lonely she might have felt the night before, standing on the beach when a new day began always had the power to fill her with renewed hope.

  Especially today. For on this long-awaited day, not only a new day was dawning, but perhaps a new beginning. After today, her life would never be the same. Today, she would be reunited with the child she had released for adoption forty years earlier.

  The thought made her heart beat faster. She deeply inhaled the morning air, still moist from the night rain. The lemony scent of primrose clung to the scant breeze. The sun yawned broadly, releasing more pink and yellow color into the shimmering haze that broke the darkness of the horizon. This morning’s dawn was neither bright nor quick. Rather, the sun rose slowly, like a recalcitrant child, not quite ready to push back the warm blanket and rise.

  Her smile slipped. Silly woman, she chided herself. What did she know about sleepy children? Or any child, for that matter?

  Elinor bent to pick up her backpack and the red plastic bucket, her tools for turtle duty. No time for wool gathering. The Isle of Palms/Sullivan’s Island sea turtle team was expected to assemble at the nest at six a.m. sharp for a nest inventory. If you were late, they started without you. Well, she thought as her heels dug into the soft sand of the high-tide line, everyone but her. Elinor was the team leader and they couldn’t start without her. But she was never late. What made her a good project leader was her need to dot every i and cross every t on her reports. Elinor played by the rules.

  In the distance she spied the familiar orange tape and wooden stakes that marked the sea turtle nest. It was barely visible high on the dunes amid the thick crop of sea oats. It was August, and they were ripe with golden panicles. This summer marked her twentieth summer on the team, and even after all these years, working with sea turtles never got old. She used to rush to the beach at dawn before her classes. She’d taught biology at the College of Charleston. But when she retired after twenty years, she’d taken over as the turtle team project leader. Truth be told, the sea turtles—and the women on the team—were her life.

  Elinor was the first person to reach the nest, which suited her. It gave her time to survey the nest without interruption. Her gaze swept the worn, two-foot-high stakes tilting in the sand; the raggedy orange tape that had survived fifty-three days of wind, rain, and salt air.

  The hatchlings had emerged from the nest three nights prior. A healthy group that had scrambled in their comical Keystone Cops manner all the way to the ocean. The moon had been bright, the night clear, and there were no obstacles to their journey home. She’d counted at least seventy-five hatchlings as they raced past. A good boil. All that was left to do now was open the nest and count the hatched and unhatched eggs to track the season’s nest success rate.

  Suddenly her breath hitched. She caught sight of two tiny trails of turtle tracks leading from the nest. Well, what do you know? she thought with amazement. Two more hatchlings had sneaked out. Good
for you.

  She glanced at her watch: five minutes till six. She set her red plastic bucket filled with a spade, small towel to kneel on, plastic gloves, and her clipboard onto the sand, then dropped her backpack beside it. Rolling her shoulders, she thought again how she really had to begin an exercise plan. She’d gone up another dress size this year and she could actually feel her body begin to sag. Other than walk the beach in the morning and maybe a bit of gardening, she pretty much just sat and read books. Especially on days like today. She wiped a sheen of perspiration from her brow. It was going to be a hot one.

  “Elinor!”

  She turned at the sound of her name. A group of women were trudging through the sand toward the nest. She grinned and waved back at her teammates Maeve, Betts, and Ting. They carpooled to the beach in the morning from points on Isle of Palms. Maeve led the troop, her green backpack burgeoning. She and Maeve were peas and carrots on the team. They were close in age, both of average height and weight, even their mousy brown hair color was similar. Maeve wore hers in a blunt cut to the chin. Elinor’s shoulder-length hair was usually bound back in a ponytail or a clip. Neither of them gave their hair much mind. What bound them from the moment they’d met twenty years earlier was their love of sea turtles.

  Unlike Elinor, however, Maeve took care to exercise in a class at the rec center three times a week and ate healthily. She was always scolding Elinor for not joining her class, for drinking too much wine, and her love of chocolate. Nonetheless it was Maeve who was struck by a minor heart attack at sixty years of age. It had shaken her, deeply, and she’d given up any duties that might cause stress, including relinquishing the task of project leader to Elinor.

  Maeve’s voice was filled with excitement. “What’ve we got?”

  “Tracks,” Elinor replied, making a small gesture toward the two sets of hatchling tracks. She smiled seeing Maeve make a beeline for the tracks.

  Betts overheard and without a word, bent over the two-inch tracks, pulling her camera to her face. Betts was tall with grayish hair cut short because, as she claimed, short hair didn’t get in the way of her camera lens. She’d been the first female photographer on the storied Chicago Tribune newspaper, and she applied that same tenacity to getting a good shot of the turtles and documenting the action of the team. One never saw Betts without a camera in tow.

  Ting released her easy smile at seeing Elinor. She made it easy to smile back. Her long black hair was braided under her team ballcap and her eyes were covered with aviator sunglasses. There was never any drama with Ting. She came for the turtles and let the question of who got to do what on which morning slide from her like water off a shell. Ting was the turtle whisperer. She could find eggs in the sand when no one else could. Elinor thought it was because turtles had always been a part of her life. Born and raised in Thailand, she’d worked with more species of turtles than anyone else on the team. In South Carolina, loggerheads were the only turtles that nested regularly on these beaches. In Thailand they had the whole gamut: loggerheads, greens, leatherbacks, hawksbills, and olive ridleys.

  “Why don’t you start?” Elinor said, giving Ting the nod to begin the inventory.

  “Okay, boss,” Ting replied, slipping off her sunglasses with a satisfied grin.

  Elinor looked past Ting to see Caroline approach. She strode along the beach path with a youthful swing in her hips, her long legs in shaggy-edged jean shorts. Unlike the rest of them who wore the team T-shirt loose and baggy over tired nylon pants, Caroline’s T-shirt was cropped short around a lean thirty-year-old body. Her spiky blond hair was too bright for natural and faux lashes fluttered like butterflies at her eyes. It was Caroline’s power of observation and cheerful enthusiasm that had singled her out to Elinor from the one hundred plus volunteers who walked the beaches every morning in search of turtle tracks.

  And her youth. Elinor felt some young blood was needed to begin building the next generation of team members. They needed that sense of wonder that came at first blush. Elinor was nearing sixty and didn’t allow herself to be sentimental about the fact that she’d be leaving the team. Living on the beach made one attuned to the cycle of life, the repetition of seasons, the passing of years. Her mind trailed off, thinking again of another young woman, her hair blond but worn long. This woman was older than Caroline. Forty years old. Today.

  She felt a quick ping in her heart. A few more hours. That was all . . .

  “It’s six o’clock. We should start,” Maeve said, sidling close to the nest where Ting was already kneeling on her towel and putting on plastic gloves.

  Elinor walked to her backpack and pulled out a notebook. She rifled through the pages, ragged from moisture, sand, and wind, and checked the schedule of nest duties. She looked at Maeve, lifted her brows in commiseration, then said, “Caroline, you’re up.”

  Maeve set her lips but stepped back to allow room for Caroline to join Ting at the nest. Elinor’s word was law on the team, and everyone knew her to be fair. Still, she knew it sometimes came hard on Maeve to have lost her role as team leader, waiting on Elinor to call the shots. There were mornings when the team gathered, pawing at the ground like horses at the gate.

  As the two women began digging into the sand, Elinor turned and followed the barely visible trail of two tiny turtle tracks. The morning’s light breeze scattered sand, almost camouflaging tracks, another reason why the volunteers walked the beaches at first light. As suspected, there was a meeting of turtle and ghost crab tracks, which ended poorly for the hatchling. She felt a stab to the heart. It was common enough. Nature wasn’t always kind, but she always felt the loss personally. Poor baby . . .

  Biologists hated it when anyone called a hatchling a baby. What did they know about the time and care and love that went into the tending of turtle nests? She’d sat on the other side of that desk and understood the science. But being present on the beach, sitting night after night like midwives, waiting and watching for the nest to heave and release an abundance of tiny, helpless hatchlings, well, it did something to your heart. You couldn’t help but love them in a maternal way. And for her, hatchlings were the only babies she had. Her thoughts kept returning to that theme today. So she called them babies and didn’t care one whit who heard her. Because in her mind, that’s what they were. A bunch of motherless babies scrambling for home.

  “We’ve got one!”

  All heads turned to Ting, who held up a hatchling in her gloved hand. The tiny brown carapace was caked with sand and its flippers waved wildly in the air. Every woman’s face burst into a grin of delight. A baby.

  Elinor hurried to grab hold of the red bucket and delivered it to Ting. She gently placed the hatchling into it. Beside the nest, Caroline lay flat on the sand, her long arm scooping out handfuls of sand and empty eggshells. Ting and Maeve counted them, and all the while, Betts photographed the hatchling running in continuous circles around the bottom of the bucket.

  “Eighty-one eggs,” Ting called out.

  “Five eggs did not develop.” Maeve rested back on her heels.

  The team looked at her expectantly.

  Elinor checked her records. “We know there were eighty-six eggs in the nest because we relocated it due to it being below the high-tide line. Minus the five.” She scribbled on her report then looked at the team with pleasure. “That gives us a very respectable ninety-four percent rate for this nest. That’s a good one. Now, let’s release this baby.” She turned to Maeve. “Do you want to do the honors?”

  “Why don’t you do it?” Maeve offered. “It’s your turn.”

  Elinor met Maeve’s eyes and saw the commiseration shining there. Maeve was the only one on the team who knew how important today was. How she could use a little bolstering of spirit. She nodded gratefully and bent to pick up the red bucket.

  “Come on, little one. Let’s set you on your journey.”

  It was a perfect morning for a release. The waves lapped the shoreline serenely and the outgoing tide would help pull the y
oung hatchling into the welcoming sea. She waited until the team gathered near, along with a lucky couple who just happened to be walking by. They were positively giddy, their phones out taking pictures. Timing was everything, Elinor thought with a smile.

  And now, it was time for this hatchling to take its chances with fate. The team gathered near the water’s edge. The rising sun cast a rosy gleam across the sea. With the dawn came the seagulls, calling out their raucous laugh. Elinor searched the sky to make certain none of those marauders were near to scoop up her one precious hatchling.

  Elinore crouched low onto the sand and looked down into the red bucket. The lone hatchling scrambled around the rim, unceasingly following its instinct to move forward in search of the sea. So small. So helpless.

  She heard the cry of a seagull and in her mind, she heard again the wail of a newborn.

  Maeve bent close and asked quietly, “You okay?”

  Elinor blinked then gave a shaky smile and nodded. “I was just giving this turtle a chance to exercise its limbs a bit.”

  “Everyone’s waiting.”

  “Yes, good,” Elinor replied, her focus returning. “Save your energy,” she told the turtle. “You’re going to need it. You have a long swim ahead of you to reach the Gulf.”

  Looking up she saw the team fanned out across the beach, all eyes on her. Elinor slowly tilted the bucket and watched the hatchling scramble out to the sand. Once on terra firma, the hatchling’s flippers madly propelled the tiny turtle forward, across the uneven sand, around footprints, shells, and bits of sea grass. At last it reached the shoreline and got its first taste of salt water. A gentle wave swept up and washed over the hatchling, sending it tumbling back with the force of it. Elinor watched the beauty of instinct at play as the turtle’s flippers switched from crawl to swim, and in that precious instant, the turtle was at home in the sea. It had found its home.