Driftwood Summer (10 page)

Riley continued. “Adalee, here is the last newsletter and a draft of the one Mama wants for this week. Please ask me if you need any help. I’ll show you where the template is on the computer.”

Adalee nodded, but said nothing—her usual ploy. Most often this drew attention to her and prompted wheedling to get her to speak. No one wanted Adalee mad and silent. But Riley vowed not to let it get to her
this time
.

Riley spoke for fifteen more minutes about what they would need to accomplish in the next few days. Finally Maisy stood. “Listen, I can’t do one more minute of this insanity without some sustenance.”

“There’s some fried chicken in the fridge. . . . It’s from yesterday.” Riley closed the notebook. “I’m done anyway.”

“No, I meant a drink. Come on, girls. Up we go. Off to Bud’s for a good old-fashioned cold draft beer.” Maisy rubbed her hands together.

Riley waved her away. “Go ahead. I have Brayden, and I’m gonna head back to check on the store.”

Maisy shrugged. “Okay, then. Come on, Adalee.”

Adalee jumped off the couch, slipped her flip-flops onto her feet. “Totally awesome. Let me call Chad and tell him where I’ll be. Maybe he can meet us there later.”

Riley turned to face Maisy, whose full attention was on her cell phone screen. Riley stared at her sister in her preoccupation, her first opportunity to really look at Maisy. She still possessed a beauty that was difficult to define with words like pretty or pleasing. There was something unsettling about the combination of Maisy’s features, which drew stares from men and women, even children. Her bronze hair had risen from the more obscure place in the Sheffield gene pool; their great-aunt Martha-Rose had had the same hair. Maisy’s wide smile was juxtaposed against her tiny nose and round, sometimes green, sometimes blue eyes.

Maisy looked up. “Why are you staring at me like that? I’m just checking my e-mail. I do have a life.”

“Yeah,” Adalee spat out. “Unfortunately it’s right here for the next week or more.”

Riley ignored her sisters’ comments. “Maisy, the morning shift starts at nine a.m. Anne comes in to open the café, but you need to be there for the bookstore. I’ll be here with Mama tomorrow morning.”

“No problem.” Maisy stood, held her hand out for Adalee. They looped their arms at the elbow and entered the house with a slam of the screen door. Riley stood alone on the porch, her shoulders slumped under the weight of unspoken words, secrets and regrets. Would her sisters act any differently if they knew what she knew about Mama’s cancer? Did it even matter?

Riley walked out to the backyard, called for Brayden, who came from the east side of the lawn. He ran across the overgrown grass, dodging the massive trunks of mature oak trees and a puddle of standing water. He pushed the tire swing high into the air as he passed it, and then stopped short in front of Riley.

The sun fell behind her son, his hair and body backlit by an amber glow. Riley’s heart swelled; she reached down and hugged him, felt his ribs beneath her fingers, his heart beating against her chest. There were times when for a few moments she was envious of others’ freedoms, but when his small body fell against her chest, Riley loved her son and her life and was filled with overwhelming gratitude.

“Let’s go check on Gamma and get some dinner.” She took Brayden’s hand in hers, squeezed the fingers that had grown in length and width when she wasn’t noticing.

“Where’d the aunts go?” Brayden fell into stride with Riley, dropped her hand.

“They need to catch up. They haven’t seen each other in a while.”

“Gamma says Maisy is wild—that she’ll be in trouble before the week is out.”

Riley looked down at him. “Gamma is taking too much pain medication. She shouldn’t tell you crazy things like that.”

Brayden rolled his eyes as only a twelve-year-old could pull off.

They entered the front foyer; Riley glanced up at an oil portrait of the three sisters when they were young: three, twelve and thirteen years old. Riley had stood behind her sisters, large, gawky, her legs and arms too long for her boyish body. Maisy had stared at the camera as if seducing it even at that young age, and adorable Adalee held a daisy between her fingers, which the artist had drawn in instead of the dandelion she’d actually been holding during the formal sitting.

It was Mama’s way to rewrite the past—to turn a dandelion into a fresh white daisy. Their childhood was this: Daddy gone so many nights for his work in the Air Force that Riley barely remembered him being home; Mama’s slurred words every evening; Maisy’s police escorts home on more than one summer evening. But Mama remembered, or attempted to make them remember, their life as a fairy tale on the beaches of coastal Georgia. If Mama were to write the book, to pass along the family stories, there would be a million daisies.

The Sheffield children each seemed to be born with roles as defined as the seasons of the year. Riley had mutely accepted hers—she was to be an example for the other girls, a rock of steadfast strength. She was the oldest: responsible, a tomboy athlete with her bigger-boned body and strong muscles. Maisy was the middle sister: beautiful, fragile and lithe. Adalee was the youngest: pampered and naive, even now unaware what had happened that last summer before Maisy left, of the break in the family bonds.

Riley turned from the family oil painting, from the memories, and lifted her cell phone from her back pocket to call Lodge, as Mama had requested.

“Hey,” he said after the first ring. “Riley, what’s up?”

“I hate caller ID,” she said. “Now I can’t prank call you like I used to.”

“Okay, pretend I don’t know who you are.”

“Too late,” she said. “You already know.”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I do know who you are.”

The way he said it made her smile. “I’m just calling to thank you for the article. It’s wonderful. Have I told you what a terrific writer you are?”

“No, and you can tell me whenever you like.”

“You’re a terrific writer.”

“Thank you, Riley Sheffield.” Shuffling noises came across the line, and then his voice. “Sorry—dropped the phone. Hey, listen, wanna go grab some dinner?”

Riley stared up at the portrait of the girl Lodge had once known. “Oh, I can’t. My sisters are here. Mama is laid up. I have Brayden. . . .”

“I know, I know. You’re busy. I just thought . . . we could do a follow-up article to come out when the festivities start.”

“Oh. Yes. That would be great. I was actually going to beg for just that. Why don’t you stop by the store tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

Riley hung up and put her arm around Brayden’s shoulders. “Who was that?” he asked.

Riley grabbed the pile of opened mail off the front table, leafed through the letters paper clipped to their envelopes as she answered, “The newspaper guy—you know, Mr. Barton, who you fish with sometimes.”

Brayden opened his mouth to speak, but the home phone rang in the hallway. He made a grunting noise. “I hate the phone. Every time I think we’re leaving or doing something—the stupid phone rings.”

“This is a terribly busy time, Brayden. I promise it will get better.”

A voice, both familiar and distant, spoke. “May I please speak with Ms. Sheffield?”

“Speaking,” Riley said, made a motion for Brayden to hold on a minute. He sat slumped on the bottom step of the curving staircase and propped his elbows onto his knees.

“Kitsy Sheffield?”

“No, this is Riley.” She made a face at Brayden.

“Well, hello, Riley. This is Sheppard Logan. I know I’m a bit late with this question, but Mack and I are coming to town tomorrow and we can’t seem to find a place to stay. I don’t know why we didn’t expect it—but in the old days we wouldn’t have had any difficulty finding a room there. Times have changed, eh?”

Riley attempted a laugh, which came out more like a cough. “Yes, the summers are crazy here now. But there is a new place. Have you called the Seaside Inn?”

“No. Do you have their number?”

Riley rattled it off. “I am so glad you’re coming. There will be events every day leading up to the party, so please take full advantage of the festivities.” Riley repeated the words she’d said to at least a hundred customers over the phone, yet this time her voice shook.

“Hold on. I need some paper.”

Silence filled the line; then Riley heard it: Mack Logan’s voice calling out to his father, “Here, Dad.” She closed her eyes, tried to imagine a Mack Logan who was thirty-two years old, in his parents’ house. She couldn’t do it. Nothing came to mind except the tanned, tall boy of summer.

Mr. Logan came back on the line. “Go ahead. I’m ready.”

Riley gave him the number again, and then paused before speaking in her most controlled voice. “Please tell Mrs. Logan and the boys that I said hello.”

“I will, dear. And I so look forward to seeing your family again.”

“Thank you, Mr. Logan.”

Riley held the receiver in her hand, the buzz of disconnection humming across the foyer.

“Mommm . . . hello. They hung up.” Brayden’s irritation was obvious.

Riley glanced over at her precious son, sitting on the bottom step of her childhood staircase looking at her holding a dead receiver in her hand. In a way, in a distorted and fantastic way, even though he wasn’t Brayden’s father, Mack Logan was one of the reasons this child sat in front of her. She hung up the phone and hugged Brayden too tight.

“Stop, Mom. You can be so embarrassing.”

“Yes, for the throngs of people watching you right now, I am humiliating.”

“I’m going to see Gamma.” He ran off down the hall.

She allowed the sweet thrill of hearing Mack Logan’s voice, even in the background, run through her before she dismissed it as another childhood fantasy. When they’d been best friends as children, she’d had an unbounded belief in mermaids and fairies, in fairy tales and nature’s mysteries. She’d believed she could fly with Peter Pan, breathe underwater, walk without touching the ground. And she’d believed that Mack Logan loved her.

Reality had a way of ruining a girl’s dreams. Her life with Brayden above a coastal bookshop was all she dreamed of now. Riley climbed the curved staircase, took a left at the top of the stairs. Photos of the Sheffield sisters lined the entire hallway: Halloween night dressed in princess costumes; first days of school; Christmas morning with the stockings—all snapshots that could never capture the internal workings of who they were then and whom they would become. Riley stopped at a photo of Maisy with her homecoming queen banner hung across her pale yellow dress. Riley reached up, wiped dust off the bottom of the frame and then opened the door to her own childhood bedroom.

The room was empty save for a queen-sized bed and dresser used for guests. Riley sat on the bed, closed her eyes; she allowed the last memory of Mack Logan to take shape in her mind’s eye.

 

Mack had been Riley’s best friend since the day they were seven years old and had met on Pearson’s fishing pier. Riley showed him what type of bait to use for the redfish, and he showed her how to throw a cast net. A friendship formed that would remain, or so she’d thought. All those years ago, she’d been able to forget about Mack during the school year until his family’s Volvo station wagon pulled into Palmetto Beach on Memorial Day weekend, bikes clipped to the back of the car, a large plastic carrier that looked like a purple turtle with its head hidden strapped to the top. Mack, his brother, Joe, and their parents would get out of the car at Driftwood Cottage and summer would begin.

For eleven years they came.

That last summer arrived with record-breaking high temperatures. Heat rose from the pavement in waves, and the summer people ran across the sand screeching and jumping, using towels as stepping-stones. Large multicolored umbrellas dotted the beach, parents underneath fanning themselves while children ran at the water’s edge, oblivious of the ninety-eight percent humidity and over-hundred-degree temperatures. The ceiling fans in the Beach Club porch whirred incessantly and ineffectively.

Mack and Riley came together on the pier as they always had. After the awkward greetings, which followed a school year apart, they dropped their fishing lines into the gray-blue water. Riley pulled her baseball cap lower on her forehead, yanked her T-shirt off to fish in her bathing suit. Mack was quiet; he hadn’t said much since he’d arrived. They were eighteen years old now, high school graduates—a new world.

Riley couldn’t take his silence much longer. It was usually less than ten minutes before the natural rhythms of their summer friendship resumed. “Okay,” she said, placing her fishing pole in a metal loop. “You’re mad at me. What did I do?”

He backed away from her. “No . . . no. Why do you say that?”

“You’re acting totally weird.”

“Just because I’m quiet doesn’t mean I’m weird.”

She leaned against the pier’s cracked wooden railing. “Okay, not weird.” She tilted her head at him. “You sure got a lot taller this year.”

He laughed. “Pizza. That was pretty much my diet. I don’t think I’m any taller, just bigger maybe.”

Riley felt the natural camaraderie of their decadelong friendship begin to return.

His eyes traveled down her body, the leaner body she hadn’t possessed the summer before. Then he turned away. “Yeah, you changed, too.”

“Whatever.” She picked up her fishing pole, cast the line into the water.

“You’re . . . smaller.”

“No, I’m two inches taller.” She poked at his side with the pole.

“Yeah, I guess.” He blushed.

She laughed, a small, nervous sound. Maybe, just maybe this would be the summer he loved her as much as she loved him. She’d been willing to remain his best friend these last years with the remote hope that one day he’d turn to her and see her: Riley Sheffield, the girl almost a woman. Maybe it was happening now.