Driftwood Summer (13 page)

She cried herself to sleep and woke early the next morning to listen to the cars of the summer people as they clogged the main road, heading home. The Logans’ Volvo would be among the others pulling out onto the highway. But Mack would return next summer. She just had to make it through her senior year, and wait for him. She would stay true to him, and never let on to anyone how much it cost her. After all, all good things were worth waiting for.

That year, the emptiness inside Maisy returned and grew. She tried to obliterate it with constant motion—classes, cheerleading, dances, boys’ attention and homecoming queen. By Memorial Day, all she could think of was Mack’s return.

And then she learned that the Logans had put Driftwood Cottage up for sale. They were never coming back.

With nothing left to lose, Maisy let herself go wild over the summer in a round of nonstop partying, frantic with a need that she believed only Mack could satisfy. Yet every time she considered trying to contact him, the pain of his possible rejection stopped her. Then, while grasping for a feeling she had found only with Mack, she slept with Tucker Morgan, and before she knew it, she was on a plane headed for California.

During the thirteen years that followed, she had continued to believe that Mack was her first and only love.

EIGHT

RILEY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dawn light filled the observation tower with its sweet blessing. Riley hadn’t been able to sleep past six a.m. in days. She’d climbed up the ladder and was sitting in the single wicker rocking chair looking over the beach, sea and horizon. She held
Walking on Water
by Madeleine L’Engle in her hand, but it was futile to pretend that she had enough presence of mind to start the book chosen by the Writers with Wit book club. Her mind filled to overflowing with thoughts of the week’s festivities, Mama’s illness. . . .

The ringing phone down in the kitchen startled her. She glanced at her watch: six twenty-five. Nothing good came from a phone call so early in the morning. She stumbled down the spiral steps, grabbed the receiver. “Hello.” Her voice cracked on the day’s first spoken words.

Sobbing was evident on the phone, gulping sobs. “Riley . . . I need you to come get me.”

Confusion and weariness were washed away in a sudden flood of understanding:
Adalee was in trouble
. “Where are you? What happened?”

“Stupid Sheriff Mason had a speed trap at the end of Broad and I got . . . caught.”

“Speeding?”

“Yes.” Adalee’s voice faded as though other words hid behind them.

“There’s more,” Riley guessed.

“I was driving Chad’s car because he had too much to drink. I didn’t think I’d had too much. I mean . . . really, only a couple beers.”

“Oh, shit, Adalee. You got a DUI.” Riley felt the truth crawl up her arms, over her gut in a nauseating clampdown.

“I have to hang up now. Can you come . . . get me?”

“How long do you have to stay there?” Riley stood, headed for the bedroom, holding the phone between her ear and shoulder. She grabbed her jeans off the floor.

“I’ve been here most of the night. I can go now if someone . . . bails me out. I thought Chad would, but he never came back.”

“I can’t leave Brayden by himself. Let me call Maisy to stay with him while I come get you.”

Adalee’s voice broke. “I am so, so sorry. Sheriff Mason told me Daddy would be ashamed of me. Please do
not
tell Mama. You just can’t.”

Riley promised, understanding that this was Palmetto Beach and Mama would know anyway within the next few hours. She hung up on Adalee and poked her head in Brayden’s room; he was sound asleep.

In the kitchen she called Maisy’s cell phone five times before she answered with a groggy, “For God’s sake, what do you want? It’s six thirty in the morning.”

“Your sister—the one you took to the bar last night—is in jail with a DUI. I need you to come here and stay with Brayden while I go bail her out.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Those were my exact words. Did you leave her at the bar by herself? She’s barely even legal to drink.”

“No, she left me. Her too-smooth boyfriend came and they went off together.”

Riley exhaled.

“Don’t go judging me. You couldn’t have stopped her either.”

“I’m not judging you. I’m exhausted and this is not the best way to start a new day.”

“I left Mama’s truck at Bud’s last night.”

“Then use the Volvo,” Riley said.

“I’m on my way.” Maisy’s phone went dead. Riley brewed a pot of coffee; she needed it and she had a feeling Maisy would, too. She watched the coffee drip into the glass container—an old Mr. Coffee from Mama’s house. She ran her fingers along a crack in the countertop and longed to update the kitchen. While the coffee dripped, Riley ran downstairs and unlocked the back door for Maisy.

Riley knew every sound and movement that this house made in its waking and in its sleeping. She felt when the floorboards shifted, when the children’s section was full, when Anne opened the bakery, when Brayden turned the water on for his shower.

Even when the Logans summered here more than thirteen years ago, she had known many of the house’s sounds: Mr. Logan coming in from fishing, a storm blowing the shutters in a
smack-smack
song against the clapboard shingles, Mrs. Logan opening and closing the cupboards as she cooked dinner, Mack’s door slamming before he came down the same back stairs Riley now came down every morning. The third stair from the bottom groaned the loudest on the left side.

The only rooms she’d never entered when the Logans lived here were the bedrooms: Mack’s, Joe’s, their parents’. Now she lived in the master bedroom and Brayden slept in one large room created out of two smaller bedrooms. She didn’t think of it often—that she now lived and worked in the Logan house, that their life stories were entwined with hers.

Finally the floor shook as Maisy ran up the back stairs, shoved open the door into the kitchen. A tattered Southern Cal baseball cap covered her chestnut red hair. She wore a chocolate-colored velour Juicy Couture sweat suit and had the green look of a hangover around her eyes.

Riley swallowed her intended words of condemnation and regret. Instead she grabbed her purse. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. How long can it take? I’ve never bailed anyone out before. . . . Brayden needs to get up by seven fifteen to meet Wes’ parents, Jean and Art White, at the dock at eight. They’re taking him out on their boat today. He’ll kill me if he misses it. And you need to be at the front desk by nine, when the Blonde Book Club meets.”

“The Blonde Book Club? You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. Totally serious.”

“What do they read? Picture books?”

“This coming from a wannabe blonde?” Riley laughed, dug her car keys out of her purse.

“Just because I put lemon juice in my hair in the nineties doesn’t make me a wannabe.” Maisy smiled at Riley. “But really, why would they call themselves that?”

“Ask them.” Riley set out toward the door, then turned. “Thanks for helping. I know Mama will find out eventually, but let’s try to keep it between us for a while. She’s stressed out enough.”

“Oh, the joy of returning home.” Maisy pouted. “I am so sorry about this. Even though it’s not really my fault, I somehow feel like it is.”

Riley nodded, opened the door to the stairwell and called over her shoulder, “There’s a fresh pot of coffee on the counter. Brayden knows what to do for breakfast.” Riley waved over her shoulder and ran down the back stairs.

 

The jail and the bond house were conveniently located next to each other on Tenth Street. Riley wrote out a check and handed it to Gentry Wallace—a boy she’d known since second grade. He told her he’d always known Adalee would have to be bailed out someday. Riley didn’t laugh.

The Palmetto Beach precinct and jailhouse weren’t exactly built for hardened criminals, and Gentry took Riley back to where Adalee sat on a metal cot sobbing into her hands. She looked up when Riley entered the gray concrete hallway. “Thank God you’re here.” She jumped up, rubbed her face. “I was afraid you were going to make me stay to teach me a lesson.”

“Let’s go,” Riley said.

Adalee followed her out, didn’t speak a word during the drive to Mama’s. When Riley pulled into the driveway, Adalee started the tears again. “Go ahead. Give me my lecture.”

“Enough with the tears, Adalee. They don’t work on me. And I’m not going to lecture you. You’re twenty-one years old. You’ve lost your license until your court date—which is months away.”

“Can’t you call Daddy’s friend—Tom something-or-other, the lawyer?”

“You want me to call on Daddy’s old friend to get your license back?”

“How am I gonna get around all summer? Working for you is terrible enough without having to bum rides, too.”

Riley stared at her younger sister for a long moment before she spoke. “Who are you? I don’t even know this girl I’m looking at. What or who has changed you so much that you can’t even see your own responsibility in this?”

Adalee opened the passenger-side door, climbed out and slammed the door harder than necessary. Riley watched her walk through the front door and spoke out loud to the empty car. “You’re welcome.”

The clock in the car blinked eight fifteen as Riley backed out of the driveway and worked her way back to the cottage, hoping that Brayden hadn’t told Maisy that chocolate Pop-Tarts were an adequate breakfast.

The parking lot to one side of the bookstore was usually full of various SUVs and station wagons—the signature cars of the carpool moms who came straight to the bookstore from the school bus stop for coffee, gossip and book club. Riley couldn’t have planned the bus stop location any better if she’d bribed the superintendant.

The back door was locked, and Riley fished her key out of her purse to let herself in through the beachside doorway. The ocean called to her, but she turned from it, and ran up the back stairs to grab a quick shower.

Quiet morning sounds filled the rooms: the swish of a window air conditioner, the cry of seagulls and far off, a boat horn. She walked over, turned off the air conditioner and opened the back window to listen to the waves, to let the fresh breeze of morning move through the rooms.

Riley looked at the clock—eight twenty-five a.m. Maisy would have dropped Brayden at the dock by now and should be on her way back. Riley liked to account for her son’s whereabouts. During school, she had Brayden’s schedule memorized and often closed her eyes and pictured him seated at various desks in the middle school that she herself had once attended. She imagined that her visions of him sent protection.

Walking toward her bedroom and bathroom, Riley unzipped her jeans. Bradyen’s cracked door made her pause in the thin strip of light falling onto the hardwood floor. Riley leaned into the room, and felt their presence before she saw them: Brayden asleep in the bed; Maisy asleep on the beanbag chair in the corner.

“Maisy.” Riley’s voice echoed across the room, shattered sleep.

Maisy startled, rubbed at her face. Brayden sat up. “Hey, Mom. What time is it?”

“Almost eight thirty.”

Brayden threw off his covers, jumped out of bed. “Mom, I was supposed to be at the dock a half hour ago. Why didn’t you wake me up?” On the run for the bathroom, he tripped over his sneakers in the middle of the room.

“Maisy was supposed to wake you.” Riley turned to her sister. “What in the . . . ?” She bit her bottom lip to stop the cuss word.

“I’m sorry. . . . I’m so messed up with the time zones. It was, like, three in the morning my time when I came over. . . . I thought I’d just lie down on this beanbag for a minute until I woke him up. I’m sorry.” Maisy turned to Brayden. “I am so sorry, sweetie. It’s my fault. I screwed up. Again.”

Maisy’s hair stuck out in several directions, her baseball cap on the floor.

Riley sighed. “Okay, let’s figure this out. I don’t have their cell phone number.” She paced the room while Brayden ran to the hall bathroom, turned on the shower. “You take Brayden to the dock, see if they’re still there. Then go back to Mama’s and shower. I’ll run the store until you get back. . . .”

“Damn, do you always think in such logical and sequential order? Do you have a five-minute-by-five-minute schedule for each and every day?”

Riley’s shoulders sagged. “That is mean, Maisy. I’m just trying to—”

“Keep it all together. I know.” Maisy turned away, walked to the window. She yanked her baseball cap over her hair. “You’ve always been the one to keep it all together. Make sure everyone does the right thing.”

Riley stared at her sister’s back. “I’ll meet you in the bookstore in an hour or so.”

“I’m sorry,” Maisy repeated, but Riley thought she might be speaking to herself.

In her bedroom, Riley ran a brush through her hair, smoothed on lip gloss, slipped on a white linen shirt over her jeans. There was no time to worry about the perfect outfit or hairdo when the book clubs would be gathering and the store filling up with only Anne to handle everything until Ethel arrived in half an hour. “Damn,” she mumbled and ran down the back stairs with her coffee cup in her hand.

“Hey, Anne,” Riley called. “Is everything okay?”

Anne poked her head up from under the counter, her auburn hair bobbing in its ponytail, her T-shirt displaying a multicolored peace sign with the words
BOOKS NOT BOMBS
underneath. She sang along to Brad Paisley playing over the sound system. “Yeah, but I haven’t unlocked the front door or checked out front for messages or deliveries.” Anne tilted her head at Riley. “You okay?”

“Not one of my best mornings. I just want to make it to lunch and then I’ll take a shower.”

After Riley spent half an hour doing the automatic tasks of opening the store, assisting customers and welcoming early members of the book club, Ethel bustled through the front door. Her flowing skirt swept along the floor, carrying a dust bunny in its hem. Her right glove was larger than the left, making her hands look disproportionate. Riley hugged her. “What would I do without you?”