The Sea Glass Sisters (4 page)

To the contrary, she waves us outside, like she’s not a bit surprised to find us on her doorstep. “Well, don’t just stand there!” she bubbles cheerfully. “Come on out here! Grab a plate! We’re having a hurricane party!”

I open my eyes, stare at the evenly spaced metal bars above my head, wonder where I am.

For once I’ve slept the whole night, rather than spending the hours dozing and waking, dozing and waking in a sweat. I haven’t tromped the woods in my dream, stirring the leaf litter and hoping to find a little blonde girl running through the trees.

The realization should come with relief, but instead it comes with guilt. If I give up on looking for Emily, even in my dreams, isn’t it the same as accepting the worst?

I don’t accept it. I won’t. Little girls shouldn’t be stolen from their mothers in the middle of the night. They should be safe at home in their beds, tucked in after a storybook and good-night prayers.

I figure out two things as I look up at the bars. The first is that I’m in the extra bedroom at Aunt Sandy’s house—the one with two sets of bunk beds, where her grandchildren stay when they come to visit. Mom has already vacated the bed across the room, but the quilt is turned back and rumpled still. She must have gotten up in a hurry. Probably to go argue with Aunt Sandy some more, before my aunt can escape for her morning walk along the shore. There’s a path out the back of the house, and it eventually leads to the ocean side of the island.

Yesterday morning, Aunt Sandy slipped away before Mom could catch her. They’ve been locked in mortal combat for over twenty-four hours now. Today we have to leave, and sooner rather than later. We’ve pushed the timeline as far as we dare.

The second thing I realize—with startling clarity, as I listen to see if I can catch the rhythm of the waves far off in the distance: I am angry with God. So incredibly, bitterly, hotly angry. I’m boiling over with it.

Why?
I want to scream.
Why? Why? Why?
Why is evil allowed to come in the night and snatch up an innocent little girl? The world shouldn’t be this way. And if it is this way, maybe I don’t want to live in it anymore. . . .

I know that is a selfish thought. I brush it away as soon as it comes.

I wonder if the advice Carol has been giving me at work is more spot-on than I’ve realized. She thinks I need to see somebody—a doctor or a shrink.
It’s nothing to be ashamed of,
she says.
This job is stressful, Elizabeth. You deal with people’s worst situations, year after year, and it adds up. On top of that, major life transitions are hard. They can knock you completely off-balance. And then sometimes it’s all as simple as hormones and body chemistry. You should go get checked out. Life’s too short to be walking around with one foot in the ditch.

I sit up, catch a breath, remind myself that my problems are small. I know where my children are, for one thing. They’re both safe. There’s never been a time when I couldn’t kiss them good night, at least over the phone. And even though these years of tearing away are difficult, there’s a part of me that knows it’s normal enough. Kids are supposed to grow up and cut the apron strings. I just never dreamed those sharp scissors would leave so many wounds. Who
am
I, now that I’m not Mom-in-charge anymore?

I put on sweats and tennis shoes, grab a jacket in case my mother and Aunt Sandy are outside, engaging in an early morning battle. Yesterday, the only peaceful moments were those when Aunt Sandy brought out her sea glass, shells, and freshwater pearls and showed my mother how she makes one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces.
Jewelry from the sea,
she calls it. She almost lured my mother into the idea of being a long-distance designer of artisan pieces before Mom realized that she was unwittingly being pulled into the Seashell Shop dream. After that, she pushed away the salt-frosted glass and said, “For heaven’s sake, I don’t have time for this kind of thing. I came here to talk about the property, Sandy.”

Then the war was on again. It lasted all day and kept us from leaving last night.

Maybe they’ve gone down to the water together this morning, but I hope not. We need to get on the road, and from the sounds of the conversation after the moments of sea glass sisterhood, it will be just the two of us leaving. Mom and I. The taproot holding my aunt to this place reaches straight through the salty soil and all the way to the floor of the ocean. And with Uncle George gone, there’s no way she’s leaving their house and the store without someone watching after them. She has a generator, bottled water, batteries, nonperishable food, Uncle George’s old ham radio, and all the other hurricane necessities, including numerous cans of gasoline.

Besides, she doesn’t expect the storm to be that bad. The last thing we heard on the television was that it was expected to pass by Cape Hatteras, not coming onshore until farther north. The greater fear seems to be that it will strike hard around New York City and up the Jersey coast.

I don’t know if it was a show of bravado or not, but at the hurricane party the night before last, the old hippies were tipping their glasses to the storm, thumbing their noses at the weather bureau, and eating enough discount seafood to choke a whale. What else is there to do but feast when the power may be out for a while and the food will spoil anyway?

These people are either the heartiest souls I have ever met or the most foolhardy. I can’t decide which, but they are very nice. While helping to pack shop goods yesterday—and listening to Mom and Aunt Sandy argue—I met several women Aunt Sandy refers to as the Sisterhood of the Seashell Shop. Teresa, Elsa, Callie, Crystal . . . I can’t remember all the names, but most of them own shops up and down Hatteras Island.

They are as close to my aunt as sisters, and as I watched them, I noted something. This is lacking in my own life. Over the years, I’ve gotten so busy with work and my kids’ activities that I’ve let friendships slide off the map. Other than Carol at work, there’s literally no one to talk to who
gets it
 . . . no one I’m close enough to that I’d admit the ragged truth, anyway.

I find my mother in the kitchen, trying to make heads or tails of some sort of professional coffeemaker that has undoubtedly been brought home from the Seashell Shop.

Mom looks like you might expect a former high school principal to look without her morning coffee.

And Aunt Sandy is nowhere to be found. That, of course, is the first thing Mom complains about, after letting me know what she thinks of the fancy coffeemaker.

I decipher the brewing machine because I am, after all, trained to save lives, and this is a life-or-death situation. We need coffee. Now. Or heads will roll.

We perch on barstools on either side of the small island as the pungent nectar of morning perks nearby. Some fresh strawberries are waiting in a bowl. I don’t know if they are for us or not, but I help myself.

I wait for the brewing to finish and for Mom to take in the requisite amount of coffee before I bring up the obvious. “We need to get on the road this morning.”

Mom is drumming her fingernails on her cup.
Ching, ching, chang. Chang-chang. Ching-ching-ching.
That’s not a good sign. “She won’t listen. She’s being ridiculous. It’s insanity.” Mom squints toward the back window. I gather that
Mrs. Insanity
has indeed gotten up early and escaped for her walk. “And I’m not the only one who thinks so either. That woman who owns the ice cream stand down the road, that
Teresa person
, she agrees with me. Not only was she sending her own elderly mother to the mainland to stay with relatives, she agrees that Sandra Kay is in no shape to be riding out a storm here, and especially not by herself.” She’s calling my aunt by first and middle name this morning, adding a parental tone to the battle. She is Big Sister Sharon now, and big sister knows best.

“Well, she’s done it before. They’ve been here for years, Mom. Surely she knows what she’s getting into.” I’d noticed my mother canvassing the crowd at the hurricane party, soliciting opinions, support, or information—or all three. She pulled Teresa aside again yesterday, when Teresa stopped by the Shell Shop to check on us. We were out back, packing up supplies in the glassmaking shop. Aunt Sandy was sweating like crazy, despite the fact that the day was seasonably cool.

On the one hand, I realize that what my mother has been doing, she’s been doing with the best intentions. Mom is not a mean person. She’s worried about her sister. On the other hand, I hate it when she does this to me. And I’m not unaware that in these months since her retirement, she has been nosing around in my life.

“Mom, I think you’re just going to have to let this . . .”

Her glare could fry an egg at thirty paces. “They
all
agree with me, Elizabeth.
Every
one of them I talk to. But especially Teresa. She knows the most because she’s the one going to the doctor appointments with Sandy.”

An uncomfortable wrinkle in the universe travels my way. “What doctor appointments?”

My mother lifts the index finger that says,
I’m right, and you’d better listen.
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it. And neither does George because Sandy’s been keeping secrets from him since not too long after they went through the last hurricane. She doesn’t want him having to worry about it, considering all the trouble he’s having with his mother and her dementia and the nursing home back in Michigan.”

“But what’s going on with Aunt Sandy?”

“Diabetes that’s out of control. She won’t take her medicine. And near blackouts behind the wheel of her car. Eating things she’s not supposed to. She refuses to monitor her diet. And if anyone tries to tell her what she should do, she makes excuses. She says there’s been too much going on since the last hurricane, and she doesn’t have time for the adjustment to the medicine. It makes her sick and takes away all her energy, so after just
one week
of trying it, she went off the stuff. She says she’s been making it okay all these years—she’ll be fine until things settle down and she has
time to be sick
. Can you believe that? Can you believe the ridiculous stubbornness?”

Oh yes, I can. I’m looking at the mirror image. Different hair. Same personality. These women run the world, or else.

I take a sip of coffee, savor the taste on my tongue, try to come up with a solution that doesn’t include throwing a gunnysack over my aunt’s head and tossing her into the trunk of the car.

“Well, maybe when we get back home, we can—” I don’t even get
talk to Uncle George
out of my mouth.

“I’m staying.”

The hammer drops, and I hear it ringing against my ear. My brain sloshes back and forth in my skull, and it’s a minute before I can form a coherent thought.

“What do you mean, you’re staying?”

“I’m not leaving. That’s it. She can’t be here by herself. And she won’t let any of her friends stay over with her because they have houses of their own to look after. And she refuses to weather this thing at their houses because she wants to keep a watch on this place.”

“Mom, you can’t stay here.”

“Oh yes, I can. And I am. What’s my sister going to do? Throw me out in the ocean? Once you leave, she’ll be stuck with me, whether she likes it or not. If she’s that worried about my safety, well then, she’ll have to get in her vehicle and drive to the mainland, now won’t she?” My mother gives me a lemon-lipped smirk, pleased with herself. All those doctoral classes are paying off. She has outmaneuvered everyone. She thinks.

“I’m
not
going to drive off and leave you here with a hurricane coming.” No way. Nohow. Not happening.

“Oh, it’s not even supposed to be that bad. You saw the weather report last night. Just a little brush.”

“Yes, and I see the eighty-seven gas cans piled on the deck out there too. It’s a hurricane, Mother. You can’t tell from one minute to the next what these things will do. Even assuming that it doesn’t cause some kind of catastrophic damage around here, there could be travel problems on the East Coast for days, maybe weeks. Who knows?”

She focuses out the window, as in,
La la la, I can’t hear you.
“I’m capable of making my own decisions, Elizabeth. They may have put some young know-nothing in charge of the school that should’ve been mine, but I’m still a fully competent adult.”

This is a fine way to prove it.
My cell phone rings in my pocket, and if it weren’t for the fact that the kids might need me and the investigation into Emily’s kidnapping is still ongoing, I wouldn’t pull the phone out to look at it. As it is, Mom gives me a disgusted look as I check.

It’s Carol.

Something cold and solid sinks slowly from my throat to the pit of my stomach. “I need to take this.” I can barely get the words out.

Mom lodges a complaint about young people and bad cell phone manners as I head outside to the second-story deck and pull the door closed behind me.

I answer, and Carol sounds emotional on the other end. I know before she says the words. It’s bad news.

“Elizabeth, they’ve found a body out by Palmer Lake. They haven’t got a positive ID yet, but I didn’t want you to hear it somewhere else if you were following the local news over the Internet. Jason says it’s her.” Carol’s son, Jason, is one of the officers on the case. He’s looked at that picture on the flyer a thousand times. If he says it’s her, it is.

“Is he sure?” I ask anyway. I can’t think of what else to say. I feel myself breaking inside. Shattering into a million pieces.

How can this be? How can this be happening?

“Yeah. But they haven’t done an ID yet,” she repeats as if that extends a ray of hope. As if it would be better for some other little girl’s lifeless body to be found in the woods. “You okay?”

I don’t really need to answer. She knows me well enough to guess. “No.”

Once again, I cycle through those moments. Those moments after the call came in, the time wasted because my mind was lost in a fog of my own problems. Could it have made the difference? Would the outcome have changed if Carol had taken the call?

“They don’t know any details yet,” she warns. “Elizabeth, don’t go jumping to any conclusions. That won’t help anything, okay?”

I don’t answer. I can’t.

“Okay?” Carol repeats, louder this time.