The Summer of Lost Wishes (11 page)

She has no idea how skilled I am at guarding
things these days. If I can guard ancient love letters like a hawk,
my heart might as well be locked away in a vault somewhere. I’ve
got this, Mom.

“I’ll be careful,” I say. “Promise.”

Mom gives me a somewhat sympathetic smile,
like I have no idea how much of a silly little girl I am, but she
has to let me figure it out on my own. Her smile quickly fades,
though, and turns into an expression of panic or worry.

“You!” someone shouts from behind me.

I spin around and come face-to-face with the
reason behind Mom’s concerned stare. The handle of his mop is aimed
in our direction. We haven’t had the displeasure of meeting yet,
but I’ve seen this man before. He was on the docks at Moonlight
Harbor, glaring into me with evil eyes and scaring me out of my
skin before we boarded The Dragon’s Jewel.

I still don’t think he’s washed his hair
since the last time I saw him. He wears a white T-shirt with an
apron over it, just like last time. But now that I can see his face
up close, he looks as if he’s been beaten by the waves, washed
ashore, and left for dead. His skin is wrinkled from long hours in
the sun, and his eyes appear hollow and frightening.

“Go away!” he shouts. “You’re only making
things worse around here. Haven’t we suffered enough?”

His voice is gruff and sandy, like he’s
swallowed sandpaper and hasn’t figured out how to use his newly
damaged vocal chords.

I dare to glance around us at the silenced
crowd. Parents hold their children back while others try to pretend
they’re not paying attention, although it’s clear that they are as
they’re all holding their breaths.

Mom inhales. “Frank, leave us alone,” she
demands, her voice calm and steady. “We’ve done nothing to harm you
or your family.”

“You can’t let the dead rest!” he shouts, a
growl still present in his voice. His face contorts like a bad CGI
graphic transforming a human into a monster.

“Frank,” Mom says sternly, stepping past me
and blocking me with her arm just like the other parents have done
to their small children. “If you come near me, my daughter, or our
property, I will not think twice about calling the police. I am not
scared of you, and you will not intimidate me. If you so much as
threaten us one more time, I will be filing a police report for
harassment, and you better not doubt me.”

Frank mumbles something under his breath
before he stalks away, stabbing his mop into the wood like a
walking cane. Mom glances over her shoulder toward me, avoiding eye
contact with the crowd.

“We’re going home,” she says.

I have no argument for that.

“So, are we riding in silence or are you
going to tell me who Frank is exactly?” I ask once we reach the
first red light.

The silence is pretty much killing me by
now, and Mom hasn’t offered an explanation yet. She taps her nails
against the steering wheel and then reaches for the remainder of
her pineapple milkshake that’s melting in the cup holder. She sips
it until we reach the next light. Then she glances at me.

“Frank is a local fisherman. Well, he was.
His family’s business went under, and last I heard, he was working
as a janitor for one of the dock owners,” she says.

“Was he around when the accident happened?”
I ask.

There’s no other explanation. He lashed out
about not letting the dead rest and about causing pain. Clearly
we’ve opened up some old wounds by moving in here. I just wish
those wounds belonged to someone less creepy.

Mom nods. “He was young when it happened,
but he’s the brother of Warren Lancaster,” she says. “Not only did
he lose his brother in the most horrific way but his family fell
apart. His mom grieved herself to death. His father drank himself
to death. The business went under. Frank might as well have not
existed after Warren died.”

I remember Warren simply because he was the
oddball of the three guys. His family owned a seafood restaurant
that he was destined to inherit. He didn’t have a path paved to the
factory life. He was going to be something bigger. I can only
imagine what the Lancasters’ business would look like today if it
continued on throughout the generations. With or without the
tragedy, they would’ve been successful.

And maybe if his parents hadn’t given up on
life upon losing him, they could’ve been successful for him. They
could’ve honored him. Frank could have stepped up when he was old
enough. I wonder if he’s angry because he lost his family or
because his family cared so much about Warren that they let him
flounder. Either way, I understand why he’s raging.

“I don’t think we have anything to worry
about,” Mom says to the dashboard. “He’s an old man who hasn’t
dealt with what happened. He was eight years old. I can’t really
say I blame him for turning out the way he has. In that moment, you
either sink or swim, and he sank to rock bottom with the rest of
his family. He never stood a chance.”

I sip on the last few drops of pineapple
milkshake until the straw brings nothing through but air. I wonder
how scared I need to be of this guy.

“Do you think he broke our window?” I ask.
It doesn’t matter what she says, though. He’s definitely my number
one suspect now.

She shrugs. “It’s possible,” she says. “That
would explain why nothing was taken. He wants to scare us away, not
actually harm us. I don’t think he has it in him, but just in case,
don’t go to the beach alone. And keep that baseball bat near your
bed, just to ease your mind. Yes, I know Rooks gave it to you.”

“Is that why you’re letting me hang out with
him?” I ask.

She sighs and nods in defeat. “I realized
then that he obviously cares about your well-being, and I think
that’s the best way he knows how to show it, for a sixteen-year-old
boy,” she says. “So like I said, benefit of the doubt…for now.”

I drove out to the Crane Pavilion today. It
made me laugh when you knew exactly where I was talking about. I’ve
been going out there since I was a kid. My dad used to take me out
to see the cranes. He would tell me how they were much like humans
in the way they fell in love and created families. Two cranes,
monogamous. They’d actually care for the baby birds together. It
was always sort of weird, for my dad to talk about birds mating and
me being too young to understand it, but I guess he was trying to
teach me a lesson about love. I’ve never asked.

Each time I go out there to leave your next
letter, I always secretly hope you’ll be there waiting for me. You
never are, and I doubt you ever will be. I know you don’t want to
risk the chance of us being seen together. Crane Pavilion gives me
a sense of hope, though, because I know you’ve been there. You’ve
been there leaving letters for me. For a moment in time, you were
in that very spot, with me on your mind, just as I am with you on
my mind.

This is a little weird, writing letters to
you. I’ve never written to anyone before. Maybe someday I’ll show
up when you’re dropping off a letter, and we can sneak away. Maybe
we can just never come back.

Do you ever think about actually running
away? I have a million and one times. But lately, it plagues me
more and more. I want far away from this small town. I want to go
somewhere so big that I can get lost in the lights and no one would
ever find me. It was a dream before, but now, after you, I crave
that to be my reality.

Do you believe there is such a place? New
York or Chicago, maybe? Possibly even somewhere bigger – a place so
big that they couldn’t find us no matter how hard they searched. I
just want to find somewhere with lights and stars and music where I
can dance all night.

But here’s the real question. Would you go?
Would you be willing to leave this life behind? I know your family
has a plan for you. They’ve given you the blueprint to your future
– the perfect factory job to support a family, the perfect home to
raise your children, even the perfect future wife in Hanna. Could
you really walk away from all that certainty just to be with me?
Would you go?

“It’s not Hanna,” I blurt out, as soon as
Rooks steps into our foyer. “The letters. The girl. It’s not
Hanna.”

“Whoa,” he says, holding up a hand to stop
me. “Slow down. Why didn’t you text me about this earlier?” He
looks past me and smiles. “Hi, Ms. Davenport,” he calls out, waving
to my mom.

Shoot. She has a way of appearing at the
absolute worst times. I turn around to see her staring at us.
There’s no way I can have a private conversation right now,
especially about secret scandals featuring Seth McIntosh.

“Piper says you guys are going to the county
fair,” Mom says, like she’s analyzing his reaction to see if I’m
being honest with her.

He nods. “Yes, ma’am. We’re meeting up with
my friend Hector and his girlfriend Natalie,” he says. “She’s the
mayor’s daughter.”

He clearly added that line for good measure.
I wonder if Mom realizes that Rooks has her figured out more than
she has him figured out. Then I wonder if he’s used that pretty boy
smile and endearing charm on the moms of a hundred other girls who
didn’t want their daughters dating the boy with the reputation. I
convince myself I’m the first and he’s a natural.

“We won’t be out late,” Rooks says. “My dad
has already reminded me that we have to work on your bay window
tomorrow, so I can’t afford to stay out too late.”

“Be careful,” Mom says. “I still don’t trust
those carnival rides.”

Rooks smiles. “I’ll be her back safely,” he
assures her.

I grab my smaller purse, the one I downsized
to after lugging that other one around on the pier. This one
contains just the essentials. And the letters. I hug Mom goodbye
and hurry outside because I have to tell Rooks everything I know
before we meet up with Hector and Natalie and all talk of the
tragedy is banned.

I slam the truck door shut and fasten my
seatbelt. Then I unzip my purse to find the most recently read
letter. Rooks cranks his truck and tells me not to read it until
he’s out of my driveway.

“Your mom can’t hear us, but I feel weird
reading that on the property of the Calloway Cottage,” he admits.
“Some other girl is writing love letters to Seth, and you’ve been
sitting there reading it in what could’ve been his future child’s
bedroom.”

Wow. Way to go, Rooks. Great way to make me
feel like I’m defacing a national monument or spray painting
graffiti across the Taj Mahal.

I brush away the remark because I don’t have
time to worry about stomping on sacred grounds in muddy boots. I
read the letter, slowly and carefully to make sure I didn’t
misunderstand something in my moment of shock last night.

“They’ve given you the blueprint to your
future – the perfect factory job to support a family, the perfect
home to raise your children, even the perfect future wife in Hanna.
Could you really walk away from all that certainty just to be with
me? Would you go?” I read the words as if it’s the first time I’m
seeing them, with the same shock and awe as before.

I fold the letter and place it back with the
others. Rooks doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t take his eyes off of
the street.

“She’s
not
Hanna,” I reiterate. “But
why couldn’t he just break up Hanna? Why did he feel like he had to
stay with her when he wasn’t happy? It’s obvious that he wanted
out.”

“You’re asking me?” Rooks says. “I think you
should be directing those questions to Seth McIntosh. He’s the only
one who really knows the answers.”

“Ha. Ha,” I say, hoping he feels the thick
sarcasm in the air. “Maybe Hanna was pregnant and he had to do the
right thing. Maybe that’s why they were getting married so soon. It
was arranged by their families because they were expecting.”

Rooks shrugs. “I’m going to put this in the
universe, and hopefully it won’t curse me,” he says. “But what if
Seth isn’t the good guy? What if he met this other girl, wanted to
be with her, but he couldn’t while Hanna was alive? Maybe he set
the whole thing up, and his death wasn’t meant to happen. His plan
failed. They all died. Back then, you married even if you weren’t
in love. The only way out was death.”

When I think of the seventeen-year-old boy
in his senior portrait plastered across the old newspaper, I just
can’t buy into that theory. He wanted to make his own choices. He
wanted a life that he planned for himself, not one that his parents
designed for him. Then again, who knows if Hanna was actually
pregnant? Her body was never found, so there was never an autopsy
on any of these kids. Mom mentioned that someone’s arm was found in
the water – one of the other boys – and traces of blood were
discovered on the rocks, but all of these kids were shark food.

“I don’t think Seth was the bad guy,” I say.
The streetlights are hazy outside the window, rushing by as we
drive through an empty downtown street. “I just can’t get on board
with that. He’s desperate for something more, but he’s not a
murderer.”

Rooks laughs and looks over at me as he
eases up to the next stop sign. “Piper, you’re biased,” he says.
“You’re totally giving him the benefit of the doubt and not
thinking of poor little Hanna. The guy was cheating on her. Do you
really want to defend him?”

Ugh. Why does he have to put it that way?
This was the great Coral Sands love story just days ago. Now it’s
the big Coral Sands teen romance scandal.

I huff out a sigh like my mom does when
she’s trying to get her point across. “Why do you have to ruin the
moment? I want to believe that it was a tragic accident, not foul
play,” I tell him. “And I don’t want the star of the story to be a
bad guy. I need to believe he’s innocent until proven guilty.”