Driftwood Summer (2 page)

 

—To my editor, Ellen Edwards, and all the people at NAL who make this possible. Claire Zion, Kara Welsh, Becky Vinter, and the formidable PR team of Craig Burke, Rick Pascocello and Melissa Broder, the sales force, production team and amazing art department.

 

—To the bookstores throughout the country who love books, words and story as much as I do. With special thanks to those who helped contribute to this bookstore story: Patti Morrison of Barnes and Noble in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina; Tom Warner of Litchfield Books in Pawley’s Island, South Carolina; Kelly Justice at Fountain Books in Richmond, Virginia; Cynthia Grabenbauer at the the Vero Beach Book Center; Karin Wilson, Taylor Mathis and Jennifer Calhoun (and her sisters, of course) at Page and Palette in Fairhope, Alabama.

—To my sweet writing friends who encourage, love and always remind me why we write: the power and magic of words.

—To the readers who write, call, read my novels and take the time to visit me on book tours. You inspire me every single day.

—To my encouraging friends who say things like, “You are meant to do this.” “Do not stop.” “We are on your side.” I do not know what I would do without you. I really don’t. I love you!!

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

—SØREN KIERKEGAARD (1813-1855)

“I can not live without books.”

—THOMAS JEFFERSON IN A LETTER TO JOHN ADAMS (1815)

Dear Booklover,

It’s finally here—summer. Ahhh…

This time of year brings our beloved summer friends back to Palmetto Beach, and offers a slower pace with more time to slip away to the backyard rocking chair, the beach, Pearson’s Pier and of course the Driftwood Cottage Bookstore.

Starting next Friday, we have an incredible season planned. We have been yacking about this special event for over a year now and it is hard to believe it is finally here: THE TWO-HUNDRED-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of Driftwood Cottage. Of course it has only been our cozy bookstore for twelve years, but the house has withstood time, trials and even a move from the plantation to the beach where it now stands.

We have a full week of events planned. There will be a night for everyone’s love of poetry, art, nonfiction, book clubs and all that Driftwood Cottage Bookstore has to offer.

You’ll find some fabulous new books in the review section of this month’s newsletter along with Anne and Ethel’s picks of the month. The book club picks are also listed. Don’t forget about Anne’s art classes and the Kids’ Corner activities.

Come eat at our café, grab a good book and enjoy our cozy atmosphere as we celebrate the endurance of DRIFTWOOD COTTAGE and our local Palmetto Beach community.

Until next time…

 

Read Well,

Kitsy and Riley Sheffield

Friday night 6 p.m.
—New York Times Bestselling Author Nick Martin speaks and signs his new thriller set in a winery in Napa Valley.

 

Saturday night 7 p.m.
—BOOK CLUB CELEBRATION. All book club members and guests come join us for a night of fun including a literary trivia contest, prizes and wine and food donated by our local businesses.

 

Sunday night 6 p.m.
—JOIN THE COOKBOOK CLUB in the café, where they’ll be preparing their favorite recipe from their pick of the month: Shrimp & Grits Cookbook by Nathalie Dupree. Come taste, watch and enjoy!

 

Monday night 6 p.m.
—LOCAL ARTIST NIGHT. Come join us as our local artisans display and sell their original works.

 

Tuesday night 7 p.m.
—POETRY NIGHT. Come hear poets from our surrounding communities read their original work.

 

Wednesday night 7 p.m.
—KIDS’ CORNER. Bring the kids and teens tonight for various activities including art, writing and a book signing with our local children’s book illustrator, Sally Wentworth.

 

Thursday night 7 p.m.
—LOCAL AUTHORS NIGHT. You know them all, right? And they’ll all be here. Buy local. Support our community.

 

Friday night
—CLOSED to prepare for the BIG Party Saturday.

 

SATURDAY 4 p.m.-10 p.m.
—DRIFTWOOD COTTAGE BOOKSTORE ANNIVERSARY PARTY. The biggest party Palmetto Beach has seen in two centuries. Local musicians; food and wine from our local restaurants; raffle to win amazing prizes. You won’t want to miss this night.

ONE

RILEY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bookstore owner Riley Sheffield believed that even the most ordinary life was like a good novel, a tale to be told. Her own life was full of twists and turns, secrets and surprises, with narrative threads that intertwined with the fabric of other people’s lives. Her story revolved around a two-hundred-year-old cottage on the beach—Driftwood Cottage Bookstore.

Her mother had bought the old cottage and turned it into a bookstore, and now Riley was raising her son in the upstairs apartment, her days tuned to the rhythm of the tides and the ebb and flow of customers. The sea-infused air mingled with the scents of ink and paper. The ocean breeze coming through the open windows created a symphony with the creaking walls and groaning bookshelves. The same sand that found its way between Riley’s toes was also embedded in the cracks between the uneven floorboards, in the creases of the well-worn upholstered armchairs and sometimes between the pages of the books. Every morning Riley awoke with anticipation of another day of stories unfolding—stories in the novels she read and in the lives of the customers she served.

On the first floor of the cottage, behind a wooden door to the left of the checkout counter, Riley’s office desk was half hidden beneath the piles of RSVP cards for the party to be held at the bookstore in a week. She avoided the tedious task of recording these responses by walking toward the Book Club Corner—her favorite nook in the store.

Riley sighed as she ran her fingertips lazily across the spines of the books lining the crooked shelves. The stories were old friends that comforted her. The camaraderie of women in the book clubs helped ease the loneliness of being a thirty-two-year-old single mother. Somehow sitting with the women and discussing the novels, then later, their personal stories, had opened Riley’s heart to the tenderness of others’ hurts. Book clubs acted as a balm on the ache for intimacy.

She stood behind the bookshelf and listened while the Beach Babes Book Club talked over and above one another, each woman speaking in the commanding tone of one who believed that what she had to say was more important than what anyone else had to say. Riley smiled, sensing an impending arument brewing. Listening to browsers and book club members, to authors and would-be authors, she’d become an expert at detecting a negative undercurrent.

She poked her head around the corner.

“Hi, ladies.”

Seated on upholstered club chairs, their feet propped up on faded green-and-pink ottomans, coffee cups scattered on the driftwood side tables, the book club waved back and hollered greetings.

“Riley,” called Lola Martin, her eybrows raised, “who was your first love?”

“Tom Sawyer,” she replied with a crooked smile, slipped a fallen book back onto a shelf. “Interesting question. What book are y’all discussing this month?”

“
Beach Music
by Pat Conroy,” Lola said. “The main character never stops loving his first love and we were just wondering who yours was. Tom Sawyer does not count.”

“Oh, yes, it does.” Riley walked into the Book Club Corner’s circle, picked up several empty coffee cups. “For a twelve-year-old bookworm sitting alone on the riverbank, Tom Sawyer made a perfect first love.”

“You make it sound like he was real,” Lola said.

“He was.” Riley glanced out the window to the front yard, to the ancient live oak spreading its branches toward the earth and sky, circles of light nestled in its curves.

“See?” said Ashley Carpenter, bouncing her six-month-old baby on her lap. “True love and happy endings are only in fairy tales or novels. Not in real life.”

Riley’s gaze returned to the group. Lola shook her head. “I’m not saying all true loves end happily. But some do. Right?” She looked again at Riley.

Ashley laughed. “Well, I’m gonna need some convincing.”

Riley smiled at the group as several different conversations started up; she said goodbye and returned to her office to face the pile of work.

Of course Tom Sawyer wasn’t her first love: Mack Logan was. She’d kept this conscious knowledge far from her mind, but some memories haunt the heart.

The RSVP cards on her desk brought her thoughts back to the present, to the upcoming party—an ambitious week’s worth of events, a celebration intended to draw an influx of cash into the bookstore to help it stay afloat. This party was also in honor of Mama’s seventieth birthday—a combination Mama believed just could not fail. But of course it could fall short of saving the store. Profits were down, and on the balance sheets Riley saw an abyss of debt with no way out.

This would be the party of all parties, according to Mama; it would rival the Fourth of July celebration, the mayoral inauguration and the town’s very own anniversary. But this was how Mama always talked, as if her grandiose descriptions could somehow make up for the smallness of her everyday life of tea parties, social calls and hours spent on personal grooming before visits to the same people, every day for years on end.

Riley’s sisters, Maisy and Adalee, were also coming to the party. They’d all be together for the first time in six years.

The pile of envelopes on the desk tilted, fell to the floor. Riley picked them up, and then caught her hair in a rubber band to begin removing RSVP cards and recording them in the ledger. The stack of letter-pressed stationery (nothing but the best for Mama) had been arranged in alphabetical order. The town’s premier wedding-invitation specialist had addressed the return envelopes in handsome calligraphy—a donation for which Riley had begged in humiliating fashion. It was important for Mama to keep up the pretense of opulence. For Riley, each family name and return address on the top-left corner created an emotion, including a yearning for those long-gone summers of freedom and joy. She said the names out loud as she drew the cards from the envelopes.

When Riley had been younger, Mama used to call the names out loud in this same manner as she addressed the family’s Christmas cards. She would utter the name in a singsong voice and then say, “Remember when Aunt Sis drank too much at Thanksgiving and knocked over the china cabinet?” or “Oh, sweet Mrs. Dun-can, she lost her son to that terrible car wreck.” Each envelope evoked a remembrance.

For once, the phone didn’t ring and no knock sounded on the office door as Riley enjoyed each memory conjured up as she checked guests off the invitation list. Half an hour later she reached for the next envelope--
Mr. Mack Logan
was written in slanted block letters. She closed her eyes and said his name out loud, her tongue now unfamiliar with the sounds.

A soft, tender and well-guarded place inside Riley opened to a flood of Technicolor memories: Mack’s attempt at ten years old to right the sailboat in the middle of the bay, hollering that he didn’t need her help; at twelve his tousled hair backlit by evening sun at the end of a day’s fishing excursion; at sixteen his body long and lean; at eighteen returning from his senior year in high school as an adult. In rapid sequence she saw the images as if they were pictures in a waterlogged scrapbook. Summer after summer was filled with various images of Mack Logan—her childhood best friend, her ally, the boy who all at once had become a man.

Now he was returning to Palmetto Beach for the bookstore’s celebration, and she would see him again for the first time in thirteen years. What would he be like?

She shoved her memory of him down again, but it was like keeping a buoy underwater. Her Mack images were still vivid and complete. She wasn’t sure why she’d thought they would disappear because she didn’t visit them, like thinking an entire country didn’t exist just because she’d never been there.

Throughout her childhood, this very cottage had been the Logans’ family vacation home, and never once had she imagined that it would become her own unconventional home. Since her son, Brayden, was born twelve years ago and she’d moved here, she’d built her life around this bookstore, focused all her attention on what was practical, necessary. Her sole escape was the novels she devoured.

A knock came to the door and Riley jumped up. “Yes?” she hollered.

“Riley honey?” called Ethel Larkin, who managed the checkout counter.