The Language of Sand (23 page)

October was half over, though the leaves had yet to fall or hint at
changing color. The island refused to conform to the season, stubbornly clinging to the departed summer. Mornings were cool, but with every hour that passed, the sun beat away the chill. Abigail hadn’t used the fireplace in days. Not that she minded.

She hauled her last can of paint into the bathroom, more of the same buttery shade that was in the kitchen, living room, and study. The minuscule space would be a snap to paint. Or so she believed.

From the middle of the wall up, rolling on the cool blue paint was easy. From there down, it was a total inconvenience. Abigail had to lie on the floor and contort herself to reach around the toilet, then squirm into a corner to get at the walls behind the tub. Eroded enamel flaked off the underbelly of the bathtub as she painted.

“What this needs is some sealer to stop the corrosion. The floor could stand to be regrouted too. A medicine cabinet wouldn’t hurt either.”

Over the symphony coming from the CD player, Abigail heard a muffled
bump
, timed as a reply to her comment.

“Seriously? This mirror’s nothing special, and the grout is, to be blunt, gross. Anyway, I don’t have anyplace to put my toothpaste.”

Logic began to nag at her.

Who are you talking to?
This is preposterous.
These are random noises, not communications from the beyond.

A worrisome notion slipped into Abigail’s brain like a note being slid through a mail slot. What if she truly was going crazy?

“People who are going crazy don’t have the presence to ask themselves if they’re going crazy.”

Or do they?

Abigail put her paintbrush aside. “That’s enough of that. I’m going to town.”

The parking place she’d come to think of as hers was ready and waiting. Abigail headed over to the hardware store and went around to the rear, as had become her custom. When she reached the door, she had a flush of misgiving. She wouldn’t normally walk into a store and leave with merchandise she hadn’t paid for.

“Merle did tell you to take whatever you wanted. He gave you permission,” Abigail said, talking herself into opening the back door.

Inside, the shades were drawn, the rooms dark. She patted the kitchen walls for a light switch but couldn’t find it. While plodding blindly into the main part of the store, she bumped into the counter, which guided her to the shelves where she’d seen containers of grout the day she came for the paint.

“Hello, Abby.”

Startled, she bounded backward, knocking into a display of wrench sets.

“Who’s there?” It was a phrase Abigail had been saying more often than she cared to admit.

Bertram Van Dorst peeked around the aisle. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I heard you at the back door and I called to you. Thought ya heard me.”

“Why are you in here with the lights off, Bert?”

“Don’t need ’em. I memorized what’s on every shelf. Why waste the electricity?”

“Okay. Can I ask what you’re doing here?”

“Washer number seven’s been acting touchy. Rotator belt’s about to go. I came to see what Merle might have to fix it so I wouldn’t have to order a new part.”

“Bert, are you the manager of the laundromat?”

“Me? No.”

“And you said you weren’t the owner. Then…?” Abigail couldn’t think of a courteous way to ask him why he spent so much time there.

“Must seem kind of strange.”

“No, no, it’s—”

“I like it there. It’s quiet. No distractions. I can keep an eye on the place for Lottie, make sure the machines are running right.”

“Lottie owns the laundromat too?”

“Well, her and her husband. They own most of Chapel Isle, really. Since his accident, Franklin hasn’t been able to do much with the businesses, which is why Lottie runs them.”

“Accident?”

“Car crash. Three years ago, one of the summer people was driving drunk. Hit Franklin’s car and flipped him into a ditch. Broke his spine in three places. He won’t ever walk again. Got big bucks in the settlement, but Franklin didn’t need money. He had that in spades.” The story was a sore spot for Bert.

“I retooled his electric wheelchair for him. Adjusted the wheels for an improved turning radius and rerouted the wiring so he could get more power. Franklin says it runs like a Porsche. Zero to sixty in six seconds.”

Abigail had dropped her chin and let her shoulders fold, sympathy melting her stance into the posture of compassion. She’d seen people slide into it after they learned of her husband’s and son’s deaths. As she stood there in the darkened hardware store with Bert, Abigail knew what she was about to say. The words were already forming in spite of how she hated hearing them herself.

“I’m sorry to hear about your friend.”

“He’s a decent guy. Done a lot for this town. Everyone does what they can.”

An unspoken bond existed between the residents of Chapel Isle. The island was the same as the nets its fishermen cast at sea, a tight lattice of people tied by lives lived closely, knotted by friendship. Being here meant Abigail could become a part of that net as well, which was a bit intimidating. The responsibility may have been more than she could be entrusted with.

“So how’s it going at the lighthouse?”

“Fine. Everything’s fine.” As often as Abigail said it, that didn’t make it true.

“Nothing out of the ordinary?”

“Oh, Bert, not you too? You’re a man of science. You can’t possibly have bought into this ghost story.”

“Had to ask. Most people around here have heard about him. Some believe. Some don’t. Either way, Mr. Jasper took care of this island and its sailors for years. Guess he has the right to be here still.”

Be it a right, a privilege, a curse, or contrivance, Wesley Jasper had become Abigail’s problem. She was lying that everything was fine while painting the caretaker’s cottage top to bottom and trying to appease a spirit she wasn’t convinced existed. If Abigail couldn’t shake the shroud of his presence—real, imagined, or mythologized—she would become known as the woman who lived in the haunted house. She wasn’t even okay being known as “Abby.” She couldn’t let this go any further.

When Abigail got home, the cottage was brutally quiet. She couldn’t concentrate and craved a mindless activity to give her wits a rest. After wandering aimlessly around the living room, she stopped and stood at the window, staring at the ocean while waiting for inspiration to arrive. Minutes passed. She grew impatient. Her
eyes drifted across the lawn to the station wagon. The grass was as high as the car’s headlights.

“Lottie did mention a lawn mower.”

A tarnished manual hand mower leaned in the corner of the shed, with a ragged-edged rake propped against it.

“Couldn’t hurt to see if it works.”

Abigail dragged the mower out for inspection. The blades were matte gray, so dull they refused to reflect the sunlight. She pulled the mower along the grass to test if the blades would cut. Much to her amazement, they did. The newly sheared patch of grass was a drastic improvement, incentive to forge onward.

Progress was slow, each pass a struggle, but Abigail didn’t stop. The exertion drained her mind and burned off the angst that had clung to her since running into Bert at the hardware store. The smell of the fresh-clipped grass was a welcome distraction.

Over the course of the afternoon, she worked her way across the yard, pausing occasionally to wipe her forehead with her sleeve. Her hair was soaked with sweat, as was her shirt. The sun was setting once she was through.

The time had come to do Merle’s rounds. A bath would have to wait. Abigail packed a sandwich for dinner. There was one piece of bread left, besides the heel of the loaf. Her sandwich was a sad statement about how she’d been living. She used to love to cook. When she and Paul were newlyweds and low on cash, Abigail had embraced the challenge of concocting lavish meals on their shoestring budget, defying their circumstances with some ingenuity and well-chosen spices. She missed cooking, not so much the act, but the purpose—feeding her family and providing them with what they needed.

Abigail stowed her dinner in the empty bread bag and took it to the car.

Tonight the moon was high, making the street signs legible—that was if they weren’t obscured by branches or leaves. Abigail was still getting the hang of how the island was laid out, reading Merle’s map by her dashboard lights. The roads didn’t run on a grid pattern;
quite the opposite. Each curvy lane unraveled of its own accord, unrepentantly irregular, like the rest of Chapel Isle.

The first few properties were unchanged since the previous evening, not a hinge or windowpane disturbed. Abigail was thankful for that. Midway through her route, she took a break to gobble down her dinner. As she sat in the station wagon eating, headlights appeared, glowing in the distance. Then the lights began to flash. It was a police patrol car.

“Uh-oh.”

In her side mirror, Abigail saw Sheriff Larner climbing from the cruiser.

“Evening, Abby.”

“This must seem a little suspicious, me sitting in my car on a dark road, eating a sandwich by flashlight with a hammer in my lap.”

“Not what I expected. Care to tell me what you’re doing?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“No such thing as a short story around here.”

“I’m checking on Lottie’s rental properties for Merle because…uh, because I owed him a favor.” Abigail intentionally avoided the specifics of how she came into that particular debt.

“Oh, right, the infamous fight at the Kettle.”

“It’s
infamous
?”

“Only to the people who’ve heard about it.”

“Wonderful.”

“So Merle sent you to…?” Larner expected her to fill in the blanks.

“Test the doors and windows. See if any of the units have been broken into.”

The sheriff cocked his brow. “Guard duty?”

“Merle can barely walk and it’s basically my fault. It’s just for a week, until he’s better.”

“A week, huh?”

“I know, I know. I’m turning into a nuisance, what with starting that fight and the changes I’ve made to the caretaker’s house.”

Her comment visibly caught the sheriff’s attention. Abigail presumed that whatever she did, whether buying a paintbrush or washing her laundry, somebody had already reported on it to everyone else. Wasn’t that how the grapevine worked? And wasn’t Larner the person who’d warned her about it?

“What sorts of changes are we talking about?” he inquired coyly.

Abigail’s defenses went up. She chose her answer prudently. “A little paint. That’s all.”

“Paint never did anybody any harm.”

“Let’s hope not,” Abigail said under her breath.

“You almost finished with your security detail?”

“I have some more houses to visit, then I’ll be off the streets,” she joked.

“Be careful. We haven’t caught the guys responsible for those break-ins. Watch yourself with that hammer, ’kay? Lucky for you it’s not considered a concealed weapon.”

“Okay. I mean, yes, sir.”

With that, the sheriff rode away in his patrol car.

Aside from the police cruiser, Abigail hadn’t seen anybody else drive by in the past two nights. There had been dozens of people at the bingo game. Where were they, she wondered.

At home
, she surmised.
With their families.

The children would be in bed. Their parents were probably watching television or washing the dinner dishes, getting ready to call it a night. Abigail envied them. She couldn’t see them, didn’t know who they were or where they lived, yet those nameless, faceless people had what she longed for. They would wake up the next morning and their lives would be the same.