The Sandcastle Sister (3 page)

Lily Clarette slaps a pair of tennis shoes into her duffel bag and jerks the lid shut. I’ve never seen her so red-faced or this close to petulant. The whole time she lived with me in New York, we didn’t even come close to having a fight. I’ve never heard her get forceful with anyone. Apparently my little sister has grown up in these few months as a college girl. She’s become a woman. A woman who does not appreciate her big sister showing up unannounced in her dorm room.

“I’m not some dumb little child,” she complains. The soft, complacent voice trained into women and girls of the Brethren Saints has disappeared. She sounds like any other local kid, her heritage evident in the Appalachian twang. “I’m makin’ it through all my classes with straight As and Bs. I drive back to Lookin’ Glass Gap every other weekend and work at the pharmacy, and I get there and back all by my own self. I can find my way to Elizabeth City and home without somebody babysittin’ me.”

“And to the prison to see Rob?” The idea of her walking through prison gates makes my blood run cold, not to mention all the other risks of her involvement with our supposed uncle.

“I decided that maybe wasn’t a good idea.” She sits down on the edge of the bed, lets her hands fall into her lap. Slump-shouldered, she looks more like the submissive girl I remember. More like she has been reminded that women must
keep pleasant
or else. I don’t want to break her newfound spirit. I only want to protect her. How can I make her see the difference?

“You shouldn’t be driving to Elizabeth City all alone. You’ve only had a license for six months, and you’ve never driven more than a couple hours from here. Elizabeth City is all the way across the state.”

“Well, who was I gonna ask to come with me? It’s not like I could call Marah Diane or Coral Rebecca or Evie Christine. You know how they all feel about Mama’s family. And even if they wanted to go, Daddy wouldn’t let it happen.”

She reminds me that, not far from here, my father is still in charge of everyone and everything. Even now that my sisters’ goat’s-milk soap business brings more income into the family than the labors of most of the men, the women still have little say in the decision making. It’s not a woman’s place.

“So the family doesn’t know anything about this?”

“No.” She stares at her hands. “I wasn’t even gonna tell
you
. I shouldn’t’ve, but I thought if anybody remembered somethin’ about Mama’s people, you’d be the one. I didn’t think you’d come running home all the way from Paris, France. Evan’s probably mad at me now.”

“Why would Evan be mad?”

“He was gonna marry you in Paris.”

“How did you know that?”

“He told me.” A blush colors the olive skin of her cheek. She looks so much like my mother right now, so much like the young Melungeon girl in Evan’s latest novel. Our family ties to those mysterious mountain people show most in my youngest sister. In her, I can see the triracial mix rumored to have long ago created the Melungeons, who were known as neither black nor white nor Native American. The descendants of lost sailors, escaped slaves, and indigenous peoples
 
—all three. There is still no one who can conclusively tell the story of Appalachia’s “blue-eyed Indians” and how they came to be here before the first recorded European explorers pressed in. It’s no wonder my sister is curious about that mysterious heritage and how it ties to my mother’s family.

“Evan
told
you that?” I didn’t know Evan and my sister ever talked, at least not since we’d left on the book tour, and no more than casually before that. Occasionally when Lily Clarette would answer the phone at my apartment, he’d tease her a little or something. . . .

The idea bothers me a bit. What other secrets is Evan keeping from me?

Then again, I’ve been keeping secrets too. I never mentioned my mother’s family . . . until Lily Clarette’s plan forced me into it.

“He called to ask me what size dress do you wear and stuff. If you said yes to Paris, he was gonna have everything ready there for y’all.”

Two things strike me at once
 
—intense guilt because I spoiled Evan’s plans and amazement that he never said a thing about it when I told him I needed to fly home. He just . . . let me go.

How many men would do that?

Once again, I’m aware of how different he is from Brian, my one serious boyfriend in all those years in New York. With Brian, the relationship was a toxic mix of competition and control. When Brian wanted something, he laid on the pressure, the criticism, the silent treatment, the guilt trip
 
—whatever it took to break me down until finally, I doubted myself and gave in.

Eventually it occurred to me that, yes, I was
living
a thousand miles from Lane’s Hill, but I might as well be right around the corner, still under threat of a caning if I stepped out of line. Old patterns are hard to overcome. The easiest way to take care of the issue was to end the relationship and not seek another one. Problem solved.

Lily Clarette frowns, her eyes narrowing as if she’s looking right through me. “You oughta go back. Tell him you’re gonna meet him in Paris after all. His book tour’s done in less than a week. Y’all could have a big ol’ honeymoon there and probably charge it off to Vida House, even. Heck, George Vida would probably pay for it anyhow, he’s so happy about how Evan’s book is selling.”

“Lily Clarette . . .”

“It’s
Lily
now. Just Lily. Meagan says Lily Clarette sounds like one of the Beverly Hillbillies.”

I’m gathering that much of my sister’s bold new personality comes from her roommate, Meagan, who has already headed to Daytona for spring break.

“Lily . . .” Should I? Should I fly back to Paris? Get married on a whim?

I feel my feet rooting to the spot again. Hesitation tunnels downward from my toes, pressing through the cement and into the rocky soil of the Blue Ridge with impressive speed.

“Lily, we’re talking about
you
. About this quest you’re on. Digging into Mama’s past is a bad idea. Do some research on the story keeper necklaces and the Melungeons if you want to and write about that. There’s a museum over on the coast
 
—I can’t think of the name right now, but I can ask Evan. Anyway, they’re working on the history of the carved necklaces, like the one in Evan’s book and the one Mama left for us. Evan got an e-mail from the museum director there. They were interested in his research for the novel.”

“I know. Evan already sent me the e-mail. I ask’ him about it when we talked about y’all and Paris. I was gonna go over there and visit with the museum people, dependin’ on how long I ended up being in Elizabeth City. I’ve gotta get back here to school at least by tomorrow-week, so I can study for tests and stuff.”

I run the timing in my head. Today is only Saturday. It’s less than an eight-hour drive to the North Carolina coast, all of which means that my sister thought she might spend up to six days in Elizabeth City. She’s been anticipating an extended visit
 
—or hoping for one
 
—with this mystery half sister. Either that or she’s lying about plans to spend time visiting the prison. . . . Maybe she really was intending on a reunion with “Uncle Rob.”

How in the world was she going to pay for all this travel?

“Do you have a hotel booked?” I fish for information.

Dark lashes lower evasively, hooding her eyes. “I figured I’d just . . . do somethin’ when I got there.”

“Do you have money for a room? And gas . . . and food?” Then it becomes completely transparent. It shows in her face. She’s pictured that she’ll knock on this stranger’s door and be invited to stay. She’s dreamed up a warm reunion with Rebecca Christine, just the way I’d once imagined tracking down Mama. In my childhood fantasies, I’d always found her settled into a little white house where there was a room waiting for me. I wasn’t all that much younger than Lily Clarette when I’d conjured that glittery scenario. It had buoyed me through the awful years of taking on my mother’s place in my father’s household.

“Some,” Lily Clarette mutters, suddenly dismal. Reality and I are crashing her party.

I cross the room, sit down beside her, smooth her long curls away from her cheek and tuck them behind her ear. There’s not a stitch of makeup on her face, and she’s so beautiful. I wonder if she has any idea. The world in front of her is an open highway to a million wonderful places. There isn’t any reason to travel the dirt roads and rabbit trails of the past.

“Lily Cla
 
—
Lily
, you know I admire how well you’ve done these past months, taking on the move to Cullowhee and living here in the dorm with someone you didn’t know and learning to drive and . . . well . . . everything.” Coming out of the Brethren Saints lifestyle is like stepping into a new universe. “But if you’re determined to do this
 
—to go to Elizabeth City and look for this woman
 
—it’s something we need to do together.”

A tear seeps from her lashes and draws a trail down her cheek. Sunlight glints against it. “I just wanna know about Mama,” she whispers.

I clutch my hands so tightly they hurt, tuck them between my legs, as if they’re covered with some form of contamination.

“It’s not a pretty story,” I begin.

We sit side by side as the Jaguar’s engine sighs into idle. “You think this is it?” Lily sounds doubtful. All the young-adult bravado that brought us here has faded. She looks as meek as a kitten, huddled in the passenger seat. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that I’ve spent the last eight hours telling her everything I know about Mama’s history and what our family life was like before she left us. None of this should make Lily feel any more confident in her quest to excavate the past.

The building in front of us doesn’t help either. It’s nothing but a small frame house with a squatty metal shop out back along a canal. We’ve had to ask around Elizabeth City quite a bit even to find it. The GPS directions took us to a dead-end road that led past some decaying trailer houses and into a bog appropriately labeled as part of the Great Dismal Swamp.

This place doesn’t look much more encouraging. The windows are dark and grass has grown up in the gravel driveway, as if no one has been here in a while. The sign out front does promise that we’ve made it to the home of J & R Marine Service. Some old outboard motors and boat parts lounge along the shed wall, but judging by the rust, they’re nothing but relics.

“Maybe . . . they’re just gone for the night,” Lily suggests. “Maybe we should come back in the morning.”

“I think so.” I’m only too happy to leave, but not so enthusiastic about returning tomorrow. Elizabeth City is a friendly town
 
—touristy and accustomed to outsiders
 
—but I picked up a strange vibe when we asked around about the boat shop. People seemed a little reluctant to tell us where to find it. I’m still wondering what that meant.

“Let’s get some supper and sleep on it.” Maybe by tomorrow, I can talk Lily into a nice shopping day by the water and then a return trip to Cullowhee.

“Okay.” Her face falls. Even after hearing the sad bits I was able to relate about Mama’s family, Lily can’t let go of something Uncle Rob told her in his last letter from prison
 
—that Rebecca Christine will be so glad to meet her. Apparently Rebecca Christine has taken Rob in a time or two when he was down and out. She also helped him arrange some legal help on the robbery and drug charges.

I shift the car into reverse to back out of the driveway and at the last minute look in the mirror. A gasp wrenches out when there’s a man blocking our way. No more than a silhouette against the setting sun, he’s standing with his feet planted and a tool dangling from his hand. It looks like a scene from
Deliverance
. I decide that the tool is an ax.

I reach for the window button, but I’m too late to close us in. Avoiding a mud puddle that blocks the way to the driver’s side, the stranger rounds our car and is standing by my sister’s door in a heartbeat.

I lean across Lily and crane to see all the way to the top of the man mountain. He’s at least three hundred pounds and six foot five, wearing overalls and a shirt with the sleeves ripped off. It would be funny, if it weren’t for the small matter of mortal fear.

“Excuse us,” I squeak, as in,
Dude, you’ve got about 2.5 seconds before we bolt. I’ll run you over with the Jaguar if I have to, dent or no dent.

“You need somethin’?” His voice is thickly accented and gruff, his face shadow-cloaked beneath a taco-shaped straw cowboy hat.

“We were just turning around. Sorry.”
Out. Out of the way. Now.

“We’re lookin’ for the lady who owns the boat shop. Rebecca Christine Fields,” Lily interjects.

I can’t
see
the man scowling, but I can feel it. “Ain’t here. Don’ know when she will be. Don’ know if she’s even comin’ back.”

“Thanks.”
We’ll take you at your word. See ya.

“Do you have any idea where we might could find her?” My little sister is like a coonhound on a tree. And this man definitely qualifies as a tree.

“Lily!” I snap.

“He might be able to tell us somethin’.” Trying to elbow me off her lap, she pushes her sweet face closer to the window. We stare at the axman side by side, like guppies in a bowl.

I wonder if he likes guppy. For dinner.

“We’re relatives.” Lily stretches out the last word, so that it has all the proper Southern syllables. About eight of them.

The man looks the Jaguar over from headlight to back bumper, resting the ax and a meaty fist on his hip skeptically. We probably don’t look like relatives of anyone who lives in this place.

Lily’s bony shoulder pokes into my neck as she strains to be free of me. “We drove all the way over from Cullowhee. I go to school there.” She’s laying on the backwoods charm so thick I can’t help but think,
Who is this child?

The hefty stranger softens some. “Relatives?” he mutters. “Thought you might be one of them people from the bank. Been a tough year for RC and Johnny.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” What other choice do I have but to join the conversation? “Maybe we shouldn’t bother them, then.”

“Imagine she’d wanna know ya come all this way. She ain’t here, though. Won’t be back yet ’til a few weeks yander. Gone to the Outer Banks. Her and Johnny’s got the maintenance contract on some boats over there. Get ’em all cleaned up and tuned this time of the year so the boats is ready for the rich folks when season comes. I keep an eye on their place for ’em.” He motions across the street, swinging the ax as if it’s a child’s plastic plaything. Then I realize that it is. There’s a little barefoot boy padding across the road from a house hidden in the pines. He’s asking for his toy.

A laugh pushes up my throat, and I have to bite down hard to stifle it. I can’t wait to tell Evan this story.

Lily Clarette whips out a piece of paper and we take down the name of the marina where the man thinks we can find Rebecca Christine. “Tell RC I said hey.”

We thank him and abandon the driveway, watching out for kids, who are popping one after another from the brush. They stand in the road, ogling the Jaguar.

“Whoa, it’s a race car!” A little boy beams. “I’m gonna have me one a them someday! Race car driver!” He adds steering motions and engine noises. He and his siblings, muddy-faced and barefoot, their hair tangled with dry grass and leaves, remind me of us when we were young.

I wave out the window as we leave, then gun the engine to give them a thrill once we’re a safe distance away. The kids jump up and down in the rearview mirror, and race-car-driver boy waves an invisible checkered flag.

We wind back to town, grab supper, then go spend the night in a hotel. For a while, it’s just like the good old days in New York. We discuss Lily’s college plans. We talk about the publishing business. We talk about Lily’s favorite TV shows and campus activities. We discuss Lily’s roommate, Meagan, an Army brat who has lived on three different continents. She has opened my sister’s eyes to a whole new world, literally. We scroll through my iPhone and I show photos from the book tour, and Lily tells me what she knows about those places.

“You should’ve got married in Paris,” she says finally. “Meagan says it’s
so
romantic.”

“Well, coming here was more important.” I burrow into the Chinese takeout bag, dig up a fortune cookie, and crack it open, seeking a diversion. The fortune is an innocuous one about today being my lucky day, but I pretend to be interested.

Lily is having none of it. “So did he ask you about Paris?”

“Sort of.”

“Did you say yes?” Her amber eyes grow wide with girlish fascination.

“We never finished the conversation.”

Even at nineteen, naive and prone to taking things at face value, she recognizes an excuse when she hears it. No girl in love would pass up a proposal like that from a guy like Evan.

I search for a simple response. One that will stop Lily from asking all the questions I’ve already been horsewhipping myself with. “Look, Lily, both Evan and I know that we’ll get married eventually. We just haven’t found the right time yet.”

“
He
thinks it’s the right time.” She breaks open a fortune cookie, reads the fortune, smooths it between her fingernails. I’ve never seen them manicured and painted before. The roommate’s work, no doubt. “You wanna know what
I
think?”

Not really.

“I think you’ve got
trust issues
.”

“Did you learn that in your psychology class?” As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I realize the comment was snippy. I’m jet-lagged, exhausted, and all of a sudden I miss Evan in the worst way. “Sorry. I’m just tired. I think I’ll get a shower and read a little while, okay?”

My sister nods, still looking down at her paper fortune. “Sure.”

I stand up, clean my mess, and drop it in the trash can. Lily’s words catch me as I move away from the table. “I didn’t learn that in psychology class, though. I learned it from the college counseling office.”

I blink, surprised. “You’ve been going to the counseling office? As in
counseling
, counseling, or just help with picking out classes?”

“The first kind. I needed to talk to somebody about stuff.”

I lay a hand on her shoulder, lean down and hug her. “Lily, I’m so proud of you.” My sister has found the courage to do what I haven’t done in all these years. Face our past head-on.

She rests her hands on the table, picks at the nail polish as if she’s still not quite comfortable with its being there. “I don’t wanna live all my life messed up, y’know? I wanna be normal. To be happy.”

Her hair feels like silk beneath my fingers. I remember the moment the midwife placed her tiny body in my arms, her skin still so hot from Mama’s body, it seemed to melt right through the blanket, joining itself to mine. “I hope that for you, Lily. I do.” She is so strong. She may be the youngest of all of us, but she’s also the toughest. The only one with this kind of courage.

“You oughta hope it for
you
.” She turns the fortune around, lays it on the table in front of me so that I can’t help but read it. The advice is short, but applicable. A single line of type that sums up reality:

Those words cling to me as the evening goes on, and I fall asleep thinking about them, taunted by a smattering of print on a bit of fortune-cookie paper. A scrap, really, but it identifies the part of myself that I like least. My one fatal flaw.

In the morning, the truth is still there, teasing the tip of my mind. I am a person who hides everything. Growing up, I learned to conceal myself behind a placid exterior. Stillness gives the appearance of confidence. I keep the inner voices hidden. I don’t want the rest of the world to hear what they say.

But
I
can’t stop hearing them.

How can I marry Evan if the outside is all I have to offer? He senses it, I know. Maybe that’s why he’s been pushing so hard on the impromptu wedding idea
 
—he suspects that impulsivity is our only hope.

But I
can’t
be impulsive about this. Not when the hearts and futures of others hang in the balance. Evan has already been through enough tragedy in his life, and on top of that, there’s the little girl he’s now raising. Hannah desperately wants a mother figure. She wants her uncle Evan and me to settle down together, create a family. She prays for it daily. I know that because she tells me at least twice a week, either in person or via Skype, depending on our locations.

“Oh, what is wrong with you!” I growl, running my fingers roughly into my hair and tugging until it hurts as I wait for Lily to finish grabbing a bagel at the breakfast buffet and make it to the car.

The hotel door swishes open, and I find my composure so my sister won’t see the ongoing battle of self versus self. Outside input doesn’t help, and I already know Lily’s opinion anyway. She thinks I’m nuts for being here, rather than across the ocean. Maybe I am.

In short order, we’re headed toward the Outer Banks. The day is clear and beautiful. We chatter about the sights, and Lily gasps in awe as we cross the bridge. The water looks inviting, even though it’s only March. Looks can be deceiving. The waves will still be chilly this time of year.

As we reach the islands and begin the drive south and south and south, the scenery runs in direct conflict with the turmoil in my head. We pass seaside stores, massive beach houses towering on stilts, and rows of dunes that dwarf the sleek red car.

Lily suggests we put the top down, so we do, even though it’s cool. The wind streams through our hair, and we look like we belong in this vacation paradise
 
—as if we could be the owners of one of these monstrous, multistory beach homes.

Evan could buy one without even blinking an eye. Even that bothers me. There will be people who talk behind their hands. They’ll say I used my position as his editor to worm my way into his life. There are already rumors around the industry that
I
was the one who insisted on joining Evan’s book tour, not the other way around.

I shouldn’t care, but the insecurities sneak in anyway. Growing up, being snickered at by the schoolkids because of my plaited hair and long, homemade dresses, I cultured a habit of worrying about what other people think. What they whisper just out of earshot. It’s a terrible habit, but it’s hard to stop.

As we draw near Hatteras Village, I leave off thrashing around in my own issues and begin wondering about this long-lost sister of ours. Is she really here on this island? Will we find her? What will happen if we do?

“Can’t be much farther, I guess.” Lily points as we wind through Hatteras Village, surveying sleepy souvenir stores, water-sports rental stores lounging in the early spring sun, a library, a fire department, a welcome center. A sign indicates that the ferry landing is close. One more mile and we’ll drop off into the ocean.

We pass a few more tourist traps, most sitting dark and quiet in the off-season. All of a sudden, the ferries and the marina lie just ahead on the right. Both of us lose our nerve at once. We decide to grab lunch at the quaint shopping center positioned at land’s end near the docks. While we’re eating, we watch boats of all sizes come and go from the marina. Is our sister on one of them? The place is larger than I’d imagined. What if we’re not even able to track her down?