The Sandcastle Sister (6 page)

On the table, four steaming bowls of oatmeal and fresh fruit wait for a last breakfast together. “You got time for a little food,” Johnny promises. “To catch one a them evenin’ flights, you won’t need to leave for hours yet.” He insists that we sit down and eat, then sets the laptop computer by my spot so I can peruse the flights he has looked up.

I check the schedules, and we talk about timing while we’re at the table. Finally I find one that leaves early this evening, makes a couple of connections, and ends in a red-eye to Paris. I’ll be there in time to surprise Evan at his hotel. Lily can fly out at almost the same time and get into Greenville early enough to be picked up and driven back to Cullowhee.

Clicking Purchase, I’m both scared and satisfied. I cave in at the last minute and buy the trip insurance, just in case something goes wrong with this crazy plan of mine. After the fact, I’m irked with myself.
You are not backing out, Jen Gibbs. You’re not.

Across the table, Johnny tells RC that he thinks he feels good enough to go help her with the boats today. A happy, contented look of love passes between them, and in it I see a deeper truth. The hardest thing about his illness is that it separates them. They’ve spent their entire adult lives together. They’re two halves of one whole.

In them, I see what is really possible when love covers over past wounds and present struggles, when two people accept one another as they are, scars and all.
You and Evan could be this way,
a voice whispers inside me.
You just have to let go and let the tide come in.

So that’s my resolution. Let go. Take a leap of faith. Stop building higher and higher ramparts around the sandcastle.

Evan Hall was meant for me. We were meant for each other. I feel it in a way I’ve never felt anything before.

“You know . . .” Once again, I speak without thinking it through. “Since you two have work to do today, I think Lily and I will just head for the airport. I can ask for standby when we get there. With any luck, I’ll make an earlier flight and that last connection won’t be quite so iffy.”

Shocked expressions come my way from all sides of the table. Lily gapes as if she fears I’ve been abducted by aliens and replaced with an impostor.
What have you done with my sister?
that look says.

“Sounds like you got your mind made up,” Johnny assesses. “We’ll miss ya.” He and RC exchange another love-look, and he nods at her. “It’ll be sorta lonely around here, our last few days on the Banks.”

“We’ll miss you, too.” I speak for both Lily and me. Even though I’m excited about surprising Evan half a world away, saying good-bye stinks.

“Better get crackin’.” Fortunately, RC is true to form
 
—naturally unsentimental. Johnny volunteers to do the dishes, and RC helps us finish packing. Then we carry everything down to the Jaguar. I’m so worked up, I feel like I could fly from here to Norfolk . . . without an airplane.

The excitement lasts right up until I slide into the driver’s seat to start the engine and let it warm while we go upstairs to make a last pass through the bedroom and say our final farewells to Johnny, who can’t run up and down the steps like the rest of us.

I turn the key and nothing happens. The Jaguar is deader than a doornail.

Fifteen minutes of tinkering with switches, and it’s still completely lifeless. Johnny makes his way down to look things over. Between the four of us, there’s quite a bit of knowledge of engines and farm machinery, but the apparatus under the Jaguar’s hood looks like it belongs in a fighter jet. We’re afraid to mess with it beyond trying Johnny’s jumper cables and battery tester.

“No tellin’ who you can find to work on this thing around here,” Johnny admits. “But don’t worry, okay? If it’s not fixed by lunchtime, we’ll drive you to the airport and keep your car here. The folks who own this house are friends. They won’t mind a bit.”

I agree with the plan but hope that with enough calling around I can find an insta-mechanic, and that the repair will be a quick fix . . . maybe a loose connection or something. I don’t know what Evan will say if I have to tell him I abandoned his Jag at a beach house way down on Hatteras Island. Will my presence in Paris be enough to make up for an offense like that?

I go back upstairs and start working my way through the phone book while Johnny and RC gather their tools and cleaning rags for work. There’s a boat they’ve promised to have ready today.

RC stops at the door, smiles. “You’ll be here when we get back, right?”

“Yes. If I do get the car fixed, we’ll hang around until after lunch and leave then.” My standby-flight plan is toast now anyway. I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed for the connection to my overseas plane.

RC gives me a long, thoughtful look, and for a minute I wonder what she’s thinking. “One way or another, we’ll get you to the airport by the time that flight leaves this evening. Don’t worry.” She sends a patient smile. “Since you’ll be here at lunch, we can do the hugging then.”

“Rain check,” I tease. RC not being much of a hugger, the promise of one lets me know how much she
feels
this new sister connection, how much it means to her.

“You got it.” One of her now-familiar winks comes my way. “Hang in there, kiddo.”

I watch her descend the stairs and disappear from view. The little Hatteras house turns lonely and quiet, and despite a day that warms and becomes idyllic, this isn’t where I want to be. After several futile attempts to find a mechanic who can work on a Jaguar
today
, I give up and call RC to let her know we’ll need that ride to the airport, for sure. My repeated apologies for the imposition are met with a casual laugh.

“It’s not every day you get to help out the course of true love,” she jokes, then adds that they’ll be home in a couple hours
 
—plenty of time to offer taxi service. I tell her I want to at least pay for the gas, and she says we’ll talk about it.

I call Evan just to hear his voice, but he doesn’t answer. I text, but he doesn’t respond. No doubt he has the phone on silent and has forgotten about it. He’s as notorious for that as he is for forgetting to silence the phone before he steps up to a speaker’s podium.

Finally, there’s nothing left to do but distract myself by digging through some work projects. Sinking into an e-copy of a manuscript on my submissions pile is a surefire way to pass the time. Luckily, the story is compelling, and it does what all good books do: it takes me away from real life. My mind travels across miles and years and falls into a love story.

By the time I’ve skimmed through it, I’m aching for Evan. I want to talk to him, at least. I can feel myself losing my courage on this Paris thing. I need a little bolstering. I
can’t
lose my courage. Not this time.

The past need not determine one moment of the future.
It’s something my childhood mentor, Wilda Culp, told me. I guess it’s taken me this long to finally absorb that lesson all the way to the core.

Another call to Evan produces no results. I phone the office instead and speak to George Vida’s assistant, Hollis, who knows all. She tells me not to worry
 
—Evan checked in with her earlier, and then he was turning the phone off for the day to sleep. He’s been a little under the weather. Yes, he’ll be in Paris a few days longer.

Long enough for me to get there.

RC and Johnny come home at lunchtime, and we’re on the road in less than an hour, rumbling up the Outer Banks in their old four-door shop truck, this time with the ocean on our right and the sound on our left. The water churns the world on one side, caresses it softly on the other. I’m more akin to the churning side right now. It’s a time of change.

Rather than running away, I can feel myself stepping in. I’m ready.

It should be a long drive to Norfolk in the old truck, but the conversation on the way is filled with laughter and revelations, and the time rushes by. We talk about strange habits we have in common
 
—certain foods we like to eat and clothing colors we prefer and subjects we were good at in school. When we arrive at the airport, Johnny insists on parking in the short-term lot and walking us in, even though I’ve promised that Lily and I can handle our luggage just fine.

“Nothing doing,” Johnny says, thumping the handicapped permit on the mirror. “Got my tag. I can make the walk.”

I worry that we are wearing him out and he’ll suffer for it later. He and RC have to make it all the way back to Hatteras yet tonight. I offered to pay for a hotel room here, but they refused.

We all proceed into the airport together, Johnny moving at a surprisingly rapid pace behind his walker. “Better hurry up. Don’t wanna miss your flight.” But we’ve arrived over three hours early. There’s plenty of time for check-in and good-byes.

By silent, mutual agreement, we all wander to a stop some distance from the ticket counters, the four of us forming a little island as people pass by, preoccupied with their own business.

The farewells are sweet and sad. We all feel these new ties, still as fragile as spider thread. Stretch them too far and they’ll break and float away on the wind. Lily keeps glancing toward the door, like she’s thinking about running back to the Outer Banks instead of using her plane ticket. For half a second, I wonder if she’s about to tell me she’ll stay with the Jaguar and drive it back to Cullowhee once it’s fixed. I don’t want our time here to end with an argument about that.

Best to move along before plans go awry.

“Well, I guess we should get checked in,” I say.

RC smiles at me tenderly, then sighs. My new sister’s eyes are already so familiar
 
—as if I’ve always known her, even though we’ve only just met. “Guess so. It was a good visit. Real good.”

“Thanks . . . thanks for everything.” Tears strain the words. I have to swallow hard to manage a few more. “I’ll take that hug now.”

Lily interrupts before I can reach for RC. A cell phone is shoved into my outstretched hand. “Here, take a picture of me and RC and Johnny, ’kay?” She’s stalling, I can tell, but I oblige instead of reminding her that we already posed for dozens of pictures back at the beach house.

After I’ve snapped one, Lily grabs the phone. “Okay, now you three.” She motions for Johnny and RC to relocate, and they move to stand beside me. Lily has us shift back and forth to get the picture just right. Suddenly she is Little Miss In Charge.

“Lily . . .” I’m getting antsy to be through security and on my way to Evan.

“I want to remember this,” she protests. “Okay, now I want just you.”

“Lily . . .”

“Smile. This is, like, the last time I’ll see you single. When you come home, you won’t be a Gibbs anymore.” The pout lip is the one she deployed so skillfully as a child. It’s still irresistible.

I strike the dorky selfie pose that Lily and her friends love on Facebook, hand on my hip, head tipped to one side.

She snaps several shots. “There, now that didn’t hurt so much, did it?” She tries to give me the phone. “Check the pictures and see if you like them.”

“I’m sure they’re okay.”

“Check and see.”

“No, it’s fine, really. I hate pictures of myself anyway.”

Lily rolls her eyes. “What
ever
.” Glancing toward the ticket counter, she moves to grab her bags without even hugging RC and Johnny.

“Aren’t you going to say good-bye?” I remind her.

“Oh, yeah . . . Good-bye.” Lily isn’t very emotional about this parting. I’m surprised. I thought she would be. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m making a big deal of it because I’m headed to another continent. It’s not like we’ll never see RC again.

But then, Lily ends up dragging out the good-byes anyway, chattering on about the museum on the Outer Banks and how, before we left the beach house, she read on the Internet that they have an internship program there. She’d like to come back and learn more about the Lost Colonists of Roanoke Island and whether those people really do have something to do with the story keeper necklaces and our heritage among the Melungeons of the mountains. “Besides, I like the beach a lot. It’d be fun to come back and . . .”

Someone taps me on the shoulder, and I jump at first. A sailor in uniform extends a hand my way. At first I think he’s going to ask me to snap a picture for him. Instead he holds out what looks like a key chain and says, “I think you dropped this, ma’am.” He releases it into my hand before I have time to argue. I catch it to keep it from falling.

It’s fairly heavy, but there are no keys on the ring, just some sort of metal bauble clutched between my fingers. It rolls into my palm as I open my hand.

I do a double take, feel my mouth slowly dropping open. If I was looking for one final sign . . . if I
needed
one, here it is. A tiny silver replica of the Eiffel Tower catches the light against my skin. It’s the sort of thing you might pick up in a tourist trap. But how did it get here? And why did that guy . . .

I glance up, and all eyes are on me. Mouths strain to withhold giddy grins. Faces beam with expectation.

“What’s going . . . ?”

Snickering, Lily presses a hand over her mouth, extends the cell phone my way. “Look. Look at the picture.”

“Huh?” I do as she asks, and as I focus on the tiny screen, everything is suddenly perfectly clear . . . Why there were problems with the Jaguar to prevent us from coming earlier for a standby flight. Why Johnny and RC were so happy to drive us all the way to the airport. Why Johnny insisted on walking us in. Why Lily was delaying just now. Why she took the pictures when and how she did. Why they’re all smiling at me like three Cheshire cats in a tree.

They’ve been waiting for someone, and that’s him behind me in the picture. At six foot four, Evan Hall stands out in any crowd.

I whirl around, and he’s only a short distance away. His grin stretches ear to ear. He nods at the tiny Eiffel Tower, forgotten in my hand. “It’s not exactly Paris in the springtime.” His eyes are the deep, fathomless blue of the ocean he has secretly crossed to come to me. The sort of ocean so powerful that it washes away the evidence of all things left behind by others. “But the Outer Banks in the springtime isn’t bad either.”

“No . . . no, it’s not.” I clutch the tiny souvenir of a trip that never was, run across the open space to Evan, and never look back.