The Sandcastle Sister (8 page)

D
URING THE THIRTY-MINUTE DRIVE HOME,
I couldn’t decide whether to develop new theories, scream like a banshee, or just break down in tears. Rounding icy curves as the headlights glinted against mounds of dirty snow, I had the urge to let go of the wheel, close my eyes, and just stay wherever the car came to rest . . . until the cold or carbon monoxide put an end to all of this. In some logical part of my brain, I knew that was an overreaction, but the idea of going broke and taking my cousin with me was beyond unbearable.

There has to be a way out. There has to be something I can do . . .

Yet no miraculous possibilities came to mind. Finally, the icebound waters of Lake Michigan glinted through the trees, and I looked toward it, seeking the comfort its shores usually provided. This time, all I could see was a vision of myself, floating cold and silent beneath the surface.

Stop.
That.
The words in my head were a reprimand, strong and determined like my mother’s voice.
You are not your father.

But occasionally over the years, I had wondered
 
—was there, inside me, the same demon that had taken him from us before I was six years old? Before I even knew him as more than a feeling, a snatch of sound, a mist of memory?

Could I, without even seeing it ahead of time, come to a place where giving up seemed the best option?

How was the thought even possible for me, knowing firsthand the pain a decision like that left behind? Knowing what happened in the aftermath when a person you loved entered the cold waters and swam out to sea with no intention of returning to shore?

Someone should tell the dead that saving the living isn’t as simple as leaving a note to say,
It’s no one’s fault.
For the living, it’s always someone’s fault.

Turning onto the cabin road, I cleared my head and felt the tears beginning to come, seeking to cleanse. Tears felt like the only thing I had left. They swelled and pounded in my throat as I drew closer to the little lake cabin that had been home since I’d moved back to Michigan. Fortunately, Mrs. Doyne, who lived in the house out front, kept her cabin rentals at 1950s prices. She was more interested in having responsible, long-term tenants than in making money off the property.

Dressed in her nightgown and probably ready to turn in, she waved from behind a picture window as I passed by the house. One of her ever-present crossword puzzles dangled in her hand.

I had the random realization that even Mrs. Doyne would be hurt if I walked onto the softening ice of Lake Michigan, however far it would take to fall through.
Get your act together, Whitney Monroe,
she’d probably say.
Life goes on.
Mrs. Doyne had survived the death of her husband of fifty years, her one true love. She worked in her gardens, volunteered all over the area, and mentored a Girl Scout troop. She had the best attitude of any person I’d ever met.

There was a time when I was more like her
 
—tough, determined, on a mission and fairly invulnerable to the twists and turns of life. I’d opened world-class kitchens, driven others to keep up the pace, never let myself get rattled when a newbie on a hot line scorched a sauce or a waiter dropped a tray. I’d dealt with corporate higher-ups who weren’t much different from Tagg Harper
 
—bloated, self-important personalities bent on showing the world how special they were.

I usually handled things well. I typically had things under control.

But what I’d never been faced with, what I’d avoided my entire adult life, was the very thing that had been squeezing me dry these past months. I’d never allowed someone else’s wellbeing to be dependent on my own. Even during a short marriage that had both begun and ended with disaster, I’d maintained my own finances, kept my own life, and so had David. Both of us seemed to prefer it that way. I’d never been faced with the knowledge that my choices, my actions, my
failure
would destroy another person’s life.

Turning off the car, I rested my head against the steering wheel as the cold needled through the windows and the engine’s chugs settled to dull metallic pings. A sob wrenched the air and I heard it before I felt it. The wheezing, hopeless sound seemed as though it belonged to someone else, but the hot moisture trails on my skin said otherwise.

A breath heaved inward, stung my throat. Another sob pressed out. I lifted my head, let it bump against the steering wheel, thought,
Stop, stop, stop!

The knock on the window struck me like an electrical pulse, catapulting me upright. Beyond the blurry haze, I made out Mrs. Doyne’s silhouette against the security lamps, the fur-lined hood of her coat catching the light and giving her a fluffy halo.

My emotions scattered like rabbits, leaving behind only two that I could identify
 
—horror and embarrassment. I didn’t want
anyone
to see me like this, least of all Mrs. Doyne. It would only worry her. She’d been an angel to me these past few years, and even though I’d tried to keep my financial situation under wraps as Bella Tazza 2 imploded, she knew things were bad. Last month, she’d offered to wait for the rent if I needed her to.

Like everyone else in town, she wasn’t aware of the whole story. All she knew was that we’d had some trouble with the inspections on the new restaurant. I was careful not to reveal more. Mrs. Doyne was related to Tagg Harper and clearly thought a lot of him. The truth about Tagg’s underhanded dealings would only hurt her. Mrs. Doyne’s deceased husband had been one of Tagg’s favorite uncles and ice-fishing buddies.

Pretending to reach for my keys in the ignition, I wiped my eyes and then rolled down the window, hoping she wouldn’t notice what a mess I was. Apparently it was obvious, even in the dark.

“Oh, honey,” she touched my shoulder, and I clenched against another rush of tears. “I guess you heard.”

I nodded, a rueful, sadistic laugh forcing itself into the air. I watched it billow and disappear. She
knew
? Had she known all along? Had she been in on all of this
 
—offering me a good deal on the cabin, being so understanding when the rent was late, as a way of . . . what . . . keeping an eye on me?

Was she just one more local, helping to make sure that this county and everything in it continued to belong to people with ties to the Harper family?

“I’m sorry. . . .” She seemed to leave the sentence unfinished, its meaning a mystery. What was she
sorry
for?

Even the question hurt. Over the last five years, I’d come to think of her almost as a substitute for my mother. They enjoyed all the same things. They both loved music. They both played the violin. They had the same Upper Peninsula accent. Being around Mrs. Doyne was like having my mom back again. Mrs. Doyne was even a cancer survivor. Someone strong enough to defeat the disease that had taken Mom five years ago. It was after her funeral that Denise and I had reconnected and spent a long night talking about life, dreams, and Denise’s struggle to pay Mattie’s medical bills after her ex-husband refused to keep up the child support. Suddenly, the unexpected offer on my restaurant in Dallas made sense. All of it seemed meant to be.

“Come on inside,” Mrs. Doyne’s hand circled my arm, as if she meant to forcibly lift me out the window. “You look like you need a spot of hot tea.”

I didn’t argue. I didn’t have the energy. I just went along.

Inside, the house smelled of cats, baseboard heat, and plants in fresh pots. When spring finally came, Mrs. Doyne’s garden would be half-grown in the sunroom. How could anyone who lovingly nursed the tender shoots of new life possibly be in on Tagg Harper’s dirty dealings? The bully was getting the best of me again, making me paranoid. I couldn’t let someone like Tagg harden me, make me lose hope in other people. Good people. People like Mrs. Doyne.

“Sit,” she said, leading me to a sofa space between three curled-up cats. “Let me put the water on.”

Sinking down with my cold fingers tucked between my knees, I let my head fall back, closed my eyes, tried to think. A cat crawled into my lap, nestled there and toyed with the zipper on my coat, its soft purr a lull of comfort.

“I tried to call you earlier when I got the message,” Mrs. Doyne’s voice seemed far away.

Another month . . . can we hang on another month? There has to be some way to get the money. . . .

My mind was racing again. Turning over options, and options, and options. Running into brick wall, after brick wall, after brick wall, and then the biggest one of all
 
— the fact that if we went any further with all of this, we risked losing everything.

You can’t do that to Denise. You can’t do that to Denise, and Mattie, and Grandma Daisy.

“I say . . . I tried to call you on your cell phone when the message came,”

Mrs. Doyne’s words broke through the din.

“Message?”

The teapot whistled, the high, shrill sound causing the cats to stir.

A spoon clinked, the refrigerator door opened and closed. Cream and sugar. Mrs. Doyne knew. We’d shared more than a few cups of tea these past few years.

“It sounded as if the man had no idea where else to call. I would’ve passed your mobile number along to him, but he left a message on the recorder while I was at the market. I suppose he found your number and called you directly?”

Her slippers shuffled against the wooden floors as she reentered the living room and handed over my tea. The cup was warm, comforting, its chamomile scent sinking in. “I left my phone in the car all afternoon.” I didn’t tell her I’d done that to avoid the constant flurry of bill collectors chasing me down for overdue payments.

Mrs. Doyne delivered a perplexed look, settling into her recliner. “I know it isn’t the sort of news you need right now, what with your restaurant struggles.” Her head inclined sympathetically, her eyes compassionate behind thick glasses. “Are you close?”

“Close?”

“To your stepfather.” Frowning, she looked into her teacup, as if she might find the answers there. “I assumed not, given that the neighbor couldn’t find the number to your cell phone in his home.”

“My
stepfather
?” The words struck like a ricochet baseball, drilling some unsuspecting fan in the head. I hadn’t seen my mother’s late-in-life husband since her funeral.

He’d had my phone number at the time, but he had no doubt thrown it away since then.

It was no accident that my stepfather’s neighbor couldn’t find my cell phone number among his belongings. The man wanted nothing to do with me.

“Mrs. Doyne, I’m completely lost here. I haven’t heard from my stepfather in almost five years. There’s no reason he’d be getting in touch, believe me.”

“Oh . . .” A hand-to-chest look of surprise. “When I saw you crying in the car, I just assumed the message had gotten through to you. I’m sorry to be the deliverer of such news. The call was from your stepfather’s neighbor in North Carolina . . . the Outer Banks, I believe he said. He thought you should know of the situation. Apparently, your stepfather is in the hospital. He took a fall in the bathroom . . . and he laid there for nearly four days before anyone found him.”

W
HEN TROUBLE BLOWS IN,
my mind always reaches for a single, perfect day in Rodanthe. The memory falls over me like a blanket, a worn quilt of sand and sky, the fibers washed soft with time. I wrap it around myself, picture the house along the shore, its bones bare to the wind and the sun, the wooden shingles clinging loosely, sliding to the ground now and then, like scales from some mythical sea creature washed ashore. Overhead, a hurricane shutter dangles by one nail, rocking back and forth in the breeze, protecting an intact window on the third story. Gulls swoop in and out, landing on the salt-sprayed rafters
 
—scavengers come to pick at the carcass left behind by the storm.

Years later, after the place was repaired, a production company filmed a movie there. A love story.

But to me, the story of that house, of Rodanthe, will always be the story of a day with my grandfather. A safe day.

When I squint long into the sun off the water, I can see him yet. He is a shadow, stooped and crooked in his overalls and the old plaid shirt with the pearl snaps. The heels of his worn work boots hang in the air as he balances on the third-floor joists, assessing the damage. Calculating everything it will take to fix the house for its owners.

He’s searching for something on his belt. In a minute, he’ll call down to me and ask for whatever he can’t find.
Tandi, bring me that blue tape measure
, or
Tandi Jo, I need the green level, out in the truck. . . .
I’ll fish objects from the toolbox and scamper upstairs, a little brown-haired girl anxious to please, hoping that while I’m up there, he’ll tell me some bit of a story. Here in this place where he was raised, he is filled with them. He wants me to know these islands of the Outer Banks, and I yearn to know them. Every inch. Every story. Every piece of the family my mother has both depended on and waged war with.

Despite the wreckage left behind by the storm, this place is heaven. Here, my father talks, my mother sings, and everything is, for once, calm. Day after day, for weeks. Here, we are all together in a decaying sixties-vintage trailer court while my father works construction jobs that my grandfather has sent his way. No one is slamming doors or walking out them. This place is magic
 
—I know it.

We walked in Rodanthe after assessing the house on the shore that day, Pap-pap’s hand rough-hewn against mine, his knobby driftwood fingers promising that everything broken can be fixed. We passed homes under repair, piles of soggy furniture and debris, the old Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station, where the Salvation Army was handing out hot lunches in the parking lot.

Outside a boarded-up shop in the village, a shirtless guitar player with long blond dreadlocks winked and smiled at me. At twelve years old, I fluttered my gaze away and blushed, then braved another glance, a peculiar new electricity shivering through my body. Strumming his guitar, he tapped one ragged tennis shoe against a surfboard, reciting words more than singing them.

     
Ring the bells bold and strong

     
Let all the broken add their song

     
Inside the perfect shells is dim

     
It’s through the cracks, the light comes in. . . .

I’d forgotten those lines from the guitar player, until now.

The memory of them, of my grandfather’s strong hand holding mine, circled me as I stood on Iola Anne Poole’s porch. It was my first indication of a knowing, an undeniable sense that something inside the house had gone very wrong.

I pushed the door inward cautiously, admitting a slice of early sun and a whiff of breeze off Pamlico Sound. The entryway was old, tall, the walls white with heavy gold-leafed trim around rectangular panels. A fresh breeze skirted the shadows on mouse feet, too slight to displace the stale, musty smell of the house. The scent of a forgotten place. Instinct told me what I would find inside. You don’t forget the feeling of stepping through a door and understanding in some unexplainable way that death has walked in before you.

I hesitated on the threshold, options running through my mind and then giving way to a racing kind of craziness.
Close the door. Call the police or . . . somebody. Let someone else take care of it.

You shouldn’t have touched the doorknob
 
—now your fingerprints will be on it. What if the police think you did something to her? Innocent people are accused all the time, especially strangers in town. Strangers like you, who show up out of the blue and try to blend in . . .

What if people thought I was after the old woman’s money, trying to steal her valuables or find a hidden stash of cash? What if someone really
had
broken in to rob the place? It happened, even in idyllic locations like Hatteras Island. Massive vacation homes sat empty, and local boys with bad habits were looking for easy income. What if a thief had broken into the house thinking it was unoccupied, then realized too late that it wasn’t? Right now I could be contaminating the evidence.

Tandi Jo, sometimes I swear you haven’t got half a brain.
The voice in my head sounded like my aunt Marney’s
 
—harsh, irritated, thick with the Texas accent of my father’s family, impatient with flights of fancy, especially mine.

“Mrs. Poole?” I leaned close to the opening, trying to get a better view without touching anything else. “Iola Anne Poole? Are you in there? This is Tandi Reese. From the little rental cottage out front. . . . Can you hear me?”

Again, silence.

A whirlwind spun along the porch, sweeping up last year’s pine straw and dried live oak leaves. Loose strands of hair swirled over my eyes, and my thoughts tangled with it, my reflection melting against the waves of leaded glass
 
—flyaway brown hair, nervous blue eyes, lips hanging slightly parted, uncertain.

What now? How in the world would I explain to people that it’d taken me days to notice there were no lights turning on and off in Iola Poole’s big Victorian house, no window heat-and-air units running at night when the spring chill gathered? I was living less than forty yards away. How could I not have noticed?

Maybe she was sleeping
 
—having a midday nap
 
—and by going inside, I’d scare her half to death. From what I could tell, my new landlady kept to herself. Other than groceries being delivered and the UPS and FedEx trucks coming with packages, the only signs of Iola Poole were the lights and the window units going off and on as she moved through the rooms at different times of day. I’d only caught sight of her a time or two since the kids and I had rolled into town with no more gas and no place else to go. We’d reached the last strip of land before you’d drive off into the Atlantic Ocean, which was just about as far as we could get from Dallas, Texas, and Trammel Clarke. I hadn’t even realized, until we’d crossed the North Carolina border, where I was headed or why. I was looking for a hiding place.

By our fourth day on Hatteras, I knew we wouldn’t get by with sleeping in the SUV at a campground much longer. People on an island notice things. When a real estate lady offered an off-season rental, cheap, I figured it was meant to be. We needed a good place more than anything.

Considering that we were into April now, and six weeks had passed since we’d moved into the cottage, and the rent was two weeks overdue, the last person I wanted to contact about Iola was the real estate agent who’d brought us here, Alice Faye Tucker.

Touching the door, I called into the entry hall again. “Iola Poole? Mrs. Poole? Are you in there?” Another gust of wind danced across the porch, scratching crape myrtle branches against gingerbread trim that seemed to be clinging by Confederate jasmine vines and dried paint rather than nails. The opening in the doorway widened on its own. Fear shimmied over my shoulders, tickling like the trace of a fingernail.

“I’m coming in, okay?” Maybe the feeling of death was nothing more than my imagination. Maybe the poor woman had fallen and trapped herself in some tight spot she couldn’t get out of. I could help her up and bring her some water or food or whatever, and there wouldn’t be any need to call 911. First responders would take a while, anyway. There was no police presence here. Fairhope wasn’t much more than a fish market, a small marina, a village store, a few dozen houses, and a church. Tucked in the live oaks along Mosey Creek, it was the sort of place that seemed to make no apologies for itself, a scabby little burg where fishermen docked storm-weary boats and raised families in salt-weathered houses. First responders would have to come from someplace larger, maybe Buxton or Hatteras Village.

The best thing I could do for Iola Anne Poole, and for myself, was to go into the house, find out what had happened, and see if there was any way I could keep it quiet.

The door was ajar just enough for me to slip through. I slid past, not touching anything, and left it open behind me. If I had to run out of the place in a hurry, I didn’t want any obstacles between me and the front porch.

Something shifted in the corner of my eye as I moved deeper into the entry hall. I jumped, then realized I was passing by an arrangement of fading photographs, my reflection melting ghostlike over the cloudy glass. In sepia tones, the images stared back at me
 
—a soldier in uniform with the inscription
Avery 1917
engraved on a brass plate. A little girl with pipe curls on a white pony. A group of people posed under an oak tree, the women wearing big sun hats like the one Kate Winslet donned in
Titanic
. A wedding photo from the thirties or forties, the happy couple in the center, surrounded by several dozen adults and two rows of cross-legged children. Was Iola the bride in the picture? Had a big family lived in this house at one time? What had happened to them? As far as I could tell, Iola Poole didn’t have any family now, at least none who visited.

“Hello . . . hello? Anyone up there?” I peered toward the graceful curve of the long stairway. Shadows melted rich and thick over the dark wood, giving the stairs a foreboding look that made me turn to the right instead and cross through a wide archway into a large, open room. It would have been sunny but for the heavy brocade curtains. The grand piano and a grouping of antique chairs and settees looked like they’d been plucked from a tourist brochure or a history book. Above the fireplace, an oil portrait of a young woman in a peach-colored satin gown hung in an ornate oval frame. She was sitting at the piano, posed in a position that appeared uncomfortable. Perhaps this was the girl on the pony from the hallway photo, but I wasn’t sure.

The shadows seemed to follow me as I hurried out of the room. The deeper I traveled into the house, the less the place resembled the open area by the stairway. The inner sections were cluttered with what seemed to be several lifetimes of belongings, most looking as if they’d been piled in the same place for years, as if someone had started spring-cleaning multiple times, then abruptly stopped. In the kitchen, dishes had been washed and stacked neatly in a draining rack, but the edges of the room were heaped with stored food, much of it contained in big plastic bins. I stood in awe, taking in a multicolored waterfall of canned vegetables that tumbled haphazardly from an open pantry door.

Bristle tips of apprehension tickled my arms as I checked the rest of the lower floor. Maybe Iola wasn’t here, after all. The downstairs bedroom with the window air unit was empty, the single bed fully made. Maybe she’d gone away somewhere days ago or been checked into a nursing home, and right now I was actually breaking into a vacant house. Alice Faye Tucker had mentioned that Iola was ninety-one years old. She probably couldn’t even climb the stairs to the second story.

I didn’t want to go up there, but I moved toward the second floor one reluctant step at a time, stopping on the landing to call her name once, twice, again. The old balusters and treads creaked and groaned, making enough noise to wake the dead, but no one stirred.

Upstairs, the hallway smelled of drying wallpaper, mold, old fabric, water damage, and the kind of stillness that said the rooms hadn’t been lived in for years. The tables and lamps in the wood-paneled hallway were gray with dust, as was the furniture in five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a sewing room with a quilt frame in the middle, and a nursery with white furniture and an iron cradle. Odd-shaped water stains dotted the ceilings, the damage recent enough that the plaster had bowed and cracked but only begun to fall through. An assortment of buckets sat here and there on the nursery floor, the remnants of dirty water and plaster slowly drying to a paste inside. No doubt shingles had been ripped from the roof during last fall’s hurricane. It was a shame to let a beautiful old house go to rot like this. My grandfather would have hated it. When he inspected historic houses for the insurance company, he was always bent on saving them.

A thin watermark traced a line down the hallway ceiling to a small sitting area surrounded by bookshelves. The door on the opposite side, the last one at the end of the hall, was closed, a small stream of light reflecting off the wooden floor beneath it. Someone had passed through recently, clearing a trail in the silty layer of dust on the floor.

“Mrs. Poole? Iola? I didn’t mean to scare
 
—”

A rustle in the faded velvet curtains by the bookshelves made me jump, breath hitching in my chest as I drew closer.

A black streak bolted from behind the curtain and raced away. A cat. Mrs. Poole had a cat. Probably the wild, one-eared tom that J.T. had been trying to lure to our porch with bowls of milk. I’d told him to quit
 
—we couldn’t afford the milk
 
—but a nine-year-old boy can’t resist a stray. Ross had offered to bring over a live trap and catch the cat. Good thing I’d told him not to worry about it. Letting your new boyfriend haul off your landlady’s pet is a good way to get kicked out of your happy little home, especially when the rent’s overdue.