The Bookshop at Water's End Read online

  I’d made a notebook with a list of things that needed to be fixed or painted or caulked or replaced in the house. And with each duty crossed off, I knew I would feel a little more in control, a little more like life could be handled even when of course it couldn’t.

  Ten miles from Watersend, an ambulance roared behind me with its lights flashing. With the siren’s wail, the world shriveled to the size of my car, the red lights bouncing off the side mirrors and streaking into my backseat through the rear window. The ambulance was in my car, in my throat, in my head. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t drive. I forgot what to do. A great horn blew and a calm voice inside of me whispered, Pull over. Now.

  I jerked the car to the side of the road and slammed on my brakes. The wheels skidded into the soft mud of the road’s shoulder and my head lurched forward. The ambulance passed, but the sound and the fear remained, echoing like a war cry inside my chest. My heart beat high and into my throat. I couldn’t take a full breath, and my head floated. Gasping for air, I opened the car door. I bent over my knees.

  Deep breaths. I’d learned this. Breathe in for four. Hold for two. Out for six. Slow. Slow. Wrap my arms around myself. Mantra: All is well. I am safe.

  Even as I knew what was happening—a panic attack—I couldn’t make it disappear. Knowing what it is doesn’t cure it. Slowly, and I didn’t know how long it took, I gained some control of my breathing and my heart. I closed the car door, leaned my head on the car’s headrest and allowed the tears to rise. This had to stop. I would never be able to be a doctor again, no matter the verdict, if I couldn’t stand the sight or sound of an ambulance or phone or bell.

  My mouth felt parched, but the water bottle next to me had been drained miles back. I was only a few miles away from the place where I could sit on the dock and watch the river, find my breath again.

  Pulling into town, I drove to the Watersend sign, weathered and wooden with carved letters that stated, Welcome to Watersend, South Carolina, and parked. The ubiquitous South Carolina flag symbol—a palmetto tree and a crescent moon—was carved into the wood, dark blue and fading in places.

  I stepped out of the car and walked to the sign. The unrelenting rain smattered against my glasses, so the world showed dimpled and misty. Rain pecked at my bare skin and slithered down my shirt. I touched the sign in the same ritual my parents had done when they left each summer, believing it meant they would be back soon. An omen. A touchstone. The wood was warm and wet, softened by years of sun and weather and generations of families stopping their cars at the bend in the road to rub their hands across its edge.

  With that touch, I was thirteen years old again, on the cusp of all the good things in the world, all the possibility and wonder and million chances for happiness. Blue Popsicle juice stained my cheeks and sand was crusted on my hands and the soles of my feet. My skin was prickly and tender with sunburn while I sat around a bonfire and whispered secrets with my Summer Sister, Lainey.

  chapter 10

  BONNY BLANKENSHIP

  Landscape was memory or maybe memory was landscape. This was what I thought as I drove along the short road to the old house.

  Our three childhood summers in Watersend had been more than sun-soaked ellipses between school years, more than vacation. Those days held the making of me. Summers in the river house had cracked me open. I’d fallen in love for the first time; I’d found my first best friend. I’d come to love books as something more than words. I’d seen my parents as people instead of just parents. For the first time, I’d deeply felt the pain and irreversible despair of losing someone.

  So, there I was again: the river house.

  The rain spit its last as I parked in front of it. I’d spent my early summers inside this marsh-soaked seascape, in this rambling old river house. I was eleven years old when we’d come here for the first time. Mom and Dad had inherited some family money when Granny passed. It hadn’t been enough money to allow them to quit their jobs as a second-grade teacher and an advertising exec, but enough to buy a small house where Dad could come from Atlanta to fish, net shrimp and drive his little johnboat; where Mom could read her paperbacks on the porch and invite her friends to hang out; where my little brother and I could run free and safe during the stifling days of high summer. It had been an escape from the city in a town no one had yet discovered.

  So much time had passed and all the while the old river house had stood watch over an ever-changing marsh, which was held together by sand and tidal mud. The same front porch, where we used to play checkers, still spread across the front and then bent around the left side. Rocking chairs painted white and blue were scattered in little clusters across the warped planking like gossiping old ladies. The front door was the same color my parents had painted it all those years ago. Haint blue. It was a white one-story beach cottage with a high-pitched roof. It spread both wide and deep, the back end stretching as if reaching, as we all did, for the river. The windows were open to every view, unblinking.

  This sanctuary was a living heartbeat between the river behind it and the ocean across the street, a halfway point. It wasn’t just wood and shutters and doors and porches. It had its own thoughts and memories, as if we shared something whispered and secret. It remembered me just as I remembered it; I was sure.

  Lainey had always told me that houses breathed just as we do, that they held secrets and energy and molded themselves around their owners. Or was it that their owners molded themselves around the house? I couldn’t remember.

  While I stared at the house from inside my car, Piper opened the front door and came onto the porch with her hands on her hips like an irate homeowner waiting on a late delivery. I’d imagined her seeing Sea La Vie and loving it as I once had as a child. I’d imagined her eyes lighting up at the way the house seemed to reach for the river and open its front door and windows. “Mom,” she’d said in my musings. “It’s so perfect.”

  Yeah, right.

  I eased the car down the driveway of gravel and stone to the garage. To my surprise, as I shifted the gear into park and stepped out of the car, Piper came to me. To me! I didn’t have to go to her. And she hugged me. “Hey, Mom.”

  “Oh, Piper. You look so lovely.” Her chestnut-colored hair was nature-painted with sun-blond strands, and her ponytail fell loose over one shoulder.

  “Oh, right, Mom. Whatever.”

  “God, it’s humid today,” I said as the last of the cool air from the car’s air conditioner faded away. “That rainstorm makes everything feel like a sauna.”

  “Mom, it’s June. Yes, it’s hot. I think it will be for a while.”

  I hugged her again, and this time I held her until she let go.

  “Help me carry in my luggage?” I asked.

  “Sure thing.”

  Together we carried in my suitcases and then faced each other in the kitchen. “We can empty the rest of the car later.” I touched her cheek. “Beautiful you,” I said. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “I had a choice?” She smiled but suppressed it quickly to add an eye roll. She lifted a Coke bottle, sweating in the heat of the kitchen, and chugged it like water. I ran my hand along the worn table, a long farmhouse table, made from reclaimed wood, which I’d found at an antique mart. The aroma of fresh paint and oiled wood seeped into the wet air. Everything here was new and old at the same time.

  “So, you’ve been here two whole days already. What do you think of the town?” I asked. “Do you just love it?” Hope, it springs eternal or something like that.

  “It’s okay.” Piper shrugged. “I mean, all I did was drag that ridiculous cart into town to grocery shop. I’ve cleaned up and made the beds. You know, all the things on your infernal list. It’s not like I’ve had any fun or anything.”

  “Have you seen the beach yet? Or gone to the dock?” I glanced out the kitchen window into the backyard. There it was—the blue-gray ribbon of river that hau
nted my memories and ran through my dreams.

  “I went to the dock. That little metal boat.” She pointed in the general direction. “Is that ours?”

  “Yup.”

  “It’s kind of a mess.”

  “It works,” I said. “We just need to clean it.”

  “And when you say ‘we’ I bet you mean me. I bet that’s part of my job, too. Clean scum. And the doors that don’t close? And the broken spindles on the porch? And the missing cedar shakes and . . .”

  “Yes,” I said. “We will save it all.”

  “You mean fix, right?”

  “I mean both.” I took Piper’s face between my hands. “I mean both.” I kissed her forehead.

  She shrugged away from me and then reached for the refrigerator door, opening it. “Voila.”

  There it was—four shelves labeled and organized like a photo shoot for a Martha Stewart exhibit. Small pieces of paper were each inside a Baggie taped to each shelf: Mom and Piper, Lainey, Kids and then Condiments.

  “Piper. It’s perfect.”

  “Right-o, Mom. And p.s., your phone is blowing up over there.” Her lips pressed close together and turned downward. “And who is Owen?”

  A beat or two passed before I could answer. I’d turned off the sound, but the screen was lighting up with his name. “An old friend,” I said and concentrated on moving slowly. My hands shook, and I took two steps to the kitchen table and my phone.

  I hadn’t spoken to Owen since the “incident.” I couldn’t. He’d tried to contact me numerous times over the past weeks, again and again he’d tried, but whenever I thought of hearing his voice, I felt sick with panic, the night coming back to me as a living nightmare.

  “An old friend?” Piper crinkled her little forehead like she did when she was confused with her homework. An integer? A chromosome? A mitochondrion?

  “Yes.” I turned off the phone. “Obviously I don’t want to talk.”

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  “Let’s take a look at our little palace. I’m so proud of you for getting everything ready.” My voice sounded canned, like a voice-mail greeting at a lawyer’s office. Leave a message at the beep. I’m so proud of you.

  That was the problem with Owen, or just his name—it threw me off balance, like a sickness or a shot of tequila.

  Together Piper and I went from room to room, and I yanked my thoughts back; they were like a stray puppy jumping around barking, What does he want? Where is he? Is he okay?

  “I washed all the sheets, in that soap you sent with me, and made the beds.” Piper opened the door to the first bedroom and spread her arms wide to show me the room with the all-white linens and comforter. There were two bedside tables with silver lamps and little white milk glass vases with a single peony in each: simple beauty. We went through each room as she described what she’d done to get it ready.

  “When do Lainey and the kids get here?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “If this is all you need until they show up to further ruin my life . . . I’m going to the beach. Finally.”

  “Ruin your life?” I bit back my internal comment. You seem to be doing that just fine on your own. Instead I smiled because that was what I did when the alternative meant another awful confrontation. “Before the beach, why don’t we run into town and eat lunch?”

  “Well,” Piper said, “there’s the café right next to the market. But I’ve been there already.”

  “Really?” I smiled at her. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out in only two days.”

  “Mom. Seriously? The town is about as big as my hand. Not much to figure out.”

  “Well, then let’s go. Beach, river and unpacking after we eat. Okay?”

  Piper hesitated in that way that let me know she had something to say but just wasn’t sure how to say it. “Where’s Dad?” She risked a glance at me. “I mean . . . is he okay?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t know. But I know he’d love to hear from you.”

  “This is weird. You know that, right?”

  “I know.”

  “There’s no way, no matter what photos you bring here”—she gestured with black-polished fingernails, to the wall where I’d framed and hung pictures of us from various stages of life—“or what candles or what linens, that this will ever feel like home.”

  “We won’t be here long, sweetie. I have to sell it soon. I’m just doing the best I can to make it feel as much like home as possible for now.”

  “And you left Gus at home. How mean is that? Couldn’t you have at least brought him?”

  “Dad would have come to take him back. I had to leave Gus. You know that.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a leather-bound folder I’d been carrying around like a talisman. “Here’s our to-dos.”

  She glanced down and then opened the binder. “Paint the sitting room floorboards white. Replace rotten cedar shakes. Replace porch spindles. Most definitely fun, Mom. The best ever.” She read on. “Replace doorknobs. Are you kidding?”

  “No. I found some cut-glass ones at the antique show and . . .”

  “God, Mom. This is ridiculous.” She rolled her eyes but her empty stomach won her over. “Gimme twenty minutes. I’m going to shower and change,” she said. “Then we can go to lunch. I guess.”

  “Perfect.”

  In my bedroom I plopped onto the bed and pulled out my phone, turned it back on. I leaned against the simple pine headboard and, along with a bone-weary fatigue, I felt the house embrace me.

  “Do you remember us, too?” I whispered to the empty room. Sitting there, about to call Owen, I knew it did.

  chapter 11

  BONNY MORELAND

  eleven years old

  JUNE 1976

  It had all been done in secret, whispers behind closed doors because they’d wanted to surprise us. I was eleven years old so I had everything figured out. I was unruly and made of bent twigs, tripping over both myself and also everything else. My five-year-old brother, Percy, was all adorable, constantly amazed and alert to changes around him.

  The air conditioner in the woody station wagon was broken and although the windows were open, the breeze only circulated the muggy air. Percy lay on my lap in the backseat and I tried not to move. Mom was in the front seat, singing show tunes one after the other, and Dad was in such a good mood that he didn’t even ask her to stop.

  “What do you think it is?” Percy asked, wiggling his fingers through mine, winding and unwinding.

  “Obviously they rented a house for the summer,” I said. “The car is full of beach toys and stuff.”

  “Oh,” he said and curled on his side, his eyes already closing as the lull of the car sent him to sleep.

  I held on to his hand and wished I could rest. Instead I just felt carsick, a low, nagging feeling that only sleep could cure. I closed my eyes, wishing I could read my Nancy Drew book without throwing up. It would wait. If we really were going to the beach, as I’d confidently told Percy, I could read all day every day.

  The car rocked and Mom and Dad whispered and sometimes Mom laughed with a simple sound that made the world seem rounder and softer. I must have drifted off because I awoke to the lurch of the stopping car. Startled, I sat up.

  Dad had pulled the car over and stepped out into a patch of grass on the side of the road.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. Blurry with sleep and the slight sway of nausea, I opened the car door to get out, too. Maybe this was it. The Big Surprise.

  “Nothing’s wrong, Bee,” my mom said. “Nothing at all.” That was what she called me: Bee for Bonny Bee.

  With the door open, I swung my feet onto the soft grass. Dad’s back was to me as he stood in front of a wooden sign. Welcome to Watersend. He ran his hand across the top edge of it. We’d never been here; I’d never see
n this sign, and my heart did a quick step, just like I was scared, but I wasn’t. I was happy. This was a new something in the world. But I didn’t know yet what. There was an expectation like I was at the edge of a cliff and I would soon be able to fly.

  Dad turned then and saw me, and he smiled. “Welcome to Watersend.”

  “What is Watersend?” I asked, stretching, inhaling fresh, wet air.

  “A town. Our town,” he said.

  “Ours?”

  “Yes.” He sauntered over and picked me up and swung me around in a circle with his strong arms under mine. The air felt different, unlike the beaches we’d visited before. And I gulped it like water. It was ours, Dad said. Ours. Belonging to us.

  Back in the car, Percy and I watched the town breeze by our open windows. Cedar shake houses. Green lawns and water of every shade—blue, gray, greenish, sparkling, dark and clear—everywhere water twisted past, disappeared and then surprised us around another corner. This town seemed an island without a bridge. I was Peter Pan, or maybe Wendy. I was Jim Hawkins on Treasure Island. I was Lucy in Narnia. All adventure was mine. We’d left Atlanta only four hours before, in the late morning, and arrived in the middle of the day, but it still felt like a new day, another world.

  The car made a slow turn onto a side street and stopped in front of a sprawling white house. An orange moving van was parked out front, its back end open. Inside was a puzzle of furniture and lamps and boxes.

  Dad and Mom climbed out of the car and stood next to each other, facing the house. They linked arms. They didn’t usually link arms, and this was an anomaly I didn’t really understand, but I was willing to suspend my judgment to see what needed to be seen. So this was the Big Surprise?

  Percy and I fell out of the car—well, he fell out of the car and I lifted him and propped him on my hip. We stood next to Mom and Dad.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.