The Bookshop at Water's End Read online

  They unlinked their arms and turned to us. Dad took Percy from me and shimmied him onto his shoulders.

  “This,” Dad said in his loud proclaiming voice, the kind he used when he had a surprise or great news. “This is ours. Welcome to Sea La Vie, our new beach house.”

  “There’s no beach,” Percy said. “Just that river there.” He pointed behind the house to where a sliver of blue water ran like a ribbon. Tall grasses lined the banks, swaying like someone was running their hands through them.

  “Yes, that is the river, son. Where we will keep our boat and go fishing and shrimping and digging up oysters. So yes, let’s call it our river house.” He gestured across the street. “That,” he said, “is the beach, just one block thataway, up and over those dunes. Just a little path between us and wide open beach.”

  “I’m confused,” I said.

  Mom placed her hands on my shoulders. “This is our new house.”

  I looked at the house again and with new eyes. We weren’t staying here for a week and running through its rooms seeking treasure (a game we played at beach rentals). That U-Haul—it was full of our stuff for this house.

  “We’re moving here?” I didn’t know how to feel about that yet. It was all too new, too soaked with possibility.

  Mom laughed, which she didn’t do very much or very well, so I laughed, too.

  “No, it’s our summer place, silly. Our home away from home.”

  It’s a different thing to know something is yours when only a moment ago you didn’t know it existed at all. Percy and I, as if on cue, ran toward the house with the kind of glee we saved for rare snow days or Christmas morning.

  The house was empty that day. We ran from room to room, calling out each other’s names and proclaiming, “This is so cool. So cool. So cool.”

  By the time we came back outside, Mom and Dad were walking toward a car that had just parked next to ours. A family poured out of the car like a little replica of our family, except the boy was older than the girl. The boy was drowsy like he’d just fallen out of bed. His brown curls couldn’t decide which way to go and his smile was aimed directly at me, all lopsided like he knew a secret he wanted to tell. My stomach did a little flip like I’d come down too fast off the seesaw, and I avoided his gaze. The little girl was blond and dressed for a birthday party or church in her sundress, her pigtails so tight they must have been painful. I smiled at her, ready for a friend. I wore a little wrinkled sundress covered in white and yellow daisies—it was my favorite but suddenly felt babyish and silly.

  Using his proclamation voice again, Dad took my hand. “The surprises aren’t over yet,” he said.

  Percy jumped over and over, twisting like a five-year-old cyclone. “It’s the best house ever, Dad. Ever. There are all these little places and the floors are wood and the fireplace is huge. I can fit inside it . . .”

  Dad held his fingers to his lips, which meant shush.

  “I know, son. It’s perfect. But I want you to come here and meet the McKays. This is Clara and Bob, and their kids . . .” He faltered.

  Mrs. McKay spoke. “This is Owen; he’s thirteen. And this is our daughter, Lainey. She’s eleven.”

  They appeared so exotic, dressed as if they were going to a party, and yet they’d climbed out of a station wagon just like we had. The dad, Bob, looked like Burt Reynolds in that movie where he stole a car.

  Then there was the mom, Clara. She was like a glitzy model from a magazine. Her flowered sundress matched her daughter’s, and her platinum hair was piled high in a ponytail. Her large round sunglasses covered half her face and her scarlet-painted lips were smiling in that same way as her son, secretive and amused. Who on earth was this family and why were they parked in our front yard when I wanted to scream and yell and do cartwheels because we had a river house and it was all ours? I couldn’t act like that in front of glamorous strangers.

  I wanted to hug Mom and Dad, go crazy with happiness. Instead I tried not to stare at the drowsy, rumpled boy who made me feel self-conscious and nervous. They needed to hurry along wherever they were headed—probably a perfect house that should also be in a magazine.

  Mom sprang forward and hugged the woman so tightly that I wished she hugged me that way. “Isn’t this all so exciting? Just like the old days when we would road-trip together. Clara, I’m so happy you’re here.”

  Dad did this weird half handshake, half hug with the Burt Reynolds lookalike. “Welcome.”

  Mrs. McKay lifted her sunglasses and stared at the U-Haul. She swished her hand, with its bright red fingernails, through the air as if she were swimming. “Looks like we have our work set out for us.”

  Nothing was making sense. Did they own the house, too?

  Dad lifted Percy, who had started to make his way to the backyard, the one place we hadn’t yet explored.

  “This is our son, Percy.” Dad threw him in the air and then caught him. “And our daughter, Bonny.” He ruffled my already tangled hair. I swatted his hand away.

  “Kids, say hello to the McKay family. They’re our best friends from college and they’re here to help us unpack and to stay for a while.”

  Mrs. McKay lurched toward the house in tiny high heels, almost like the plastic ones my Barbie doll wore. When she stepped onto the porch, she swayed the littlest bit, like there was a strong wind coming from inside. She peeked over her shoulder as if posing for a photograph. “This is dreamy. Very, very dreamy.”

  We all watched her like it was a TV show and she was the star. Maybe she was. Or would be. Me, Clara McKay seemed to say. Look at me. And we did.

  chapter 12

  BONNY BLANKENSHIP

  I looked at my phone. Six missed calls. Owen hadn’t ever called that many times in a row. I slid my thumb to voice mail and clicked, but he hadn’t left a message.

  Text messages. I checked those. One.

  Call me.

  I texted back. I can’t talk right now.

  Find a way.

  I slipped into the bathroom and shut the door. I was behind two closed doors, and still I knew the house well enough to know that voices traveled through secret passages—the floorboards or a vent or a crack in the walls. I’d covered the old drywall with clapboard bleached oak, which was beautiful, but definitely not soundproof.

  All through childhood I’d heard things I wasn’t supposed to hear, little snippets disconnected from the context, severed from the sentences that came before or after, and I’d always been left to guess what the adults really meant.

  Owen answered on the first ring. “Hey, you,” he said.

  I fell into his voice. It was a surrendering, like exhaling, like falling asleep when you thought you might not. But I hid this from him and asked right off, “Are you okay?”

  “I am. Are you?” he asked with a laugh.

  “I’m in the house with Piper and . . .”

  “That’s why I’m calling. What house are you in?”

  “Watersend.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said with an exaggerated exhale. “You’re there with Piper?”

  “Yes. How did you find out?”

  “Lainey.”

  “You’ve talked to Lainey?” I asked.

  “Well, not really talked. She e-mailed me and she said you might be going back . . . but I haven’t checked in with her again.”

  “Of course you didn’t. Why would you keep in touch with her or . . .” I stopped. This was the rabbit hole I’d promised myself I would never go down again—where I battered us both with past mistakes, tried to solve them, pushed and prodded and attempted with sheer force of will to make things come out the way I wanted them to come out, to change what had already happened. I bit my tongue and tasted the metallic regret.

  “I miss you,” he said.

  “Owen . . .” I closed my eyes. “I know that’s not
why you called.”

  “I just wanted you to know. And I’ve been trying to call you. You never came back to check on me after the surgery and every time I asked for you, they said you were off that day. I thought you’d at least . . .”

  “Things really fell apart after that night, and I’m not working right now. I’m on sabbatical.”

  “You have to tell me what’s happening, Bonny. I have no idea what’s going on. Lainey wrote that you were going back to the river house, but that’s all she said. Are you ticked off that I didn’t tell you I was in town?”

  “You mean, am I mad I discovered you were in Charleston when you rolled in on a stretcher? No, that’s not it.”

  “I didn’t tell you because you told me not to contact you anymore. You told me to stay away. And I was doing what you asked.”

  “Kite boarding a few miles from my house is staying away?”

  “It was a competition. It could have been anywhere. I’ve done what you asked . . .”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s what happened that night. Owen, it’s a mistake that cost a life and a job I desperately wanted.” I stopped and slid to the tile floor in the bathroom, my knees drawn in a tented V where I could rest my forehead.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t talk to you about this. I just can’t. I’m here to try and gain my footing again. To save my own life.”

  “Okay. But you can’t go running back there to that old river house. You have to tell me what happened. Right now you have to tell me if it had anything to do with me.”

  “It wasn’t you. Or maybe it was, but it wasn’t your fault. I made a medical error, Owen. I gave another patient the same pain med I gave you, but it wasn’t . . . right. The dosage might have been off and he’d already had some and . . .” The electric panic started to bloom under my chest and I closed my eyes, took in a long breath. “I can’t talk about this. Not now. Not with you.”

  “Bonny, let me come to Watersend. I can be there by tomorrow.”

  “Please don’t. I’m here with my daughter and you are the last person I need to see.”

  “Don’t stay there, Bee. Don’t stay in Watersend. You can’t go backward like that. It’s not a good place for you or your daughter.”

  “I’m doing everything I know to do to save myself, Owen. Everything. And part of that is letting go of you. Of us.”

  “The place where my mother found herself in jail and then disappeared? Bonny. You could go anywhere, literally anywhere else. That is not the place for letting go.”

  “It is for me. You can run to the wilderness, or another country, or an ashram or an island, but I can’t settle into an old house?”

  “I just don’t want you to make things worse. You’ve said a million times you don’t understand why I am the way I am. Part of that reason is because of what happened there. What we lost there . . .”

  “But there was also goodness and simple beauty. And I’m here for that.”

  “There are other ways to build a new life. You don’t have to chase an old one.” His voice changed, the softness and need fading.

  “Owen, this is too hard for me. I have got to go.”

  “I love you, Bee. I miss you all the time.”

  He was the only one who called me Bee now. A secret language. A single-word tell-me-everything evoker. I had my defenses, the phrases I wanted to shout at him. If you loved me, you wouldn’t have disappeared when I needed you the most. If you loved me you would have left that wandering life for me . . . if, if, if . . .

  And that was where I stopped because somehow I’d always believed that if he loved me he would sacrifice his chosen life to be with me. It was a wrongheaded belief. And absolutely right. It was everything all at once.

  Silence was like the rain I’d driven there in, the slip-slap of it drowning out all thought until the ambulance had roared past.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  And then I hung up without waiting to hear his good-bye, with an echo of the questions I’d wanted to ask: Where are you? Will you come here if I ask?

  As a child in the river with his sister, I’d thought that it might be cheating to make two wishes, but there were only two things I’d wanted then, two things I’d thought I’d ever want: Owen and being a doctor. Of course my wishes would be different now, if I believed in wishes at all.

  chapter 13

  PIPER BLANKENSHIP

  Mimi stood on a ladder, shelving a handful of hardcover books in the “Local History” section, when the jingle of the door announced our arrival and she turned. Her face broke into a huge smile, and I almost wanted to run under the ladder in case her happiness made her fall.

  “Oh, Bonny Moreland. Welcome back,” she said. “And hello there, Piper.”

  She took a step down and headed toward us, and she hugged my mom, who looked stunned and frozen with her arms by her sides as hard and straight as branches.

  “Ms. Mimi,” my mom said. “You’re still here.” And then Mom seemed to regain the use of her body and she hugged Mimi back.

  “You’re surprised?” Mimi asked with a laugh.

  “No . . . I mean, yes. I guess I am.”

  “Well, look, you’re here now. I met your lovely daughter yesterday so I knew I’d see you eventually. When I first saw her all I could think about was your little Nancy Drew Club. She looks so much like you.”

  People often coo that I look like Mom, but I don’t. She’s prettier even though she’s older. She has such thick brown hair, all scattered with blond streaks like she colors it even though she doesn’t. Her round, dark blue, almost purple eyes look like they’ve been painted on, and I’m glad I have the same ones. She has this way, this kind of quiet way, of not drawing attention to herself in a crowd, and yet she will always be the one you remember when you leave.

  “You met?” Mom asked me.

  “I meant to tell you,” I said. “But we just kept talking about other things. But Mimi said she remembered you and Lainey—the Summer Sisters.”

  “Summer Sisters,” Mom said with a bit of sadness caught in her voice. “I thought I was the only one who remembered that.”

  “Oh, I don’t think you’re the only one.” Mimi rubbed her hands together in a swish-swish movement as if wiping dirt from her palms.

  “The store looks great,” Mom said. “I love how the books go to the ceiling now.” She pointed at the rolling ladder attached to a metal track above. “Is this the same space?”

  “Yes, same space, but in between your childhood and now, it was a couple other things before it was a bookshop again. I lost the store and started it back about two years ago.”

  “Thank goodness you reopened,” Mom said. “How did that happen?”

  “A story for another time,” Mimi said. “But it involves a movie producer, a love story and a little bit of magic.”

  “Wait. Yes. I heard about that,” Mom said. “Some movie was both filmed and premiered here a couple years ago. Some hotshot from California fell in love with a local girl or something.”

  “Yep. Ella and Blake. They still live here, and they helped me reopen the store. So, let’s do our best to keep it open.” She headed toward the counter. “What can I get for you today? Is there something you’re looking for?”

  “No. I always trust your recommendations.” Mom seemed to have a secret language with Mimi, as if they both knew something I didn’t.

  “How about a good mother/daughter story?” Mimi nodded at me.

  Then I remembered something Mom had told me once, a long time ago. We’d been at the library in Charleston and she told me about a woman who had known how to give her customers books that hinted at something they needed to know.

  “Sure,” Mom said. “Sounds great.” She reached over and pulled me into a one-
arm hug.

  “Hold on,” Mimi said. “I’ll be right back.”

  We waited as Mimi roamed in search of the perfect title. I picked up books and bookmarks and then placed them back down. Then I lifted a leather journal, bound together with a string and clasped shut with a green sea glass pendant. “Mom. Look at this.”

  “It’s gorgeous,” she said. “Want it?”

  “I do.”

  “That’s what I . . .” Mom started to tell me something and then brushed her hand through the air like she’d already forgotten what it was. “I just can’t help but think of any blank notebook as a promise of adventure.”

  “All right, then,” I said as Mimi returned.

  “Here you go.” Mimi extended a paperback with a bright cover showing a woman in caricature with oversized sunglasses. “Great book for both of you. It’s fun.”

  “Well, I definitely need fun,” I said.

  Mom came to my side and laughed. “Maybe that’s exactly what you don’t need.”

  And see? Right there was why Mom was such a pain in the ass. There was no reason for her to say that and embarrass me when everything was just fine. Now Mimi knew that I’d had too much fun. My face turned red just like it did when a teacher called my name or Ryan told me that my outfit looked slutty.

  Mom saw this because she sees everything, and she cringed. “Bad joke.”

  I was set to leave just as the bell jingled over the front door, and we all turned to see a woman enter. I barely noticed her beyond the obvious—she was tall and wore a tennis outfit, one of those cutesy pastel skirts and a tight athletic top. Her brassy blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she wore a white visor and sunglasses.

  Mimi toddled over to the woman and greeted her, but the woman stared at Mom.

  “Bonny?” she asked out loud. She’d taken off her sunglasses and was glancing between Mom and me, taking us in.

  “Yes.”

  “Bonny Moreland?”

  “Well, Blankenship now, but yes . . . Do I know you?”