The Bookshop at Water's End Read online

  “You did.” The woman stepped forward. She seemed to be my mom’s age but better preserved, if that was the polite way to say it. In other words, she’d had some work done, and not good work at that. Her lips were too big and slightly lopsided. Her forehead was smooth but lifted high so her eyes seemed too large and stunned. “I’m Margaret Edgars. We played together as kids in the summer.”

  Mom does well under pressure—otherwise she wouldn’t have made it a month in the emergency room—but she just stood there. Finally she said, “It was all so long ago.”

  “When did you get to town?” Margaret asked.

  “Just now, an hour ago . . .”

  “Well, it’s really good to see you.”

  Mom tried to laugh but it didn’t sound right at all. “How do you remember me? I can hardly remember last week.”

  “Oh . . .” The woman looked at Mimi as if she might help. “I saw you on TV. That’s all.”

  Poor Mom, it was bad enough that she might lose her job, but her biggest mistake had ended up on the news. At least my biggest mistakes stayed private, or on Facebook only.

  “TV.” Mom didn’t ask this but stated it. “Fantastic.”

  The woman laughed. “It’s nice to have you back in town. Let’s all try and get the old summer crowd together. Who was your little best friend?” The woman closed her eyes. “Elaine?”

  “Lainey,” I said. “She’s a famous artist now.” I didn’t know why I felt I needed to explain, but I wanted to shift the conversation somehow away from Mom.

  “Oh, I bet she is,” the woman said. “Well, I have a million errands. I just needed to grab a book for my little niece. I hope to see you around.” She walked toward the back of the store and Mom took a couple tentative steps to the checkout counter to buy my journal and the book Mimi gave us, which now I wanted to throw on the front table so we could just leave.

  “God, I was hoping I wouldn’t be recognized here,” Mom said. “So much for that.” Embarrassment crawled all over her like a rash.

  “TV?” Mimi asked. “You were on TV?”

  I felt the shudder of shame for my mom.

  “I’m an ER doctor in Charleston,” Mom said. “And there was an accident . . . it’s being investigated . . . and it’s been on TV.” This was the shortest explanation Mom had. I’d heard her give it before. If I were her I’d be shouting, I have saved a gazillion people and I didn’t do it on purpose and leave me the hell alone. But not Mom. She just took it.

  “Oh, Bonny,” Mimi said. “This must be a terrible time for you.”

  “It is,” Mom said. “All I’ve ever meant to do, or wanted to do, was save lives.”

  “Ah.” Mimi glanced upward as if trying to find something. “What was it our beloved Flannery O’Connor used to say? Oh, yes. ‘The life you save may be your own.’”

  As usual, I blurted before thinking. “It’s all bullshit. Mom is the best doctor in the world.”

  Mimi glanced at me and with a smile said, “Language.”

  “Sorry.” I cringed, suddenly ashamed of the words both inside my head and coming out of my mouth. “It’s just infuriating.”

  Mom deflected. “I don’t remember Margaret at all. Isn’t that awful?”

  “She was one of the little girls you played with back in those days. Her daddy was the mayor. Her mom was the real pretty one who always had all the parties during the summer.”

  Mom lifted her eyebrows and made that aha sound she sometimes does. “Oh, the rich, pretty girl with blond hair and a pony. A pony!” Mom shook her head. “And a huge backyard with a white picket fence.” Mom laughed and I felt the relief.

  We chatted a little more before exiting into the blazing heat. We walked in silence until she passed me and I called out, “Mom!”

  She stopped on the sidewalk and turned to me because she had roamed past me in some kind of daze. “What?”

  “Wake up. The café is right here. You missed it.”

  Inside, we sat at the table under a fan. The little café must not have been redecorated in a hundred years or more. It was like something in one of those old movies. Booths with red shiny material on the seats, tablecloths decorated with a tiny flower print and covered in some kind of oily coating. The salt and pepper shakers had tiny silver tops that looked like bullets. The menu was printed on a trifold piece of paper, stained and crinkled. “So what is all of this about the Nancy Drew Club?” I asked.

  “The Nancy Drew Club,” Mom repeated. “We didn’t call ourselves that. We called it the Girl Detectives Club. But yes, Nancy Drew inspired it. Back then, we didn’t have the Kardashians.”

  I did laugh at that. “I thought you were the Summer Sisters. Vowed to be there for each other forever. Girl Power and all that.”

  “We were both. All of the above.” She lifted the menu to glance at it and then back at me. “Anyway, we would run around town, find all these little mysteries and try to solve them. We had a notebook and we wrote about everything we saw. We nosed our way into things that weren’t any of our business and giggled and believed we were true snooping detectives.” She shook her head. “We had no idea that adults kept things secret for a reason.”

  “Not just adults, Mom.”

  “No, not just adults.” She seemed so sad, but then she smiled at me. “I wonder where that notebook is. I hadn’t thought of it at all until it was time to pack to move. Maybe Lainey has it. It would be fun to have it here and show you.”

  “I can’t believe Mimi remembers so much about you,” I said.

  “Well, we practically lived in her bookstore for three summers.” Mom’s face relaxed, which I hadn’t seen it do in weeks. “She always gave us the exact right book. And they weren’t just books to tick off a summer reading list—they were books meant for us. Little Women, Pippi Longstocking, Little House on the Prairie. Books that took us out of our small, small world and into larger ones, adventurous ones, where little girls could carve out their own fate. Books where girls weren’t just cute and nice, but maybe a little too loud, a little too much. Mimi offers you what you need, not what you want.”

  It was good to see Mom animated and talkative, and for the first time since “the mistake,” I felt some hope for her. She fanned out her menu, and I quickly glanced at my phone. I’d mastered the art of peering at the phone without being noticed. Or so I thought.

  “Sweetie,” Mom said, “I’m sure whatever that is, it can wait.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, and I hated and loved that she could read my hurt expression so quickly, so easily.

  “It’s Ryan,” I said. “He’s . . .” I couldn’t say it; the truth was too much out loud. Mom had met him. We’d dated for almost a year and I’d brought him home one fall break. But I didn’t need to finish the sentence for her to know.

  “Oh, sweetie. I know it hurts. I know . . .”

  Just then, the front door opened and a blast of hot air rushed in. This town sure was small. Fletch, the boy from the Market, saw me first. He strode toward us and waved even though we were right in front of him. It was an endearing nervous gesture, which made me grin. “Hi, Fletch.”

  “Hey!” He stood at the table and glanced between Mom and me. He carried a basket of tomatoes under his arm. Those damn eyes were killing me. “How’s it going?”

  “It’s going,” I said and placed my phone upside down on the table. “This is my mom. Mom, this is Fletch. His parents own the Market next door.”

  “Hello,” Mom said. “So lovely to meet you.”

  “Fletch helped me that first day when you sent me on that Sisyphus errand to get groceries.”

  He laughed. “Nothing like a good mythology reference.”

  I wanted to crawl under the table and pull the oily tablecloth over my head. Who talks about mythology in the middle of a casual conversation? He took a step
back and then forward, trying to decide where to stand. “It’s true,” he said. “That’s why we have a market. Just like poor Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the mountain, only to have it roll down again, for all eternity, you finish shopping only to start again.”

  “That market wasn’t here when I was young.” Mom smiled at Fletch.

  “I think it was a hardware store, or so I’m told.” He shrugged and then shifted the basket under his arm.

  “Is your family from here?” Mom asked.

  “Mom.” I flipped over my menu. “Stop interviewing him.” I peered up at Fletch.

  “No worries,” he said. “This is what it’s like to live in a small town.” He addressed Mom. “We moved here about ten years ago so Mom and Dad could open the store.”

  “I bet you love it here,” she said. “It’s such a beautiful place to live.”

  “It is,” he said. “And now I’m off for deliveries. It was nice to meet you, ma’am.”

  The waitress approached to take our order and greeted Fletch. He handed her the basket of tomatoes. “For Beatrice,” he said. “She had a tomato emergency in the kitchen.” He moved a step backward as if to leave and then threw me a parting gift. “See you soon, I hope.”

  I twisted my hair behind my neck and wrapped a rubber band from my wrist around the bunched tangles. “Oh, I’ll be around. Where else would I be? I’m trapped here all summer.”

  Mom waited until he was gone and we’d ordered and then she said, “What a nice kid. The most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yes, he seems nice so far. It’s not like I know him.”

  “And you’re trapped?”

  “Yes. Totally trapped. Mom, come on. I couldn’t leave if I wanted to. That’s the definition of trapped.”

  “Do you want to leave?”

  “Not sure. I’ll let you know when I decide.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Piper.”

  “What’s going to be okay?”

  “Everything,” Mom said.

  “Right, Mom. Just run away to an old house and that will fix everything. This wasn’t one of your best ideas, you know.”

  “It might be. Let’s give it a chance.” Mom took a deep, deep breath like she needed air in her toes and then said, “I need to tell you about Lainey’s mom before Lainey gets here tomorrow.”

  “Because people in town know about it? Is that why you asked if he was from here?”

  “No. Because I want you to know.”

  “Okay.”

  I’d heard hints through the years. I loved Lainey whenever I saw her—a hippie with the slight aroma of incense and oil paint surrounding her, and I’d wondered how she’d finished growing up without a mom. I hadn’t seen her since my freshman year in high school when she’d come to visit Mom for a weekend.

  “You know she lost her mom, right?”

  “Yes. But, I mean, is she dead or did she leave them or what? Nobody’s ever told me.”

  “We don’t know. When we were kids, thirteen years old, she left a note that said she was leaving and that was that. They never heard from her again.”

  “Literally never heard from her? That’s impossible in today’s world.”

  “No, it’s not. When you want to be gone you can be gone. And remember, it wasn’t today’s world. It was almost forty years ago.”

  “What happened?”

  Our chicken salad orders arrived with little tomato aspic blobs on the side of the plate wiggling like Jell-O. I poked my fork into it but didn’t take a bite yet. Mom pushed her plate aside as if she needed to tell this story without food.

  “Ms. Clara was so beautiful, and I adored her. I wanted to be like her. But she was an addict, frantic, always trying to find stillness and never able. I don’t know her history, and neither does Lainey, but something terrible must have happened in her childhood. She was diagnosed with anxiety, but it had to have been more than that, and she took Valium. And she drank. A lot.”

  “Maybe that’s why you’re so crazy sensitive about me drinking.”

  Mom smiled, but it was sad. She took a sip of her iced tea. “No. I’m crazy sensitive about your drinking because you’re my daughter and I don’t like you spending the night in the tank.”

  I blushed. “Got it. Go ahead.”

  “It got worse and worse—her drinking and her addiction and her outbursts. She went from manic to quiet. Then she stopped taking care of herself. I remember one night we all went out to dinner at the Crab Pot and she wore her nightgown, saying that everyone would think it was a sundress. She just stopped . . . caring. But then this awful night happened—there was a car wreck that was her fault, and she and her husband got in a terrible, terrible fight. We heard the whole thing. We’d seen and heard the fights before, but this time was the worst and he shouted something at her that no one will ever forget.”

  “I hate you?” I asked, knowing that might be the worst that could be said to me.

  “No. He told her that they would all be better off without her. And that was after he’d threatened to send her to a facility for help. And in 1970-something that meant shock treatments or worse.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Language.”

  I smiled.

  “After he told her that horrible, untrue thing, Ms. Clara wrote a note and left in the early morning while everyone was asleep. She took her clothes and some cash from the jar in the kitchen and that was that.”

  “God, poor Ms. Clara. Poor Lainey.”

  “And her brother, Owen.”

  “Owen is Lainey’s brother?” I’d never made this connection before. Now it made sense why his name appeared on her phone.

  Mom nodded.

  I took a bite of my lunch, and it felt like a piece of Styrofoam had been stuck inside my mouth. I wanted to spit it out, but I swallowed and chugged my Coke. “If someone told me they were better off without me, I would die.”

  “That’s what we think happened.”

  “Why?”

  “Lainey has hired detectives. She’s searched and searched. But she’s come up empty every time.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “Yes, it is.” Mom drew her plate forward and stuck a spoon into the salad, but only twirled it around. “When we were kids we used to make a list of all the places Clara might be. All the things that might have happened to her. It’s in our Girl Detective notebook. Who was she? Where was she? Another country? The bottom of the sea?”

  “That’s so awful and sad.”

  “They were all just guesses and we were kids. It was the year after the Son of Sam, and our minds were crazy with horrid possibilities. Lainey’s dad could have sent her away. She could have run off with the man who was fixing the roof—he disappeared at the same time. She could have overdosed, of course, and that was the most likely. But we had better scenarios.” Mom trailed off, her ideas gone.

  “Now all someone does is push the Find My Friends app and there I am. Or there Ryan is. Or there anyone is.”

  “Well, we didn’t have a find-your-friend app.”

  I laughed and Mom smiled, but Ms. Clara’s despair hung over the table, swirling under the ceiling fan like smoke. “That must have been awful. Is that why Grandma and Granddad never came back here?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you did.”

  “Not until now.” Mom nodded. “I loved it here. I’m giving it a chance.”

  “A chance,” I repeated.

  Mom glanced at her food and I reached into my back pocket and once more scanned my phone. I searched for the one text that might convince me that Ryan missed me and loved me best. And even as I hated myself for caring, I couldn’t stop.

  Poor Clara, not able to stop taking drugs, and not able to stay. To be told that the world would be better off without you might
be the worst I could imagine. I glanced at Mom, but she was staring off across the room, lost in her own story by then, as I was in mine.

  chapter 14

  LAINEY MCKAY

  JUNE 1977

  THE SECOND SUMMER

  WATERSEND, SOUTH CAROLINA

  The day my parents told us we would return to Sea La Vie again the next summer, I hung a Donny Osmond calendar on my wall. In Magic Marker, I crossed off every day that passed until we would return to the river house. I added doodles and pictures and noted the dwindling blank days, which was what they were to me—blank. Life began again when we drove those four hours from Atlanta to Watersend, when I saw that long stretch of palmetto trees and live oaks, when I felt the frigid air of the bookshop, when I sat up all night with Bonny scribbling in our notebook, when I sank into the coarse sand and dug my toes in to find the cooler sand, when I jumped into the river and held my breath for as long as I could under the blue-gray water.

  For the first few months after returning home the summer before, I’d been afraid that the Moreland family wouldn’t invite us back, that my mom had embarrassed all of us enough to prevent another invitation. But I’d heard Dad on the phone talking to Mr. Moreland about plans and dates. Even before he told me, I knew.

  I didn’t get to see Bonny at all between summers. Our parents went out together, but we lived towns and towns apart. Atlanta wasn’t like Watersend, where the name of the city meant you knew the names of the people in it. We lived in Buckhead; they lived in Marietta, which was only thirty minutes by car but might as well have been Alaska for twelve-year-old girls in the seventies. But we talked on the phone. A lot.

  My brother, Owen, didn’t pay much attention to me that year when I was twelve years old. He had his first real girlfriend, a prissy girl from some rich family on Tuxedo Drive. He spent all of his time there and came home rumpled and stoned. (Yes, I knew what stoned was at twelve. You would, too, if you had Owen for a brother and my mom for a mother.) I was lonely in that angst-ridden, end-of-the-world way that a twelve-year-old girl can be. Everything meant everything. Poems. Short stories. Art. They all made me cry and believe that I was the center of the universe and everything was created on earth just for me or against me. Me. Me.