The Summer of Lost Wishes (2 page)

The lady – Sandra – is apparently someone Mom
graduated with ages ago. She expresses her sympathy for Grandma’s
death, asks Mom what on this planet made her move back to Coral
Sands, and of course, inquires about my deadbeat dad who I have
zero memories of, even if he is in a few of my baby pictures.
There’s a piece of me that is glad I have Mom’s name and not his,
but it’s still awkward when people realize my last name is my mom’s
maiden name.

She shows Mom a few pictures of her own kids
– a junior high cheerleader and a varsity soccer star of a son.
Then they laugh about how their parents used to pull photos out of
wallets instead of holding up a smartphone.

“So I’m assuming you moved into your mom’s
house?” Sandra asks. “I’ll have to swing by sometime. You know,
bring a housewarming gift.”

Mom crumples up the wrapper from her burrito.
“Actually, I sold Mom’s house,” she says, a bit matter-of-fact like
the Charlotte Davenport I know. “It was dated and I just didn’t
want to invest in how much it’d take to bring it into this century.
So I purchased the Calloway Cottage.”

Sandra gasps and places a hand over her
chest. How freaking dramatic. I didn’t think people really acted
like this. I feel like my life has become a made-for-television
movie in less than twenty-four hours.

“Well, that’s just one hell of a return,”
Sandra says. She shakes her head. “I bet you’re aiming to have it
all fixed up just before the big anniversary. Geez, Charlotte, of
all the houses in town for you to purchase. The Calloway Cottage?
They should’ve demolished it when they planned to fifty years
ago.”

Sandra looks off at the orange light fixture
above the table behind us and shakes her head again, as if Mom has
committed the ultimate offense and she’s completely disgusted with
us. She doesn’t even say goodbye. She simply walks away from the
table, out the exit, and toward her suburban mom SUV in the parking
lot. I bet she has a stick figure family on her back glass,
complete with a family pet. She seems like a dog person. She
probably has a poodle or some other yappy house dog that wears
sweaters and has a luxurious pet bed.

I don’t question Mom until we’re back in the
car because if the people of this town feel the same way as Sandra
does about the Calloway Cottage, I don’t want to draw any more
attention to us than necessary.

“Okay, spill,” I say, fastening my seatbelt.
“What’s wrong with our house? Is it haunted? Did someone die there?
What anniversary is she talking about?”

Mom heaves a sigh and leans her head back
against the headrest of the driver’s seat. “Nothing is wrong with
our house,” she says. “It’s not haunted. No one died there.”

She doesn’t answer my last question. Or crank
up the car. Or even blink.

“Mom,” I say.

She puts a hand up to stop me. Then she
squeezes her eyes shut. She takes a deep breath – or more like
three – and then opens her eyes and faces me.

“Coral Sands is coming up on the fifty-year
anniversary of the biggest tragedy this town has ever seen,” she
explains. “There was an accident out near Shark Island where five
local teenagers died just before their high school graduation.”

The silence in the car is as eerie as the
words ‘Shark Island.’ I remember the awkward silence after Aunt
Carrie called Mom to let us know about Grandma’s passing. We knew
it was coming. Mom couldn’t afford to keep taking off work just to
sit in an out-of-state hospital while Grandma lay dying. Aunt
Carrie cried and called Mom an ungrateful brat, but Aunt Carrie
isn’t a single mom who can’t afford to miss work without pay.

In that moment, it’d felt like the world
turned into a bleak cloud. The lights were a bit dimmer. The air
was hazy, like a humid summer day that literally sucks the oxygen
out of your lungs the moment you step onto your porch. That “bleak
cloud moment” lingered just a bit, to make sure we really felt it,
and then it passed, quickly and easily, to drop its storm
elsewhere.

That’s how this moment feels – except there’s
more of a melancholy touch to the way Mom inhales and exhales. I
dare to speak.

“What is Shark Island? What happened there?”
I ask, twisting my body toward her to show her I’m really listening
and not just blabbing for the sake of conversation.

She bows her head, cranks the car, and turns
on the air conditioning, but she doesn’t leave Taco Bell’s parking
lot.

“They were all so young,” she says. “It was a
few weeks before graduation. They all had their lives planned out.
They went out on a boat one night when a storm was rolling in. To
this day, no one knows why they did it. They were smart kids, grew
up in Coral Sands, and knew the ropes. But there they were, in the
dark, on a boat, in bad weather and…”

Her voice cracks. Were they thrown overboard
and drown? Lost at sea for all of eternity? Shipwrecked on Shark
Island and found once it was too late? Mom grabs a napkin from
under her cell phone and dabs at her eyes.

“Shark Island was an actual island. It was
connected to the mainland by a huge fishing pier. It had a
lighthouse, and all of the fishermen went there to catch for the
local seafood restaurants and markets,” she says. “It became Shark
Island after quite a few sharks were seen there. They were coming
in to feed.”

As my brain begins weaving together the
shark-bitten pieces of this tragic puzzle, I’m not quite sure I
want confirmation as to what happened to them. I especially don’t
want to know how my house is involved.

“The boat didn’t make whatever journey they
were setting off on,” Mom says. “It was found the next morning
crashed into the rocks at Shark Island. Well, they found what was
left of the boat, anyway. That storm really did a number on the
town as it was, but losing five teenagers on top of it was
terrible.”

I slip down in my seat and wish I could be
absorbed into the hot leather and melted into some pretty waxy
candle. Mom could even call me Iceberg Blue and decorate beach
houses with me. I don’t want to know any more of this story.

“I’m not sure how they coped,” Mom says.
“Losing them was the worst, but those parents couldn’t even bury
their babies. They found a few limbs and a lot of blood, but
knowing your children died in that kind of awful way…”

She straightens up in her seat, takes another
deep breath, and breathes it out in a whistle-like way. Then she
shakes her head.

“Two of the kids who died that night were
what they used to call the golden couple,” she says, readjusting
her air vent. “You know, sort of like the modern day equivalent to
a quarterback and head cheerleader kind of couple. Hanna Calloway
and Seth McIntosh. They were going to own this town someday. They
were high school sweethearts who already had their wedding planned
for that summer. The cottage was a wedding gift from her
family.”

Oh my God. We just bought Hanna Calloway and
Seth McIntosh’s wedding gift from Hanna’s ancestors. Just in time
for the fifty-year anniversary. Good going, Mom. You sure have a
way with timing.

“I’m sorry, Piper,” Mom says. “Please, say
something.”

I shrug my shoulders and focus on the
dashboard. “What are people going to say about us? I mean, I’ll
have to go to school here this fall. I don’t want to tell people I
live in the house that Hanna and Seth never got to make into their
home.”

Mom reaches over and places her hand on mine.
“I know, sweetie. I know, and I’m sorry. It’s just such a beautiful
house, and it was brand new just for them,” she explains. “They
were going to demolish it afterward because it was too painful to
look at, but their grief wouldn’t let them.”

On the drive back to the cottage, Mom tells
me that the family kept the home for their other daughter, Sarah.
But little sister never moved in. She held a resentment toward her
parents because their grief for Hanna was stronger than their love
for Sarah – or so she felt. The house remained empty for decades
until Sarah recently passed, and her children sold it and split the
proceeds. I guess I can understand it. The Calloway Cottage was
nothing but a painful reminder of what happened to their
family.

“They were all good kids,” Mom says. “Hanna
was a small town princess, and Seth had a great job lined up at the
factory just outside of town. Three of their friends were with them
that night, such good kids. All those bright futures gone. All of
those families destroyed. I can’t even imagine.”

Yet we’re going to live in the house that
belongs to the dead golden couple. I cannot feel right about this.
I don’t think it’s haunted – yet – and I know it’s technically
still new in the sense that no one has ever lived there. But
everything about it feels wrong. It’s like I’m walking over sacred
ground that you just don’t step on. Not only that, but I’m walking
all over this golden ground with muddy shoes and stomping around to
make sure everyone knows I’m here. I can’t sleep in a bedroom that
was meant for the future children of the Calloway-McIntosh
clan.

I know I’m stuck, though. I have nowhere else
to go, and Mom officially owns the Calloway Cottage. This is going
to be our home now, like it or not. So I decide to dig a little
deeper.

“Tell me everything,” I say. “I want to know
every single thing you know about this story.”

I wait until Mom is asleep before I fight to
drag my air mattress downstairs. There’s no way I can sleep in that
room after knowing the truth about this house. Unfortunately, Mom
couldn’t provide much more information other than what she told me
in the car. The afternoon was busy with sweeping, scrubbing, and
deep cleaning after we returned, so all talk of the Coral Sands
tragedy was left in the driveway.

I feel like if I’m going to live in their
house, I need to know something about Hanna and Seth. I need to
know who they were and who they wanted to be. They have no legacy
left, aside from Hanna’s sister’s children who want nothing to do
with this house or the Calloway name.

And don’t even get me started on the boy.
There’s no one left in this area with the McIntosh name, so his
legacy is sitting on the ocean floor next to Grandma’s ashes. For
this town to honor the memories of five lost teens every single
year since their deaths, you’d think more people would know
something.

I drop the air mattress on the floor and
tiptoe back upstairs for my pillows and blankets. Once I have my
actual bed and a bedroom that feels like my own, I’ll sleep in it.
For tonight, in that empty room with the creepy moonlit glow, I
just can’t do it.

After making my air mattress bed for the
night, I settle in on the living room floor, tossing and turning in
hopes of falling asleep soon. But it’s impossible to sleep when
phantom images of people who died before your mom was even born
haunt you. I grab my phone from its charger and pop back over to
Google. I type ‘Hanna Calloway, Coral Sands FL’ into the search
bar.

I click on the top result, but my hopes
falter upon seeing the actual article.
Coral Sands to Host
Fifty-Year Anniversary Vigil
. Hanna’s name is listed alongside
the others who perished in the tragic shark-eating shipwreck. I
don’t know why I expected the world wide web to actually have
details of their lives. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter weren’t
exactly a thing back then – none of their creators had even been
born, I’m sure. I exit Google, hook the charger back into my phone,
and force myself to find sleep.

Sunlight pours through the bay window and
bounces off the freshly-cleaned hardwood floors. Mom calls out my
name again from the kitchen. She must have unpacked her coffee
maker because I’d know the smell of black coffee in the morning
anywhere.

“Piper,” Mom says again. “I’m pretty sure you
don’t want to be sprawled out in the living room floor when the
contractors get here. You can sleep in, but please take the air
mattress upstairs. Why are you even sleeping down here anyway?”

I push myself up on the mattress and stumble
while grabbing my blankets and standing up at the same time. It is
too early for this.

“I got freaked out being in an empty room in
a new place,” I tell her. It’s not a full on lie. I did get freaked
out in an empty room in a new place. She doesn’t have to know that
Hanna and Seth are haunting my thoughts.

With an arm load of blankets, I drag myself
up the stairs and wonder how in the hell I’m going to get that
mattress up here when I’m still half-asleep. Maybe the contractors
will volunteer to help Mom move all the furniture in so I can have
a normal bedroom again.

I drop the blankets in a pile and change into
fresh clothes that I packed in a duffle bag because Mom stole my
suitcase. I don’t feel like brushing my hair or dealing with
makeup, but I know I’ll regret it later if I don’t put at least a
semi-face on. I already know what Mom will say.
“You never know
who you’re going to meet, so you always want to be ready.”
Therefore, I get ready.

Voices bounce around off the high ceilings as
I make my way back down the stairs. I didn’t think the contractors
would be here this early. I round the corner and walk toward the
kitchen. Mom sets her coffee cup on the counter and waves me into
the room.

“Piper, you remember Mr. Carter from next
door, right?” she asks.

Mr. Carter turns toward me. He’s all smiles,
so he must’ve had his coffee this morning, just like Mom. He nods
my way in acknowledgment.

“He’s offered to help us get this place put
together,” Mom explains. She sips from her cup and places it back
on the counter, most likely against her will. She’s a coffee fiend,
especially if it’s her first cup. “I asked him for recommendations
of trustworthy carpenters in the area, and it turns out, Mr. Carter
has quite the skill set.”