The Tidewater Sisters: Postlude to The Prayer Box (3 page)

I have no idea who
them people
are. “No. I’m not. Do you think I could talk to your daddy . . . or your mom? I’d like to find out who actually owns the place now.” It’d be helpful information, considering that I’m being sued for fraudulently trying to sell it and stealing someone’s earnest money, on top of failing to pay the property taxes.

“Reckon,” the boy says. He’s definitely not an excitable little scamp. He takes his time, moving toward the bike. “It’s up yander a piece. We can walk it. I ain’t allowed in no cars with n’body.” He points in the direction I haven’t been and didn’t intend to go. Luke Townley’s house was just a quarter mile up the road, barely out of sight behind a scrappy tree line of chokecherries and magnolias. I don’t want to know if the place is still there. Better to leave it in my imagination, as it was before life took a heartbreaking turn that final summer here, twenty-odd years ago.

“Sure. That sounds fine.” Walking will give me time to take in, piece by piece, the changes on the old farm road.

Eventually, you must stop running to something or from something and embrace where you are. Otherwise you’ll never embrace anything.
It’s one of the lessons I drew from the letters in Iola Anne Poole’s big white house. It has become my mantra in this midthirties time of finding my feet and myself.

I grab my purse from the car and we start walking, the boy keeping the bicycle between us and staying out of reach, just in case I have plans to nab him. He introduces himself as Bean, which he tells me is short for Beaudean. On the way up the road, I share information about Zoey and J.T. and how they’re learning about sea turtles this summer. I mention that J.T. is about Bean’s age.

“He can come o’er sometime,” Bean offers. “We got lotsa kids usu’ly. One more don’t make n’matter.”

“I’m sure J.T. would like that.” What exactly does
we got lotsa kids usu’ly
mean? I contemplate the possibilities and listen to the breeze stirring the fencerows. The sound is achingly familiar and so is the road, every step. It still feels the same.

“I’d like to see them big ol’ turtles.” Bean darts a hopeful look my way.

“Maybe you can come to the Outer Banks sometime.”

“Ain’t never been to the ocean.”

I’m tempted to say,
Well, come visit. J.T. can take you to the marina to watch the boats.
But being a mom, I know better than to make an offer like that. Kids get their hearts set on things, and I don’t even know
Bean’s parents. Still, it seems like every kid ought to have time by the seashore.

“If you’re ever on Hatteras, look us up,” I say innocuously. “Zoey and J.T. can teach you how to surf.”

Bean’s lips purse. Finally, he nods. “I might do that. I jus’ might.”

“If you do, come by Sandy’s Seashell Shop in Hatteras Village and ask them where to find Tandi. They’ll know.”

We walk up the road a little farther, and despite the cloudy day, the heat swirling off the asphalt makes me regret the decision not to drive. It’s melting right through my tennis shoes. I can’t imagine how Bean walks it in bare feet, but he doesn’t seem the least bit bothered. I can’t help thinking of Luke Townley. The soles of his feet were like leather. He never wore shoes unless it was the dead of winter. His sister, Laura, was the same way. The Townley kids were always impressively rugged. Tough and wild and ready to try just about anything. My grandfather complained that their mama didn’t have the word
no
in her vocabulary. His usual term for the Townley kids was
the hooligans
. Pap-pap didn’t appreciate the fact that their parents were old hippies and their farm was a junkyard of loose goats, welded-together metal art, and broken-down equipment.

The place comes into view ahead, and I see that it hasn’t changed a whole lot, other than the removal of the metal-art statues. It won’t be making the cover of
House Beautiful
anytime soon, but the crops look healthy, and there’s a harvester working in the fields. I’m a little surprised when Bean turns that direction to cut across the yard. I’d expected to go to a different house farther up.

Bean gets a running start at the ditch, jogging the bike down one side and ramming it up the other. “Come on. It ain’t wet.”

I follow him, feeling a little odd. I don’t want to surprise these people or interrupt their day, but I need whatever information I can get about the goings-on down the street. I hope I don’t surprise them at a bad moment.

I also hope they’re not the ones Gina stole the earnest money from.

That idea ties my stomach in a gigantic slipknot as Bean announces our presence by yelling across the yard, “Mama! I found me a lady out here. She’s wantin’ you to talk to her.”

The doors and windows are closed, of course, because this time of the year anyone not dirt poor is air-conditioning. The Tidewater in summer is sweltering hot, humid, and filled with mosquitoes. Today is unusually mild, or I would’ve been baked alive in Pap-pap’s house already.

Bean keeps yelling all the way onto the porch, until finally a woman steps out, wide-eyed. She’s holding a toddler on her hip, a little girl with curly blonde hair, who doesn’t look anything like Bean. Neither does Bean’s mother. She looks like the toddler. “Bean, for heaven’s sake, what’s wrong? You scared me to death.” Still holding the screen, she stops, looks around the yard, and notices me.

“I got a lady,” Bean reports again, offering me up as exhibit A.

“Oh.” She blinks. “Oh . . .” Her gait wobbles slightly side to side as she advances onto the porch and lets the storm door fall shut. We stare at each other, and there’s an odd, silent moment of minds thumbing through pages of memory. Sparks of recognition travel back and forth between us, slowly casting enough light to see by.

I recognize the eyes, the mouth, and the thick blonde hair, slightly curly like Luke Townley’s. I recognize his little sister all these years later. “Laura?” It’s clear that she thinks she knows me but can’t figure out who I am. “It’s Tandi,” I fill in. “Tandi Reese?”

Her eyes blink, blink again, growing wider each time. “No!” Her mouth hangs open. “Get outta town!”

Her lips spread into a smile, and I’m reminded of childhood mischief the group of us cooked up over the years. I’m also reminded that the last time I heard Laura’s name mentioned, she was in the ICU. She was never supposed to walk again, yet here she is, standing on the porch. I catch my gaze drifting toward her feet.

“Titanium,” she preempts and leans over to knock on one of the legs just below her knee, then hikes the toddler back onto her hip. “Once I got into high school, I really wanted to run again, and the only way I could do that was to have the legs amputated and fit with prostheses.”

“Oh . . .” Her matter-of-factness dispels the awkward feeling, but guilt hits me right after. It was supposed to be me in the truck that afternoon with Luke, but my mother, my sister, and my grandparents had been at odds all day. I’d stayed home to try to keep the powder keg from exploding again. The ice cream run that never happened changed everything. Laura rode along with Luke instead of me. Laura was sitting in the passenger seat of their old farm truck, where I would’ve been.

“You look so good,” she says, seeming surprised. Shifting the toddler to the other hip, she stretches for a shoulder hug as if she means to reassure me. Either she doesn’t remember that we didn’t even attend her brother’s funeral or she doesn’t hold it against me.

“You do too.” My breath ruffles her hair. It seems like she has a good life here, and somehow I gain an ounce of absolution from that.

“How’s your health?” she asks, releasing me carefully.

“Fine . . .” What a strange thing to ask after not having seen one another for almost twenty years. Why do I get the feeling that she knows things about me? That she’s not surprised to find me here? “Great, actually. I live on the Outer Banks now. For the last year, I’ve been supervising the renovation of an old Victorian house that’s about to become a museum.” I almost invite her to come to the opening and bring Bean to see the water, but that might seem strange after all these years.

Bean steps in and wraps his arms around her waist, the force knocking her off-balance a step or two. She catches herself on the porch rail just as I’m reaching for her. “Easy there, buddy,” she says to Bean. Then she bends, kisses his sweaty raven curls, and sends him inside with the toddler to watch something that has just come on Animal Planet. I gather that there are other children watching too.

“We take in foster kids,” she tells me, smiling after Bean. “The little one is mine. My youngest. But they’re all mine after they’ve been here awhile.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“Gosh, I’m glad you’re doing so well.” She runs a hand up and down my arm, her fingers scratchy and calloused, slightly sandy against my skin. There’s a huge garden out back and a chicken yard with chickens pecking around. This place must be a lot of work. I wonder if her husband farms the fields, or if her parents still live here. “So I guess you got your miracle?” she asks.

“Miracle?”

“The cancer . . .”

“The what?”

Our gazes meet, and suddenly we realize we’re talking in riddles She crosses her arms over her chest, squints at me. “Your sister said you weren’t well. That’s why she’d always handled the property over the years. Dale and I hate to lose the lease on the land, although, really, with all the foster kids and our own farm, we’ve got just about as many acres as we can handle . . . but we’ve already got a crop in down on your grandparents’ place.”

“
What
lease?” My mind runs a thousand miles an hour, but it’s going in circles. Gina has been telling people we own this land and collecting some kind of rentals from it? How could she possibly get away with that?

Years
. . .
Laura said
years
.

“Laura, I’m sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

We just stand staring at each other. Moments tick by.

“Whoa,” she says finally. “Whoa. I knew there was something weird going on. I always told Dale things didn’t seem right.” She motions to the weathered metal rockers on the corner of the porch. “I think we’d better sit down. I have a feeling you’re in for a bit of a shock.”

The fire runs rampant under my skin. It’s like my body has been rolled in hot molasses, and I’ve stepped into a nest of warrior ants, yet I’m feeding on the venom. It’s a strange, wicked, but sweet sort of pain, and the only way I can get through it is to fan the anger, clutch the steering wheel, and keep on driving . . . until I find my sister and wring every last droplet of the truth out of her. If that’s possible.

Even then it won’t do any good. The legal mess with the property is so complicated that Laura herself doesn’t understand it. She just knows they’ve been warned of the dispute and told an injunction is imminent, which would mean they’d lose the crop they’ve planted there.

Sitting at Laura’s table while foster kids ran to and fro, I took in so much information that now it’s churning faster than the dust clouds in the car’s wake as I race toward Greenville, where, according to Laura, my sister is dating the owner of a car dealership.

Gina has been keeping a secret all these years. She and I
own
the farm, and we have since my grandparents’ passing. Years ago, when both Gina and I were far away in foster care, my grandmother made the arrangements. Meemaw, who’d never so much as balanced the checkbook, ensured that the long-term lease with Laura’s family would pay the taxes and yield a little bit each year for Gina and me. My grandmother told Laura’s parents she planned to have the land legally divided as soon as she could manage it—perhaps she didn’t trust Gina even then. Gina’s portion was to be 120 acres of irrigated Tidewater cropland. Eighty acres and the house were to go to me.

My grandmother thought of everything, except the fact that I might still be underage when death took her, and Gina might be fully legal, out of foster care, and on her own. And that Gina might be the only one to learn of our inheritance. Who knows why the news never reached me. In an overburdened Human Services system, channels don’t always connect. Because the legal division of the land never happened, Gina and I own it as tenants in common, and she’s been able to operate the place all these years without my knowing a thing.

Of all the things Gina has ever done, including dropping into my life on Hatteras last year and trying her best to ruin
everything
, this is the worst.

She knows there has never been a place in the world that meant more to me than this farm. She knows that after my father ran off and CPS took us from my mother, I pleaded for the social workers to bring us here instead of moving us to an emergency foster home. Gina knows that I ran away three times, trying to get back to Meemaw and Pap-pap—that I told caseworker after judge after teacher that
none
of my mother’s horrible claims about Pap-pap were true. No one would listen.

Gina knows that the scuppernong vines and the bayberry tangles and the mulberry orchard could have given me the healing I needed after the ragged patchwork of our childhood finally fell apart.

When my sister came to visit me in my future forever home the year I turned sixteen, she must have known we’d inherited the property. She never mentioned a thing. Instead, she marveled at the bedroom my new family had given me. She was impressed by the white board fences and sprawling horse barns, yet she tried to persuade me to leave it all and come with her. We were
sisters,
she pointed out, and sisters should stick together.

When I wouldn’t leave with her, all she said was,
Oh yeah, by the way, the old folks are dead. He had a stroke a couple years ago, and they both croaked in the nursing home—just so you know. See ya. Have fun here at the Ponderosa
. . .
that is, till these people decide they’re tired of their new toy, because that’s always how it is. Nobody wants to just
get
a teenager, Tandi Jo. It’ll wear off. When it does, come find me. I’ll be around.
. . .

I could still picture my sister—tall, blonde, as beautiful as the models in
Seventeen
magazine—delivering the blow with a sympathetic smile.

The trouble with sisters is they know exactly where the tender places are. Gina has always known how to find all of mine.

I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do when I catch up to her, but possible scenarios abound. In my mind, I’m everything from John Wayne to a ninja torture artist.

The phone rings, and for some crazy reason, I imagine it’s her. That somehow she knows I’m headed her way at nuclear missile velocity. I grab my cell and bark out, “Hello.”

“Whoa,” Paul says on the other end. “You all right?”

“Yes . . .” Deep breath.
Don’t say anything,
a voice inside me whispers, the usual instinctive reaction. Leftovers from a childhood of knowing that if you’re too much trouble, people will walk out the door, or worse.

Tell him,
I admonish myself.
Be honest. That’s what love is—dropping all the barricades.
I know Paul loves me. I know I love him. Why is this still so hard? “No,” I finally admit. “No, I’m not okay. . . .”

The story—what I know of it so far—spills out, and the anger that had been my power, my supply of venom, wanes. In its wake comes incredible pain. I want a sister who wouldn’t do something like this. Ever.

“Honey, stop the car, okay?” Paul interrupts. “Pull over, stop the car, and calm down a minute. I’m afraid you’re gonna end up wrapped around a tree.”

He’s right. I’ve been flying down the rural highway like an idiot. I slow down and pull over by someone’s gate. The SUV shudders as if it’s trying to catch a breath of the muggy summer air. “I just . . . I just want to wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze right now.”

“Are you sure that’d be a good idea?”

“Oh, it’s a good idea. It’s my
best
idea.” My fingers knead the steering wheel like a stress ball, building muscle.

“I mean, not that I won’t come bail you out of jail for the wedding, but . . .”

A grudging chuckle wrenches free, and a groan comes after it. I’m reminded that I should be home enjoying the wedding countdown. Paul and the Seashell Shop girls will make sure everything is shipshape, but
I
want to be the one doing it. This is my once-in-a-lifetime. My forever. “Ohhh . . . don’t make me laugh, okay? I’m just so . . . mad.”

“I know, but what I meant was, take a minute to think things through. Right now, Gina probably doesn’t have a clue that you’re onto her. You still have the element of surprise on your side. Once you tip her off, she’ll start into evade-and-escape mode, and you
know
where things’ll go from there.”

I pull in air, let it out slowly, feel my anger-stiffened limbs turning to rubber. “You’re right.”

“Yeah, I’m good that way.”

“S-stop.” Another chuckle forces its way out. I just want to be home with Paul, curled up in his strong arms, but I know I can’t leave now. The farmhouse, the mulberry orchard, the eighty acres around it are mine.
Mine.
I want them. I have to save them somehow. I have to make someone—whoever has the power here—see that my sister has committed fraud and that she has been doing it for years.

Gina could go to jail for this.
That thought hadn’t even occurred to me until now. It comes with the weirdest stomach-stab of fear. Am I willing to take that route? To . . . prosecute my sister?

I feel myself shrinking away from the possibility, reconsidering my mad dash to the car dealership in Greenville. I sit staring across a farm field as another bank of clouds rolls in, casting shadow. The sharp edges fade.

“Honey?” Paul’s voice presses through the paralysis. “You still there?”

“Paul . . . I just really need to think about all of this. And . . . and see what I can find out. I’m going to get a motel and hang around until tomorrow, when the tax office, the courthouse, and the lawyer’s offices are open. Okay?”

I expect him to protest, but he says, “Whatever you need. Listen, I’ll get Sandy to look after Zoey and J.T. for a couple days, and I’ll come—”

“No, Paul, I’ll be okay. I promise.” Paul has Summer Sea Camp to teach, but aside from that, I still feel myself desperately seeking containment. A way to keep this life from spilling over into the one Paul and I have made. “But will you do something for me? A couple of things, actually?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

I have that sense of being gushy in love again. And with it comes the reminder that this is what love and family should mean. A covenant of protection and care and always wanting the best things for one another. Love doesn’t
use
other people. It doesn’t steal, kill, destroy. What has been passed off as love between my sister and me over the years has never been love. It’s more like codependence.

“The neighbor told me that Gina’s dating a guy who owns a big car dealership over in Greenville and that she apparently works there with him. Merritt Cars. It’s on Sandpiper Road. That’s where Laura sent the last rent check for the farmland. Could you call there and see if you can figure out when Gina works? Just in case she’s the one answering the phone. She won’t recognize your voice. Also, could you see if Vince can give us any more information about what comes next? What I have to do to straighten this whole thing out. . . . And what will happen to Gina if I do? She’s apparently been forging my name on checks and legal documents for years, telling people I had cancer and she was looking after my affairs for me. If I turn her in for all of this, what are they going to do to her?” Guilt. I instantly feel
guilt
. As if I’m the one being cruel here.

“Tandi,” Paul warns firmly, “you’re not actually thinking of letting her get away with it?”

“I just . . . There’s the wedding and the honeymoon and all of that to think about. The museum opening . . . Everything is finally good, you know? I don’t want to mess it up for us.”

“Nothing can mess us up, Tandi. I’m here, no matter what. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I just don’t want you to feel like you’ve invited Typhoid Mary into your perfectly good life.” There. I’ve said it. I’ve done the thing that Brother Guilbeau over at Fairhope Fellowship Church has advised during our premarital counseling. I’ve trusted Paul with the ugly truth. Some of it, anyway.

I’m still afraid that I can never measure up to the wife he lost to cancer. The one he traveled the world with, made a dream list with, and lived as many of those dreams as possible with before it was too late.

“I don’t,” he promises. “We all have our baggage, Tandi. I mean, for instance, you’ll probably be stuck playing Thursday night dominoes at the church with my grandma for the next thirty years, because she’s not about to let you give
that
up. And then there’s my questionable fashion sense. How many people would be willing to marry
that
, right?”

“You do have a point there.” But he doesn’t. He’s just being silly, and he knows it. The kids and I love Thursday night dominoes at the church, and Paul’s sense of fashion is what makes him Paul. He’s famous for it.

Not
infamous
and certainly not
criminal
, which makes our baggage completely different. But we exchange I-love-yous and let it go, and he makes me promise one more time not to do anything rash.

I agree not to rush into the confrontation with Gina. Not yet.

I tell Paul I’ll call him later when I’m checked into a motel, but I’ve barely set down the phone before I’m staring in the rearview, thinking. Then action follows thought, and the car makes a U-turn in the deserted road almost by itself.

While I still can, I’m going back to my grandparents’ farm to see what else has been left there.

I may not get another chance.