The Tidewater Sisters: Postlude to The Prayer Box (8 page)

The sideways tilt of her head says she doesn’t believe me. She probably thinks I typed up the letter myself. “Seriously. You know, if you’ll just wait a couple weeks, I’ll have this all taken care of, and you’ll have a nice, big check to show for it. We’ve got a month before they docket the tax sale on the place, and those lawsuit people know it’ll cost them more to go to court than if they just work with me. In a week, maybe two, the property sale will be signed, sealed, and delivered to the new buyer. The debts and taxes get paid off as part of the sale. They’re giving us a good price on the land, too—something about the government wanting off-site plots for the Tidewater Research Station. See? Win-win. So you can put your little lawyer letter away and get out of my office. I try to do something good for you and this is the thanks I get.”

“I am
not
selling.”

“That’s what I knew you’d say. That’s why I didn’t even tell you about all this. I knew you’d get some stupid idea about keeping the farm. You can’t
afford
to, Tandi, and you know it. Even if I take care of the earnest money thing, how are you going to come up with the chunk of change for the taxes? We both know you don’t have that kind of cash lying around.”

My molars grind so hard I’m afraid I’ll need dental work after this. Gina can twist a conversation until it’s like spaghetti on a plate. “
You’re
going to come up with the money to pay the taxes and return the earnest money on my part of the property.
You’re
the one who
stole
the farm rental checks and didn’t pay the taxes in the first place.”

“I got a little behind last year after you kicked me out of your casita there on Hatteras,” she says vaguely, shrugging as if she’s done with me. “Anyway, I don’t have that kind of cash lying around.”

That’s the first truthful thing she’s said, and of course I’m ready for it. “Come up with it, Gina. Now. Or I’m having my lawyer go forward with this.” I look around at Gina’s posh new digs and take in the clothes she’s wearing. “Sell your car. That shouldn’t be too hard, considering.” On the way in, I noticed her tricked-out Jeep—the one she had on the Outer Banks last year—parked around the side of the building.

Her posture softens. I can see her switching tactics. She sinks against the corner of the desk, meets my gaze,
sister to sister. “Listen, Tandi, just chill, okay? Merritt doesn’t know anything about . . . my past. He doesn’t know about the property or the tax mess. He’s a really great guy and he’s crazy about me. I can’t screw this up. Just give me a couple weeks to—”

“No. Gina.
No.
” I’m resolved not to fall for any of this. Where Gina is involved, promises are made to be broken. “Whatever you do with the acreage Meemaw and Pap-pap wanted to leave to you is your choice, but my wedding is in twelve days, and the museum opens this weekend, and I’m
not
having this hanging over my head, or Paul’s. You and I are settling up
now
, or else.”

She tries to stare me down, but I don’t flinch. Her lower jaw juts outward, and I can see another firestorm brewing. In under thirty seconds, she’s sending off a new shot. “You need to work with me here. It’d be
terrible
if something happened to screw it up for you and Mr. Wonderful . . . wouldn’t it?”

“You stay away from Paul, Gina.” My fiancé can take care of himself. I know that on one level, but fear gnaws deep in my stomach, chewing holes. I have no idea what Gina is really capable of. Over the years, I suspect I’ve only seen the tip of the manipulative iceberg.

She tastes the rim of her teeth, one weapon stroking another. “I mean, it’d be such a
shame
if someone called that school he works for . . . or say, CPS . . . and said they’d seen him cuddling up a little
too much
with one of those lonely teenage girls he teaches, wouldn’t it?” A falsely innocent sigh regrets what mess an accusation like that would create. “Just a
concerned
citizen, of course. Someone who’d
seen
something that didn’t look right. They’d have to investigate. Can’t take any chances.
Better to err on the side of safety.
” Her voice rises falsely high as she repeats the overheard words of a social worker from long ago—the words that inadvertently promised we’d never be going back to Pap-pap and Meemaw’s house. “CPS might need to look into it for J.T. and Zoey’s sake too. Make sure you’re not moving your kids in with a pervert. What a hassle, huh? Once a rumor like that gets around . . .”

She stops there and lets me conjure the consequences on my own. My head swirls. I want to turn tail and run. My life with Paul, our happiness, our
peace
is worth more than any possession on earth. Even the farm.

I hear myself silently praying. Begging God to tell me what to do. To make order from chaos.

Words come. “You’re not Mama, Gina. You’re
not
.”

Our gazes lock, and we stare at one another for what seems like minutes, but undoubtedly only a few seconds tick by. My mind races with images of her face next to mine, the two of us forehead to forehead as we hide beneath the covers or in the closet on nights when storms raged—within the house or outside it.
Sssshhhh,
my sister whispers.
Go to sleep. I’ll watch out.

She’s in there somewhere. I know it.
Ssshhhh,
I hear myself thinking.

Finally, she sinks to the desktop with an irritated sigh, her thin frame collapsing inward. “Fine. Be a jerk about it. I’ll get your money for you. But I have to go back to work right now.” She points over my shoulder, and I see Ramon waiting in the hall. “You’d be a lot better off my way, you know. We both would, but of course all you care about is what
you
want.”

Despite everything, that sticks a knife in a tender spot. A lump rises in my throat. I swallow it and say, “I wish we weren’t at this point, but I guess we are.”

“I guess so.” She returns a cold look. “Come back after five and I’ll have your money, but if this ruins things for me with Merritt, I’ll never forgive you.”

I don’t respond. I can’t think of anything to say, anyway. I just gather the rest of the rental invoices, scoot the letter closer to her desk chair, close the folder, and turn toward the glass, where Ramon stands bug-eyed.

“What’s in the box? More goodies from your lawyer?” Gina stops me before I can open the door. I’ve forgotten all about the box. Looking down at it in the chair, I’m overwhelmed with sadness. I consider picking it up and taking it with me, pretending it contains nothing more than paperwork.

“Meemaw left it on the shelf in her sewing room. She put your name on it. Her wedding dress is inside . . .
and a few other things. She wrote you a letter.” I turn to my sister again, seeking her reaction. Does she know the box was there? Does she care at all?

There’s no hint of emotion. She’s just . . . perfectly cool. Her gaze flicks past me. A middle-aged man has stopped to talk to Ramon in the hall. I recognize him from the larger-than-life photo on the billboard. This is Merritt Walker himself.

Worry lines crack Gina’s cool exterior.

I take one last look at the box. “If you decide you don’t want the dress, I’d like to have it . . . to save it for Zoey, at least.” I hate myself for asking, but not as much as I would if I didn’t try.

“Pppfff!”
Her response chases me toward the door. “Of course I want it. Merritt and I are getting married too. You think you’re the only one who can land a guy? At least I found one who’s got something to offer.”

I don’t even answer. I can’t. I just yank open the door and walk out, leaving my sister and the wedding dress behind.

I’m sitting in the bookstore and Internet café across the street, just waiting, as I have been all day. I feel like a detective on a stakeout, only in a sad sort of way, since the fact that I’m here means I don’t trust my sister. I circled the dealership before I left, and all the exits lead onto this one road. If I see her making a break for it, I’m not sure what I plan to do. Follow her, I guess. Make certain she’s headed to a bank, rather than the nearest highway out of town.

Maybe she believed my threats and the letter from Vince, but in spite of the knock-down fight in her office, it feels like she gave up too easily. Part of me says she must have something up her sleeve. Part of me says she has a cushy deal here at Merritt Cars and she doesn’t want to blow it by having me march in there and make it known to everyone what a shyster she is. She clearly wants to take care of this quietly.

That’s to my advantage.

But Gina doesn’t like to lose, especially to me. Aside from that, I wonder where in the world she will come up with the money. Maybe she really will sell her Jeep.

The hours have been endless. I’ve read two books and talked on the phone with everyone I can think of, just to pass the time.

Fifteen more minutes go by. The five o’clock deadline looms close. What is my sister doing over there? Worrying away the minutes like I am, or loading up on ammo and excuses, so she’ll be ready when I come back?

A sweat breaks over me, travels from head to toe, a kind of walking dread.

That’s it,
I text Paul. I’ve promised to let him know when I leave the coffee shop.
I’m going over.
I reason that it’ll take me at least ten minutes to pay my bill, get in my car, and find a break in the rush-hour traffic.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t. There’s no one in line at the checkout counter and traffic parts miraculously, like the Red Sea. I’m in front of the dealership six minutes early.

When I step inside, it feels like the receptionist and everyone else are watching me. Is that my imagination?

I cross the showroom, turn the corner, and Gina is standing in her office with her chin held high and her teeth clenched. Behind her, her backup is none other than Merritt Walker. He’s an imposing figure, at least six foot four, 280 pounds, and in middle-aged good shape. He eyes me with his arms crossed, a stern frown on his face. I can only imagine what my sister has told him about me. Gina has an amazing way of convincing people she’s the victim.

It doesn’t really matter what Merritt Walker thinks, and Gina doesn’t introduce us, of course. She merely snaps the check off her desk and extends it my way. “Here. Maybe this will help you
get by
awhile.”

I take it from her hand, notice it’s written straight from the car dealership. Merritt Walker’s signature is on the bottom. That’s a relief. At least I know it won’t bounce.

“You mean it’ll take care of the taxes that weren’t paid on the land. And the rest of the money due.” An angry, wounded part of me yearns to say more, to spit out the truth in a great gush that would undoubtedly knock her boyfriend right out of his fancy Italian-leather loafers.

“Whatever you want to do with it,” Gina says sweetly, but the tight-lipped smirk Merritt can’t see is far from sweet.
Don’t say anything more,
it warns.

There’s no point, anyway.

I tuck the check into my purse. “Okay, well . . .” I’m a little stuck for a graceful closing line. Certainly not
thank you
or
I’ll see you later.

None of the things that should be said between sisters in parting.

The familiar regret tugs, like the pain of an old scar that won’t let the skin stretch. Pap-pap and Meemaw would’ve hated the idea of our fighting over the land.

“Good-bye, then.” I don’t look at her. I really can’t. She’ll see that she still has a hold on me.

“Yeah, see ya. Take care of yourself.” She continues the performance for Merritt’s benefit, making
me
sound like the one with the screwed-up life.

“I wish you would’ve just told me about the land and paid the taxes, and it wouldn’t have come to this.” I can’t help it. The sentence slips out. My voice cracks at the end.

“I really did think it would be better if we just sold it.” For some reason, Gina’s words ring true. “It’s time to move on, and the offer on the property was good. I think you’re going to be sorry you went this route.”

“Well, at least now I can make the decision for myself.”

It’s time to end the conversation, so I square my shoulders, settle a hand over my purse, and walk away.

Curious glances follow me across the showroom again. People in Gina’s new world clearly know
something
has happened. Maybe they all think I have leukemia, too.

Strangely, I feel both lighter and heavier as I reach my car. I’m just standing with my fingers on the handle when the dealership door swishes open behind me, and I catch a peripheral glimpse of my sister’s blonde hair swirling on the wind.

I turn, and she’s carrying the box from Meemaw’s house. “You might as well have this.” Nose crinkling, she shoves it my way. “I kept the pearl necklace that was in there, but I’d never wear this old thing at my wedding.” She releases the box so that I almost have to catch it in midair.

An awkward stalemate holds us in place, neither party willing to fly the white flag or fire another cannonball across the battlefield.

My sister studies me as if I’m an alien life form she no longer recognizes. “Thanks for not saying anything more to Merritt.”

“You should tell him the truth yourself.”

A head shake indicates that I just don’t get it. “You know, Merritt is a really decent guy. The past just needs to stay in the past, that’s all.”

I think of what Luke said about never being able to make a good life while you’re running. “I hope things work out for you, Gina. Thanks for letting me have the dress.”

“You’re welcome.” She says it begrudgingly, but then our gazes meet and she softens. “
You
need to leave things in the past too, little sister. Don’t let Luke Townley screw it up for you and Paul. You’re lucky you found somebody who really loves you, even if he’s not sitting on a fat checkbook.”

“I know I’m lucky to have Paul.” And then for some reason, I feel the need to call it what it is. “Blessed.”

Looking down at her red, high-heeled shoes, she hugs her arms around herself and glances back toward the dealership as if she knows we have an audience watching through the glass, and she feels the need to wrap up this conversation.

Yet there seems to be something more she wants to say. “Listen, I didn’t keep it from you about Luke Townley because I was jealous. I mean, I
was
always jealous that he liked you the way he did, but . . . I wasn’t trying to hurt you by not telling.”

Again, there’s possibly some underlying truth in all of that. Just enough to make the words burn soul deep. “How long have you known?”

“Always.”

“Since we left Meemaw and Pap-pap’s?”

“Since not long after.”

“How did you know?”

“I heard Mama and Daddy fighting.” She sighs, seeming to suffer a pang of regret. “I couldn’t tell you. You were better off letting the Luke thing go. We were all better off.”

“Why?”

For the first time, somewhere in that pretty shell, I see the sister who protected me when she was just a child herself. Who fed me when Mama was too drunk or stoned and Daddy was off doing whatever he did every time he walked out on us.

I feel like I’m standing in front of a firing squad blindfolded and waiting for the click of the trigger. What secret has my sister been keeping all these years?

Gina’s expression suddenly deepens. The cool, glassy shield is gone. “Daddy told Mama the Townley boy’s eyes were as big as baseballs when he saw our truck coming at him that day. Daddy didn’t even see Laura in the truck, so she must’ve been bent over in the floorboard right before the accident happened, but he knew Luke saw who it was . . . and Luke knew our truck, anyway. Daddy and Mama were both afraid that if Luke did make it through all the surgeries, he’d remember what happened. They figured the less the Townleys were reminded of us, the less chance there was.”

My stomach feels like one of the dishrags in Laura’s kitchen, filled with dirty water and discarded food, slowly being squeezed dry. Filthy streams run everywhere, but through them comes clarity. Now everything makes sense. “The accident was Daddy’s fault? Daddy ran them off the road?”

Even Gina seems to feel remorse over this disgraceful piece of family history. “After the DUIs, you
know
what would’ve happened to Daddy if he got caught again, Tandi. He would’ve been in prison. For a long time. And where do you think we’d have ended up then? Mama’d never held down a job, and she sure wasn’t going to come back to Pap-pap’s again when she knew they were trying to get custody. I couldn’t tell you about the accident or Luke. I had to keep it secret.”

You should’ve told. It would’ve been better if Daddy had gone to prison.
But I don’t say it. I understand the warped logic and misguided loyalties of a messed-up childhood. I know exactly where my sister was coming from. I’ve been there.

Instead of going to prison, my father ran out on us a few months later and eventually drank himself to death. I wonder who else he may have damaged before it finally happened.

I think of Luke, of what Laura has told me about him, about his life, and I’m overwhelmed with guilt. If my father had faced up to the truth, if my mother had told, if my sister had set the truth free . . . so many things could have been different.

“At least now I know,” I say numbly, and then open the car door. The box with the wedding dress goes on the passenger seat beside the tobacco tin.

I tell my sister good-bye and back away, and she’s still standing in the parking lot when I leave. I wish what has been broken between us could be fixed. Not all things are so easily made right, but the anger slowly cools. I feel it chipping off and falling away as I drive mile after mile, racing toward the Tidewater while the sun rests on long, lacy clouds near the horizon.

Some good can come of this, even now, even after all these years, if I can find Luke Townley. If he hasn’t disappeared into the world again.

I try to call him, but there’s no answer on his phone or Laura’s.

I hold my breath as the scenery grows more and more familiar, and I cross marshes, sedges, and Tidewater irrigation channels. All around me, crops peek from the soil. Fresh, green leaves. New things from old.

A rebirth.

And then, up ahead, in the field across the road from the one where my grandfather grew long, straight rows of corn and sweet potatoes, there is Luke on the tractor. Boomer sits in the cab with him, the two of them turned around and watching the cultivator cut the soil.

I think of an old sermon my grandfather quoted from time to time—something about not looking back when you’re plowing a field, but instead finding a mark in the distance and focusing on that. Otherwise, the rows won’t come out straight.

I understand the meaning now in a deeper way. Both Luke and I have spent far too many years looking back,
wondering if something could have been different that bittersweet summer when everything changed.

But it’s time to look forward. Hatteras Island, with its storms and its recoveries and its hardy, determined people has taught me one overarching lesson, and I know I must not only remember it but live by it. The past must be let go before the future can be grasped.

I feel the burden lifting as I hurry from the vehicle and step over the ragtag fence to flag Luke down before he turns to plow another row. He sees me and waves. My heart beats fast as he stops the tractor at the edge of the field, releases the hydraulics, and turns off the engine. Quiet settles over the field after the tractor wheezes to a stop.

The evening Tidewater sun silhouettes Luke’s form and Boomer’s as they cross the grassy margins, but I am only lost in time for an instant. Just a heartbeat in which he and Boomer are what they used to be, and the future is still an expanse of sand, waiting for the tide to deposit things upon it and ripple it with the coming and going of days.

And then I am back in these shoes. My shoes. I am thankful for this life in which ashes become second chances.

“Hey.” Luke slips his hands loosely into his jeans pockets, that wide white smile creasing his face, showing that he is both surprised and glad to see me here. “Thought you might be headed home to the Outer Banks right now.”

“I was afraid you’d be gone already,” I blurt.

He surveys the field. “Couldn’t leave the job half finished. I’ll be done in a couple days. Soon enough to move on.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.”

His gaze catches mine, and there’s a strange hope there. I open my mouth to tell him why I’ve come back, but he preempts me with a question. “How did things go with your sister?”

“Good and bad. She had a lot of reasons, or excuses, depending on how you look at it, for what she did. But she managed to get together the money to pay what’s owed on my part of the land. I’m keeping the house and the eighty acres, at least for now. Until I’ve had time to think it all through and decide what’s best.”

“Laura and Dale might rent the eighty from you. With Dale working full time, and all the foster kids, the whole two hundred was a little much for them, but they probably could take on the eighty again and look after the house. The kids love the orchard. They pick the berries and the scuppernongs and set up a stand down on the highway, just like we used to. Remember that?”

The memory is as clear as yesterday. The image of us, sun bronzed and dirt covered and knobby kneed, separating our bounty into crates and pints, arguing about who picked the most—this will always be as sweet as the ripe fruit of the mulberry trees.

Its lingering syrup tempts me, but I settle for only a taste. “Luke . . . Gina told me something you need to know.” I don’t wait for him to answer, but rush through repeating what I’ve learned from my sister about the accident. Each word is like a brick, settling on my shoulders, mortared together with heavy globs of guilt. If we hadn’t come home that summer . . . if I had ever admitted to a teacher, a neighbor, a social worker, that my father was frequently too drunk to navigate, and Gina and I drove him around, maybe he would’ve been in jail that day, not weaving down Mulberry Run Road.