The Tidewater Sisters: Postlude to The Prayer Box Read online

  I move around the shelves, testing the sags in the dusty floor, fingering a bridal veil left hanging from the edge of her bulletin board. The notes and pictures there make me smile—babies for whom she crafted intricate christening gowns, girls for whom she sewed first communion and party outfits, brides clothed in her beautiful wedding dresses.

  There are books and boxes and stacks of patterns on the shelves all around the room. I want to open every one, look inside for connections to my grandmother, yet logic tells me this is all a long, strange dream. The house couldn’t still be here after so many years—a perfect time capsule in some places, pillaged in others.

  An old J. G. Dill’s tobacco tin atop the bookshelves catches my eye. It’s roughly the size of a shoe box, almost invisible among the clutter, but I remember it now. I remember finding it buried in a drawer during one of my visits here and slipping my fingers under the lid, trying to pry it open.

  I was fascinated by the image of a beautiful woman on the front. Etched in lines of black and red, hands thrown behind her head, she smiles in wild abandon, even now. Next to her the words Cut Plug Tobacco destroy the romance a bit, but I remember wanting the tin and wondering what might be inside. Meemaw found me with it and took it away. Oh, pea pod, that’s not for playin’, she said gently. Someday, when you get big, it’ll be for you. She set it high on the shelf. On that exact shelf, where it must have remained all these years, half hidden between a stack of patterns and a cardboard box.

  I stretch toward it, but something shadow-moves in the corner of my vision. I gasp, slap a hand to my chest, wheel around so quickly that I’d swear the floor ripples beneath my feet like a paddleboard on a wake. There’s a little boy standing in the driveway. Just standing there, staring up at the house with his arms hanging at his sides, the sun glinting off his honey-brown skin. His oversize jeans are bunched around bare feet, and his blue button-up shirt hangs askew, so he looks like something from The Grapes of Wrath. There was a hired-hand family that lived in a shanty house down the road, years ago. The grandfather still worked his little garden patch with a mule. We were never allowed to play with the kids. Could it be that the family still lives there?

  Or maybe I’m only imagining the boy, remembering the past.

  He seems to be looking at me through the window.

  A toppled-over bike rests in the ditch nearby. It’s modern enough to snap my mind from the haze. I’ve just been caught where I have no business being.

  I hurry downstairs, wondering if he will still be there when I get to the door, and he is. He watches with consternation as I navigate the balance-beam porch and hurry down the steps.

  “Y’ain’t supposed to go up’n there,” he says, and his directness surprises me. He’s only nine or ten, around the age of my J.T., but he looks me in the eye, and his bottom lip squeezes upward into the top one.

  “My grandparents used to live here,” I offer, trying to appear calm, but inside the voice of reason scolds, Good gravy, Tandi, what were you thinking? You could get arrested for this.

  Yet I want that tobacco tin, and other things that have been left inside the house. . . .

  The boy looks doubtful. I don’t blame him.

  “Do you know who owns the place now?” It doesn’t hurt to ask, I figure, since I’m already in trouble anyway. I do have a little money saved up—assuming I don’t need to use it for a legal defense fund. Maybe I can buy the things I want.

  “My daddy does the farmin’ on it. Till they run him off, anyhow. You one a them people?”

  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.”

  CHAPTER 4

  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 n
ever 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.