Seven Tears into the Sea (14 page)

“Want me to fix this next to the strawberry tree before I sit down?” I asked.

Nana had a bundle of wooden stakes, forked at one end to hold a plastic sleeve, which protected ink from the fog and rain. I gestured toward them, but Nana and Thelma ignored me.

“It sounds a bit cynical to me,” Thelma said.

“She wouldn't be her parents' girl if she weren't sarcastic,” Nana suggested. “Besides, sarcastic isn't the same as cynical. Read that bit.” Nana tapped the sign. “I'd say she's indicated that once a girl's heart has settled on a single beau, she won't be moving on. That's really quite romantic.”

“It's not!” I told Nana, and reread the sign.

How Nana could ignore the part about putting out false fruit—like a guy pretending we were soul mates, let us just say for the sake of argument—was beyond me.

I shook my head and arranged the sign next to the tallest strawberry tree.

They were an unlikely pair of sunbathers, I thought, looking back at Nana and Thelma. I'd fallen in with a different crowd in the last three days.

I missed Jill and Mandi but guessed they were as busy as I was, or they would have called. But now I had something to tell them. Would Mandi and Jill just freak out if they saw Jesse and knew I'd been kissing him?

I tried to control the smile on my face but couldn't.
Although it was impossible to show him to them right away, I was pretty good with words. Maybe I'd give my girls a call right after breakfast.

I stood up, and checked my skirt to make sure I hadn't soiled it.

While I'd been squatting in the garden, Nana and Thelma had been discussing the guests who were due to arrive this afternoon. Nana planned to make dilly breads shaped like four-leaf clovers and some other things I didn't hear. Thelma was talking about laundry, bookkeeping, and kindling for the Midsummer's Eve bonfire.

“Perfect,” Nana said as I stood from situating the sign.

“Thanks,” I said. “Do you mind if I call Jill? I won't be long, I promise.”

“Go right ahead, dear,” Nana said.

The kitchen was quiet, so I dialed from there. I was getting way too big a thrill out of this.

“Hi—”

“Hi! You'll—”

“—is Jill. I'm either working or sleeping,” said Jill's recorded voice. Then she sang a few bars of a song I'd never heard before about burning the candle at both ends. Usually, I would have hung up, but I just couldn't.

“Jill, if you were me, you wouldn't believe the night you just had.”

I slammed down the receiver. That ought to tantalize her. And because I was so pleased with the prospect of
Jill calling Mandi and demanding to know what I'd told
her,
I didn't dial Mandi's number. Let them both simmer in suspense.

Smiling, I sauntered back to the garden, ready for my French toast.

“She wasn't home,” I said to Nana and Thelma's expectant faces.

“You could've called the other girl,” Nana offered.

I just gave a shrug that said, maybe next time. Then I attacked my French toast.

“Still and all, it's not what good Christians believe,” Thelma said, obviously continuing a conversation I'd missed.

“Oh rubbish, there's no contradiction whatsoever,” Nana replied.

Chewing, I waited to hear what came next. Their philosophical battle didn't sound new.

“Gwennie,” Nana was trying to line me up on her side. I could hear it in her voice. “Do you believe in destiny?”

Like love at first sight? Like spotting a stranger among a throng of strangers at a street fair and having your heart swell? Like knowing his kiss is going to be the best one of your life?

“What I believe in, is laundry,” I said, clanging the lid back on my empty plate. “I'll clear all of our plates on my way to the laundry room.”

“The wet sheets are already out by the line, just
waiting to be hung,” Thelma said. “Your Nan couldn't delay breakfast five minutes for me to get it up.”

“Great,” I said. Then I slung the drawstring bag of laundry over my shoulder and picked up all three of our plates.

As I headed for the kitchen I made excuses to myself. I just could not have that conversation about destiny with Nana and Thelma, even though I was anxious for that real reading from Nana's copper mirror.

Independence was great. I liked deciding on my own bedtimes and mealtimes, but when it came to Jesse, I needed some help. Not that scrying would point me in the right direction, but it might raise some interesting issues.

I rinsed off the dishes and shook my head at the suddenness of my feelings for Jesse. I was infatuated. At least. But he was strange, or mysterious. No,
exotic
. That word had crossed my mind before, and it still suited him best.

I slotted the dishes into the dishwasher, then headed back outside.

Though the laundry line was tucked into a corner of the Inn property, away from the eyes of guests, it still had an ocean view. Some people thought a laundry line looked low-rent. I was one of them, but the damp laundry smelled good, and I loved putting order to it.

I grabbed the first sheet, flapped it out until I found
the left corner, then fastened it with a wooden clothespin. I smoothed it taut to the middle. There I put the second clothespin just above the Sea Horse Inn insignia. Picked out in thick white thread, it was cameo shaped with a sea horse in the center. Then I smoothed to the right corner, where I made the first sheet and the next one share the third pin. And I kept going.

The clean white sheets danced before me, gathering the smells of summer, the sea spray, hot asphalt, salt, and Nana's pink and white flowers. Sheet after sheet I pinned them, border to border, tight and white.

Then my serenity fractured. I didn't feel alone.

Moving slowly, I leaned down to pull the last sheet from the wicker basket and cast a quick glance to see if feet showed beyond my wall of sheets.

None.

As I fastened its left corner, the last sheet flapped back at me, wrapping around my skirt, clinging to my bare legs. Only the wind, I told myself. I smoothed to the middle, then stretched up, pinning its right corner. That feeling wouldn't vanish.

Even as I bent to take the first pillowcase from the basket, the last sheet fluttered against my calves. I could have sworn a dark form on the other side of the sheets … Jesse's.

“Forget what I said.”

Laundry hadn't billowed those words. Neither had
waves calling up from the shore. I'd heard a voice, but no one was there.

And then there was a louder voice.

“Have your friend come up for coffee,” Nana shouted from the house.

I gasped and whirled, breaking free of the clammy sheet, and saw Nana waving.

She'd seen Jesse, so he must be here. I lifted the sheet in front of me and ducked under. I didn't see him, but all the sheets were waving. He could be hiding from me.

I moved between the rows of laundry, up and down the billowing white corridor as if I were pursuing someone. Where was he?

Finally I stood at one end of the clothesline. Waves thundered, a truck passed on the highway, country music swelling from its radio then fading. A gull hovered overhead, scoping out the white sheets to see what all the flapping was about, but I was all alone.

I didn't run up the hill to the house like a scared little girl, but I didn't dawdle. I slung the basket against my hip and went straight to the Inn. With calm precision I put the basket on its shelf in the laundry room then walked down the totally normal hall to the kitchen.

Nana's flyaway hair danced as she snipped dill weed into cottage cheese, making batter for her bread.

She glanced past my right shoulder. “Didn't you bring your friend?”

I glanced, too.

“There was no one there,” I told her.

For a second her hands paused.

“Which of you is the shy one?” she asked.

“Nana, I was all alone.”

“Must be getting old. I suppose it could be those wind-filled sheets had my eyes playing tricks on me.” Her tone said she believed no such thing.

I swallowed, wanting to tell her I'd felt and heard whatever she'd seen. Even with Nana, though, I couldn't.

Besides, there was work to do.

“What should I do next?” I asked.

Nana ran through a list of things that had already been done—all the rooms made up, bathrooms freshened, and floors polished upstairs and down—and things that would have to be done Thursday, before the Midsummer guests arrived.

“You could look through some of the costumes and see what you'll wear,” Nana said.

“Costumes?” Oh my gosh, this was going too far. I was a good kid, but I wasn't playing dress-up for the tourists.

“It's likely you'll be crowned Summer Queen,” Nana said as if she were saying I'd stop someplace for gas for the Volkswagen.

I laughed, but part of me felt sort of bad when I did.

I'd seen photographs of Nana as Summer Queen. She'd been no one's grandmother or mother then, just a leggy
girl named Elane, wearing a daisy crown, a Renaissance-looking dress, and a grin which rushed at you from the crackled surface of the black-and-white snapshot.

But heredity didn't mean I qualified to take her place.

“Nana, I know you were Summer Queen, but I'm just not the type.”

“You are exactly the type,” Thelma said, bustling through the kitchen with something destined for the compost pile.

“Just look at yourself.” Nana towed me out of the kitchen to the parlor. Turning my shoulders, she faced me toward the mirror over the sideboard.

The me I saw wasn't as tidy as yesterday. Today I looked more like a beach bum, all straggling hair and sun-pinked skin.

“Auburn hair, green eyes—”

“Blue,” I corrected, bugging my eyes out at her. “Nana, you know I have blue eyes.”

“Blue-green,” she allowed. “Anyway, you look a proper Celtic girl, and you will win the crown this year.”

She gave a firm nod then walked back toward the kitchen.

“Why this year?” I insisted as I trailed after her. “Because I was too chicken to come back before now?”

Across the kitchen Thelma's shoulders stiffened, but she stayed put, probably because she wanted to hear what Nana had to say.

Nana took her time. Before she answered, she resumed whipping her batter with a wooden spoon.

“That's one uncharitable way to put it. But you're not a coward.”

“I am, believe me,” I told her. “I hate gossip and knowing it's about me. And even when I don't see them do it, I'm sure they can't wait to dissect my craziness later.”

Thelma made a muffled grunt, but I could tell she was trying to comfort, not scold me, when she said, “It never occurred to you, I suppose, that folks have more on their minds than what happened to you seven years ago.”

“I didn't say my feelings made sense,” I said.

“But you're no coward, Gwen,” Nana said without slowing her abuse of that poor helpless batter. “You faced your fear of sleepwalking. Now you're facing people. They're always harder. But as for becoming Summer Queen, it's simply
time
.”

The word settled there like a stone in a puddle. I swear you could feel ripples coming out from it. And that spoon kept beating round and round. It was hypnotic, which is probably why I asked her.

“What did you see in my reading that bothered you?”

That stopped Nana's stirring and made Thelma head for the back door.

“Nana, I really want to know.”

Her hand jerked away from the wooden spoon. It fell,
flipping batter onto the spotless kitchen counter.

“Then I guess you'd better see for yourself,” Nana said.

She didn't clean up the counter. Instead, she slipped the mirror from her pocket and out of its pouch, then laid it before me.

She waited.

“I can't see anything but a kind of oblong piece of copper.”

“Look harder.”

“All right. It's bright reddish gold, mostly, but there are tarnished spots and smears.”

“Harder.”

My hands fisted. This was like being “taught” geometry when you had no aptitude for it. “I'm trying,” I told her.

“Don't try. Look beyond the surface and the smears. Let your eyelids lower. Don't focus …”

It was like listening to someone talk as they fell asleep. I saw nothing, but Nana did.

“There,” she said, but she didn't point. “The waves, the girl in the rain, and that”—Nana's voice cracked on
that,
as if tears interfered—“awful, blood-begotten storm. Blood and love and loss.”

“You're starting to scare me,” I admitted.

Nana shook her head and clapped her hand over the mirror. The gesture echoed the one she'd made two days ago.

“You see what I mean?” Nana asked. Despite her frustration,
her normal tone had returned. “It's the Fisherman's Daughter legend and not your reading at all. Except around the edges, there are flowers.”

“Like in your garden?” I asked, trying to understand.

“Or the crown,” she said, nodding past the kitchen walls toward her own Summer Queen crown, dried and hung over the mantle.

“Nana, do you really believe in this? Do you think you're getting messages from”—I broke off, and my hand spun in the air—“somewhere?”

“Not really,” she said. “I suppose it's all projection. Looking into the mirror, I see things I must already know on some level—forgotten memories or intuition, perhaps.”

That made sense. Seven years ago, of course she knew I'd come back. Knowing I'd be seventeen, she might even have guessed I'd meet a guy. Although saying it would be a reunion was pretty shrewd.

“At least that's how it usually works.” Nana shrugged.

“I don't suppose the mirror is high-tech enough to be broken,” I joked.