The Summer Wind (14 page)

Dora couldn’t procrastinate any longer. Wearing old gym shorts and one of Cal’s old Gamecock T-shirts, Dora laced up her old tennis shoes and headed out for a walk. Mamaw and Lucille were out on the porch, and not wanting to draw their attention, she hurried out the front door. She didn’t have any plan—unlike Harper, who shot like a bullet out of the
house early each morning. It was already midafternoon, but Dora wasn’t measuring her distance or heart rate, or wearing high-tech wicking clothes or running shoes, like her sister. Her intention was simply to start moving. Mamaw had told her to just go out and explore, not to have an agenda, but instead to look around and soak in the sights. To allow herself the freedom to simply roam without someone or something calling her back.

Dora took the advice to heart. She drew in a breath, then began walking at a moderate pace—not so fast that she started to sweat, but quicker than a stroll. Large, drooping oaks provided welcome shade along the side streets. As she passed the few visible houses, she admired the landscape designs, checked out what plants were in bloom. It was a lovely day, with blue skies; she had to ask herself why she’d been so hard-pressed to get out of the house before now. The answer was, she knew, because the black cloud hovering overhead made the world appear dismal.

But she was walking now, pumping her fists with determination. Dora reached the end of the pavement, and then she started down a sand- and rock-strewn beach path bordered on either side by an impenetrable maritime shrub thicket. She paused to study the groundsel, the wax myrtle, the yaupon bushes that survived—even thrived—under the harsh effects of wind-blown salt and sand. Survivors, every one of them. A lesson to be learned, she told herself as she moved on.

Dora followed the narrow path to where it opened up, revealing with a gust of wind the panorama of the Atlantic Ocean. The brilliant sea mirrored the azure skies, sunlight reflecting on its surface like diamonds. Heartened, Dora took
off on a quicker pace, keeping to the hard-packed sand. She reflected on the many years she’d walked this same stretch of beach. When they were girls, she and Carson would pretend they were Chincoteague ponies, kicking their knees high and neighing as they galloped along the surf.

Her mama would drop her off at Sea Breeze in early June when school let out and come collect her in early August in time to get her outfitted for school. Carson would cry when Dora had to return with her mother to Charlotte. Dora had always felt for the little girl without a mother. But she was a bit jealous of her, too. Carson got to live full-time with Mamaw in her great house on East Bay, the loveliest street in the world, she thought. And on weekends and holidays, she’d go with them to Sea Breeze. Mamaw tried not to show favoritism when the girls were together, but everyone knew Carson was special to her. As a grown woman, Dora could understand that it was only natural for Mamaw to feel more for the girl she mothered. But as a child, Dora envied Carson for the silliest things, like how Carson got the best bedroom, which, as eldest, Dora thought should have gone to her.

Years later, she gave up girlish games to sit in the sun, coated with baby oil, roasting like a plucked chicken. Carson used to beg her to play, but Dora was three years older and her interests had shifted to the more sedentary scene of sitting on a towel, talking to her girlfriends, flirting with the boys, or reading a book. She had been awash in a sea of hormones, vacillating between laughter and tears, wanting to play the old games with Carson one day and trying to ditch the younger girl the next. It was a confusing summer of budding breasts, boys, and best friends.

That first summer when Dora was on the precipice of womanhood was also Harper’s first summer at Sea Breeze. Carson was eleven and Dora was already fourteen. Then this tiny, doll-like girl of six years of age arrived from Manhattan with expressive blue eyes and ginger hair. She was introduced as their half-sister, Harper. Everyone catered to her, oohing about how pretty she was, how well behaved, how smart. Dora had heard of this younger sibling, of course, but she’d never met her. The age difference was too great for them to really play together, as she had with Carson. At best, they’d find a few activities they could share over the summer; at worst, she’d get stuck babysitting.

When Dora remembered those summer days, however, she always returned to one day during that first summer when all three sisters were at Sea Breeze together. Mamaw had taken them to the beach, as she did many days. Mamaw sat in a folding canvas chair under a large, colorful umbrella. Beside her, three towels were spread out on the sand. While Mamaw read, the girls played—making sand castles, collecting seashells, playing tag in the waves. Mamaw’s strictest rule was that no one was allowed to go into the water unless she was watching.

On this particular sunny day Carson had been pestering Dora to ride the skim board along the shoreline. Dora was getting annoyed. Carson was such a tomboy it could be embarrassing. After all, only boys skim-boarded and Dora wasn’t about to look like a fool in front of people she knew. Harper was building a sand castle in the moist sand at the low-tide mark. Dora lay on her belly on her towel, pulled out
Seventeen
, and soon got lost in the magazine.

Then she heard Harper scream.

Instantly Dora dropped her magazine and leaped to her feet, scanning the beach for the little redheaded girl in the pink swimsuit. She spotted Harper standing frozen by her sand castle, arms out as though poised to run, staring at the massive cargo ship passing the island. Dora ran to her side and grabbed her hand. Carson had also heard the scream and abandoned her skim board to reach Harper’s side just after Dora. The little girl was trembling with fear as the monstrous ship passed. The enormous, black, rusting hulk coming so close to the shoreline was very frightening for a child, even for Dora. Fully as tall as a high-rise building, it moved at a leviathan’s pace, skimming past the island.

What Dora remembered most was standing on the beach, side by side with Carson and Harper, holding hands, bolstering one another as the behemoth cast its shadow over them. Both she and Carson had come running when Harper cried out. Dora felt a keen sense of solidarity with her sisters at that moment.

When the ship had gone and the sun shone warm on the beach again, the girls dropped hands and each went back to their individual play. But that moment had sealed an unspoken pact between them. They were sisters. They’d be there for one another.

Mamaw, Dora realized now, had never forgotten the sisters’ unspoken promise to one another, though the sisters had in the many years they’d been apart. Mamaw had been standing behind them on the beach, watching. Years later she’d brought them back here, to this same island, to this same beach, to feel that bond again.

Was it possible? Dora wondered. Could anyone recapture the innocence and trust of youth once she had transitioned into the cynicism of adulthood?

She continued walking, lost in her thoughts, before she turned a curve and saw a dozen or more kite surfers gliding across the water, their colorful kites like brightly plumed birds in the sky. She grinned, mesmerized by the sight. Carson had told her about this new sport and, curious, Dora took a spot with others along the shoreline, watching the amusing aerobatics out on the water. Of course, Carson had already learned to kite surf from Blake. Dora smiled and thought,
Maybe next year.

Reaching the tip of the island, she looped around and began her long trek back along Middle Street. She hadn’t realized how far she’d walked. She’d reached the northern end of Sullivan’s Island. Her throat was parched and her body ached; she was exhausted, sweaty, and had a long way to go before reaching Sea Breeze, clear on the other side of the island. Dora scolded herself for having left without water, but she’d not planned to go so far! But as there was no place to get any or buy any, she had no choice except to put one foot in front of the other and keep walking.

Sweat dripped from her face and was pooling along her neck and between her breasts, blotching her T-shirt. Her thirst became palpable, and she began to worry.
You’re such an idiot for going so far on your first day. What if you have a real heart attack this time?

A car honked beside her and she nearly jumped from her skin. Blinking in the bright sunlight, Dora put her hand up over her eyes like a visor to see who it was waving her over. A shiny
red pickup truck with big wheels and a shiny front grille was idling at the curb.

“Hello?” she called out in a questioning tone.

“Dora! Dora Muir, is that you?”

Dora didn’t recognize the man at the wheel, nor did she want anyone she might know to see her dressed like this and all sweaty. She waved and kept walking.

The truck followed.

“Dora!” the voice called again.

She didn’t stop.

“Hold on a minute. It’s me. Devlin.”

Devlin?
Dora stopped again, then squinted toward the man in the truck. He was a barrel-chested man with shaggy, sunbleached hair and deeply tanned skin; he was wearing a pale blue polo shirt. He had the look of an islander. She couldn’t put a finger on exactly what it was that gave someone that look, but it was as deeply embedded as DNA.

“Devlin Cassell?” she called out. Earlier in the summer, Carson had told Dora she had run into Devlin.

The man in the truck grinned wide. “The one and only.”

That was a name that brought up memories that had been packed away in a pretty box labeled “old boyfriends” and tucked into the deep recesses of her brain. If Dora’s face hadn’t already been so flushed from overheating, Devlin would have seen her cheeks pinking. She’d heard he’d become a successful real estate agent, and that he was divorced. Dora wiped her brow. It was just her luck that she’d run into Devlin Cassell again after fifteen years when she was exhausted and soaking in her own sweat.

“Hey, Devlin,” she called out halfheartedly. “Nice to see you again.”

“Well, come on over here, girl,” Devlin called back, waving his arm in a come-hither gesture. “We don’t want to keep shouting.”

“I’m all sweaty,” she begged off.

“So what?”

“So, I don’t feel like stopping right now.” Nervousness made her dry mouth feel like a desert. She started to cough, and it was one of those hacking coughs that could go on forever.

“You okay?” Devlin called out.

She waved her hand dismissively, wishing either that he’d go away or the earth would just swallow her up.

Dev put the truck in park and rushed to her side with a bottle of water. He handed her the bottle and gently patted her back. She drank thirstily, and as the coughing fit subsided she took great heaving breaths, embarrassed to the core.

“Thanks,” she said between breaths. She was so hot, if she were alone she’d take the rest of the water and pour it over her head.

“Come on, sit a spell in my truck. It’s air-conditioned.”

She wanted to. Desperately. Dora looked from left to right, to see if anyone she knew might see her step into the car of a man who wasn’t her husband. Silly, of course, given that she didn’t really have a husband any longer. But old habits died hard.

“Sure, thanks,” she said. Dora followed Devlin to the truck, plucking at her T-shirt as she walked so it wouldn’t cling so tight.

Inside the truck it was blessedly cool. She almost wept with gratitude when he moved the fan to blow directly onto her.

Devlin leaned back against the door and grinned like a Cheshire cat as they studied each other. His eyes were shockingly
pale blue against his dark tan and she remembered how, when they were teens, the girls all said he looked like Paul Newman. Well, she thought, swallowing another gulp of water from the bottle, she wasn’t the only one who had put on some weight since the good ol’ days. But Devlin wasn’t heavy as much as solid. He had filled out his girth and had the sheen of a man who loved the outdoors and his drink in equal measures.

“Dora Muir,” he said in a tone that implied he couldn’t believe he was seeing her again. “As I live and breathe.”

“Well,
I’m
barely breathing,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh.

“What are you doing running in the heat like that? It’s gotta be close to a hundred out there.”

He thought she was running? Dora let that one slide. “I didn’t know it was that hot. I, uh, might have gone a little too far.”

“Your face is as red as a beet. Let me drive you back to Sea Breeze.”

She could’ve kissed him. “That’d be nice,” she replied, wiping sweat from her brow in as demure a manner as she could manage. “Thank you.”

Devlin fired up the big engine. It purred to action.

“Nice truck,” she said. Then, remembering the dented, vintage gray Ford pickup he used to drive, she added, “Nicer than the one you used to drive.”

His grin spread across his face and he laughed. “You remember that old clunker?”

“Remember it? Some of my fondest memories were in that smelly ol’ truck.”

His eyes sparkled with mirth and memory, and she knew they were both remembering the heavy-petting sessions they’d had in the torn-up front seat of that truck when Dora was sixteen and Devlin seventeen. Over the course of one long, hot summer, Dora had rounded first, second, and third base with Devlin Cassell and, on one particularly steamy night, almost scored a home run.

“Yeah,” he said in a slow drawl as he shifted into gear. They took off down the road. “It near broke my heart when I had to let that truck go. Hung on to it long as I could.” He glanced her way. “It sure is good to see you again. You’re as pretty as ever.”

“Oh, get out of here,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I look terrible. I’m sweating like Pattie’s pig.”

“You’re out running. You’re supposed to.”

Dora wasn’t going to argue with that.

They reached the corner where Dunleavy’s Pub sat.

“Hey,” Dev said. “Can I buy you a drink? There’s a parking spot right in front. That don’t happen every day.”

“Good God, no. I’m not going in there dressed like this.”

He continued on past Dunleavy’s and the strip of restaurants on Middle Street, most of them not crowded yet. In another hour, all of them would be overflowing with guests.