I shooed J.T. toward his room, then leaned against the corner of the hallway wall, my body still shaking, the nerves vibrating leaflike and fragile under my skin. “I just need to . . . catch my breath a minute, okay? I’m sure Zoey will show up soon.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” Ross grumbled. “Guess I should go get the cooler out of the truck.” He walked out the door, and I sank down on the edge of the sofa, vacillating between being angry, being worried, and being confused. This just wasn’t like Zoey. Where was she?
She’d come in soon. Of course she would. And she’d have a good reason for going AWOL tonight. She would be here any minute. Home. Safe.
But hours ticked away as I waited on the sofa, alternately calling Rowdy’s cell number and checking the driveway. By midnight, Ross was like a fighting rooster chained to a peg, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Whenever Zoey did finally show up, things were going to be a mess, I could tell.
One of Ross’s friends called, and I was glad for the diversion. They’d moved the party from the beach to a house. They were jamming on guitars and hanging out, planning to crash for a few hours before hitting the water again in the morning. Tomorrow’s forecasts called for waves hip to waist.
I urged Ross to go join the party and then was strangely disappointed when he took me up on it. After he left, all I could do was let my head sag against the sofa and try to focus on the TV rather than the disaster scenarios in my mind.
J.T. staggered up the hall, drowsy and clumsy, dragging the sleeping bag from his room. He curled up next to me, and I sat finger-combing the silken strands of his hair, trying not to think all the worst things.
Sleep slipped over me sometime after midnight. When I woke, Zoey was sneaking past, trying to keep the worn plank floorboards from making noise as she crossed to the sand-crusted carpet runner that ran down the hallway.
“Zoey?” I whispered.
“Sssshhh.” She pointed at J.T. The two of us had collapsed into a heap, and I couldn’t move without disturbing him. After the long day, my mind was slow and sluggish.
“What time is . . . ? Where were you?” I blinked hard, tried to sort out the muddle in my head. J.T. stirred in my lap.
“Go back to sleep.” Zoey shifted from one foot to the other, rubbing her hands up and down her arms like she was half-frozen. “We got Rowdy’s truck stuck at the beach. I need to get some sleep. There’s a stupid science test tomorrow.” She didn’t wait for an answer but disappeared into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind herself.
I slipped out from under J.T., started toward the bathroom door, but decided to leave it be for tonight. Instead, I tucked J.T. in tight on the sofa, then stumbled off to my room. A heavy moon hung outside the window, its soft glow soothing me into sleep almost before my head hit the pillow.
In the morning, Zoey was trying to get quietly out the door when I woke up. She had J.T. in tow and her backpack slung over her shoulder. “Where’s the key?” she demanded when she saw me in the bedroom doorway. She looked tired and red-eyed, her long brown hair hanging in tangled wet strings around her face. “The dork said he got locked out yesterday because the key wasn’t there.”
“Yes, and he was wandering around after dark by himself because you weren’t here,” I snapped, my anger fresh and potent this morning.
Zoey’s jaw squared, her eyes flaring, revealing an odd mix of bloodshot red, dry pink, and sky blue, a miniature sunset in reverse. “You know what —you weren’t either. You’re his mother, remember? You do whatever you want. Why can’t I? Rowdy and me went to the beach. We got the truck stuck when we started to head home. His phone was dead, so we had to walk.” She spotted the key on the windowsill and snatched it up, then pushed J.T. out the door. He stumbled on the stoop and took a couple of running steps across the porch before catching his balance.
Zoey slanted a narrow glare at me, her fingers closing over the knob. “We’ve gotta go. We’ll miss the bus.” The panes of glass rattled as the door slammed behind her.
Fury flared in me, and I yanked it open, yelled into the yard, “You come home after school today, you hear me!”
She didn’t answer, just kept walking toward the marina with J.T. trotting along after her, shooting concerned looks back and forth. I stood watching, tears of frustration blurring the outlines of the kids as they reached the trail through the salt meadow and slowly vanished into the morning fog.
The silence closed in hard and fast as soon as they were gone. It crossed my mind that Ross hadn’t checked on us since he left last night. For all he knew, Zoey could still be missing —or worse. We weren’t even on his mind.
I wanted something medicinal to take the edge off that realization.
But there were no crutches around, and that was for the best. It was easier to leave the pills behind when no one was handing them to me and watching to make sure I took them day after day.
I showered, dressed, and went to Iola’s house, leaving the cottage unlocked, just in case Zoey lost track of the key. Not that I planned to go anywhere today. When Zoey showed up after school —and she’d better —she would listen to what I had to say. I refused to let my baby girl repeat my history. She was better than that. She deserved better. My parents might not have found much to like about me, but I loved my daughter, even if I wasn’t good at showing it. I had hopes and dreams for her. Somehow I had to make her see that.
Iola’s house was quiet and cool inside, the damp, foggy night still clinging in the corners.
“G’morning, Iola,” I said, my voice echoing through the house. Today I liked the feeling that I was not alone here, the sense that I was coming to spend the day with a friend who’d awaited my arrival.
Setting my things on a little table in the vestibule, I looked toward the stairs. In the excitement last night, I’d forgotten all about Iola’s boxes.
CHAPTER 9
January 1, 1933
Dear Father,
Sister give this box to me. She say, “Iola, you write to Father when you got the sadness in this place, and Father, he gon listen.” Sister tell me, put my letters in this box and hide it in my clothin chest where no one else gon know of it. This box a secret between Sister and me. “Not all secrets are sin,” say Sister. She make the box beautiful. “Not all beautiful things are sin,” she say. “Were not the gifts of the magi beautiful?” I like the way Sister talk, all proper like Isabelle.
“Beauty is created with purpose,” say Sister. She hold my chin in her hand and lower her face close to mine, her eyes round and green like a fresh growth of daffodils. “Beauty is created. It’s intentional.” She give extra voice to them big words, created and intentional, to be sure that I know they matter. I ask her just how the ABC’s supposed to go in them words, so I can write them good in my letter to you. They important words.
“We do not choose the vessel we’re given, Iola Anne, but we choose what we pour out and what we keep inside,” she say.
This box a vessel for my letters to you, Sister tell me. I got to put in all the things I keep inside me, get them out in my words. “This is good for the soul,” Sister say. “Tell Father your worries. He will understand. He knows you so well.”
I don’t like the way I look.
I don’t tell this, even to Sister.
They make me come stay here cause of my look. I ain’t stupid. I know it.
I wish I look like Aurelia. She got long hair in braids, black as a dead coal.
I pray this prayer ever night, but in the mornin I wake up and run myself to the mirror in the water closet down that long hall and still, there the same girl lookin back at me. She got a bad look.
My heart so empty for Mama Tee and Maman and Isabelle.
If I look a different way, I can go home again.
I got to believe even harder. I got to believe you gon hear me, Father.
I want to go home.
Your lovin daughter,
Iola Anne
Letting the letter rest, I ran a finger over the words, carefully written in a child’s slow, uneven print. My fingernail grazed the edge of the paper, slipped off onto the quilt, and snagged a stitch of white thread along an aster-blue square. I hadn’t even realized I was sitting on the bed, rumpling Iola’s resting place. The oldest of the boxes —one that had been almost hidden among dust bunnies, stray fur, and cast-off ribbon scraps in the bottom left corner of the closet —lay upside down on the bed beside me, the contents in a neat pile, still shaped like the interior of the box.
The uppermost shelf had me worried today. High out of reach near the attic hatch, it had slipped off its rickety broom-handle bracket overnight, as if I’d disturbed the balance of things when I’d come into the closet yesterday. One side now rested on the shelf beneath it, the boxes compacted like train cars in a pileup. The heavy stained-glass container was teetering with the others, one corner hanging in air.