I turned back to the wall, a hot flush pressing in. I’d never been a secret weapon before. In fact, it had been a long time since anyone had expressed that kind of confidence in me —a long time since I’d done anything to deserve it.
I studied the problem again, trying to come up with a plan. Stripping off the wet drywall on top would be easy, but the lower half, the original beadboard, would be really tough. I’d have to take it off a piece at a time, labeling the pieces and saving as many of the old square nails as I could, then dry it out and work it back together like a puzzle. I’d never done anything like that. Ever. But losing anything that was original to the building would practically be a crime. I had to make sure all the parts were dry before I started rebuilding the wall, or they’d have more problems in the future. Mold. Mildew. Wood rot.
I laid out a tarp for the soggy drywall, probed, cut, checked with the moisture meter.
“Was this wall redone after the storm?” I knew it must have been. Some of the drywall work was recent, but they’d done a lousy job. The old studs with termite damage should’ve been replaced, for one thing.
Sandy made a disgusted sound. When I glanced over, that round-cheeked face didn’t look so friendly anymore. Seashell Sandy had a feisty side. “Yes, and by a contractor who pretended to be a good person. When he showed up with his crew not long after the storm, I thought he was the answer to a prayer. I even let him and his crew headquarter their trailers here at the shop, plug into the electric, all that. Their end of that deal was that they were supposed to do the work on my shop. What I got was last place on their list and shoddy results. By the time we started trying to get our occupancy permit, they were long gone, and there were complaints about them all over the island.”
“Oh.” The whole drywall knife went through the wall, along with my hand. “I’m really sorry.” I pulled it out of the wall and looked down at my fingers, sighed. What a mess.
“Don’t be sorry.” Dishes rattled and the water turned on in the bar sink. “Just figure out where the leak is coming from, and I’ll get a plumber in here, and then you’ll fix my wall, and all will be right with the world again.”
I chuckled and moved on. “I’ll do my best.”
“I’m not even worried. Only the right sort of person would’ve bothered to bring back that box of hummingbirds.” She held up a coffeepot, checked it against the light, then lowered it to wipe off a water spot. “There, that’s ready to go. Now all we need is a wall, a plumbing fix, an occupancy permit, a food service permit, stock for the shelves, and hordes of customers coming in the door before we go totally broke.” For the first time since I’d met her, Sandy sounded a little depressed.
“Well, you know how a river moves a mountain.” The words surprised me at first, but I knew where they were coming from.
“Stone by stone,” she finished. “Iola told me that on the phone when she called to order those hummingbirds.”
I felt Iola there in the room with us. “I wish I’d known her better.” It was still so strange that I knew the intimacy of her private thoughts, that I felt at home in her house, but in reality we’d never been face-to-face.
“Well, she was a sweet person. Friendly, but hard to get close to in a way too. Back when she was driving, she would usually show up in the late afternoon. She’d figured out that was when the girls from the other stores around here stop over for coffee. We’ve got a little sisterhood that hangs out here at the Seashell Shop. You’ll meet them later. Iola liked to come sit with us. Every once in a while, she would share a story or two about some place she’d been in the past or some event she remembered, but mostly she just listened. She was private like that.
“I remember one time, she’d ordered fifteen of our glass boxes —the large ones, a size bigger than the ones on the shelf over there. A load of fifteen boxes is heavy and hard to transport. Anyway, I wanted her to let me bring them to her house, but she just wouldn’t. She had me ship every single one of them to her by UPS, packaged separately. She planned to send them out for Christmas gifts, she said, but she didn’t want to just give me the addresses to mail them to. That was usually how she did things. I never did quite figure it out, except that she must have sent a lot of gifts to friends and family out of state —either that or she just liked to buy things, and there’s a houseful of our glasswork at her place.”
Sandy paused, the statement rising into a question. She was wondering if I knew what was in Iola’s house. I thought about the clutter of boxes and plastic bins on the lower floor. Most of it seemed too old to have come from Sandy’s. “I’ve seen one glass box and a suncatcher, but that’s about it.” I left it at that.
“Guess I may never know what happened to all of our treasures. Anyway, I’d better stop bothering you and let you work.” Sandy moved from behind the bar. “You look like you’ve got everything under control over there.”
I sensed that I’d just received the nod of approval. “You might want to wait until the wall is finished to decide on that.” I regretted the comment the minute it slipped out. Habit. I’d learned long ago that bragging about yourself would bring a smackdown. Around Mama and Daddy’s house, you didn’t come home with your A-plus papers and wag them in someone’s face. Well, little miss smarty-pants, you just think you’re too good, huh? That right?
“Don’t sell yourself short. I know a competent woman when I see one,” Sandy replied, then exited the room and left me to contemplate whether the queen of the Seashell Shop saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.
By midafternoon, I didn’t feel competent or contemplative. I was too tired to feel anything. I hadn’t been so physically exhausted since my days of living in a little house next to a stable, exercising show horses, trying to work my way up in the business and raise my baby girl on my own after I dropped out of college.
When Sandy’s shop friends came in for coffee and she and Sharon invited me to sit with them at a table on the back deck, I didn’t argue. I’d done all I could with the project for the day. The wet drywall and craft-paper backing were off the studs on the top half. I’d uncovered the leak in the pipes from the back side, and now it needed a plumbing fix before I started the painstaking process of taking off the old beadboard, drying things out, and replacing studs. Sandy had a plumber friend coming by after hours.
“It’ll help if that thunderstorm doesn’t come in,” I said as I sat down with Sandy, Sharon, and Crystal from the Boathouse Barbecue, along with Teresa and Elsa, who owned the ice cream stand down the street, and Teresa’s eighty-eight-year-old mother, Callie.
“Well, that’s the one thing we can’t control, sweet pea.” Callie leaned over and patted my knee. “You learn that, livin’ eighty-odd years on a sandbar. It’s all in God’s hands.” She smiled at me, her eyes a cloudy brown. “Now where did you say you’re stayin’, exactly?”
The other ladies at the table gave me apologetic looks. Callie repeated the same questions over and over —I’d already noticed. My grandmother had started to do that the last time we were allowed to visit her and Pap-pap. Alzheimer’s had been setting in.
“She’s taking care of Iola’s house, Mama,” Teresa answered patiently. “Remember, Sandy told us that a few minutes ago? Iola passed away.”
“Oh.” Callie nodded, her hand still resting on my knee. “She was a WAC during the war. She told me that once. I was a WAC too. That’s Women’s Army Corps, if you didn’t know. I was a pilot. Ferried supplies and antiaircraft artillery around. A WASP, they called us girls. Did Iola Anne ever tell you about those days?”
“Mama, you were a WAC, not Iola,” Teresa corrected.
Callie glanced at her daughter, then turned an entirely lucid look my way. “We, both of us, were. Or maybe that was USO. . . . She was at Camp Davis in Holly Ridge, I think. Yes, that was it. I was there too. I don’t think we saw each other. Maybe I went to her wedding. I can’t recall now. . . .” She drifted off, pulling her hand away and scratching her head. “Oh, it’s all such a muddle. . . .”
“I do remember Iola saying something about dancing with the soldiers.” Sandy sweetened her coffee, then passed the dish around. “I had some cute embroidered hankies in the store once, and Iola said they reminded her of the ones the soldiers gave to the girls when they danced. I don’t know that she was ever married, though. She never mentioned a husband in all the years I knew her.”
Callie lifted a finger into the air. “I think she left him after the war. . . . Yes, that’s what it was. I . . .” Her finger curled slowly, and she lowered her hand, pressing a knuckle to her lips and sighing. “I don’t know. . . .”