I felt the hardness around my body like an extra layer of skin. Iola had softened it. She’d eased it with her letters. She’d whittled away at it with donated Tiffany lamps and shrimp boats washed ashore and fifty-dollar bills in envelopes for the grocery boy.
And look what happened to her. Look how things turned out. A crazy lady, locked in her house. Dead, and not one of those people cared. She could have bought anything she wanted with the money from that lamp. . . .
Then there was Paul, slowly settling back into his chair across from me, a crease forming between his brows as he tried to bore through my forehead and get at my thoughts.
“I just need to do this myself.” What else was there to say really? It was the truth. Before I could lose my nerve, I dialed the number for Sandy’s shop. She answered on the first ring, and I stumbled through an explanation.
I hadn’t even finished and she was trying to shut me down. “Wait. Now, just a minute.”
My stomach started churning, the taste of roast beef on rye bubbling up. She was upset with me, of course. I couldn’t blame her. “Listen, I know what a mess this will put you in. I’m so sorry, but I just . . . Zoey can’t be home by herself right now.”
Across the table, Paul was once again trying to offer himself up, in sign language this time. I pretended to be focused on the phone conversation.
“Okay, now listen.” Sandy’s voice was flat, determined. I prepared myself to face that side of her I’d only heard about —the one that was reserved for building inspectors, teenagers showing too much PDA on the boardwalk, and rowdy drunks who wandered in off the beach. “There are two of us here, and with you, that makes three. The rest of us can’t finish the drywall, but we sure can look after a sick little girl, so I’ll tell you how this is going to work. The minute they let Zoey out of there, you call me. Sharon or I, or maybe even Teresa and Cassie, will be at your house by the time you get there, with chicken soup in hand. I’ll even make the chicken soup from scratch. I’ll run out and pick up the stuff right now. I’ve been home with sick kids more than you can count. What time do you think we’ll need to be there?”
Color prickled into my cheeks and emotion choked my throat. Why so much more kindness than I really deserved? They made me wish that I were a better person, that I weren’t hiding so much about myself. “I can’t ask you to do that, Sandy. I . . .”
Across the table, Paul rolled his eyes and threw his palms up.
“You’re not asking. I’m telling. Right now, I wouldn’t care if you were the Octomom —if you’d have my wall ready by Monday, I’d watch after eight sick babies. I’m a grandma. I know how to do these things. You don’t argue with a grandma when she’s got her mind made up. You won’t win.”
“No, I guess not.” I laughed and sniffled. This day was breaking me down and building me in so many ways that I didn’t recognize my own shape anymore. “Thank you, Sandy. This is . . . I don’t know how to . . .”
“There’s no need. You’re in the Sisterhood of the Seashell Shop now. We Shell Shop girls look after each other. That’s how it works. What God puts together, no building inspector nor nasty virus nor category 2 hurricane can tear apart. It’s like being married, only without the hanky-panky. Once you’re ours, you’re ours forever.”
I couldn’t even answer. I just nodded as Sandy went on.
“You call me the minute you know anything. I’m headed out for chicken and celery.” She gave me her mobile number. Paul slid a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote it on a napkin as I repeated it.
There was a knowing look in his eyes when he handed me the napkin. His lips pulled sideways into a self-satisfied smirk.
“See?” His smirk added, You should have listened to me in the first place.
The strangest feeling came over me when we were finally notified that we could go upstairs to see Zoey. It was like the light from my dream —a fully enveloping warmth that surrounded my body from outside but came from inside me as well. I’d never known anything like it. As we stood in the elevator, I closed my eyes, let my head fall against the wall, felt it around me and through me. For a moment, there seemed to be nothing in the world to fear. Nothing more powerful than this.
The door chimed, I opened my eyes, and the spell was broken. Tension crackled through me like an electrical current as I left Paul outside the room of curtained beds and followed a nurse back to the one that was hiding Zoey. She opened her eyes drowsily at the sound of my voice.
“Mama?” A whisper was all she could manage. She looked so pale and drained, her skin ashen alongside her dark hair, her eyes luminously blue against the pallor.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said and kissed her. “How are you feeling?”
“What happened?” she murmured, seeming confused by the curtain, the stainless steel trays, the tubes and monitors sitting idle in the corners.
“You’ve got a virus. You were really sick last night.” She didn’t remember any of it, I guessed. Maybe that was just as well.
“Did I go to Aunt . . . Aunt Gina’s?” She pushed an arm against the mattress, trying to lift herself.
“Ssshhh. Lie still, okay?” Aunt Gina’s? What in the world . . . ?
I hadn’t heard from Gina in months. Six weeks after Trammel threw her off his place, she blew through town with a carful of cosmetic samples and wanted to pick up the clothes she’d left behind. Somehow, she’d landed a job selling makeup to drugstores. Gina had always been tall, willowy, beautiful like our mother. And like Mama, she knew exactly how to use it.
“Are we in Tex . . . Texas?” Zoey’s hair bunched against the pillow as she looked for clues in the room.
A picture began sketching itself in my mind, the lines slowly filling in. Zoey had been trying to run away, and it had something to do with my sister. All that secret e-mailing had been about making plans. “Were you trying to go back to Dallas? Is that what’s been going on?”
She turned her face away, closed her eyes, and tried to lose herself in the pillow. She was so tired, so weak, but I needed to know what she’d gotten herself into. “Zoey, were you trying to run away?”
Tears seeped beneath her lashes, and I was sorry I’d asked. “Why do you care?”
“Zoey, of course I care.” Suddenly her illness was a blessing, the virus like an instrument of salvation. Instead of lying in a hospital bed, she could be . . . anywhere right now. How in the world did she plan to get all the way back to Texas? “Did Aunt Gina have anything to do with this?”
Even exhausted, her face revealed the truth.
CHAPTER 20
ON MONDAY, when I stepped out the door to leave for the Shell Shop, Geneva Bink, of all people, was pulling into the cottage driveway in the little golf cart she kept next to the grocery store. She held up a casserole dish covered in a gingham napkin, smiling over the top of it as she exited the golf cart.
“I was just making our famous crunchy-sausage-and-crab balls for the ladies’ lunch at church tomorrow. I thought I’d bring a plate over,” she said as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to be showing up on my doorstep.
Zoey bumped into me from behind, surprised when I stopped in the doorway. I’d made the command decision to take Zoey to work with me instead of leaving her home alone. The grandmothering from the Shell Shop girls had worked wonders in the last few days. Zoey was better physically, but not at all enthusiastic about returning to school sometime in the near future. With Rowdy and his crowd ignoring her, she felt hopeless and lonely, and there wasn’t much the Shell Shop Sisters or I could do to help that issue.
Zoey threaded her way around me as Geneva came up the steps, holding the gingham napkin in place with her thumbs as the wind toyed with it. “Well, my goodness, look at you!” Geneva twittered when she saw Zoey. “Glad you’re up and around. I hope that brother of yours hasn’t been stuffing you too full of doughnuts these last couple days.” With Zoey sick and me working like a banshee to piece Sandy’s shop back together for inspection, J.T. had been hanging around at Bink’s more than ever. He’d been coming home with little baskets of goodies packed by Geneva, in addition to the leftover doughnuts.
“Thanks for the cookies and stuff.” Zoey’s voice was lifeless and flat. Recovering or not, she still had misery written all over her.
“Well, sure. It’s my pleasure.” Geneva balanced the dish in one hand and touched Zoey’s arm as she passed. “You just feel better, all right? That brother of yours has been worried about you.”
Zoey forced a sad, tired smile and went on to the car.