Geneva and I stood in awkward silence, the scent of crab balls wafting up. “Those smell really good,” I said finally, thinking I would take the dish to the Shell Shop. We’d all be working like crazy, getting everything in place for the inspection today and hopefully an opening before the music festival started. I’d finished the second coat of paint on the wall last night, while Teresa and Cassie sat at the house with Zoey and Paul took J.T. night fishing.
“One of my specialties.” Geneva reached across the space between us and helped me capture the fluttering napkin. Her hand lingered there a moment. “I’m sorry we haven’t been better neighbors. We’re usually a friendly bunch, here in Fairhope. But it’s always been a strange situation . . . with Iola and the house. I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of it. It has nothing to do with you and your precious kids. We’re glad to have you here. We don’t get new families all that often.”
It has nothing to do with you . . . The muscles in my neck stiffened. “What, exactly, did I get caught in the middle of? I’ve wondered.”
Geneva’s lips pursed, her gaze flicking away. “Well . . . I never really understood all of it myself, not being from Fairhope. Bink and I didn’t move back here until his parents gave up the store and retired about ten years ago. I mean, I’d heard a little chatter over the years when we visited —it’s hard to come to Fairhope and not wonder about this big house. The whole patch of woods back there is part of the estate. It runs right behind our cottage. I’d heard Iola Anne Poole’s name muttered around, but folks don’t like to talk about it. But they haven’t forgotten, either.”
Geneva’s gaze darted nervously toward the big white house. Then she leaned close and whispered, “She stole this place when old Mr. Benoit died. His mind wasn’t good, and she took advantage of it —at least that’s how the story goes. I try not to tell things as true, if I wasn’t there. And I wasn’t. But Girard Benoit’s family members expected to inherit the estate, and there was an agreement to sell it to a group of local folks and repurpose it for a resort —sort of the bygone era of shipping tycoons, the grace and grandeur of Titanic and all that kind of thing. They’d already put quite a bit into forming the corporation and having all the legal work done. Almost everyone in Fairhope had money invested, and these weren’t rich people. Then, next thing they knew, old Mr. Benoit died, and it all belonged to Iola, not the rightful heirs —his nephews. She wouldn’t hear of selling it. Folks feel like she took advantage of the old man when he was bedridden and out of his mind —maybe threatened him with that nonsense about a voodoo curse and who knows what else. It set a lot of people back financially, and of course it kept all the new tourist business from coming to Fairhope.”
Glancing toward the house again, she held her hands up at her sides. “Like I said, I don’t know what’s true, and Matthew 12 says that the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and that’s not the kind of heart I want to have. I wish I’d tried harder to be a neighbor to Iola in the ten years we’ve been here, but it always started trouble with Bink, and to tell you the truth, I hated to see her just letting this house go downhill. She couldn’t take care of the place, but she wouldn’t turn loose of it.”
“She loved this place,” I said quietly, thinking of her letters. You have brought me one step short of heaven. . . . “People have no idea how much she loved the island. She’d been here most of her life.” But Geneva was right. By clinging to the house, she’d come close to destroying it.
“I know the church has some hope of taking over ownership of it, but I’m afraid that’s not what’s going to happen.” Geneva sighed. “Bink keeps an ear to the ground, and he’s heard that the county commission is bound and determined to have this property for an eventual storm-water-management site. Since the hurricane, they’ve gotten a lot of pressure and support from high-dollar homeowners farther up the island, who are tired of their houses sitting in water every time a rain comes along. Bink believes that they’ll make Fairhope into one big holding pond, if they can. It’s David and Goliath, and I hate to say it, but we’re David. The only slingshot that’s kept this thing at bay was the fact that Benoit House was a historic landmark, and thanks to Iola, that may be ruined. If the house isn’t viable, there is no landmark. Of course people are mad. Anyway, you asked, and that’s the story as I know it. I’d better get back to the store.”
I said good-bye to Geneva with a singular, terrible image in my mind —the little village of Fairhope, Iola’s grand old house and the ancient maritime forest behind it, reduced to a holding pond.
In the car, Zoey was slumped in her seat, her head resting against the window, her face a picture of unhappiness. “You didn’t have to bring me with you. I’m not gonna run away. I don’t have any place to go, anyway.” She’d refused to explain how she’d planned to get back to Texas, other than that she’d hoped to pawn the phone Rowdy had bought her and return some of the clothes that still had tags on. She thought that would be enough to buy a bus ticket.
Her problems inched into my mind, elbowing out Iola and her house. I wanted to make everything better for my little girl, take away all the pain, but nothing seemed to help. No matter how many times I told her that Rowdy wasn’t worth all this heartbreak, and no matter how kind Sandy and the Shell Shop girls were to her, Zoey couldn’t seem to break out of the gloom.
“I didn’t decide to bring you along because I don’t trust you, Zoey. I just thought . . . it might be a nice day for you. Different scenery, you know? If you feel like it, you can help Sandy with displays or something in the shop, and if you don’t feel like doing anything, there are plenty of sofas and books and a couple computers with Internet service in the coffee bar.” I instantly wished I hadn’t brought that up. I didn’t want her to think of contacting Gina. I’d hidden J.T.’s game box in Iola’s house. The strange thing was that J.T. didn’t seem to mind. He was more interested in hanging out at Bink’s or with Brother Guilbeau or going fishing with Paul. Where his skin had always been sallow and pale, now he was ruddy and sun-kissed, an island boy with freckles under a tan, his hair bleaching to a soft gold on the ends. Brother Guilbeau had bought him a fishing hat so his nose wouldn’t burn anymore.
I wished things were going so well for Zoey. “Not like that’ll do me any good,” she sighed. “Aunt Gina never even answered me when I told her I was coming down there. I guess she didn’t really mean it about the extra room I could stay in.” The truck bounced over a chuckhole, and her head rattled against the window. She didn’t seem to care.
“Zoey, you never know what Aunt Gina means. She just . . . says the things she thinks people want to hear. Whatever’s easy at the moment. Maybe she means it when she says it; I don’t know. But she never should have told you anything like that.” If I had the first idea where to find my sister, I’d snatch every hair from her pretty blonde head.
“Yeah.” Zoey crumpled against the door again, watching without interest as hedges, hotels, and beach homes drifted by. She barely bothered to look when I pointed to the roof of Sandy’s Seashell Shop, ahead on the right. As the place came fully into view, she sat up slightly, taking in the bright-yellow exterior, the colorful chairs and tables on the deck outside.
“Pretty neat, huh?” A sense of pride warmed me. I felt like a piece of Sandy’s Seashell Shop was mine. My own little Ocean of Possibilities.
Zoey craned forward. “Yeah.” She had a little more enthusiasm now. Once we were inside, hopefully Sandy, Sharon, and all their treasures would help. The Seashell Shop was like Iola’s house. It had a magic all its own.
Inside, Sandy was already red-faced and sweating. She was bustling around the shop, pressing the end of a pen against different areas of the drywall. Before we’d painted yesterday, I’d fixed old termite-eaten areas we’d discovered in several other places, including a couple in the ceiling. The patches weren’t perfect, but they were close. There wasn’t any way the building inspector would find them.
“I’m just making sure,” Sandy said without stopping to look at us as I carried the dish of crab balls to the coffee counter. “When that nasty inspector gets here, there is not going to be one thing he can find to fail us.” She lifted the pen into the air, posing momentarily, her short blonde hair falling in sweaty strings over her forehead. “As God is my witness, we shall never be red-tagged again!”
Zoey gave me the sideways fish-eye, as in, Is this what you people do around here?