“Zoey, what’s the matter?”
Her eyes glittered, her cheeks flushing as her lips parted in a smile. “We passed! The inspection. The guy showed up early, and I walked around with him and Sandy, and I was coughing a little, and I told him I had West Nile, and he didn’t stay here very long at all —I think he thought I was, like, Typhoid Mary —and we passed!”
CHAPTER 21
A STORM WAS SLATED to roll onto the island during the grand reopening day of the Seashell Shop. We watched the prediction on the news before finally locking the doors and leaving on Tuesday. The shop was cleaned and organized, fully stocked and waiting for the music festival customers to arrive. After working on inventory and sorting, polishing, and washing mud-covered pottery that had been stored in the shed after the last hurricane, the shopgirls were exhausted. We’d been like sailors on a ship making ready for the wild waters around Cape Hatteras, Sandy at the helm issuing orders and the rest of us scurrying.
Before we left, Sandy had rounded us up on the porch —all the Seashell Shop Sisters, Sandy’s husband, George, Greg and Crystal from the restaurant next door, Paul and J.T., who’d come by after school, and Zoey, who made excuses not to go to school that day, complaining that she still didn’t feel well. Watching her work at the shop, it was obvious that she wasn’t really sick anymore. I was dreading forcing her to finally get on the bus with J.T. It would be an ugly battle of wills. Spending time with her at Sandy’s the past couple days had been nice, more relaxed. The shopgirls fawned over her like a gaggle of grandmas, giving her and the West Nile virus credit for chasing away the inspector. Zoey laughed and talked and seemed more like her old self. It was good to see her happy.
Sandy wanted us to pray for tomorrow’s reopening —right there outside the shop, with the cars rushing by. Zoey glanced at me, probably thinking I’d find some way to make a run for the car before the prayer circle could form, but I didn’t. After weeks of sharing Iola’s prayers, journeying along as she offered up her hopes, her pain, her helplessness and confusion when life didn’t happen according to plan, it seemed natural. I’d started to write notes of my own and tuck them into a rusty cracker tin I’d unearthed in Iola’s pantry and taken back to the cottage. A prayer box for myself. My first.
Someday, when I could afford it, I’d buy the lighthouse box from Sandy —the one that had survived the storm —and make things more official. Sandy had offered to give it to me, but I told her I’d rather pay for it. She’d agreed to put it in the storeroom until I was ready.
For now, my notes were simple, a fledgling effort at conversation, but committing them to the cracker tin somehow helped me to let the thoughts go and stop spinning them round and round in my head.
Thank you for Zoey’s smile. Help me to help her, to show her how amazing she is. . . .
Thank you for Sandy and the Sisterhood of the Shell Shop. . . .
Please protect Iola’s house. Show me what I should do. Stop them from tearing it down. Help me to save it somehow. There must be a way. . . .
Send good weather. No more rain. There’s so much plaster falling in. . . .
Sandy and the Shell Shop girls were praying for good weather too. I felt the urgency of that prayer through our clasped hands, Zoey’s on one side and J.T.’s on the other, linking to Paul. Each of us knew the high stakes of the days ahead. Hatteras had pieced itself back together again, and if the music festival didn’t bring in a crowd, it would be a blow to the local businesses —an indication that tourists had decided to stay farther north on the Banks for now, rather than returning to Hatteras, where the streets were still dotted with ravaged houses and the remnants of storm damage.
When the prayer was over, we left quietly, like parishioners exiting church. Even Chum walked soberly off the porch rather than doing his usual crazy-dog figure eights.
J.T. asked if he could go by the classroom with Paul to get some things ready for tomorrow’s lab project, and I let him. I knew that when Paul dropped J.T. off later, he would probably sit in his truck a minute before he backed out, and I would probably go outside. We would linger and talk about the day or Zoey’s issues or some funny question J.T. had come up with while he and Paul were out and about. The routine had become an unspoken thing that both of us looked forward to.
Zoey and I drove home without saying much. I tried talking to her about going back to school tomorrow. She went into avoidance mode.
“Not tomorrow. It’s opening day.” A desperate look slanted my way, her bottom lip unconsciously pooching out in a pout, then trembling a little. “I’m caught up on all my homework, anyway.” Paul had been helping by gathering Zoey’s work and sending it home with J.T.
I caved. “Okay. One more day. But, Zoey, you’re going to have to face this. You can’t let other people decide your life for you. Who cares what Rowdy and his friends say about you or think about you? Other people’s judgment doesn’t have any power unless you offer yourself up for trial, so don’t.”
Zoey blinked and looked at me like I had two heads. That last part didn’t sound like anything that would’ve come from my mouth. It was a quote directly from one of Iola’s letters —a bit of parting advice from Sister Marguerite. Something I was trying to remember. I’d been offering myself up for trial my whole life, determining myself by what my parents said about me, whether men wanted me, whether the wives in Trammel’s circle accepted me. It had never even crossed my mind that I had a choice in the matter.
Remember that you are God’s, not theirs. Sister Marguerite’s final words to Iola as she walked through the gates of the orphanage for the last time.
I wrote it down that night and tucked it into my box. Please help Zoey to see that she isn’t theirs.
Thunder was rumbling outside when I closed the box and went to bed. I was tempted to sneak over to Iola’s house to check the drip buckets, but that would only lure me into staying. I’d been keeping close to the cottage since Zoey’s illness, just making sure the running-away idea didn’t resurface. With Ross still stuck out of town, it was easy to hang around home without it being obvious to Zoey.
I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that I wasn’t really sorry Ross’s mechanical problems had delayed him a few more days. I was afraid to analyze the reasons for that too deeply, but the question nagged as I closed my eyes and went to sleep, bone-weary but happy.
Just before dawn, I woke to the sound of a bird singing outside the window. I lay awake, listening, looking into the misty morning haze, the beginnings of a perfect day. After all our hard work, I’d prayed that it would be.
This day, the bird singing, the blushing sky felt like an answer.
In committing these prayers to you, I have come to see the answers in everything. Words from Iola’s letters, now tucked in the closets of my mind. By asking the questions, I’d begun to see answers in the simple things that happened each day —like a pile of driftwood left stacked behind a building. Zoey’s birthday was coming up. I hadn’t even thought of that when I’d started the box for her.
I took a blanket and a cup of coffee and went out on the porch, watching as fingers of morning sunlight stretched through the loblolly pines and touched the wet grass, outlining each strand in a silver hue. Just out of sight beyond the salt meadow and the trees, the marina came to life as fishermen rigged their nets and crews made ready for the day. Metal rang against metal. Motors rumbled. Tires grated against gravel. On the road, Geneva Bink passed by in her golf cart. She waved at me as if we were old friends, and I waved back with my coffee mug.
Closing my eyes, I rested my head on my knees, lulled by the music of early morning. Was it possible for life to really be this good, this peaceful? For everything to be so beautiful all at once?
Thank you. Everything in my soul was whispering it.
“I guess our big prayer worked.”
I opened my eyes and J.T. was standing in the doorway, blinking drowsily under a bad case of bedhead.
“Guess it did. It’s a perfect morning.” I purposely didn’t look toward Iola’s house. I didn’t want to be reminded of the problems with it. Not today. Instead, I stood, fanned out my blanket, and folded J.T. in for a hug. Then we walked backward through the door like a pair of clumsy dancers. “We’d better get ready, huh? Paul said if you wanted to come to the Seashell Shop with me this morning, he would pick you up there and give you a ride to school.”
“Awww, man!” J.T. complained, and I was surprised. Usually he wanted to go anywhere with Paul. “Why can’t I stay home from school like Zoey?”