Two steps inside the commissioners’ court, I panicked. Completely. The room was filled to capacity, even though the meeting wasn’t to begin for twenty minutes yet. People stood along the walls, sat on the floor in the center aisle. In the semicircular rows of seats, some attendees were already sitting two to a chair.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered and tried to hand the notebook to Paul. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but the interior looked like a courtroom: dark wooden walls, gallery seating filled with onlookers, a heavy U-shaped stand where the commissioners sat behind marble countertops on a raised dais. My mind rushed back to countless visits to family court, adults asking questions, making decisions, casting looks of pity our way. Suddenly I was a little girl again, powerless, afraid. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
I tried to turn and run out the door. Paul caught me before I could escape. His arm formed a firm, strong circle around my waist.
“Let go!” I protested, loudly enough that a uniformed officer glanced my way. I lowered my voice. “Just take the notebook, Paul. You know everything we were planning to say. I can’t go in there.” I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
Paul’s skin pressed warm against mine. “Yes, you can, Tandi. You can.” His gaze grabbed me, held on. “You’re the one who lived it. You’re the one who needs to tell the story of the boxes and that house.” He set the poster boards beside the wall, took my face in both of his hands, stared hard at me like a rescue diver trying to convince a shipwreck victim to stop floundering and start swimming. “Come on, just like we practiced. Don’t let these people intimidate you. You’re stronger than that.”
“Paul, I —”
“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.” He leaned close, his forehead almost touching mine. His nearness blocking out the sounds of people whispering, bodies shifting impatiently, chairs scraping the floor.
For a moment, I saw only Paul, heard only his voice. “When you get your turn to talk, don’t think about the commissioners. Just tell me the story, like you did last night when we practiced at Iola’s house. Now remember, they’ll go through all the people who signed up earlier on the agenda first, so there will be a bunch of talk about different issues. Then Geneva comes up and then you. Geneva will prep the court with the list of complaints she’s gathered about more borrow pits and a holding pond going in, and then it’s you. You show them, Tandi. Show them what they’re talking about destroying so that they can dig sand and drain water to save houses that’ve been built where they shouldn’t have been in the first place. Houses that likely won’t survive another storm or two. You ask those commissioners, and the audience, which house has the right to be here —the ones that are sliding off into the water or the one that has made it through every storm? You show them who Iola was and what that house meant and everything she did for the Banks.”
Which house has the right to be here . . .
I heard my grandfather’s voice. What do they think —the storms will never come? You build a house on the sand, the sand shifts eventually, Tandi Jo. You remember that.
I heard Isabelle. Fear builds walls instead of bridges. I want a life of bridges, not walls.
Swallowing the pulsating lump in my chest, I pulled in air, nodded because I couldn’t find my voice, and let Paul lead me forward. Geneva, Bink, Zoey, J.T., and Brother Guilbeau were sitting in a row near the middle. I recognized many of the faces around them. The fishermen of Fairhope had turned out in force.
Zoey and J.T. wiggled out of a single seat by the aisle.
“Here,” J.T. offered, grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair. “We saved you a seat.”
Zoey nodded, her face filled with tenderness and something else I’d never seen in her before, or at least not in a long time. Admiration. “Go get ’em, Mama.” She hugged me, then pressed the mermaid’s tear necklace into my palm.
I closed my fingers around it and let her faith seep into me. We’d been brought here, back to these islands, for a reason. For so many reasons that I was only now beginning to see.
“I will,” I promised, holding the necklace as I slipped into my seat. “I will, Zoey. Don’t worry.”
J.T. folded himself into the space in front of my chair, sitting on my feet, while Zoey moved to the back to stand by the wall where Sandy and the girls had staked out a corner. Paul sat beside me on the floor, holding the poster boards on his crossed legs as the meeting came to order with all the normal proceedings —announcements, prayer, Pledge of Allegiance. I tried to take in air and let it out, to still the trembling in my hands. I needed to appear confident when it was my turn to speak. I had to be convincing. I had to be worthy.
After the court’s opening program, the agenda moved on with a short ceremony, giving several county workers their five-and ten-year service pins. In spite of the routine proceedings, the room was filled with tension and expectation, with a sense that everyone was waiting for what would come later.
I closed my eyes and turned a page in my head, imagined this moment as if it had already passed, as if I were reading it in one of Iola’s prayer letters. How would she write this? What would she say? What would she ask for just before those closing words, Your loving daughter?
Wisdom? Strength? A steady voice?
The presentation of the pins concluded, and the opening of the podium was announced. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the time that has been set aside for public comments. If you have a public comment this evening and you have not signed up, in a moment, please raise your hand, and I will recognize you. When I do, please go to the podium, state your name, and tell us where you are from. Please limit your comments to three minutes. There’s a green light on the podium that will come on when your time begins. A yellow light will come on when you have about thirty seconds left, and a red light will come on when you need to conclude your comments.”
Three minutes. Just three minutes. So short a time. How could I possibly make them see?
I opened the notebook, looked down at it, but the words were a jumble in my mind. At the podium, a man was talking about a change in the regulation of lot sizes in Manteo and how it would lead to overdevelopment. From behind the marble counter, the county commissioners watched, polite yet emotionless, giving no hints as to what they were thinking.
Would they even hear me? Who was I to talk to them? I’d only been here a few months. The man petitioning the court right now had lived here twenty-seven years, and no one had protected him when a developer bought the land next door and made plans to stack it full of condos and retail shops.
Why would anyone care about Iola’s story?
Movement on the opposite end of the room caught my attention. Someone was threading a path through the crowded side aisle. Slick blonde hair swayed over the shoulders of a tight red dress.
“Gina,” I whispered. Paul looked up, then turned a wary look my way.
Another familiar face towered over the crowd behind her. Ross.
“Oh no,” I whispered. If Gina was here, it was a given that she knew about our plan and had come to derail it if she could. I should’ve known she wouldn’t quietly disappear after our confrontation in Iola’s house. Anytime shots were fired, Gina made sure she won the war, whether she really cared about the spoils or not. Just the fight was motivation enough.
“Steady now.” Paul winked at me.
I focused on the podium again, staring straight ahead as one speaker and then another came and went, airing grievances and concerns having to do with everything from school funding to noise control ordinances. Everyone had problems and needs, and every need seemed important. A building contractor spoke about the cost-effectiveness of having borrow pits nearby, to provide fill for construction and sand for waterfront homes. A couple whose life savings were tied up in a beach house that now had runoff sitting underneath it pleaded for new measures in flood control and storm-water retention.