Laire watched her go, leaning down to pick up the crate and put it in the closet beside the front door. The grit of salt and sand under her bare feet reminded her that she still needed to vacuum the house before her father returned home from a long day of crabbing. She pulled the old Electrolux from the closet and dragged the fabric-wrapped cord to the wall, plugging it in. She attached the nozzle to the hose and turned it on, pushing it back and forth over the frayed, faded welcome mat just inside the door as she pondered whether or not Remy and his family should still be called dingbatters after a decade on the island.
As a tenth-generation Corey Islander, Laire Cornish was about as “old Corey” as they came, and she had the accent to prove it. Her mother, who’d taken some classes in hospitality and tourism at Carteret Community College, had made certain her girls were aware of the Corey brogue, and took steps to mitigate it in their speech with non-islanders. Islands like Corey, Harkers, and Ocracoke in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, had been settled by the English hundreds of years ago, but had remained largely isolated thereafter, which meant that the accent and speech patterns had never really changed from what one might have heard from sailors in the 1700s. Laire couldn’t count the number of times tourists had asked her if she was Australian or Scottish. She wasn’t, of course. But her accent, a mix of Elizabethan English and American Southern, made for a highly unusual combination that wasn’t always understandable by dingbatters and woodsers.
As the gravelly sound of vacuumed-up sand and salt faded away, she finished the carpet quickly and turned off the old machine.
“You’re good to Daddy, Laire,” said Isolde, who stood in the kitchen doorway holding a glass of sweet tea on top of her rounded belly. “How’s he feelin’ lately?”
Their father, who had suffered a mild heart attack just after Christmas, was back at work again, crabbing with his brother and nephew, just like nine generations of Cornishes before them.
“Okay, I guess,” she said. “I make him eat oatmeal every morning.”
“He hates it?”
Laire smiled. “Of course.”
“He eats it?”
“With grumbles.”
“Mama would’ve . . .”
Just like Kyrstin, Isolde’s voice trailed off, like talking about their mother was something they shouldn’t do. Or maybe, thought Laire, it just hurt too much.
Isolde, who was twenty-four, had gotten married to her high school sweetheart, Paul Hyde, last summer and discovered she was pregnant three months later. It was the way on Corey Island to marry and have kids young, but Laire suspected it was extra hard for her sister to be without a mother now.
Laire put the vacuum away and turned to her sister. “It’s okay to talk about her, Issy.”
“What good is it?” asked Isolde, sniffling before taking another sip of tea. “Won’t bring her back.”
“I miss her too,” said Laire, holding her sister’s familiar green eyes, feeling jealous of her sister’s memories and wishing she would open up and talk about their mother more.
“Here it is!” said Kyrstin, holding the wedding dress carefully across her forearms as she reentered the living room.
Laire took the dress and sat down on the brown plaid couch, shaking out the bodice to figure out where to open the seams as Kyrstin took the tea from Isolde’s hands and finished it up.
“You know what I think, Issy?”
“Tell me, Kyrs.”
Laire looked up at the pair of them and rolled her eyes. From the singsong tones of their voices, she knew what was coming.
“Now that our little Laire is a high school graduate, I think it’s finally time for her to figure out when she’s gonna let Brodie into her shorts.”
“Poor Brodie,” said Isolde with a snicker.
Kyrstin giggled. “You holdin’ out on us, Laire? You got someone else in the wings?”
Laire pulled on the left side seam harder than she should, making several beads scatter to the carpet, then looked up at them. “You’re a couple of jackasses, is all I know.”
“Ooo! Testy!” said Isolde, turning to Kyrstin. “Go get me more tea. You drunk all of mine.”
“Get it yourself,” said Kyrstin. “I want to know when Laire’s settlin’ down.”
Never, she thought, leaning forward to open the sewing box on the coffee table and pull out a seam ripper to help her finish the job.
Never, never, never, never, never.
The word circled around and around in Laire’s head like a promise, like a vow.
I am never “settlin’ down” on Corey Island and having half a dozen kids with a local boy before I hit thirty. There’s a whole wide world out there, away from here, away from Corey, away from the Outer Banks, and I intend to see it.
“. . . touch your boobies, huh, Laire?”
She looked up from the dress in her lap. “What?”
“Brodie told Remy you let him touch your boobies. After the prom.”
Laire’s face flushed with heat as she blinked at her sister. “That’s a lie!”
Yes, she had gone to the high school prom with Brodie Walsh, but that was it! The second he’d tried to kiss her, she’d clocked him in the nose and run home. Touched her boobies? Hell, no! They’d never even kissed!