At the eighteen-year mark, the story takes a twist. That’s when Avery found a cookie tin of mementos tucked under the back seat of the van. It held the few things Willa gathered before she fled: a letter with her old address on it. Graham’s song notebook. Family pictures—even pictures of me from that summer.
And a diary. Mine.
Avery asked questions. She started hitchhiking up to the Sandcastle whenever the van was in Northern California, spying on her grandmother from outside the gates.
First it was Avery’s secret. But when Angela got sick and moved to Arbor View a year ago, Avery came clean to both of them and convinced Willa to visit Angela. To tiptoe back into civilization once in a while for her dying mother.
“How did she take it, when she first saw you?” I asked. “Back from the dead...”
“She was frightened, ecstatic, furious, sad, worried. All at once.”
“And you?”
“I only felt one thing. Guilt. But she didn’t want me to feel that way. She was just so happy that I was okay. She’d touch my hair, convincing herself I was real.” Just like I’d wanted to. “She touched Avery’s hair, too, and the boys’. I brought them twice.”
“You snuck in so the nurses wouldn’t see you, or what?”
“We were careful. You get good at back doors, living how we do...good at saying just enough for what you need that day.”
It was Avery who came up with the idea for the album as a way to make peace with the past. With Willa’s blessing, she gave Angela Graham’s notebook. It was Angela’s idea to choose Shane as producer.
“I’m sorry Avery scared you,” Willa says. “Lurking around, the diary...”
“I’m not sorry.”
“We worry about her hitching up and down the coast all the time, but we can’t seem to stop her. She’s half-wild. I know we chose a wild life but... The boys love how we live, but she’s restless. We don’t know how much longer we can keep her with us. If it’s right to.”
“She’s your carbon copy, Willa. She’s going to give you away.”
She laughs. “She’s a strong girl. Always full of plans. She reminds me of you.”
“Uh-oh.”
“No. I’m so glad that she’s strong. But she’s become impossible lately...”
We’re settled in our sleeping bags now, head to head.
“Jackie?”
“Yes?”
“Angela said something. Near the end. Something you should hear.”
I hold still. Her voice has never had this quality of authority, not that I remember. “What?” I ask, a little afraid.
“That maybe it wasn’t such a tragedy, what happened to him. And sometimes I’m...”
Trailing off—the commanding tone is gone and this is the dreamy Willa I remember.
She doesn’t need to say it. Sometimes I’m not sorry about what happened to him, either.
Because of how he’d abused Angela. Because it might have gotten worse.
Because toppling Graham freed Willa to live somewhere besides his kingdom—though she hadn’t seen it as only his until she’d left.
“He could be a brutal king,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Now let’s hear this anniversary album everyone’s talking about.”
We play it on low, just loud enough to hear above the breathing ocean. I take her hand as we listen, and we gaze up at the stars like we used to. We’re far enough from the city lights to see the cloudy glow of the Milky Way. We’re part of it.
The shell trail was a spiral, a white glow in the dark. From high up, maybe it looked like a galaxy. And we’d moved it. Together. We’d tilted a galaxy.
* * *
Soon, too soon, it’s time to go. I could stay here with Willa for a month but I know not to push.
We’re at the van, saying our goodbyes in the dense beach fog. It’s early, cold. Willa has made it clear that she has no intention of resurfacing, living like everyone else, no matter how much I beg her to at least visit her old home.
“It’s as beautiful as ever, Wills. It’s valuable, and it doesn’t belong to me. It’s yours. If not the land, then the money.”
“I don’t want it.” She says it with complete finality. “Not a penny.”
“Then, for your kids. It should be in a trust for them, for when they’re twenty-five.”
“One thing my dad got right. Growing up with that kind of money isn’t any kind of life.”
“It hasn’t made my father happy. I know that.”
Willa doesn’t care about how the album does, either—if it gets panned or ignored. She’s just satisfied knowing it exists. That we’re on there together.
“How will I reach you?” I ask as she climbs into the van. “I can’t let you go again.” I want details, city names. Dates for visits. She’s mentioned a vague itinerary, how they spend winters in Costa Rica or Baja, giving surf lessons up and down the coast.
“I’ll send you a letter in Boston. Or...”
“I won’t be in Boston for a while. You can mail it to your old address. For now.” I didn’t decide this until just now, but I need to stay here for a while longer. I can’t just find another real estate agent and put the Sandcastle on the market.
She smiles to herself. “Good.”
The sound starts out so faint I think it’s coming from the ocean. But it’s her. Humming “Answers.” Softly, but I remember it.
“Promise you’ll write? Promise, Willa.”
“Promise.”
She has trusted me, and I have to trust her, too.
43
Avery
The promised letter didn’t come for a month. It arrived only three days after I’d flown back from a quick trip to Boston to get my affairs in order, pack up my apartment, help find the perfect person to take over my music program. A wet-behind-the-ears Berklee College of Music grad who plays bass in a punk band at night and nannies to make ends meet. The kids’ll like her.
When the letter came, someone delivered it in person.
Avery.
“This wasn’t my idea,” Avery says. She hands me the note.
Jackie,
I think our old home has been waiting for you for a long time.
And I wouldn’t send my daughter to anyone but you. Remember how I said that she’s ready to stay in one place? I can’t go back, but you’re there, and I have a good feeling about it. You finding me when you did—it was a sign. Even if she cheated a little.
I don’t know when I’ll be able to come visit. I’m trying to work up the courage, but it may be some time.
Can you take care of her for me? She won’t admit it, but she wants one bed, and a teacher. I mean you—not whoever she’ll have at school, though I trust you to help her through that. All that junk, like you used to call it.
She wants to stop moving, and I so want to give those things to her.
You don’t have to do this. But I think maybe you want to.
I love you.
Your,
W.
I fold up the note and put it in my pocket, smiling at the girl.
She is angry. She is afraid. She asked to come, but now that she’s set everything in motion, she’s not sure she wants to be here.
I see her defiance and I see struggles ahead and I know nothing about teenagers except what I remember from being one myself. I have no business raising her, but every part of me wants to.
It’s a chance to make it right.
“There’s just enough daylight left for a tour.”
I know the first place I’m going to take her. I’ve made a new rope ladder and fixed the platform. I’ve left the walls bare. She can decorate it how she likes.
EPILOGUE
Ten months later
I stand with my back to the waterfall, fac
ing the sea. I have found a kind of peace in coming up here every day, and I understand why this place meant so much to my uncle. But I don’t try to write songs here, like he did. I do that alone in my old cabin, or at the beach. I meet Shane at the Rec Room piano after, to try to match the words with the right music.
Then, every afternoon, I come here to relax.
This morning is not about tranquility, though. I have a clipboard in my hands.
Down at the cabins, there’s a flurry of activity. Last-minute checking, schedules, repairs. Although we’ve been ready for weeks.
I glance at my watch: not quite eleven. Shane picked them up at nine thirty, which means the earliest I’d see them is eleven fifteen. He’s driving the bus now. A dozen kids, a small group to start. If this summer goes well, next year we’ll host three times that. I have a nonprofit business plan and licensing for a two-week winter program, too.
I take a breath. Twelve kids, ten days. We’re ready.
I scan the water, looking for Avery. She went surfing before the sun came up. I heard her slipping out before dawn, grabbing her wet suit from the railing. I am trying to be patient with her, to give her space. Each morning that I hear her thump down the stairs from Willa’s room, past the parlor, where Shane and I sleep, and onto the front porch is a victory.
“Half-wild,” Willa called her. I hope it wasn’t a mistake to start all this while Avery is still adjusting. I thought she might be interested in the project, in acting as a sort of counselor-in-training. When our license came, she was the first person I told, but she merely said, “That’s nice,” and fled to the ocean, as always.
She has withdrawn over the past few weeks, while we have bustled around getting everything ready. I gave her the anniversary CD, which just came out, and she hasn’t said a word about it. It has sat unwrapped, on her dresser, for days, so she can’t even see that it is dedicated to her inside the liner booklet. Shane and I thought of that on the same day when they were finalizing the album.
I wish Willa was here. But she still can’t set foot on this property, and I understand. It is enough that she has entrusted me with her daughter.
I wish the sun would come out, but the fog is stubborn this morning.
I don’t see Avery out there in the waves. I’ve been on edge for nearly a year since she moved in, half waiting for her to leave. And now I’ve piled more kids, more chaos on top of it. For the hundredth time, I hope it’s not a mistake.
“Are you nervous?”
I turn. It’s Avery. Headphones around her neck, cord leading to the Discman in her back pocket. Her hair is still damp from surfing.
I want to run and hug her, thank her for joining me here. This is a first.
But I restrain myself and instead admit, “I’m terrified.”
“You—” In stepping toward me, her headphone cord has gotten snagged on a branch and she stops, fumbles with it, detangling. With torturous slowness, she hooks the headphones in her back pocket.
I what? I want to yell. Should be terrified? Got myself into this?
She finishes at last: “You can probably handle it.”
This is the height of courtesy, coming from Avery.
“Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
“Although some of these kids could be real handfuls. So I’ll let you know tonight if I’ve changed my mind.”
“I’ll be waiting eagerly for your update.”
“Brought you something,” she says, pulling it from the back of her waistband and holding it in front of her face: the new Rolling Stone, with the review of the album. It even has a cover headline. Return to the Sandcastle, p. 46.
Avery peeks out from behind it. “Don’t you want to read it?”
“Oh, it’s a beautiful album. Who cares what they say?”
“You do.”
“I know. But I don’t want to.”
She holds the magazine flat, like a Frisbee, as if she’s going to throw it.
“Do it,” I say.
“Seriously?”
I nod, her wrist curls, and she flings the magazine.
“Wait!” I reach out but it’s too late. It’s sailing. A whirling, flapping, rainbow-colored sphere. Then it’s just a dot, and then it falls, splashes. We watch it sink.
Avery and I look at each other for a minute, then burst out laughing.
We stand together, facing the sea.
If the fog burned off, I could show her her mother’s trick. How to spot images and letters in the water, the sun’s secret messages.
Messages. Avery will only admit to leaving me one within the Sandcastle’s fence—placing the diary where I could see it from the treehouse last August. She claims she broke the rope ladder by accident, hurrying down to hide when she heard people heading her way, and insists she was far too careful, lurking around the bowl, for me to ever spot her in the trees. Insists that the golden hair I saw, the flax behind leaves, was my imagination, or a trick of the light. She claims she never set foot inside the house. The album in the Rec Room, the scrap of lace in the hall—she tells me they were just chance. It’s possible she’s lying.
But I hope she isn’t. I’d rather believe it was this place working its magic, helping us. Asking me to stay.
I hear the tinny beat from her headphones, and I wonder if the song is from the tribute album, and which one it is. If it’s Graham’s, or a song Willa and I wrote together.
She flicks it off before I can make sense of the tune.
I’ll choose to believe it is one of the songs her mother and I dreamed up. A secret message from Willa, to tell me she’s here with me, that I can do this. That we’ve found the only way to heal this place.
Avery and I wait, watching, for a long time.
“Look,” she says, pointing down at the highway. Silently, we watch the school bus. A bright yellow streak in the distance.
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my superb agent, Stefanie Lieberman, for six years of support, wisdom, and friendship.
Melanie Fried, you’re not only an astute editor with a crystal clear eye for structure and pace, your steadiness and optimism are unearthly. I’m so proud of us.
Kathleen Carter, huge thanks for working tirelessly to get the word out in these unprecedented times.
To Margaret Marbury, Susan Swinwood, Roxanne Jones, Pamela Osti, and everyone else at Graydon House, I’m honored to be part of the imprint and so grateful for your vision and excellent work. Gigi Lau and Mary Luna, thank you for designing a cover plucked straight from my daydreams.
Molly Steinblatt, Adam Hobbins, and the whole stellar team at Janklow & Nesbit, thanks for seeing promise in my work and giving me precious feedback on my duck-under-the-covers-in-shame-they’re-so-raw drafts.
Gratitude and love to Billy Bragg, Wilco, Nora Guthrie, and Woody Guthrie. I got the idea for this novel decades ago from their 1998 album Mermaid Avenue—created from a treasure of Woody Guthrie lyrics. If you haven’t played it, do so immediately.
Thanks to independent bookstores for keeping the faith and keeping the lights on—Rakestraw Books, Broadway Books, Powell’s, Cloud & Leaf, Books Inc., City Lights, Kepler’s, Lido Village, Diesel, The Elliott Bay Book Company, Parnassus Books, Books & Books, E. Shaver, Shakespeare and Co., and hundreds more. You are appreciated, loved, and needed.
Reading sites have been a bright spot for many of us in 2020. Much love to A Mighty Blaze, A Novel Bee, Bookworms Anonymous, Chick Lit Central, Great Thoughts’ Great Readers, Linda’s Book Obsession, My Book Tribe, Novels N Latte, Readers Coffeehouse, The Romance of Reading, Sue’s Reading Neighborhood, and many more.
I took some liberties with the Lilith Fair ’99 performer lineup in order to include two of my favorite singer-songwriters, Lucinda Williams and the late Lhasa de Sela, both of whom I was lucky enough to see at other shows. Tha
nk you to Sarah McLachlan and everyone involved in Lilith Fair for the inspiration and the memories.
Professor Susan Rogers at Berklee College of Music was generous with her time and patiently answered my questions about analog recording. Any mistakes are mine.
Wes, you gave me the idea for Novel 4, and Kelsey, I admire your confidence onstage, offstage, and on the way to the stage. Tiff, Dave, Nat, Luke—I miss you. Erin Higgins, I’m so proud to be your aunt. To all the Doans, we may not see each other often, but you’re in my heart.
Dad—I still love Willie and George Jones. I miss our KSAN commutes. Mom—I can picture you in 1979 lying on the floor, headphones on, listening to your favorite tunes. Can’t wait for a post-pandemic hug.
Mike and Miranda—I may have written most of this in a tent in the backyard, but there’s nobody I’d rather be quarantined with than you two. Thank you for putting up with my moods and self-doubt and all that disco on Spotify. Miranda, please keep singing, ’kay?
Carrie—my big sister, my best friend, and forever my role model of a strong woman. You bought me my first 45 record (Melissa Manchester), introduced me to Solid Gold, KITS, and KFOG, and I paid you back by stealing your K-Tel albums and mixtapes. Wish we could travel back to ’79 for an afternoon and roller-skate to Grease and Xanadu in the garage. I love you.
LADY SUNSHINE: THE ALBUM
Side A—Jackie
“On the Radio,” Donna Summer
“Heart of Glass,” Blondie
“The Hustle,” Van McCoy
“Jackie Blue,” Ozark Mountain Daredevils
“I Feel Love,” Donna Summer
“Sunday Girl,” Blondie
Side B—Willa
“California,” Joni Mitchell
Lady Sunshine Page 29
