Beach House Reunion

by Mary Alice Monroe

  “If you lay off the wine,” Flo muttered.

  “Never!” Emmi fired back with a laugh. “Speaking of which,” she said to Cara, “there should be a few bottles in the fridge.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for all you did to get the house ready. I didn’t get in until very late, and it made all the difference in the world to have a clean house and fresh sheets.”

  Flo just waved her hand in friendly dismissal. “Pshaw. It was nothing. You’d do the same for us. Now, enough talk. Where’s that baby?” Her sharp gaze darted around; spotting the baby, she clapped her hands together. “Look at you!” she exclaimed, making a beeline toward Hope. “Aren’t you precious? Give me some sugar.”

  Cara watched with uncertainty as Flo bustled toward the baby. Hope’s eyes widened and her lips quivered. Flo was a dear, but her personality could come on a little strong sometimes.

  “Don’t pounce. You’ll scare her!” Emmi admonished.

  Flo stopped and looked back, confused. But it was too late. Hope scrunched up her face and wailed.

  Cara rushed to pick her up and soothe her. It wasn’t how she’d hoped this first meeting would go. She wanted Flo and Emmi to love Hope just as much as she did.

  “She’s tired,” she said by way of excuse. “Neither of us got much sleep last night. She’s teething and must’ve woken up half a dozen times.”

  “Oh, honey, no worries. It’s just the strange place,” Emmi said. “She doesn’t know where she is, is all. She’ll get used to it.” She laughed. “In time.” She bent at the waist and spoke to Hope in high-pitched baby talk. “Well, hey there, butter bean. Aren’t you a pretty thing? I’m your aunt Emmi. I’ve been waiting to meet you. We’re going to be the best of friends.”

  Cara watched as Hope listened, eyes wide and clutching Cara’s robe. She rewarded Emmi with a shaky smile.

  “Well, lookee there,” Flo said with a shake of her head. “I guess I am a tad loud for babies.”

  “Hope just needs to get to know you,” Cara was quick to reply. “Soon she’ll be running over to your house like Emmi and I did. And you’ll teach her all about the sea turtles, like Mama would have.”

  Flo took a seat at the table and rested her elbow on it. “I expect you’ll be teaching her all about the turtles. You’re coming back on the turtle team, aren’t you?”

  Cara puffed out a breath. “In time,” she replied, hedging.

  “The time is now,” Flo said matter-of-factly. “Season’s already begun. We’ve got three nests already.”

  “Three already? We don’t usually get any till maybe next week.”

  “We had the earliest nest on record. April thirtieth.”

  “April?” Cara repeated, stunned.

  “So, we’re off and running.” Flo paused, and shrugged wearily. “I’m not as up-and-at-’em as I once was. Moving a bit slower now. Emmi could use some help on the team.”

  Cara felt Hope’s body meld into hers, as though she’d always belonged in her arms. This little one had changed her every decision.

  “I don’t know,” she said in a tone that implied no. “Mornings are pretty unpredictable with Hope. I can’t just tell her to wait for breakfast.”

  “Why not?”

  “Flo!” Emmi said with a guffaw. “What you know about babies wouldn’t fill a thimble.” To Cara she added, “I think we should let her babysit one morning and see for herself.”

  Flo shot Emmi a withering look.

  “You’ll both have ample opportunities to babysit,” Cara said, putting Hope back into the high chair. After a few squawks, Hope relinquished her grip on Cara’s robe, and soon her chubby fingers were grabbing Cheerios. Cara brought her hand to her throbbing head. “I can’t make a decision until I make coffee.”

  Emmi rushed to the sink. “I’ll make the coffee. You sit.”

  “Thank you. I am tired. Everyone always tells you how glorious it is to have a baby. How cute they are. How fulfilling. And that’s all true. . . . But no one tells you how hard it is physically. It’s been a grueling few months. Honestly, when I look back, I can’t believe how completely my life changed in such a short span of time. Utterly and completely changed.”

  Emmi filled the kettle, then put it on the stove to boil. “We really don’t know very much about it.”

  “And we’ve got a lot of questions,” added Flo. She indicated the child with a thrust of her chin.

  “I’m sure you do. Let me get Hope settled before I launch into my story.” Cara ran her hand through her tousled hair and sighed. “It’s a long one and complicated.” She rose.

  “I’ll do it,” Emmi said. “Just tell me what you want done.”

  “It’s easier if I just do it myself.” Cara went to the counter and mixed dry baby cereal with formula as Emmi gathered mugs, pulled cream from the fridge, and scooped tablespoons of ground coffee into the paper filter. Cara couldn’t help but notice how Flo stayed seated and was gently tapping her fingers on the high chair to amuse Hope. Years back, Flo would’ve been a tornado in the kitchen, pushing them aside to get the tasks done.

  Soon the heady scent of freshly brewed coffee filled the air. Cara carried a steaming mug in one hand and the baby’s bowl in the other. Emmi carried two more cups and handed the one with lots of milk and one teaspoon of sugar to Flo, her familiarity a product of the two women sharing the house next door for more than ten years.

  Cara spooned cereal into Hope’s mouth, and for several minutes the women watched in silent amusement as the little girl opened her mouth eagerly, fists clenched, for every bite.

  Flo said, “She looks like a baby bird.”

  “She has a good appetite,” Cara said a bit smugly.

  “Count your blessings,” Emmi said. “For as tall as my boys grew, they were finicky eaters. Mealtimes were battles.”

  Flo chuckled. “Well, you won the war. You raised some strapping fellows.”

  Emmi smiled with satisfaction. “I did.” She sipped her coffee.

  Emmi’s older son, James, was a surgeon living in Chapel Hill. He was married and had made her a grandmother. “How old is Jamie now?”

  “I have to think,” Emmi said with a short laugh, and counted on her fingers. “Thirty-one.”

  “You have a thirty-one-year-old son,” Cara said, bringing another spoonful to Hope’s open mouth. “And here I am raising a one-year-old. It’s rather daunting. And that makes John . . .” She paused, doing the math. “Thirty?”

  “Last month.”

  “What I want to know is how you found this sweet baby to adopt,” Flo said. “You don’t tell us anything until that phone call announcing you’d adopted a baby girl. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.”

  “What do you mean?” Emmi asked. “Cara always wanted to adopt. Don’t you remember? It was Brett who didn’t want to.” She darted a look at Cara, gauging how she reacted to the mention of Brett’s name.

  “I did,” Cara said in a calm tone. Hearing Brett’s name was still a pinprick in her heart, but after three years she could handle it. “But that was while I was married. After Brett died, I didn’t pursue adoption. As a single older woman, I didn’t think I had much of a chance.”

  “That’s not true,” Flo said. As a former social worker, this was her area of expertise. “I’m long retired, but I keep up in my field. More people are adopting later in life than ever before. Age is no barrier, except you still have to be twenty-one.”

  “So I learned. . . .” Cara let her fingertips gently smooth back the soft curls from Hope’s face. “Hope found me.” Cara spooned the last bit of cereal into Hope’s mouth, dabbed away the mess with the bib, then wrestled her out of the high chair and into her lap.

  “Let me hold her,” Emmi said, setting down her mug. She came over and smiled at the baby, hands out.

  No one could resist Emmi’s smile. Cara was convinced that was what had snagged the boy both of them were angling for in seventh grade. Hope fell for the charm too and went willingly into
Emmi’s arms.

  “You didn’t pursue the adoption?” Flo continued. “Then how . . . ?”

  Cara paused, gathering the pertinent details of the long and emotional story. “I met this young woman while working at the aquarium. She was an intern. Pretty, vivacious, a bright girl. She was interested in nonprofits, particularly in PR, so she latched on to me.” She smiled in memory of the girl she’d grown fond of over the year. “We got along well—you know how I love mentoring young women: Toy, Heather. And then Elena. That was her name. In a way, each of them was like a daughter to me. I guess that makes me the proverbial wise old crone.” She laughed and looked down at the channel-set diamond wedding band she wore on her right hand now. Her smile faded, remembering how this story ended.

  “Elena shadowed me for several months, and we grew quite close. Neither of us knew many people in the city. She was from Mexico; did I mention that?”

  The two women shook their heads.

  “But her English was flawless. We would have lunch together at work, and once we even went to a Spanish guitar concert together. Then she just disappeared.” She lifted her shoulders. “No good-bye, no note. Nothing. I was hurt, I can’t lie. But I wrote it off to the callousness of youth.”

  Hope made a noise, but Emmi gave her the spoon, which she promptly inserted into her mouth.

  Cara continued in a somber voice: “It wasn’t callousness at all, though. I should have known that wasn’t like Elena.” She paused. “It turned out she was pregnant. Apparently a one-night stand with some American boy she thought was cute. She drank too much. . . .” She shrugged and lifted her palms as if to say, You know the rest of this story.

  “ ‘Apparently’?” asked Emmi. “You don’t know?”

  Cara shook her head. “I never talked to Elena. Never saw her again. One day last January I got a message from Social Services. They told me that Elena had died after a car crash and that she had a daughter. They contacted me because Elena had listed me as next of kin at the hospital.”

  “Next of kin? But . . .” Emmi tilted her head. “Can she do that? You’re not related.”

  “Apparently she can.”

  “Next of kin is a legal term,” Flo explained. “But . . .” She turned again to Cara. “The agency seeks first to place the child with family, a relative. Didn’t she have parents? Grandparents?”

  “She does. In Mexico. Elena was in the country illegally, so it slowed the investigation down. Eventually they tracked her family down through the school she was enrolled in in Chattanooga. Turns out they’re a well-to-do family, and I’m sure they were heartbroken by the news. But according to the agency, they were ashamed that Elena had had a child in America and cut her off.”

  “Imagine cutting your child off in a foreign country,” said Emmi. “There’s nothing my boys could do that would make me that kind of angry.”

  “We don’t know what really happened,” Flo said. “They may have offered to fly her home, put the baby up for adoption.”

  Cara spoke again. “Poor Elena. Whatever they said, she didn’t feel like she could go home, and she remained here as an illegal alien. Trapped between a rock and a hard place. Pregnant, alone, and then with a new baby. It must’ve been very hard. She worked as a maid at a hotel.” Cara exhaled heavily. “Now that I’m taking care of Hope, I swear, I don’t know how she managed.”

  “Horrible. Sad,” Flo said, her eyes flashing. “I’ve seen that happen far too often.”

  “That was pretty much Toy’s story,” recalled Emmi. “Her parents gave her the boot and Lovie took her in.”

  Cara remembered the bumpy road she’d traveled with Toy Sooner, her mother’s caretaker, when she’d arrived at the beach house after leaving Chicago. She’d been jealous of their relationship at first, but in time she came to feel like Toy’s older sister. She adored Toy and was an aunt to her daughter, Little Lovie. That sweet child had filled a deep void in her and Brett’s life during the years they’d tried for a child of their own.

  “I only wish Elena had tried to contact me. I’d have helped her. I remember how tough it was when I first left home. My parents had abandoned me. I felt I was on my own with no one looking out for me.”

  “You made it,” Emmi said with admiration.

  Cara nodded. She didn’t think she could ever fully explain to her best friend how hard and lonely those years of being young, alone, and without support had been and what they had cost her.

  “Look how far Toy has come,” Emmi added.

  “I’m sure Elena could have too. But she’ll never have the chance now. . . .”

  The women lapsed into silence, each brooding over the sadness of the situation.

  Flo scratched her head. “I’m trying to get this straight. The agency tried to place the baby with relatives first. And no one claimed her? No uncles or aunts?”

  Cara shook her head. “No one.”

  “So they contacted you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Extraordinary.” Flo smirked. “I’m guessing they did an assessment to determine you were, as they say, fit and willing?”

  “Oh, yes,” Cara replied with an eye roll. “Honestly, I didn’t think I’d pass the grade. A single woman in my fifties. On the one hand, getting older isn’t easy on the ego. But on the other hand, I can be proud that I’m financially stable and”—she lifted her brows in mock modesty—“relatively mature. We older parents have devoted decades to building careers and are now ready to say yes to being parents.”

  She took a long sip of her coffee and set the mug back on the table. “And a lot of us are women like me who’ve spent years trying. Infertility treatments, waiting and waiting, only to be disappointed. The heartbreak. The money spent. The years wasted. All those years dreaming and hoping. Then giving up. And then suddenly this . . .” Even now, after all these months, the realization had the power to give her pause. “This opportunity to be a mother came out of nowhere. I was speechless. A deer caught in the headlights. I swear I couldn’t breathe for days while I agonized over the decision.”

  “But why?” Emmi asked. “You’d wanted this for so long. It was a gift.”

  “I wasn’t sure if I was up to the task.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” asked Emmi, her voice gentled.

  “I couldn’t. I didn’t want to call anyone. This decision I had to make alone.”

  “I guess I can see that,” Emmi said softly.

  “I had a lot to think about. Was I too old? What would I do about my job? Could I afford it? Did I want to be a mother at my age? When Brett died, that dream died with him. I was trying hard . . . so hard . . . to move on. To make a new life for myself.”

  Emmi reached out to place her hand on Cara’s arm in unspoken understanding.

  “Then one night I had this dream. It was so real, like watching a scene in a movie, only I was in it. Mama, too. I could smell her perfume.” She looked at Emmi and Flo to gauge their reaction. The two women had leaned forward, listening intently. “It was during the hurricane, that last summer with Mama.”

  “Ah, yes,” Flo said in a breath of understanding.

  “The tidal surge had pushed into the house, and the water was rising foot by foot. I’ll never forget walking through the blood-warm water in the middle of the night, worrying about snakes or God knew what else. We were sitting in the dusty, steamy attic space, holding on to each other while the wind screamed and tore at the roof overhead and the inky waters rose higher in the house.”

  Cara shivered in memory.

  “But despite the storm’s fury, Mama was as calm as the eye of the hurricane.” Cara could feel again her mother’s arms around her. “I heard her voice as clear as a bell in my dream. She told me the same thing she did that night. She spoke in that same raspy voice. Remember that?”

  “Of course,” said Emmi.

  “It was from all the coughing,” added Flo.

  Emmi prodded, “So what did she say?”

  Cara wiped her eyes, rem
embering. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”

  Emmi reached for her hand. “We miss her too.”

  “That night I asked Mama,” Cara continued, “ ‘How will I find my happiness? How will I know?’ Mama cupped my face and smiled. I swear, in my dream I felt the force of that smile enter my soul like a beam of light. It gave me strength, filled me with faith. ‘You’ll know, my precious,’ she told me. ‘One day you’ll look up and see it—and just know.’ ”

  She looked at Flo and Emmi, silent and thoughtful.

  “When I awoke the following morning, I was filled with a sense of peace. Like a storm passing, my mind was clear. Later that day I met Hope for the first time. It might sound strange, but it felt predestined. I looked at her and I just knew she was mine.”

  “Oh, Cara . . .” Emmi said.

  “And I knew I had to come home. I want to raise Hope here, at the beach house where I’ve been happy and where I hope she will be too. Here, with you.” She squeezed Emmi’s hand. “And you.” She looked over to Flo and met the older woman’s blue gaze. “And Toy and Ethan, Heather and Bo, Palmer and Julia, Linnea, Cooper. You’re my family. I need you. And so does Hope.”

  “It takes a village,” Flo said in summary.

  “We’re here. Right next door. And our door’s always open.”

  Cara nodded, taking a resolute breath. “I know.”

  “By the way, did you name her Hope?” asked Emmi. “Because it’s kind of perfect.”

  Cara shook her head and looked at Hope, her dark brown eyes never wavering from Cara’s. She felt the love for her child pumping through her veins. “Elena named her Esperanza. ‘Hope’ in English.”

  Emmi smiled. “Like I said. Perfect.”

  Chapter Three

  Loggerheads have gorgeous reddish-brown carapaces and get their name from their massive heads and strong jaws that can crack hard-shelled creatures like conch, crab, clams, mussels, and sea urchins.

  IT WAS STRANGE living back under her parents’ roof. For the last four years, Linnea had lived an independent life. She liked being able to do what she wanted, when she wanted. That freedom had been hard-won from her hovering parents, and she wasn’t willing to relinquish it.