Sandcastles

by Luanne Rice

  Now, at dawn, on the same beach, Honor finally felt the dream drifting away. So many of the promises they had made that night had come true. They had gotten married at Star of the Sea. Bernie had been maid of honor, Tom had been best man. There had been lots of travels, lots of art, lots of students, and best of all, three children. Three beautiful daughters. Regis, the oldest, had been the light of her father’s life. When John had asked Bernie and Tom to be her godparents, he had told them he was holding them to the fire on it—if anything ever happened to him or Honor, she was in their hands.

  Honor had been expecting that Tom would give Regis away—her daughter was rushing to have the wedding in October, over Columbus Day weekend, desperate for the security she thought marriage would provide. Honor had asked herself, would Tom walk his goddaughter down the aisle, because John wouldn’t be home yet? Would he dance with her at the reception? Would he be the one to tell Agnes and Cecilia, Regis’s sisters, that they were as beautiful as the bride?

  Questions Honor had never wanted to ask. Because among all those promises made that moonless night so many years ago, all the promises so faithfully and lovingly kept, there had also been one broken.

  Honor didn’t think about it very often anymore. Her life was fine, busy, very full. The girls still needed her, even Regis. Over the years, Honor had gone through the motions of painting, saving most of her energy for her daughters and students. And the shoreline was still her home. It had soothed her heart during the time John had been gone, with salt breezes and sea glass and beach roses. But the one thing she never did—not since Ireland—was walk the tide line to gather handfuls of moonstones.

  Until now. Because she knew that something was about to happen. She hadn’t told the kids yet, but Tom had told her the rumor. And some rumors were too real not to be believed, especially when they came from Tom Kelly.

  Honor shivered in the dawn chill, looking down at the hard sand. The new moon had pulled the tide out so far, the flats were completely exposed. The sun had not yet risen, but its light was spreading up from the horizon, across the dark water, onto the tarnished silver sand, rippled with tiny salt streams, glittering with tiny white stones. Seeing them took Honor’s breath away. Leaning over, she picked them up, cupping them in one hand. Each pebble shimmered like a jewel.

  “I can’t afford a ring yet…but I love you, Honor…I’ll love you forever….”

  She wheeled around. If the moonstones were back, it seemed impossible that John wasn’t here, too. A cool breeze blew off the water, whispering through the marsh grass growing along the top of the beach. It sounded almost like a voice, and she started toward it. She saw Sisela whisk across the stone wall leading up to the Academy, one of the walls built by John’s ancestors.

  Emerging from the shadows, she saw a person running toward her. Tall and lean, with his long legs and strong shoulders. If she closed her eyes, she could see his face, his blue eyes, forever in her memory. But she didn’t have to remember, because she saw those eyes every day. In their twenty-year-old daughter Regis.

  “Mom,” Regis called from down the beach, waving something in the air.

  Was this it? Honor wondered, her own heart starting to race. Regis ran faster, although Honor could truly say she’d never seen her daughter move at a normal pace. Everything with Regis was full speed ahead.

  “What is it?” Honor asked. “What do you have there?”

  “Oh, Mom,” Regis said, holding up the blue envelope. “Read it! It’s addressed to you!”

  Honor’s hand shook. She held the moonstones so tight, they pressed into her palm and left marks. The sun was coming up, throwing light onto the beach. Regis stared at the envelope, Honor’s name in John’s handwriting.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “It was stuck in the screen door.”

  Sometime between when Honor left the house for her walk and now—had he been watching them?

  “I think Aunt Bernie put it there. I saw her standing outside the convent just now, when I came down. What does it matter how the letter came? Read it! What does it say?”

  As always seemed to happen, the wind picked up as the sun rose. It blew gently off the land, bringing with it scents of beach plums, sassafras, grapes, and pines. It carried the sounds of Star of the Sea—the nuns’ voices, singing lauds, and the bell, tolling half past the hour. The breeze ruffled Honor’s hair, and even though it was summery and warm, it sent an arctic chill into her bones as she read John’s letter.

  There were several paragraphs, and each one answered a question. Honor held it so her daughter couldn’t see.

  The moonstones, Honor thought, feeling electricity. There are no coincidences….

  “What does he say, Mom? You have to tell me!”

  Honor looked up at her, stared straight into those gray-blue eyes. She saw all the pain of John’s absence, and the joy of having just found his letter. The tide had turned, was starting to come in, licking their bare feet with the first splashes of foam. Honor’s whole body trembled. She knew she could try to smile, but Regis knew her too well, would know that it was forced.

  “Mom?”

  Honor held the letter, the sheet of pale blue paper. She thought of what she had just read, but she knew that Regis cared about only one line.

  “He’s coming home,” Honor said.

  Regis had to go straight from seeing her mother to meeting her fiancé. She had never felt more torn in her life. She wanted to run back home to her sisters, tell them the news about their father. Or to Aunt Bernie, who would know the whole, real story—she had stayed in touch with him more than anyone. The six years had passed with horrible, excruciating slowness. Like six years in fairy-tale time, or legend time—six years when people grow old, and other people go a little crazy, and still others forget entirely.

  But Regis had made plans to go out on the water with Peter and his family. That was the thing about being in love—you had to train yourself to love, or at least care for, or at least spend time with, his family, when you’d really so much rather be with your own.

  Regis left her mother standing on the beach near Star of the Sea, and ran along the sand toward Hubbard’s Point. Because it was so early she was practically alone, except for egrets and herons standing in the shallows, and rafts of seagulls and terns gathered just off the rocks.

  She ran along the empty, deserted nature sanctuary, then emerged into the stretch of beach cottages—each almost identical to each other, almost like Monopoly houses, in a tidy row along the strand—and then the honky-tonk section of Black Hall, with one guy sleeping on the sand in front of the beer hall.

  As her feet pounded, her heart soared. Just seeing her father’s handwriting could do that to her. Her sisters were younger, and didn’t quite get it. Not the way Regis did. What did they remember about him? She was never sure, and they hardly ever talked about it. During the six years, the family had visited him seven times. Three times the first year, twice the second year, then once a year after that until the summer before last. They hadn’t gone back after that. During the long stretches between visits, Regis noticed strange things happening. She would forget what her father’s voice sounded like, or how his eyes looked. How his laugh would start out slow, with a chuckle, and then grow. How his hands were so strong. How her parents looked together.

  Her mother had made various excuses for why the visits stopped. The airfare was too expensive; studies and school activities demanded too much time; and Regis’s favorite: seeing their father in prison was traumatic for the girls. Regis had tried to tell her mother that not seeing him was traumatic. But her mother seemed to have secret reasons all her own, and she stopped listening.

  Running along the beach, Regis felt exalted. She’d played varsity tennis at Star of the Sea, but only because her aunt had made her. Team sports weren’t her thing. Like her father, she was more of a solitary athlete—running, swimming, biking, climbing, preferably with an element of severe danger and a major adrenaline rush
involved. Even now—approaching the big houses of Tomahawk Point, she chose to run along the craggy, jagged rocks close to the water’s edge, instead of cutting across the coast path higher up, through the yards. One slip of the foot and she’d break an ankle or fall into the sea. But Regis didn’t think about it—she just trusted herself to make it across.

  Running along, she saw some driftwood washed up on the rocks and felt cold. The sight reminded her of Ireland: her father’s sculpture vandalized, driftwood branches torn off, lying on the ground. Regis shuddered as she ran, a memory shimmering, not quite there.

  Tearing over the rocks now, then forsaking the last stretch along a pristine beach to run through the woods, along narrow paths, over streams, into the swamp, across a makeshift bridge—a splintered plank someone had laid across the inlet, thick with blue crabs and slithery marsh creatures—to Hubbard’s Point. Even before Ireland, her father had taught her to take the path less traveled. The instincts were in her blood, and even when she tried to choose the safest route, she seemed compelled to go the more dangerous way.

  Dashing the last quarter mile, along sleepy beach roads to the Drakes’ house, she was sweaty and out of breath when she came face-to-face with Peter and his mother. Peter lit up to see her. His mother looked displeased.

  “Hi!” Regis exclaimed, going straight to Peter and kissing him. He held on, but she pulled back because his mother was right there. “Hi, Mrs. Drake.”

  “Hello, Regis.”

  “Am I late? You said seven o’clock, right? For our trip out to Block Island?”

  “The boat’s in the mud,” Peter said. “We had a really low tide this morning.”

  “It was a moonstone tide,” Regis said. She tried to smile, but couldn’t. She thought of how her parents had gotten engaged, not with a diamond, but with moonstones. What if her mother couldn’t forgive her father? What if that day in Ballincastle had destroyed them?

  “Maybe so, but look,” Peter said, pointing.

  Regis peered between the cottages, and yes—the family vessel, a big white fiberglass powerboat on a mooring out in front of the house, was listing seriously to starboard, clearly aground.

  “There could be a lot of damage,” Peter’s mother said. “Stuck in the mud like that. Structural damage.”

  “I don’t think there will be, Mrs. Drake,” Regis said. “Really, I don’t. When we were in Ireland, there was this tiny fishing village. Just past Kinsale, Timoleague…Some boats were tied to a long stone jetty, others were on moorings, and when the tide went out, they would all rest right there on the bottom of the harbor. Then the water would flood in again, and the boats would float and head out to sea.”

  Mrs. Drake gave Regis a long look, as if she was trying to figure out whether she was for real or not. Her expression made Regis squirm and take Peter’s hand. “That’s not an Irish fishing boat,” Mrs. Drake said, gesturing. “It’s a brand-new, top-of-the-line Jetcruiser. You don’t want to know what it cost. It has an intake system I don’t understand, but let me tell you, getting filled with sand or mud or eelgrass or whatever is out there on the bottom won’t do it any good. Peter, go out and help your father.”

  “Mom—”

  “What’s he doing?” Regis asked.

  “He’s trying to dig it out.”

  “But the tide’s coming in soon,” Regis said. “If we just wait, nature will take care of everything.”

  Again Peter’s mother gave her a long, scary look. Her nostrils trembled and her lips thinned. “You and Peter have decided to interrupt your college educations and get married,” she said. “How you’re going to support yourselves is the question. It makes me think you’re very naive in the ways of the world, to think that nature takes care of things. As often as not, it ruins them. Business 101 would teach you that once an engine gets clogged with sand, you can kiss it goodbye!”

  Mrs. Drake wheeled and walked toward the house. She was dressed for the boat ride: white slacks, a red T-shirt, and a blue and white sweater tied around her neck. Regis felt herself blush, and looked down at the ground, picturing the colorful Irish fishing boats and how much more beautiful they were than the fiberglass gas-guzzler of which Mrs. Drake was so proud.

  “She’s right,” Peter said. “This isn’t Ireland.”

  “My father’s coming…” Regis began. But her throat caught, and she felt herself shaking. She stepped forward, reached up to put her arms around him. They leaned gently against an oak tree, and he started kissing her long and slow. The morning heat touched her face and arms, and Peter’s kiss made her feel like liquid sunshine, warm from the inside out.

  When they pulled apart, he looked into her eyes. “Okay, tell me what you meant,” he said. “About your father coming.”

  “We got a letter from my father. He’s coming home.”

  “Your father?”

  Regis nodded. She couldn’t even speak the words.

  Peter’s expression darkened. “But that can’t make you happy, him coming back here,” he said.

  “How can you say that?” Regis asked, feeling slapped.

  “Because of what, well, what happened. Because of what he did.”

  “He saved my life,” Regis said. “That man was attacking me, and my father fought him off.”

  Peter glowered. Regis recoiled, remembering how he had once told her his parents felt sorry for her mother, because of what had happened. It had almost been enough to make her break up with him.

  “He killed that man,” he said.

  “Stop, Peter,” Regis said, feeling the blood flow out of her head, her face, just as it had from Gregory White’s skull on the rocky coast. “I know.”

  “Goddamn it, Millie!” came Peter’s father’s voice calling from across the tidal flats. “Will you and Peter get out here? There’s seaweed in the intake.”

  “Seaweed in the intake,” Regis murmured.

  “Should we go and help him out?”

  Regis felt stunned. She looked around at the window boxes and garden. Peter’s mother had an eye for bright flowers, and had planted multitudes of geraniums, petunias, zinnias, and cosmos. The yellow cottage had fake blue shutters bolted to the wood. The windows were hung with white curtains tied back with colorful ribbons. The overall effect looked just like the house pictures Regis had drawn when she was a little girl.

  “Regis?” he said, taking her hands. “You’re not like your father. I know that, okay? I love you.”

  “I love you,” she murmured, feeling prickles race around her lips, across her cheeks. Didn’t Peter know she was just like him? She felt almost faint, but then she looked around at the pretty gardens, and up at the man she was going to marry. She and Peter would love each other and be safe forever. Their biggest worry would be seaweed in the intake.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, resolute. Peered out at the water, saw the tide starting to trickle back into the rock pools and across the sand flats. The Drakes’ shiny white boat looked so ungainly out there, nothing like the bright wooden hulls in Kinsale harbor. It looked plastic and aggressive, with silver pipes and ducts, like something that might harm the sea. But because Regis loved the man whose family owned it, she knew she’d do anything to help.

  “Come on, then,” she said, tugging his hand. “Let’s go rescue your boat.”

  And together she and her fiancé hurried across the yard to the steps down to the rocks, instead of where she really felt like going—home, to see what was going on, to hear what everyone was saying about the letter.

  Two

  The wedding plans were moving along, and Agnes hadn’t seen Regis so sparkly since their father had gone away. Nothing had been the same since then. Their family had once been so happy. They lived at Star of the Sea Academy, the most beautiful place in Connecticut. They were Irish Catholics who practiced their faith, who believed in being good.

  But then life had changed. Her father had gone to Portlaoise Prison for six years, for killing a man. How could that be
—Agnes’s good, gentle father? She couldn’t stand thinking of what he’d done; she couldn’t believe that he’d raised his hand so violently to someone, even in defense of Regis.

  No one really talked about it. Regis couldn’t remember anything, from the minute of running out into the rain, into the murky salt mist that had obscured the whole thing. Only three people had been on that cliff—their father, Regis, and Gregory White. The news stories in Ireland had said that Greg White was a drifter, originally from Connemara, with a history of theft and violence. He’d seen their father as a mark, a successful artist, someone to get money out of.

  Agnes had sneaked into the Academy library, where her aunt kept copies of Irish newspapers. The country seemed just about evenly divided on whether her father should have been punished or not. Some said that his manslaughter conviction was an outrage—that John Sullivan had only been defending his daughter. Some articles portrayed Greg White as a parasite, reporting that he had previously been associated with gypsies, “travelers,” in Connemara, breaking into farmhouses and beating up the owners. They said that White had bragged about the riches he was about to get.

  Other papers said that Agnes’s father had acted with undue force. Police had been called on him before. White had attacked the sculpture, and Agnes’s father had confronted him in a bar. Fighting had ensued, and Agnes’s father had had to be restrained. Worst of all, people had heard him threaten to kill White if he touched the sculpture again. Some news accounts seemed to say that he hadn’t just defended Regis—he had gone over the line between manslaughter and murder, that his real anger at the victim had been caused by White’s vandalism of the sculpture, and that six years in prison wasn’t enough.

  Agnes couldn’t bear thinking that, and she refused to believe it. The worst part was, the prison was far away, and over time they had stopped visiting him. He wrote letters home, and Agnes and her sisters wrote back. But not her mother.

  Agnes sat on her bed, writing in her notebook. It was Tuesday, a day of silence. Looking around the room she shared with her sisters, at Regis’s bride magazines, at the pictures on the bureau of their father, of his photographs on the wall, and at a photo of Regis and Peter, Agnes held in a shiver.