The Sea Keeper's Daughters

by Lisa Wingate

  I didn’t really think he would. I had a sense that we’d crossed some invisible barrier last night, that we understood one another a bit better now. At least, I hoped so.

  Outside, the security lights flickered and the moon slipped below the rooftops as I focused on pieces of the next letter. Searching through the box, I separated fused-together pages, matched up seams. A noise in the hall testified to the fact that Clyde was out of bed, probably about to begin his morning round of tennis ball toss. The normal time—4:30 a.m. On the way to down the hall, he passed by my doorway, stopped a few steps beyond, and wandered back, teetering slightly and once again not using the cane I’d given him.

  “Did you need something?” I glanced up from the letter.

  He looked tired and disheveled, his thick gray hair sticking out in all directions. “Saw the light on. Thought maybe you’d left.”

  His tone made it obvious that he didn’t mean left as in a quick run down to the convenience store; he meant left as in gone for good. Maybe we hadn’t bonded after all. Maybe yesterday’s fiasco had been another attempt to get rid of me.

  “No, Clyde. I just went downstairs to grab something. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Hard to believe that.” Somehow in those four little words he managed to convey that I was a lazy ne’er-do-well who slept all the time.

  “Whether you know it or not, I do have things on my mind.” The snarky remark slipped out before I could stop it. I didn’t want to descend into an argument. What we needed was a calm, logical conversation about possible next steps. Even though I’d been forced to give Casey the bum’s rush yesterday, I fully intended to call him later and talk about touring the Shores. I hoped to convince Clyde to come along.

  “I know what you got on your mind.”

  Emotion and exhaustion bubbled to the surface. “I’m trying to do what’s best here. My—” I bit back the rest of my mother would have wanted me to. It’d only dredge up yesterday’s pain, and what good would that do? I had nothing to gain by hurting Clyde. Maybe that was one thing I’d learned from these letters, these scraps of a sister bond that had been torn, and torn again, and discarded in the trash. There was nothing but loss here. Terrible, heartbreaking loss. Alice’s temporary departure from Ziltha’s life had somehow become a permanent one.

  “There are bagels and fruit in the kitchen.” Maybe I could divert him with food. Get rid of him.

  I turned back to the letter.

  Dearest Queen Ruby,

  I write to you today from a lovely rock bluff high atop the waters of a majestic, tumbling falls, where Tom has stopped us for lunch. We are enjoying a picnic given to us by a Mrs. Esther Mae Powers, a delightful woman whose interview will be submitted in my next packet. Honestly, Ziltha dear, I’d worried that my eighty dollars per month might amount to starvation wages for myself and Emmaline, but I have learned that it is possible to survive on much less than one might think. The mountain folk are so very generous, once you’ve come to know them. Though they are often suspicious of our purposes at first, I have found that merely mentioning an acquaintance with this mountaineer or that one a hollow or two hills away will …

  I looked up, and Clyde was still skulking in the doorway like the proverbial toad atop a toadstool. His chin poked outward, his bottom lip pressing frog-mouthed into the top one.

  “Your coffee’s in there by now. I set the timer.” Come on, it’s too early for this. Anytime was too early. I wanted to close the door, turn the skeleton key, and spend the whole day with Alice’s story … and without Clyde.

  I’d just noticed that in the time since the last letter, Thomas had suddenly become Tom.

  Interesting …

  “Whatzat?” Clyde’s whiskery jaw bobbed toward the scraps of paper lying in strategic piles on the quilt.

  “It’s not from up here. Don’t worry, I haven’t touched anything of my mother’s.”

  Despite the barbed assurance, he didn’t leave.

  I stopped what I was doing, sighed, rested my elbows on my knees. “What, Clyde? What? You know, I just want to sit here and work on these letters and be left alone. For a while, at least. Okay? We’ll talk later, after I’ve had a shower.” And called about the retirement home and looked for anything else downstairs that can be sold quickly. I’d talked to Denise last night, and as predicted, she hadn’t taken the ring from my cabin. She wouldn’t tell me where she’d gotten the rest of the money for the range hood bill.

  “Letters?”

  “Yes. They’re letters. To my grandmother Ziltha. I found them in the storage, but somebody’s torn them up. I think they were probably in the trash at one time or another. I’m piecing them together the best I can.”

  “What for?”

  “To see what they say. They’re interesting.”

  Silence, finally. Teetering sideways a bit, he caught himself against a dresser, then wobbled a few steps in the door, eyeballing the bed. I focused on the papers, felt myself locking into defense mode. Clearly, the agenda was to pick a fight this morning.

  If Clyde tried hard enough, he’d get it, and I was afraid the fallout would be epic. I was just so … tired.

  Clyde, these letters were not my mother’s and they’re not yours. Just leave me alone and go drink your stupid coffee. It was on the tip of my tongue, but Clyde spoke first.

  “Like workin’ a puzzle.”

  I swiveled a tiny scrap of paper, slid it into place, feeling a strange sense of calm as the edges met. One torn piece of the world suddenly right again. Real life should be so easy. “Yes. A little.”

  “Your mama liked puzzles.”

  A tender memory rushed in, and I felt Mom there behind me, her shoulders leaning over mine, her chin resting on my head, her breath stirring my hair, my body momentarily enveloped by hers, as if she’d taken me into the womb again, making us one. She’d always kept a puzzle on the two-seat breakfast table of our Michigan kitchen. We’d never worked hard on it—just added a few pieces here and there, during breakfast, during supper, late in the evenings sometimes as we popped popcorn or stirred cocoa, getting ready to watch a movie together.

  Even when we were arguing, or I was sulking, or she was too exhausted to deal with my teenage angst, we could always put together a piece or two of the puzzle.

  She’d walk by, tap a finger, say, This one goes there, I think. She had the benefit of having looked at the picture on the box, but she always hid the boxes from me. This way it’s a mystery, she’d say.

  “Yes, she did,” I whispered, then closed my eyes over the memory and quickly tried to lock away its tenderness, to protect the vulnerable space before Clyde could use it to wound me.

  “She kep’ one on the table here in the kitchen. Worked on it while we had our coffee in the mornin’.”

  I pinched my lids tighter, trying to ignore the vision. I didn’t want to think about my mother doing puzzles with Clyde. That was our space. Ours.

  “Your mama cleaned ’em up whenever you come to visit. She wanted ever’thing to be nice.” The floor groaned as he shifted from one leg to the other, hobbling closer and leaning his weight against the bedstead. The small bit of effort brought a low moan. I still couldn’t imagine how he’d made it all the way to the park yesterday, but the trip had taken a lot out of him.

  I heard Ruby sidle to a position nearby. She let out a whimper, as if she felt the air in the room changing again.

  “I just wanted to see Mom. I didn’t care what the house looked like.” But after her marriage, things had been so different. It was as if she felt the need to put on a June Cleaver performance whenever I came around—to fill our time with scheduled activities and four-course meals and shoreside shopping trips, during which Clyde would sit on a store bench, looking grumpy and bothered. Ruining everything.

  “She wanted you to like it, so’s you’d come more.”

  That stung. “I came as much as I could, Clyde.” I pressed my fingertips to the sudden throb between my eyebrows. Tears needled.
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  “Your mama knew that.”

  “If I’d realized how sick she was … I would’ve come for good … for however long it took.” A rush of breath followed the words. On its heels, I sucked in air, slid my hand to my mouth. I wasn’t doing this right now. I wasn’t.

  How dare Clyde use my mother as a weapon in this war.

  “She didn’t wanna bother you.”

  I snapped upright, felt my nostrils flare in preparation for breathing fire. “She was my mother, Clyde. Of course I wanted to be bothered if she needed me. I would’ve dropped everything to come take care of her.” Whirling my feet around, I hit the floor, looked down at my sweats and sleep shirt. I needed clothes. I had to get out of here now.

  The clean clothes were lying beside my suitcase. I snatched up a T-shirt and jeans, threw them on the desk, then added socks, underwear, and a bra, hoping the unabashed display of feminine underthings would chase Clyde away.

  Instead, he shuffled back to the doorway, leaned heavily on the frame, he and Ruby blocking my exit. I had the ridiculous urge to go in the closet and dress, then barrel past Clyde and make my escape.

  “I tried to tell ’er.”

  Stopping midstride, I gaped at him. “What?”

  The skin beneath his eyes drooped, his lower lip hanging slack on one side, as if he had a plug of tobacco in it—a habit my mother had insisted he quit after their marriage. His eyes, old, cloudy, gray, found mine. “I tried to tell your mama you’d wanna know. But your mama wouldn’t listen.”

  I searched his face, felt myself hovering on a tightrope between anger and horror, struggling to know which way to fall. Which was the softer landing? “My mother wanted to keep me in the dark? That was her idea?”

  I studied him, watching—pleading—for some hint of deception, some evidence that he was lying.

  There was none.

  “She knew you’d drop ever’thing and come. She didn’t want to mess up that new restaurant of yours, out there in Dallas. She was so glad you’d quit all the flyin’ around the world for that big-deal job. She thought those people had just took advantage of you, never paid you near what you was worth. It made her glad that your restaurant was a great big goin’ thing, and she knew you’d been workin’ night and day to get it that way. She told people all the time about it. Whenever she’d meet folks out here who come from Texas, ‘Go eat at my daughter’s restaurant,’ she’d say.”

  I collapsed against the lowboy dresser, stood looking at the face in the mirror—my mother’s, except for the dark hair and blue eyes. It’d been so much easier to blame Clyde than to accept any of the blame myself. Every time Mom had called, it’d seemed like I was in the middle of some crisis or other, half-listening to her on my Bluetooth as I dealt with incorrect orders from the vendors or helped the cooks catch up or talked to some customer who was dissatisfied and wanted a free meal. Mom, can you hang on a minute? Or Mom, can I call you back? These were as common as hello and good-bye in our conversations.

  “I never wanted her to feel that way.”

  “You cain’t do nothin’ about what other folks decide for theirselves. Your mama had her own mind, and she thought it was best that way.” Clyde seemed to offer me absolution, but I couldn’t grasp it, especially considering that it was coming from him.

  I closed my eyes again, let my head fall forward, tamped down the swell of emotion. Maybe Clyde would move on now, go to the kitchen for his coffee.

  But his labored breath hovered a few feet away along with Ruby’s soft panting.

  “I could do them things. I was good with your mama’s puzzles.”

  When I looked up, he was backhanding toward the scraps on the bed. I could only blink at him, fairly certain that the earth had suddenly reversed its rotation. “You … want to help me reconstruct my grandmother’s letters?”

  A soft, sardonic puff of laughter and then, “I got time on my hands. What d’you hold ’em together with when you’re done? Scotch tape?”

  Everything tilted again, in a different direction this time, like a ship sloshing around on a storm tide.

  Clyde, offering to help me with something? “I haven’t been doing anything to hold them together. I’ve just been reading them and then keeping the pieces stacked in order. It didn’t seem like a good idea to put tape all over them.” Beneath my immediate curiosity about my grandmother and our family secrets, there was a sense that the letters should be preserved. Alice’s story, whatever it turned out to be, shouldn’t be lost to time. But I had no idea how to properly restore a torn piece of paper.

  “Seems kinda stupid. What if ya wanna read ’em again?”

  “I guess I’ll piece them together then.”

  He hobbled closer, grunting as he moved. He’d probably gained well over fifty pounds since I’d seen him at my mother’s funeral. Mom wouldn’t be happy with the condition he’s in. The thought was both unexpected and unwanted.

  I replaced it with, At least at the retirement home, he’ll get proper care and whatever physical therapy he needs to regain his mobility.

  “Them plastic pockets,” he blurted out of the blue.

  “What?”

  “Them clear plastic pockets, like you put a thing in and hold it in a notebook? We used ’em for our maintenance schedules in the Army, to keep the papers clean and dry. You go on and get me a big box, over to the Walmart. And a stapler. A good stapler.”

  “Clyde, I don’t see—”

  “I know how to do things. I ain’t useless as you think.” His chin jerked upward. His jaw clenched. Sinew hardened beneath sagging skin.

  “I never said you were useless.”

  “Then you go on to the Walmart.” The words were issued like a military command. No room for argument or discussion. I was being given my marching orders. “And get me that card table in the hall closet first. Set that thing up by my chair. I need someplace to work.” He was already perusing the collection on the bed, curiously thumbing one pile and then the next.

  “Oh … okay … I guess.” Clutching my clothes, I started toward the nearest bathroom, still glancing over my shoulder to make sure I hadn’t imagined Clyde altogether. I half expected him to vanish, but there he was, still hovering over the bed.

  Like it or not, my project with the letters had just taken on staff … or been assigned a new general.

  I heard the noise at the bottom of the stairs before turning the corner from one landing to the next. The soft moan echoed against the walls and wound its way upward like a curl of smoke. Stopping, I peered over the rail, saw someone—a man in a dark sweatshirt and muddy jeans—sitting in the shadows with a hood pulled over his head. My heart slapped against my ribs, then fluttered upward. I’d locked the alley door last night … hadn’t I? In all the excitement over bringing Clyde back from the marina, maybe I’d forgotten it after Casey left… .

  Who would be down there at this hour? The street was still quiet. The shops wouldn’t be open for a long time yet. Silently rounding the landing, I moved closer, stood balanced between two steps, ready to turn and run.

  His head rolled sideways against the weathered wooden banister, long strands of sun-bleached blond hair sifting from beneath the hood. Something about it was familiar, even in the dim light.

  “Joel?” What in the world would he be doing in my stairwell at this hour?

  Mark’s warnings whispered in my head. He doesn’t necessarily hang around with the most savory people. Had he sneaked in here last night to see what he could find on the second floor? Surely not. Joel was such a nice kid—smart, helpful, interested in the antiques. He wouldn’t do something like that.

  Huddled on the bottom step, he looked sick or … really hungover.

  “Joel, are you okay?” I stopped just out of reach, uncertainty creeping in. He’d been at some kind of a party when I’d called him last night. He could be under the influence of … who-knew-what right now.

  He rolled his head upward, using the banister for support. One eye opened in a thin sl
it. The other was bruised, puffy, and swollen shut. “Huh-uh. I mes-s-s-sed u-up… . I did-didn’t mean… . Mark’s g-gonna kill umm-me… .” The words were a thin muddle, echoing up the silent stairwell.

  I moved closer, squatted beside him. He didn’t sound dangerous, just confused and fairly out of it—like a kid who’d overdone the partying, maybe even tried the hard stuff. This wasn’t my first go-round with teenagers who’d been on a bender, then gotten scared and ended up at work because work was the only stable place they could think of to go.

  “What happened last night?” The shiner and the dried blood were evidence that it was nothing good. The arm dangling between his knees was cut up too. I took his hand, turned it carefully. Just nicks and scrapes. Not life-threatening.

  “Mark’s gon-n-nna kill ummm-me,” he moaned again. “Oh, man … I s-s-screwed up. D-did we umm-mess up the sh-shop?”

  “What shop? Mark’s shop?” A sense of doom slipped in. I’d been through this scenario too—had seemingly random restaurant breakins end up being traced to employees. “Were you in Mark’s shop last night?”

  He bobbed forward with sudden ferocity. “Oh, ummm-man … g-gotta go s-s-see about the sh-shop. Somebody had s-some stuff las’ night. At the p-party. We got s-so ummm-messed up. The car’s toas-toast.”

  “Joel, why would you … ?” The idea of him trashing his future this way was sickening. There was a good heart inside that confused teenage skin.

  “Man … s-somebody wreck … wreck the… . g-got … n’ ran-n-n f-for it … didn’t … w-whatdda do.” He sank against the banister again, closing his eyes.

  “Stay here a second, okay?” Stepping over him, I hurried out the door and around the building, afraid of what I might find there. But Mark’s shop looked fine. Quiet. Untouched. The store was locked up, everything in place. The morning shadows reflected peacefully against the plate-glass windows, streetlamps still competing with the dawn light.