The Sea Keeper's Daughters

by Lisa Wingate

  When I reached the bottom landing and opened the door, Joel was on the other side, not Mark. He had a purple-red shiner on one eye, and his arm was wrapped in an Ace bandage. He looked like he was probably wearing some of Mark’s clothes. The orange surf shirt and sweats were too big on his bony frame.

  Oversize togs couldn’t hide the sag of contrition. He blubbered out a long and clumsy apology before I could even speak.

  “Joel, you didn’t have to come by here tonight. It’s okay.” I touched the bandage and lightly turned the arm over. “That looks like it smarts. Did Mark take you to the doctor?”

  “It’s not broken or anything.” He slipped his good hand into his pocket, then withdrew it clenched in a fist. “I brought you somethin’. I didn’t even remember it was from here ’til I looked at my stuff sittin’ on the table at Mark’s a while ago.”

  I opened my palm, and he dropped a coin into it. The design around the rim was hard to make out in the dim light of the doorway. I hoped he wasn’t returning some contraband he’d lifted from the place while he was upstairs helping with the squirrel incident. Surely not.

  “It’s, like, a saloon token. Del, over in the antique mall, says there was a speakeasy here for a while during Prohibition. I dug that coin up in the flower bed one time when Surf Dude had me puttin’ in pansies. I been carryin’ it in my pocket for luck.”

  I turned the coin over, felt the warmth of Joel’s body still on it, understood its value. “Maybe it worked last night.”

  “Guess it did … kinda.”

  “You’re okay at least, Joel. It could’ve been worse. A lot worse.”

  Sighing, he slumped lower, his head dropping forward. “You don’t gotta give me the lecture. I already heard it from Mark, big time, I promise.”

  “Did it sink in?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Don’t hope so, Joel. Make it true. You have so much going for you. Don’t waste it on stupid people and stupid things.” Mark’s daughter came to mind. Despite the calm exterior, Mark had to be scared to death that Joel would make the same mistake. “You don’t have to give me this.” I tried to hand the coin back, but Joel wouldn’t take it. “I’d so much rather you just be good to yourself … and listen to Mark. He really cares what happens to you, you know? He’s not trying to limit your fun; he’s trying to show you the way to a good life. Sometimes when people are older than you, they know a few things.” Suddenly I felt so mature, so settled, so completely unlike the mixed-up girl who’d wandered the world, recklessly trying on different locations and relationships. These last few years in Michigan had changed me—I hadn’t realized how much until this moment. “That’s the lecture. You got it anyway. Sorry.”

  “Okay.” He pushed the coin back. “I want you to hold on to it. Like … collateral. If I don’t do better, you can keep it.”

  Making a fist over Joel’s gift, I swung at him playfully, tagging him on the chin. “Then I’m counting on not having this for very long.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He looked at his ragged, blood-spattered boat shoes again.

  “Don’t call me ma’am. It makes me feel ancient. That’s one of my rules around the restaurant. No one gets to call me ma’am.” Maybe I could take Joel back to Michigan and put him to work in the kitchen. Kenny, the kitchen manager, would be such a good influence. Kenny came from a tough upbringing too, but he’d left it behind, changed the pattern.

  As quickly as the thought came, I realized how silly it was. We were barely keeping our own people employed. I didn’t have anything to offer Joel.

  But there he was, still hovering on the stoop like he wanted something.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, then smiled impishly. “Sorry.”

  “Did you need something else?” Each shift of weight seemed to bring him closer to the door.

  “Well … Surf Dude told me about maybe workin’ for you. Helping you finish up on the second floor? He said you, like, might need to leave for home pretty quick because of stuff with your restaurant?”

  “Yes, that’s true.” Fear and faith instantaneously went to war inside me. What if I really couldn’t trust this kid? There was no way I could supervise him every minute—not while looking into a place for Clyde, trying to wrap things up with the museum, and worst of all, attempting to convince Clyde that, at a retirement condo, he would have the help he needed and wouldn’t be so lonely.

  Why did I feel guilty for even thinking about that?

  And now, here stood Joel, stoop-shouldered on my doorstep with a black eye and his arm in a bandage, complicating things even more. The image of him weeping against Mark’s shoulder, broken and remorseful, tormented me.

  Forgiveness given is forgiveness gained. It was a proverb I’d learned while opening a corporate-owned restaurant in American Samoa, widely known as the happiest place on earth. If Mark could take the risk on someone who’d disappointed him before, so could I. It was time I stopped protecting myself and started taking risks. A life lived with everyone at arm’s length wasn’t really a life.

  Maybe Joel hadn’t ended up in my stairwell by accident. Maybe all of this was meant to happen.

  “Sure. Definitely. I do need the help.” A small leap of faith. A beginning. It felt good.

  Joel sidled toward the door.

  “Okay, Joel … well … thanks.” What else was there to talk about at nine thirty at night, standing on the threshold? A mosquito the size of a B-1 bomber had homed in on my head. It really was time to end the conversation and close the door.

  “Okay.” He looked past me toward the stairway.

  “Oh … wait … did you mean now? You wanted to work now?”

  A quick sigh and a shrug. “If it’s cool. I’m kinda, like, a night person? Kayla’s working, and Mark had to drive over to Norfolk. So … it’s weird-quiet at the Captain’s Castle, y’know?” He swiveled toward the street, then back. “Rip’s in the car, though.”

  Swishing at the mosquito, I leaned around the corner, and yes, there was Rip happily panting out the window of the Rip Shack’s pickup truck.

  The thought process that might have led Joel to my doorstep at almost bedtime, with Mark’s dog in tow, was anyone’s guess. No point trying to make sense of it. “Well … all right then. Let me run upstairs and tell Clyde what we’re doing and grab my gloves, and … we’ll work awhile.”

  “Cool.” Joel added a sheepish look. “It’s okay if Rip comes too, right?”

  Was there an alternative plan in his mind? “Yes, of course it is. You and Rip come on in. Ruby will probably enjoy the company.”

  “I checked all the mattresses, and I mean, like, I really went aggro on it. There’s nothin’ left but bones. I bagged the old rotten stuffing and all. Man, some of it was gnarly. Only thing I found inside were some acorns.” Joel mopped his forehead with the bandaged arm, now brown with dust. “Then I thought, dude, maybe it wasn’t a person who put that red ruby necklace in the mattress. Maybe it was the squirrel.”

  “The squirrel?”

  “Could be. My uncle had one livin’ under his trailer house, and there was a box of pecans on the porch, and we’re still findin’ shoes and coat pockets jammed with nuts.” He scratched his head. “Wait … maybe that was a rat. But I bet squirrels do it too.”

  “Anything’s possible, I guess.” But no squirrel could’ve hidden the Benoit brooch and the story keeper necklace in the davenport desk. That was still a mystery, and meanwhile, Joel and I were burning up time. We’d worked until midnight last night, while Rip and Ruby stood guard against crickets and marauding mice. First thing this morning, Joel had shown up at the stairway door again.

  I looked around, yawned into my hand, watched dust drifting through the window light. Outside, the sky was a clear, fathomless blue. A perfect day to be by the water. “Joel, why don’t you go ahead and start on some of the boxes in the salon? There’s so much stuff junked in there.” Stopping and taking stock was depressing. Despite all the time I’d spent on the second floor,
the place still looked almost as disorganized and clutter-filled as it had to begin with. The painstaking process of watching for any scraps of paper with handwriting on them had slowed things down immensely. Even the containers of library books had to be unpacked and the books inspected one by one in case letters were hidden inside. “Unless you need to go to work, I mean. I don’t want to keep you from anything you’re supposed to be doing.”

  He pulled a face. “Mark took me off the schedule at the Rip Shack until I look a little better.”

  “I can’t say as I blame him. You’d probably scare the customers.”

  A chagrined huff, and then, “That’s what Mark said.”

  “And you told him it wouldn’t be a problem anymore, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am … I mean, not ma’am … but yes. Me and Mark talked a long time after he got back last night.”

  “That’s good.”

  Joel wandered off to the other side of the salon, and I watched him go. When I’d finally kicked him out last night, I’d texted Mark to let him know Joel was coming and where he’d been all evening. It felt a little like informing, but I’d done it anyway. I didn’t want Mark to think the kid had been out partying, and if I were completely honest with myself, I might’ve been looking for a wee excuse to see what Mark was up to after we left the park.

  If I were totally, completely honest … I was fishing for information as to whether or not the appointment that had pulled Mark away last night was a date.

  The problem was, I couldn’t tell a thing. He’d been at some kind of gala in Norfolk, apparently, and at midnight when I’d texted about Joel, Mark was on his way home. Business dinners didn’t usually last that late.

  This morning, I’d awakened bleary-eyed and half-dead after staying up until after three, researching the story keeper necklaces, the Federal Writers’ Project, and Alice Lorring. I’d found plenty of information on the first two. The mystery of the story keeper necklaces was all over the Internet. Interest had skyrocketed since the publication of Evan Hall’s blockbuster book, and just as Mark had indicated, there was a new firestorm of controversy about the fate of Roanoke’s Lost Colonists and whether the carved necklaces might in any way provide clues.

  The Federal Writers’ Project was fairly easy to investigate as well. Plenty of photos and narratives from the massive collection had found their way online in university libraries, in museum collections, and on the Library of Congress website.

  But nowhere, not one place, was there a reference to Alice Lorring as a member of the FWP staff, nor were any of her FWP narratives available online.

  There were a few postings of narratives recorded in areas where Alice and Thomas had traveled. Many of the manuscripts had been scanned in, showing the yellowed pages and the author’s markup notes. But the handwriting wasn’t Alice’s and she wasn’t listed as the interviewer. Perhaps the manuscripts she’d turned in to the Writers’ Project had been, as she’d feared, rejected for political reasons? Discarded maybe, or lost over time? Or could they still be gathering dust in a vault somewhere, along with tens of thousands of unpublished pages from the FWP?

  On a historical website, I’d discovered a grainy image of Alice in an old college newspaper article about the financial problems at the women’s college. The photo had been taken less than a year before she’d sent the first letter to Ziltha, announcing her intentions to join the ranks of the writers’ project and travel to the mountains to collect stories.

  Staring into the faraway face of the woman in the photo, I’d thought, Where did you go? What happened to you? You didn’t just disappear… .

  “Hey, your phone’s buzzin’.” Joel caught my attention from the other side of the salon. “Here, you want it?” He’d picked it up and pretended to toss it my way before I remembered that not only had I recorded a message on the museum’s answering machine this morning, I’d called Casey Turner’s cell and left a voice mail.

  My heart hopscotched, and I jogged over to grab the phone. “Thanks.” I glanced at Joel, checking his expression as I headed for the stairway door. No sign that he was suspicious of anything.

  “Morning.” Casey was cheerful on the other end. “You sound a little out of breath.”

  “I’ve been working in the building.” I moved down a half flight of stairs, watched the door to the second floor click shut. Still, the walls seemed to have ears … or perhaps mouths, because I heard the nagging whisper of guilt. Guilt and indecision. I could only hope that once I had all the options, the answers would become clear.

  Casey’s package deal was definitely the easiest choice—wrap up the sale of the building and provide a place for Clyde in one fell swoop. Casey had seemed so confident when he’d talked about the Shores. A lot of older folks come for a visit, and they’re reluctant to move out of the homes they’ve always lived in, but they see the facility and the amenities and the view from the upper floors, and they fall in love. If that doesn’t work, we ply them with food. The restaurant is first class… .

  “Got your message. So, are you busy right now?” he asked. “I thought I’d check while I was in the neighborhood.”

  “In the neighborhood?” A pipe wrench tightened around my neck. The Rip Shack would be opening in a half hour. Was Mark down there yet?

  “I can be at your door in … ten minutes. Let’s go grab a cup of coffee, and I’ll take you over to see the Shores. I think you’re really going to like it.”

  I searched for an excuse. “Oh … you know what … I’m a wreck. Rain check? I could drive out there later today.” The last thing I needed was Mark and Casey in one place. I could just picture how well that would go.

  A pause followed … the complicated kind that said Casey was either analyzing my answer or recalculating his day. “Well … I hate to tell a pretty lady no, but I might be leaving town later. I’m in dealings on a property in Virginia Beach. I’m not sure how long that’ll take. Once I head over there, I could be gone a few days.” He ended with an expectant pause—let it float like bait on a hook. Whether or not he really had a business trip planned, he knew I couldn’t wait several days to make decisions. I’d told him that in my message.

  “Thirty minutes,” I rushed out. Was it safe to leave Joel here alone? Did I have a choice? The work needed to be done. “Give me thirty minutes, and I’ll meet you over at the Shores, okay?”

  “Perfect. Got the top down today. Sure you don’t want me to just wait on you?”

  Yes, I am. Really sure. “Thanks, but I need to make a grocery run, so I was planning to get out anyway. Clyde’s complaining about the lack of milk this morning.”

  A soft tsk-tsk, and then, “One more great thing about the Shores. The residents have their own little market, right in the building. He’ll never run out of milk again.”

  The way Casey said it bothered me a little—as if we’d already done the deal. “Sounds good. See you in a bit.”

  I hurried back to the second floor and gave Joel instructions to continue sorting through the boxes in the salon. “Remember not to throw away anything that has handwriting on it. Clyde’s working on putting Alice’s letters back together upstairs, and every little scrap helps. Just leave whenever you feel you need to … if I’m not back, I mean. I’ll set the doors to lock behind you when you go. I’m not sure exactly when I’ll be done with my errands.”

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n.” He saluted me and offered a bruised, lopsided smile. It only served to add to the guilt, considering where I was headed.

  Upstairs, Clyde’s enthusiasm heaped stones onto the pile. For once, my stepfather was excited to see me. He had things he wanted to share about the letters. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to listen. “I have to go take care of some errands. I’ll be back in a little while, okay?”

  His face slowly lowered, the folds of skin settling like mud. He turned back to his work. “Guess I’ll be here when you get home.”

  “I’ll try to hurry. I want to know what you found in the letters. Joel’s wo
rking downstairs. I told him if he uncovered anything with handwriting on it, to save it for you.”

  Clyde answered with a grunt, and I didn’t have much choice but to disengage. I washed up, slipped on yellow capris and a black T-shirt—the only two decent things I had that were clean. The girl in the mirror looked like a bumblebee. Then I realized I didn’t care. Other than in relation to questions about the building, I hadn’t had a random thought about Casey since our first dinner date.

  Yet I entertained random thoughts about Mark all the time—actually, they came whether I entertained them or not.

  What did that say?

  Driving out of town, I tried not to overanalyze it. Today’s meeting was about business, and on the personal front, I had run across Mark a whole lot more than I’d seen Casey. Of course Mark would be on my mind… .

  But even as I thought it, I was remembering the way Mark had looked at me in the park, and those words that had hinted at something and remained a misty bridge between us. Maybe I’m after something more… .

  I’d analyzed that one short sentence every way it could be analyzed. Even so, I thoroughly dissected the possibilities again on the drive to the Shores.

  Casey was waiting on a bench by a trickling marble fountain when I drove up to the retirement village. The place was gorgeous. Pristine. A brilliantly planned miniature community. To my right, a small group of retail buildings mirrored the architecture of a New England fishing village along the waterfront. To my left, tennis courts and a swimming pool offered entertainment. All around, the gardens were immaculate. Cabbage palms swayed over brightly colored cabanas; docks offered kayaks, canoes, and water bikes.

  Exercise trails waited with racks of bicycles. A wide sidewalk circled a small lake. The grass was thick and green, meticulously edged along curbs. Every window trim and shutter was freshly painted. Glittering brass plates offered the names of each building. Signs on decorative posts pointed toward streets filled with exclusive townhomes and duplexes. Under the sprawling portico of the main tower, a valet stand awaited arrivals.

  This was retirement living at its finest. Luxury everywhere. But the glitz couldn’t hide the monstrous glass towers jutting skyward. They loomed over the driveway, blocking the sun as I pulled up.