The Sea Keeper's Daughters

by Lisa Wingate

  I opened the folder, took in the sixteen-thousand-dollar offer. Enough to keep our heads above water until the Bella Tazza hearing. Not enough to single-handedly rescue us from the storm. If I went this route, I’d have to believe that Mark could do what he claimed he could—win our case so we could reopen Tazza 2, as well as somehow arrange grants and volunteer help for the restoration of the Excelsior.

  Tandi leaned in slightly. “It is a very fair offer, I promise. And there’s the side benefit of knowing that these are back where they belong and the public can have access to them for years to come. They won’t end up on someone’s mantelpiece.”

  “I know.” My thoughts were moving in such a rush, I couldn’t grasp any of them. One big breath, and then, “It’s the right thing. I want to do it. All of it … including the commitment to the loan.”

  Things happened in a blur after that. I signed papers. I said things. They said things. We laughed. We smiled. I tried to imagine how Joel and Clyde would react, what Mark would say, what the future might hold for the Excelsior, for Bella Tazza …

  For Mark and me?

  The meeting ended, and we walked through the shadowed halls of Benoit House to the front door. Sorenson thanked me, and Kay Harper invited me to come visit the university. She was currently in the process of scanning the necklaces in 3-D, so that the etched motifs could be studied and compared to markings found on stones in other parts of the state.

  “The artifacts you’ve allowed us to study are invaluable, as are the letters. It’s still a puzzle, the story of who these people were and where they came from, but every piece brings us to greater understanding,” she said.

  We shook hands in the doorway, and then she and Sorenson disappeared into the night. I waited while Tandi moved through the nearby rooms, turning off lights. Around me, Benoit House creaked and groaned, the walls sighing and settling into evening slumber.

  I thought of my grandmother, coming here filled with hope as a young bride, anticipating an advantageous marriage and an exciting life. How could she have ever imagined that Benoit House was hiding devastating secrets? How could she possibly have known that Benjamin’s marriage to her was only a convenience? That her husband didn’t love her and wouldn’t be faithful?

  Maybe in some way, my journey back here with Alice’s story was redemption, an end to the anguish that had been passed silently from generation to generation. Now there were no more secrets, nothing hidden, nothing to hide from. There was only the future, and I was ready. It was time—well past time—to shed the dark legacy my father had left me and step into a life that was wholly my own.

  She was in my dreams again, my mother. She stood on the shore, on a jetty, just out of reach, yet so real. So filled with color and life, her auburn hair tumbling on the breeze like liquid.

  “I miss you.” The words didn’t hurt this time. I didn’t feel my heart breaking along with them.

  “I’m here,” she answered.

  I wanted to touch her, but I didn’t. If I stayed where I was, maybe she would stay too.

  “You are loved, Whitney. You’re always loved.” Her smile was radiant, washing like warm water over my skin. Turning, she looked over her shoulder toward the water. “It’s so very beautiful there.” And then she was moving away, not walking, but moving farther from me.

  “Mom, no!” The wind rose. I could see it swirling toward us, whipping the dunes.

  “Take care of the baggage, Whitney,” she shouted, laughing. Then she tipped back her head and let the wind take her, and she was gone.

  I jerked awake, blinked into a night sky that was slowly surrendering its stars to dawn. For a moment, I couldn’t place where I was. Then I remembered rambling around the Excelsior after having supper with Clyde and telling him about the meeting at Benoit House. Sometime around midnight, I’d wandered to the roof deck with a quilt and called Mark to see whether he was still stuck in an airport on his way home. He’d been thinking about getting a hotel and starting fresh in the morning. “Let me at least pay for the hotel,” I’d said.

  “Nope.” He’d sounded remarkably cheerful for a guy with two flights canceled so far. “It’s all covered under the retainer agreement.”

  “Mark, I gave you a dollar.”

  “Still counts.”

  “You’re sort of impossible, you know.”

  “That’s what your old friend Tagg Harper thinks. He’s quite a piece of work. I’m going to have some fun with him.”

  He’d laughed, and I’d laughed with him. Who could’ve imagined I’d ever find humor in any sentence that had Tagg Harper in it? “Just don’t do anything illegal, okay?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  We’d said good night, and he’d told me to have sweet dreams, his voice soft, familiar. My mind had drifted ahead, imagining things it probably shouldn’t have, before sleep had finally stolen me away.

  Now the first shades of morning had begun to lighten the dome of night sky. I sat up, looked around, breathed deep.

  A faint, clear music floated on the gray-misted air. Whistling. Perhaps the reason I’d awakened so suddenly?

  I threw the quilt aside, felt the dew gathered on its surface, stood up bent and stiff from the chaise longue, then wobbled toward the edge of the roof deck. The whistling was drawing closer, and with it, another noise—one that pulled me back to my teenage summers in this building. Footsteps on the fire escape’s metal treads.

  Someone was coming up, and I’d only heard one person around here whistle like that… .

  A giddy pulse fluttered as I leaned over the railing. What was he doing here … now? And why was he climbing the fire escape? I couldn’t imagine, but there he was, trotting up the second flight of stairs. Even in the shadows, there was no mistaking Mark Strahan. He’d parked his truck underneath the bottom landing, used it to make his way up.

  “Hey,” I called down in a laughing whisper as he rounded to the third flight. My voice carried on the mist—eerie, otherworldly. He stopped whistling, looked up, smiled.

  Was I dreaming? Maybe conjuring all of this … and him? “You made it home,” I said anyway.

  “It wasn’t easy.” He was up the last of the stairs and over the railing quickly.

  I backed away a step and let him in, stood suddenly uncertain as to what should come next. He seemed to be debating the same thing. One hand still held the metal safety bar. His gaze swept the roof, taking in the smattering of old lawn furniture and the ragged string of patio lights. “I called your cell phone. Clyde answered. He said you were up here.”

  “Clyde answered my iPhone? I had no idea he knew how.” Techno gadgets and Clyde were really the last two things I wanted to talk about, but that’s what came out.

  “He knows more than you think.” Mark’s slowly spreading smile was visible even in the glow of the vintage camp lights my mother must have rescued from some rummage sale. Mark was standing under a green one, so that the smile was green and so were his eyes. Deep, dark green. I felt myself falling in.

  “Clyde told me to come find you. He offered to let me in through the third floor, but … this felt like a better idea.”

  “It feels like … a really good idea.” The fortress tumbled, the old walls falling away. What was the point? They weren’t needed anymore.

  Mark reached for me, and I slipped into his arms. I felt … safe. I was so ready to be safe with someone. To be safe for someone. Tipping back my head, I gazed up at him and said, “Thank you. For everything you did.”

  “All part of the retainer.” He was as cavalier as if he rescued people every day. I leaned into his palm, let my eyes fall closed.

  I was lighter than air. I could float off the rooftop and sail away… .

  Maybe this was the very lesson my dream was meant to teach me—to stop clinging to the baggage, just let go.

  “It was so worth the retainer,” I teased, looking up at him again.

  “We aim to please.” He frowned contemplatively, adding, “But yo
u do owe me for some luggage. After this trip home, I may never see my suitcase again. I checked it through when I left Michigan because I knew I’d be cutting it close on the connections. Bad choice. No telling where it is right now.”

  There was something undeniably sweet about the fact that he’d rushed home without worrying about his things. “I’ll buy you a new one. Or if you’d rather have a classic, we can probably find a replacement downstairs.” Thumbing toward the stairway door, I laughed. “There might be something really snazzy down in …”

  Take care of the baggage, Whitney.

  Take care … the baggage …

  Fireworks went off in my head, and this time they had nothing to do with Mark’s close proximity. My thoughts raced like flame along a newly lit fuse, sparks flying everywhere. “The peanut can,” I whispered. The second batch of letters had been found in a peanut can.

  Baggage.

  I caught a breath, pushed out of Mark’s arms, drew a confused double take from him.

  “What?”

  Blood was thrumming in my ears now. “Old Dutch!”

  “The what?”

  “Old Dutch …” Lucianne wasn’t the one who ate peanuts; Old Dutch was. “The porter, back when this was a hotel. He ate peanuts and he saved the containers and stored things in them. He always had peanut jars and peanut cans. We found the second batch of letters in a peanut can.”

  Suddenly so many things made sense. Lucianne wasn’t the only one who’d loved books. Old Dutch’s small first-floor bedroom had been lined with homemade shelves. They were filled with volumes he’d salvaged from trash heaps and library book sales. Maybe the encyclopedia set downstairs hadn’t quite seemed familiar because it wasn’t familiar. Maybe it wasn’t Lucianne’s at all, but Old Dutch’s. Maybe he’d been the one to rescue the letters. That was the reason so many pieces were missing. Old Dutch wouldn’t have had access until the wastebaskets upstairs were emptied into the old rubbish chute. By then, everything would’ve been mixed together, including the hotel trash, but Old Dutch didn’t mind trash. He was always coming up with treasures he’d salvaged from garbage bins. He used those things or he repaired them and gave them away.

  He was clearly fond of Alice and her daughter. Emmaline had sent drawings to him.

  “The porter’s closet.” The words and the thought came in unison. “What if there are more of the letters? What if the suitcase Alice planned to send to my grandmother is hidden there? Old Dutch would’ve never let a perfectly good suitcase be hauled away with the trash.”

  Mark blinked, blinked again. “The supply closet? The one downstairs? There’s nothing in there but tools and floor polishers. A couple rusted steam radiators nobody ever bothered to get rid of. I’ve been in there a million times, Whitney. There’s no space for anything more.”

  “But it used to go way back under the stairwell. They closed it off and built shelves over that part when they shut down the hotel and remodeled for retail downstairs, but what if there are still things in there? What if they never cleared the crawl space … or maybe even left things stored there on purpose?”

  Mark’s mouth slowly dropped into an O. “It’s possible… .”

  He bolted for the fire escape, and I followed him over the railing, the two of us rushing down the stairs together. At the bottom, an agile jump landed him in the back of his pickup. He reached for me, but I was already swinging off monkey-style and dropping to the pavement.

  “I get a feeling you’ve done this before.”

  “Just a few times.” We’d reached the street door before I realized I was in my sweats and didn’t have a thing with me. “Please tell me you’ve got keys?”

  “In my truck.” He jogged off while I paced under the awning, trying not to let my hopes go wild, but I couldn’t help it. After all this time, could a miracle be waiting in Old Dutch’s domain? Nobody else ever went into that closet, back in the day. The place had smelled of partially used paint, polish, grease guns, oil, floor wax, and customers’ stored luggage. It would’ve been a safe hiding spot for something Old Dutch didn’t want my grandmother or Lucianne or any of the hotel staff to find.

  When Mark came back, we were like bumper cars going through the door. Mark’s store keys gave us entrance to the closet, and we haphazardly piled cleaning equipment against the stairwell and wheeled floor machines into the landing. The shelves along the back wall of the closet were even more work. They were filled with spray bottles, outdated cans of wax, and assorted leftovers from the building’s slipshod operation over the years.

  “I actually don’t think the unit is attached to anything.” Mark grabbed a board and seemed to rattle the entire back wall. “Hang on.” Lifting the plywood grid in one piece, he manhandled it around the corner and propped it against an adjacent wall. Where it had been, the Sheetrock from the renovation was unpainted, the seam tape curled and peeling. Mark rapped on it with his knuckles. “Sounds hollow in the middle.”

  I hurried to the hallway, grabbed a hammer and a garden spade. “Let’s knock it down.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. If there’s anything back there, I want to know.”

  “It’s your building.” Mark laughed.

  The wall gave in easily, but even so, an eternity seemed to tick by as the dust settled and the light reached in. Slowly, bit by bit, the remnants of Old Dutch’s hoard became visible—peanut jars filled with salvaged nails, bolts, rubber bands, bits of string. Faded bobbers and crab pot buoys, rolls of fishing line rescued from the tide. Bottles frosted by time in the sea. Wooden crates, plumbing supplies, wire bins holding the pads for floor polishers, old scrub brushes, wringers, and dust-covered rags.

  Three empty crates sat neatly stacked in one corner. A small suitcase rested on top, an innocuous brown tortoiseshell leather, twine wrapped around it and the remains of a disintegrated mailing label clinging to one side. The handwriting was familiar even in the half light. At this point, I would’ve known Alice’s penmanship anywhere.

  Staggering clumsily over the boxes on the floor, I tried to reach the case. Rotted cardboard collapsed underfoot and I felt Mark grab the back of my sweatshirt in a handful. “Easy there, Sherlock.”

  “I’ve almost … got it… .” One more stretch and the edge of the handle was within reach. I flipped it upward so that when it fell back, it landed against my palm. A quick tug and the whole thing slid free. I toppled forward with it, unprepared for its weight.

  “That’s not empty.” Mark reeled me in, dragging both the suitcase and me by my sweatshirt.

  “No … oof … It’s not. I think I might’ve … found … what we were looking for.” But in the back of my mind, there was a nagging worry. What if this suitcase had been emptied out long ago? What if Old Dutch had used it to store something else?

  If Alice’s manuscripts weren’t here, it would be a dashed last hope, a final, crushing disappointment.

  Stumbling out of the closet, I sneezed and coughed, puffs of Sheetrock dust falling in my eyes, turning my hair gray as it tumbled into my face. I pushed it out of the way, saw Mark grinning at me in the stairway light.

  “You look like you’ve been playing in the dirt pile. Here.” He wiped the smudges away with the sleeve of his crisp, white lawyer shirt. “You can buy me a new one.”

  “Deal.”

  We moved to the staircase together. Settling in beside the suitcase, I smoothed a hand over the label, took a breath. This small container was all that remained of Alice and Thomas’s journey. It had survived these many years, thanks to Old Dutch. Inside, hope would be either lost or found.

  “Here goes.” I flipped the latches, lifted the lid, watched the shadows recede, saw Alice’s manuscripts meet the light for the first time in almost eighty years. The bundles lay carefully stacked and tied with brown packing twine, the pages surprisingly pristine.

  Lifting the closest one, I read the heading on the top page:

  PROJECT #1721

  ALICE LORRING


  LA BELLE, NC

  JUNE 10, 1936

  The Narrative of Ida Mullins, a Melungeon Woman of the Mountains

  The echo of Ida Mullins’s laugh must surely travel mile upon mile over the crisp morning air as we sit by grass-covered foundation stones that seem as ancient as the mountains themselves. Nearby, a graveyard rises along the hillside. There are no granite markers here. Little commemorates the passing of these lives, save for rough, brown stones selected from mountain slopes. Some have been carved with names and dates, carefully etched by relatives, the carver spelling his sentiments to the best of his ability.

  Ida rests a hand upon the foundation stones. She pats them for me to sit with her. The grass rustles near her feet, and she grabs at it, tossing something away. Her discard writhes in the air, then lands hard and slithers off. A snake. Ida pats the stones again, and I am loath to sit down, but I do.

  “This ’ere be the oldest place I knowed’a. My mama knowed it, and her mama afore her. Was built a long, long time back yander, the way my granny told’t it. Doubt she had any call to lie over it.

  “Granny told’t the story that the folks what made this place come to the mount’ns, back when there was none but the Cher’kee hereabouts, back before any white man ever laid his eyes on this country. The sea keepers, my granny used’a call them old-time folks, ’cause they told’t a old, old tale of comin’ over the sea and settlin’ first by the big water. Was their women what was the keepers of their story. Was their job to always hold tight to the past, to tell it to the young’uns. The valley, their men farmed in it, and the hills, they hunted ’em. They was friendly with the Cher’kee and married up with the Injuns some too. They lived right pearly here, I reckon.”

  Her hand moves in the rhythm of slopes and valleys, peaks and folds. Those bent and curled fingers know the mountains, even from a distance. “This ’ere be their church.” She pats the stones again, giving them a good hard thump, hard enough that it would seemingly hurt, but she does not wince. “Knowed the Lord, them folks that come o’er the big, wide sea. Brought him with ’em to the mount’ns. Come to the fer country, like ’em old-time folk in the Good Book.”