Message in the Sand

by Hannah McKinnon

  But lately, they’d begun to creep back in. Nothing like before, thankfully. He no longer awoke standing on the front porch in just his boxers, wondering how the hell he’d gotten there, how long he’d been outside. Nor did he feel like he might choke to death, something that used to happen when his heart raced so hard against his ribs that he passed out. Each time it felt like death was coming. That’s what the whole first year home had been like.

  Shakily, he stood and went to the bathroom to splash water on his face. This one was not bad, he told himself. It was just a siren from a fire truck. There was nothing for him to do, no one for him to try to save.

  Wendell stared at his reflection in the mirror as the sirens grew louder. They were coming closer. He closed his eyes and opened them, forced himself to swallow. “Not for you,” he whispered hoarsely to himself.

  But he wondered.

  He turned out the bathroom light and the bedroom fell again into darkness. A red flicker danced around the edges of the windows, slipped through his curtains. Wendell went to look out.

  His family house was set on a green rise overlooking the corner where two roads met: to the side of the house ran a state road, and to the front, a quiet town lane. A series of trucks, lights flashing, were heading his way up the state road. Wendell held his breath as they slowed. One by one they turned sharply onto his lane. Where could they be going?

  When the last of the trucks passed, Wendell stood a moment longer, following its light up the hill to where it rounded the corner and fell out of sight. Eventually, the sirens faded and the after-dark sounds of June again filled the night. Wendell closed the curtain and turned back to his bed. He would not sleep. He never could after an episode. But he lay down against the still-damp sheets and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  At daylight, the birdsong woke him. Wendell sat up, chilled but amazed; he’d fallen back to sleep. He showered quickly, let Trudy outside, and made quick work of breakfast. It was no more than a half hour later that he was pulling in to White Pines.

  No doubt Alan would give him a hard time about coming in to work on a weekend, but Wendell couldn’t help it. With the gala behind them, it was time to assess the damage. Having the catering and event-planning trucks on the property bothered him; they often did not leave the estate as they found it, and no doubt there would be garden beds trampled, tire marks in the lawns, and areas of grass to replant.

  Now, as he turned up the main drive, a young girl outside the main house caught his eye. She staggered across the lawn, then fell to her knees. It was Julia. She heaved on all fours as if becoming sick. Wendell stopped the truck and got out. It was then he heard it: a keening wail, like that of coyotes at night.

  The front door of the house flew open, and a dark-haired woman he did not recognize filled its frame. She hurried across the grass toward the child. Something was terribly wrong.

  Wendell abandoned his truck in the driveway and began moving toward them. The woman stopped where Julia lay sprawled in the lawn and, after a moment’s hesitation, bent beside her, placing her hand on the girl’s back. If she’d been jolted by a shock of electricity, Julia could not have lurched more violently. She sprang up like a wounded animal, at the ready, and then ran. A sense of dread had coiled itself in his stomach, and without realizing it, Wendell found himself running, too.

  “Julia?” he called. He quickened his pace.

  * * *

  Upon hearing his voice, the girl halted in the middle of the yard. Wendell did, too. Her mouth hung loose as if stuttered between expressions, her long hair wild about her face. For a ghostly moment she stared through him. Then, like a rabbit, she bolted. Across the yard, away from the woman and Wendell, too. Wendell remained frozen as he watched her tug the barn door ajar and disappear inside. By then the woman had come up beside him, and he turned to see it was the Lancasters’ neighbor, Alison Walters. She’d been all dressed up with her husband at the party last night. Now her expression was drawn.

  “Alison. What’s going on?”

  She wrung her hands. “They’re gone,” she said. “Both of them. Gone.”

  Alison was talking too fast. “Who is gone?”

  “Alan and Anne.”

  “Gone?” Wendell shook his head. She wasn’t making sense.

  “They took the T-Bird out for a drive. After the party. The car was found this morning—crushed against a tree off High View.” She gulped back a sob. “The poor girls…”

  Wendell turned and stared at the vacuum of light streaming through the barn doorway, at the golden spill of dust motes roused from the hay-strewn floor. Beside him, Alison went on. “The girls just found out. We wanted family to be here with them, but I only know of one. There’s an aunt. She’s flying in from London tomorrow.”

  From inside the barn came the dense thud of a stall door being slammed. A squeak of a gate. Around the side of the barn, Radcliffe’s bridled head emerged. Julia pulled herself up into the saddle and swung her leg over his back.

  “Julia!” Alison cried upon seeing them. “Please, wait.”

  There was a flash of chestnut flank and golden hair, and then the pounding retreat of hoofbeats reverberating against the green morning.

  The dirt beneath his feet seemed to tilt, and Wendell steadied himself against his senses, the smell of fresh-cut grass fermenting in his nostrils.

  Nine Roberta

  Roberta had heard about it that first morning in the IGA market. She was standing in the produce section, selecting tomatoes for a garden salad she planned to make, when she learned of it.

  “Their car went off the road up on High View,” Mike Lanzi, the market owner, told Sherry Whiting, one of the local realtors. He shook his head sadly. “Such a tragedy. Both good people, both so young.”

  Sherry put a hand to her mouth and gasped. “I just saw them at the gala! What about the children?”

  “They were home,” he said softly. “Asleep in their beds.”

  Roberta tilted her head in their direction, wondering who had suffered such a terrible accident.

  Sherry turned to her as if reading her thoughts. “Can you believe it? The poor Lancasters.”

  Roberta had set down her tomatoes and exited the store. Wendell, she’d thought.

  She’d gotten straight in her car and called him from the front seat. His cell rang seven times, then went to voicemail. Wendell’s voice was lilting, like his mom’s, and tears pricked her eyes as she listened to the recording. But Roberta did not leave a message. She went home and put on her apron.

  Whenever she was stressed, she ate. A lot. And since she couldn’t very well eat for Wendell (though she’d done a bang-up job trying), she’d made him food. A roasted pepper-cheddar-chicken casserole she figured would fill a man up. The dish was still warm from the oven as she pulled it off the passenger seat of her car and carried it up the walkway to the front door. How long had it been since she’d walked up this path?

  Before she could knock, Wendell opened the door. Roberta held up the tray and smiled sadly. “Sorry to drop in, but I wanted to bring you something.”

  He looked down at the casserole, then up at her in surprise.

  “I heard about the Lancasters.”

  Wendell held the door for her.

  They ate together on the porch in silence. After, Wendell mopped the last bit of creamy chicken off his plate and set his fork down. “That was delicious, Roberta. Thank you.”

  Like his plate, his work boots, she noticed, were polished spotless. She wondered if this was a habit left over from his years in the Guard.

  Wendell eased back in his rocking chair. “I don’t know what happened up there on that road. It’s a terrible corner, sure. But Alan was a skilled driver. From the tractors on the property to the vintage sports cars, he could drive anything. And he was with Anne. No way would he have been going fast.”

  Roberta stared out at the green undulation of perfectly mowed lawn. It was as crisp as she imagined he kept the lawns at White Pin
es. “What will become of White Pines and the children?” she asked suddenly.

  “There’s just one relative, Alan’s estranged sister,” he said. “Candace Lancaster is her name. She’s flying in from London. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” Wendell looked down at his teacup, which she realized he hadn’t touched. “There’s already talk.”

  “I’d expect nothing less.”

  Roberta wished people would mind their own business, but facts were facts: the Lancasters were a big name in town.

  The Lancasters’ fingerprints were all over Saybrook. The library had been founded by Alan’s grandfather. There was the village shopping center, with the IGA market, coffee shop and bakery, bookstore, and bank. The town marina, adjacent to the local beach, had recently had new docks put in. As it was, resident boat owners had to put their name in the lottery system just to get a slip. Only the summer before, the Village Playhouse, whose lavish productions were known to draw audiences from surrounding towns, had been revived with cedar shake shingles and a fresh coat of stark New England white paint. If Saybrook had been a charming New England village before, the renovations had delivered the past right to the present, straight out of the history books.

  The Lancasters held positions on the Historical Society Board, funded the town’s higher-education scholarship committee, served on the Candlewood Lake Water Safety Commission. While all of those boards would certainly survive without them, the Lancaster Foundation was a tremendous investor and supporter.

  The first rumor was that the family foundation would maintain White Pines for the daughters, and they’d stay on with the mysterious aunt everyone was wondering about, finish school, and move on with their lives as best as two orphaned girls could. It was tragic, but at least they’d remain in the community and school system, where they were known and loved.

  A close second rumor was that the estate would be turned into a nature preserve for the town, and the main house into some sort of museum. This, of course, was popular with many who loved the large property and had always longed for the opportunity to sniff around the gardens and cultivated nooks and crannies of a place many had only heard about from those who were invited or could afford to attend the social events held on the property over the years. As far as Roberta was concerned, there was a lot of nosiness behind that plan. Saybrook was lovely enough, and it was just plain selfish to sacrifice the home of two innocent children for a bunch of busybodies who were too cheap to pay for the garden-tour tickets the previous year. People should be ashamed of themselves.

  She really hoped Wendell knew well enough to ignore all the talk. He’d been through enough in his young life as it was.

  * * *

  Later that night, as she sat on her screened-in porch with a book in her lap, Roberta’s mind drifted. It had been a long day. As Roberta nodded off to the rhythm of the summer peepers, images filled her dreams. Two little girls in matching blue dresses stood in the middle of an overgrown field, their hair as fair as the bleached summer grass. They held hands, as if waiting for her. Roberta walked toward them. Suddenly, they turned away from her and, in a fit of giggles, disappeared into a small grove of trees. Worried, Roberta followed the sound of their voices. But without warning, the sky darkened. A brisk wind picked up, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of blue skirt among the trees. The giggling had stopped. “Girls?” she called softly. “It’s okay. You can come out now.” There was just the wind. She waited at the edge of the field, a feeling of dread growing. Roberta did not want to enter the forest. “Girls?” she called again. Still there was no answer. Somewhere ahead, a branch snapped. Roberta squinted into the shadows as a small figure emerged from the trees. It was neither of the Lancaster girls. This girl had short dark hair, her bangs cut in a jagged line across her forehead. Roberta recognized those bangs. That hollow gaze. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. There was only a loud crash.

  Roberta startled awake. Her book had fallen from her lap and lay open on its spine. She put a shaky hand to her chest. “It’s just a dream,” she said aloud.

  But there was no one there to confirm that. And besides, it wasn’t the truth.

  Ten Julia

  “I hate her,” Julia said. There followed the scratch of pen on paper as Lottie made a note in her little green journal. Who even wrote in journals anymore?

  To Julia’s consternation, Lottie did not grimace nor look surprised. That was the thing: she never did. Julia wondered if anything she said would shock the middle-aged therapist. She doubted it. Not one hair of her perfectly coiffed bob was ever askew. Her dress shirts always looked starched. Just looking at her put-togetherness was infuriating.

  Finally, Lottie looked up from her journal. “That’s excellent.”

  Julia scoffed. “So, hating my aunt is okay with you?”

  Lottie took her glasses off. That was another thing: before she said something important, she removed her glasses. As if that were a signal to Julia that she should lean in. Instead, Julia pulled her gaze away and stared out the window.

  “Actually, Julia, this is all good. You’re feeling something. And you’re starting to express it. That’s a long way from where we started quite suddenly.”

  That was a lie. There was no “we” in any of this. Lottie had not had her parents torn out of her life one perfect summer night like a page from an unfinished book. She didn’t have a little sister who’d pretty much stopped speaking, who had started to look like the little orphan she was: a rag doll who followed Julia everywhere and climbed into her bed at night to cry. Lottie was not at the mercy of the only adult who’d come forward to take care of them, an aunt she barely knew and from whom her father was long estranged. His own sister! Who had arrived at White Pines, taken one brisk look at the property and the house and the two girls, and looked like she wished very much that she’d never been summoned.

  The truth was there was so much to hate right now. The powder-blue T-Bird her father loved so much. The sharp corner of High View Lane. The ancient maple tree that grew at the edge of the turn.

  * * *

  But her aunt Candace was alive and breathing, standing by the kitchen stove where her father should have been each morning, sipping tea from a bone china cup her mother liked. Julia’s hatred needed a target. For now, her aunt would do just fine.

  “Julia, everything you’re feeling is normal. Let yourself feel it, and don’t worry if it’s not what others might call socially acceptable. Right now isn’t about that. It’s about identifying what you’re going through and forging a way.” Lottie set the journal on her desk, signifying that their time was about up. “I’m proud of you.”

  Julia stared into her lap to hide the tears that pressed at the corners of each eye. Why did this woman have to be so nice? She liked Lottie, or at least she might have if they’d met under different circumstances. If she weren’t someone to whom Julia and Pippa were dragged for these last unbearable weeks to talk about the most unbearable thing. Julia didn’t want to talk. Talking about it meant that it was real. That she was learning to accept what had happened. That she would figure out how to move on. But Julia didn’t want to do either of those things. She wanted her old life back.

  * * *

  Julia knew from the moment Aunt Candace arrived that she would not work out. The limo driver had carried her bags up the front steps and into the house, and Candace had followed. There she stood in the foyer, clutching a small gold purse, staring at the girls as if she’d never seen a child. Julia could find no trace of her father in Candace. Pippa had stood beside Julia, squeezing her big sister’s hand, the thumb of her other hand jammed into her mouth, something that had started the day they learned of their parents’ death. Regressing, Lottie called it.

  “It’s terrible what happened,” Candace said finally, stepping toward the girls. “I am very sorry for you both.”

  Julia had stared back at this woman who was supposed to be her father’s little sister, who had not opened he
r arms nor offered a shred of comfort, and known instantly just how awful this arrangement would be.

  Eliza, who’d been staying with them from that first horrific day, stood behind both girls and nudged them forward. How Julia wished Eliza could stay.

  The first night without her parents, Julia lay awake staring up at the ceiling as images flashed in her mind: the way her father’s eyes crinkled in the corners when he laughed, her mother’s gentle hands in Pippa’s hair as she braided it. It did not seem real that they would never experience those things again; it wasn’t possible.

  Her parents were just here. And they still were. Everywhere in this house and on this property, she felt them. That night she lay awake until her eyelids felt like sand, until the ache in her bones grew dull with fatigue and she eventually fell into a fitful sleep. When she awoke a few hours later, Julia blinked at the sunlight streaming in through her curtains. Her first thought was that her stomach was growling. When had she last eaten? She sat up. And then she remembered.

  She’d barely made it to the bathroom before she vomited. When she finished, she stood and rinsed her mouth out at the sink. The girl in the mirror was not the girl who’d done her hair for the gala, standing in this very spot only two nights ago. She was not the girl who’d watched her parents twirl on the dance floor, the last time she would ever see them both alive. Nor was she the girl who’d sneaked back across the lawns, the cold dew beneath her bare feet, after meeting Sam in the woods. The very same night he’d leaned in and pressed his lips against hers: her first kiss. Afterward, she’d raced home, stolen up the back stairs, and tumbled into her bed, thinking of the warmth of Sam’s mouth, the tingle of his fingers intertwined with hers. How foolish. How selfish!