Page 14 of That Last Carolina Summer

The shadows of the room played on her face, showing me, just for an instant, what she’d look like as an old woman. “I didn’t forget. She said she didn’t need them.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? You asked her? Would you ask a baby if they wanted to wear diapers?”

“Would you want to wear diapers? I know you don’t care what you look like, but Mother has standards.”

“Right. And leaving a wet stain on her dress or a puddle in her chair at the club is so much more elegant.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it, pressing her lips together as she abruptly sat down on the bottom step and began to retch.

I ran to the half bath off the foyer and grabbed the small wastebasket. It was overflowing with used tissues, and I dumped it out on the floor before bringing it back to Addie. This was a familiar ritual, done quietly in the dark so as not to awaken our parents.

She grabbed the wastebasket, and I turned my head while she vomited. When she was done, I stared at her in the dim light and saw a weariness she kept hidden, and for the first time in my life I felt sorry for her.

“Here,” she said, handing me the wastebasket, a weak smile on her lips.

“Nice try.” I stepped back, unable to stop my own smile. I sat down on the step next to her, feeling my own exhaustion. “We need to get the cleaning lady back. The house is a disaster. Ophelia told me Mother fired her, but maybe we can work around that.”

“Mother won’t remember.” The words were spoken too quietly, as if this one disloyalty needed to be kept secret.

“Okay. If you give me her number, I’ll call. You’ll just need to get Mother to write the check.”

Addie let her head fall into her hands. “Except I don’t know where the checkbook is. Her purse is missing. I only have her one credit card because I took it out of her wallet a while back.” She lifted her head to look at me. “To cover my expenses. Mother always let me use it, so it was okay.”

I sat up straighter. “So did you cancel her other cards? Or at least call the bank or go online to check her statements to see if anyone is writing checks?”

Addie leaned her head against the base of the newel post. “I don’t have a clue what cards she had or even where to start with her bank info.”

“What about the statements that get mailed to the house? Where are those?”

She closed her eyes and for a moment I thought she might throw up again. “Probably in the desk drawer in Daddy’s study. I’ve just been putting Mother’s mail in there until she’s better and can deal with it.”

My stomach hollowed out, and for a moment I thought I might need the wastebasket. I tried to keep my voice calm, knowing that Addie would close up and get defensive if I sounded the least bit critical. “How long have you been doing that?”

She straightened, her hand gripping a spindle to keep her steady. “I don’t remember. It’s been a while. I might have shoved the overflow in a basket on the bookshelf.”

I stood, and I had to grip the railing because my body was shaking, my temples throbbing. “Go to bed, Addie. We’ll talk about this in the morning.” Her eyes were in the shadows so I couldn’t read them, but I held out my hand anyway.

She brushed my hand away, but after several attempts at trying to stand on her own I grabbed her elbow and hauled her up. Addie stood still, her head lowered. When she lifted it again, her eyes met mine. “Do you still see the future in your dreams?”

I sucked in my breath. I hadn’t been asked this in so long I was no longer prepared with an answer.

I thought of the car and the bridge and the lone survivor, the scent of the rain on the asphalt still fresh in my mind.

But I’d never told anyone about that dream, still not knowing if it was in the past or in the future, or the identity of the person emerging from the dark water.

I shook my head. “No. Not since I left home.”

She sighed. “That’s too bad.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d like to know where I’m going.”

I didn’t help her climb the stairs or get her into bed.

I waited until I heard her door shut then made my way to our father’s wood-paneled study, my stomach tightening the way it would before a final exam or an oral report.

I stood in the threshold, watching the shadows slip over the large desk that was as much of my childhood memory of him as his piercing blue eyes and towering build.

Our father’s study had been forbidden territory when Addie and I were children.

I had once been spanked for borrowing a pencil from the cup on top of his desk, and I’d never ventured inside again, but Addie would go in whenever an adult wasn’t present and would freely riffle through the drawers in search of money or anything else she thought she might need.

Feeling something between nausea and fear, I flipped on the light.

Very little had changed in the years since my father’s passing.

Thick law books lined the built-in bookshelves on two sides of the room, the heavy mahogany partners desk dominating the center.

My father had spent most of his evenings and weekends in here.

Even our mother had respected that boundary, only intruding to bring him a cup of coffee and the morning paper or a glass of bourbon in the evening.

She’d kiss him and then retreat to her sitting room off their bedroom where her antique secretaire sat in front of the window facing the side yard with the stone koi pond that had been installed in 1939.

Her desk was what she referred to as her command central, where she orchestrated calendars for the family, bridge club, the garden society, and the Old Village Historic District Commission.

Its position at the window was so she could keep an eye on the pond for any sneaky herons who thought to prey on her exotic fish.

Her desk contained a single photo of Charlie standing in front of my father and my mother holding Addie in her christening gown.

My father’s desk and office were devoid of photographs.

Part of me now wanted to back out of the room and close the door. But what Addie had said about unread mail forced me forward.

The heavy leather chair had been pulled back to allow the top drawer to protrude, its opening like a mouth spewing unopened envelopes. Some had fallen onto the chair and floor and my mother’s beloved seagrass basket on one of the bookshelves.

I flipped on the desk lamp and the bulb popped, startling me, then I gathered up the envelopes preventing the drawer from closing and placed them on top of the desk.

The drawer still didn’t close, so I crouched in the kneehole to look from underneath and see if something might be stuck.

A yellowed manila folder was wedged against the back of the drawer, as if it had slipped from the top of an overstuffed drawer.

Standing again, I pulled out the drawer and retrieved the folder.

Although it appeared worn and creased, the edge on the bottom rounded as if it had once contained thick documents, the folder was now empty.

The only indication that it had ever been used was the typed label affixed to it that read SIMMONDS .

The name was only vaguely familiar, and since the folder was empty, I placed it on the floor to start my throwaway pile.

I replaced the drawer and sat down in my father’s chair.

Fighting the urge to look behind me to see if anyone might be watching I pulled out the ivory-handled letter opener from the pencil box then picked up the first envelope from the stack, noticing the words FINAL NOTICE stamped in red on the front.

With a shaking hand, I sliced open the first envelope and felt glad in a perverse way that I had an excuse to stay awake all night.

The faint memory from my dream had expanded in my subconscious and now exploded in my mind with full-blown clarity.

I’d seen something I thought I’d recognized, a small shiny object floating on the surface at the spot where the lone survivor had emerged.

It bobbed up and down before being upended by a small ripple and then swallowed by the dark, silent water.