Page 4 of That Last Carolina Summer

“The male goldfinch’s bright vibrant yellow fades to a muted olive brown in the fall just as the female’s brightens.

My mother used to say that to force a cheerful mood, wear a bright sweater.

Not quite the same as a bird’s feathers changing for the season, but it’s a worthy effort on our part for effecting something that Mother Nature omitted from our survival skills. ”

Excerpt from the blog The Thing with Feathers

Phoebe

THE OLD DREAM returned to me the night before I left for Charleston.

It’s always the same. A lone car on a two-lane bridge straddles the double lines, moving quickly toward the other side.

The sun has already set, but the sky still glows with the memory of light.

Heavy clouds block the moon, and the asphalt shines with fallen rain collecting in the dips and hollows of the road.

I don’t know this bridge, but the uneven pavement and broken wooden side rails could be any bridge over any creek in this corner of South Carolina.

It’s too dark to see the water, but the briny scent and the scream of a night heron tell me I’m not far from home.

Two people sit in the front. I can’t make out their faces or anything about them except I know that something’s not right.

My chest constricts as the car swings too close to the side of the bridge, scraping along the side rails with a demonic squeal, and then overcorrects with the screech of tires.

The passenger grabs the steering wheel, but I can see it’s too late.

That what has been put in motion can’t be reversed.

The side of the bridge collapses from the impact, offering little resistance as the vehicle crashes through the opening and plummets into the water.

I don’t see it go in, but I hear the splash, so I know what’s happened.

I wait, suspended in the dream world where I’m a passive witness despite how loud I scream.

But it’s useless. What’s happened is already past. I can’t stop it. All I can do is wait and see.

A dark shiny head emerges, the hair color masked by the twilight sky and the soaking water.

I wait for the second head to appear, mutely observing the single head duck back under the surface.

I hold my breath, listening as my heartbeat grows louder in my ears with each passing second until the single head reappears and dives beneath two more times before breaking the surface one last time.

I feel their weariness as they continue to tread water, sensing the fear of unseen creatures that lurk in the waterways of the Lowcountry.

I taste sediment and salt in my mouth as the head involuntarily dips in the water, feeling my own muscles go slack, each limb a leaden weight.

With a final burst of energy, the person flips onto their back with their face turned toward the sky and begins slowly paddling with flattened palms toward the bank where rocks glow like skulls.

Pale hands climb the incline, fingers and feet slipping on the rain-soaked rocks before the person collapses at the place where the grass meets the road.

I feel the nauseating combination of fear and grief bubbling in my own stomach as the survivor vomits into the grass.

The rain has stopped, leaving behind the crying of a million insects and the haunting scream of a nightjar.

Slowly then, crawling then standing, they stagger to the road.

They glance back at the inky-black water with a stab of loss and regret that I feel down to my bones.

Then they walk across the bridge, avoiding the open maw of the railing, until the night swallows the person, and the road and creek are now silent with a secret kept.

The lightning strike I’d sustained when I was nine years old scarred me with a purple vinelike mark that crept up my spine before curving over my left shoulder like a snake.

This was the scar others could see. The reoccurring dream was the other scar, the one I couldn’t hide with makeup or cover with a shawl.

Its presence hovered on the other side of my consciousness, a relic from when I was brought back to life by a boy with marsh-green eyes.

I kept this vision to myself, pretending that it would go away if I didn’t talk about it, always afraid that if I stared too long at the unknown survivor, I might see my own face.

Ever since my near-death experience, my dreams were often interrupted with premonitions, but none as terrifying as the recurring nightmare, and always containing faces I recognized.

I’d seen a classmate in a cast with crutches before she’d had a skiing accident, and I saw my sister wearing a crown before she won Peach Queen.

My ability to see into the future became my special power at an age when I was too young to know that being different was worse than being invisible.

I became Addie’s show-and-tell for her friends, an endless party trick she never grew tired of.

I welcomed my newfound celebrity status and relished being showered with Addie’s attention again, at least until I overheard my mother telling a friend that my notoriety had become her greatest embarrassment and she hoped that it was just a phase that would go away, like a cold or a case of chicken pox.

I eventually learned to keep my visions to myself.

Addie stopped asking me to join her and her friends, and I was once again left alone.

But the dream of the car and the bridge never left me, appearing sporadically enough that at times I thought it had stopped.

It hadn’t. It was only once I’d moved across the country that I believed I’d finally escaped it and the other premonition dreams that had interrupted my sleep since the day I’d almost died.

Which was one of the reasons why I resisted returning home to the place where I knew the bridge existed and where my dream at any moment could become real.

Yet no matter how many times I’ve seen the accident, I still can’t see the faces of the two passengers. Nor do I know if the accident is in the past or still to happen. And I’m not sure which scenario scares me more.

The night before I left for Charleston, I’d slept on my couch, having anticipated the dream, yet been delusional enough to believe I might avoid it by not sleeping in my bed.

But the certainty of my return to South Carolina overrode my safeguard, and the dream seized me with startling clarity as if I’d just experienced it for the first time.

My friend and school nurse Holly McCormick drove me to the airport, promising to keep birdseed in my feeder during my absence. She and her husband were having their kitchen and bathrooms renovated and would be staying in my house and paying rent, which eased some of my financial worries.

I pressed my forehead against the airplane window as we approached the Charleston airport, watching as the watery landscape beneath me separated into landmasses embraced by tidal creeks and rivers of home.

I’d told Addie that I’d arrive Monday around five o’clock but not any specific flight information.

I didn’t want to set myself up for disappointment if she didn’t show up.

I made my way to baggage claim, suddenly aware of my rumpled appearance.

In the casual atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest, I’d long since forgotten where my clothes steamer and iron were.

My mother had always kept one or the other in the front hall cabinet just in case we needed touch-ups before heading out the door.

They were as foreign to me now as hairspray and Spanx.

“Hello, Birdbrain.”

I looked up to see my sister. She was a head taller than me and still as slender as a blade of sweetgrass.

She wore a Lilly Pulitzer sundress that showed off her tanned legs, the pale green color of the cotton material the same shade as her eyes.

Her arms were covered with a long-sleeved cardigan, something I’d never seen her wear in the summertime.

Wavy strawberry-blond hair was piled on top of her head in a perfect messy bun, and around her neck lay a fine gold chain with a black pearl pendant from Croghan’s Jewel Box.

Our parents had given the necklace to Addie for her sixteenth birthday.

She’d lost it sometime during her senior year, but it had been quickly replaced because Mother claimed it was Addie’s lucky charm whenever she wore it in pageants.

The new pendant was missing the small diamond that perched at the top of the pearl like the original, but it still looked stunning on Addie’s long, elegant neck.

“Hey, Addie,” I said, aware of the attention focused on us. Addie had always attracted attention just by breathing. I’d long ago realized that my nonchalance about what I looked like annoyed her almost as much as my lack of the adulation she was used to from everyone else.

We stared at each other as if daring the other to make the first move.

Our family had never been big on shows of physical affection, so I wasn’t expecting a hug.

She kept her arms crossed as she examined me.

Before I could say anything else, she moved aside to reveal my niece, Ophelia, who’d been standing behind her mother.

In the year and a half since my last visit, she hadn’t grown much taller, and she still wore her baby fat in her face that made her look much younger than her nine years.

Large round glasses sat perched on her nose, lending her face a cute owlish look.

Addie gently pushed her toward me. “Say hello to your aunt Phoebe.”

“Hello,” she said, keeping her gaze down.