Page 44 of That Last Carolina Summer

“There’s a meaningful quote from one of my favorite poets that compares a bird opening its wings so it can fly with our need to expose our hearts so we can love.

It’s impossible to have one without the other.

Birds are born with the instinct to fly.

I think that humans are also born with the instinct to love, but so many of us hit a snag along the way and struggle to remember what it was that we are supposed to do until the moment comes to step off the ledge and discover our own wings. ”

Excerpt from the blog The Thing with Feathers

Phoebe

“Are you okay?” Liam asked. They were the first words spoken since we’d left the house.

I shook my head. “No. I’m not. I’m worried sick about my mother and angry enough that I might do physical harm to my sister when I get back. The only thing stopping me is Ophelia.”

I dialed the number for Christ Church again and got the voice mail, telling me that the office was closed. But I tried again just in case.

“We’ll be there in a minute,” Liam said. “Maybe if you tell me why you’ve been avoiding me since the night of the concert, it’ll distract you until we get there.”

I glared at him. “That’s pretty insensitive.”

As if I hadn’t said anything, he said, “I enjoyed our kiss, and I would have sworn that you did, too. So when you didn’t return my texts or phone calls, I thought I’d misread things.”

I turned to face him, the straps of my seat belt cutting into my chest. “My mother is missing! How can you talk about anything else except finding her?”

“So you’re saying you didn’t enjoy our kiss?”

“I didn’t say any such thing. I’m just saying that—”

“We’re here,” he said, cutting me off as he pulled the truck off the highway and into a parking lot. “And there’s your mother’s car.” He turned to face me. “See? It worked.”

Too relieved to feel angry, I slid out of my seat and ran to my mother’s Lincoln parked in the sandy grass with the back end of her car protruding into the road that encircled the cemetery.

The driver’s-side door was unlocked and partially open.

I pulled it the rest of the way to see inside, alarmed to find her purse and the key fob lying next to it on the passenger-side floor.

The frame with my father’s photo lay faceup on the driver’s-side floor where it rested against the brake pedal as if it had slipped from my mother’s lap forgotten.

I straightened to find Liam standing next to me as panic bloomed. I grabbed on to the open door to steady myself. “What if she couldn’t remember where his grave is and is just wandering? She could step out onto the highway...”

“She made it all the way here, so that’s a good sign,” Liam said gently. “He’s been gone for over a decade, right? Her long-term memory is still pretty good, and if she came here every week, my guess is that’s where we’ll find her.”

“But if she’s not?”

He gently took my elbow and closed the car door. “Then we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I’ll follow you since you know where you’re going.”

I led the way through the iron gate past the historic chapel and into the old graveyard.

A lone mockingbird trilled from a high branch of a magnolia tree then flew away as a hot, humid wind scattered dead leaves across the sparse grass.

Older headstones with names and dates lost to time rested comfortably near more modern gravesites, all reposing beneath the towering trees and ancient azalea bushes.

I had only been here on the occasions of my grandparents’ and my father’s burials.

But I remembered where he’d been laid to rest, recalled the sweltering heat of an August morning that made the black silk of my dress and nylon of the requisite dark pantyhose stick to my skin.

Addie and I had flanked our mother, all of us dry-eyed because it would have been unseemly to be otherwise.

Not that it mattered. Our makeup mixed with sweat slipped down our cheeks, leaving trails of unshed tears.

A fat blob of rain fell from the sky and stained the packed dirt of the path in front of us.

I quickened my pace, with Liam following closely behind.

We heard her before we saw her, listened to the strung-together words that weren’t a song but weren’t conversational, either.

It was a repetition, like the rote memorization of a spelling test. Or the long-remembered words of a prayer.

She wore her dark blue housecoat, its sides dusty with dirt, and her feet were bare. Her bright pink toenails were visible in the short grass over his grave, almost like a desecration in this solemn place.

“Mother?”

She turned, her face composed and her eyes clear. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you. You didn’t tell anyone where you were going.

” I stood next to her but didn’t touch her.

More rain dotted the granite headstone and my mother’s face.

I should have thought to bring the umbrella from the car since she’d just had her hair done, and it would upset her to have it ruined.

She turned back to the headstone. “I need to talk to Charles.” She looked down at my father’s name etched into the granite.

“I think it’s time for a reckoning.” Her brows creased over her nose in an expression she’d always admonished Addie and me would give us wrinkles.

I’d once had my leg pinched while sitting next to her in church for doing the same thing.

Liam glanced up at the low growl of thunder. My blood raced as it always did at the first signs of a storm.

“There’s a bad storm coming.” I made a mental calculation of how long it would take to get my mother to her car before the clouds opened and the sky erupted with flashes of heat and light. “Let’s talk about it in the car, all right?”

Her lucid eyes met mine as she pressed her cool palm against my check.

“You have good reason to be afraid of lightning. I’m so sorry.

If I’d been home, that never would have happened.

And all that came afterward.” She blinked as harder rain began to hit her face, and she turned toward the darkening sky.

I placed my arm around her shoulders, huddling close to protect her from the onslaught of the pelting rain, and began to lead her back to the car.

An arc of lightning lit up the cemetery, followed by a roll of thunder that bellowed from the sky making me scream.

In that brief flash of light, I saw a reflection of something lying on the ground in front of my father’s headstone.

Liam must have seen it, too, and bent to pick it up.

He caught up to us and joined us on my mother’s other side, helping to shelter her from the wind and rain.

My jaw hurt from clenching it. Liam helped settle Mother into the passenger seat of her car while I crawled behind the wheel, tossing my father’s picture into the back seat as my panic grew despite my resolution to stay calm.

As Liam buckled my mother’s seat belt he said, “You’re safe in the car, Phoebe.

Your tires are rubber, and it’s a short drive. You got this.”

I gave him a stiff nod, feeling the phantom pain on my shoulder following the crooked path of my scar. It was as if the nerve endings could communicate with the burnt ions lingering in the air, a reminder to always look up to prepare for what’s coming.

Liam returned to his truck and flashed his headlights to let me know he was right behind me and ready to go when I was.

My mother’s cold fingers grabbed the bare skin on my arm, making me jump. “I love you, Phoebe. Everything I’ve ever done for my girls was because I love you both. I only meant to protect you.”

I put my hand over hers and squeezed. “I love you, too.” It was a rare affirmation.

Something had happened in her mind today, something that had brought her to the cemetery and my father’s grave.

Something that had worked its way through the clouds in her mind to clarify that she loved me. That she wanted to protect me.

“Protect me from what?” I asked, hoping she could hear me over the sound of the rain pounding the roof of the car.

She peered out her window at the water darkening the headstones and the puddles forming on the path. “Where are you taking me?”

My stomach tightened at the shrillness in her voice, already mourning the shared moment, realizing that it would probably be one of the last. “We’re going home.

” I hit the gas pedal hard, jerking the car forward as I pulled out onto the highway.

I glanced in the rearview mirror, comforted by the beams from Liam’s headlights.

“Home?” She clutched at the seat belt across her chest.

“Yes. We were at the cemetery visiting Daddy’s grave.

You said it was time for a reckoning.” I held my breath, having learned that asking questions she couldn’t answer would make her lash out.

But an uneasiness had settled inside me, an imbalance that made me think of stepping on a stationary escalator.

We stopped at a red light, the thump-thump of the wipers magnifying my anxiety as I waited for her to answer.

“I love Charles. From the first moment I saw him. He always knows the right thing to do. Except for that one time.” She clasped then unclasped her fingers, spinning her wedding ring around and around.

“I need to find him so he can make it right. I don’t know how.

” She squeezed my arm, her nails cutting into my skin.

“There’s something wrong, but I can’t.. . I can’t...”

She began twisting in her seat as if trying to escape more than just her seat belt. The light turned green, and I floored the gas pedal, needing to get home before she decided to open her car door.