Page 51 of That Last Carolina Summer

The dream floated back in time, showing more of the car’s approach and the two occupants through the front window.

Their mouths were open as if in the middle of what appeared to be a conversation, although that would have meant they were talking at the same time.

Maybe arguing, then. But that wasn’t it, either.

Their faceless expressions were calm—joyful, even.

My dream self looked closely at the front window of the slow-moving car, trying to make out more of the facial features to determine if they were male or female.

If one of them could be me. Something moved against the glass of the windshield, catching the ambient light of the still night.

It slithered in slow motion with the car, swaying with the rhythm of the bumps in the road.

Like a necklace, a long necklace with heavy, chunky beads.

The dream was a tableau painted in shades of gray: the car, necklace, and even the clothes of the passenger were hidden from view, their colors muted.

I felt something pulling on me, plucking at my sleeve, trying to make me see something my brain kept hidden from me.

I watched the car approach the bridge, willing it to stay in its lane as the terror expanded into a physical thing inside me.

The necklace swayed as the car hit the side of the bridge before careening over the edge.

I heard the splash and saw the South Carolina license plate, the reflection of an object that I thought I recognized sinking slowly into the dark water near the car.

A nightjar screamed somewhere close to my ear.

The tugging continued on my arm, insistent and unrelenting until I opened my eyes.

Ophelia knelt on the edge of my bed staring down at me, and she was sobbing as she pulled on my arm. “Aunt Phoebe. Please wake up. Please.”

I jerked upright, fully alert, and switched on my bedside lamp.

I gently took her face in my hands and smoothed her hair from her face, while using my thumbs to wipe the tears that spilled down her cheeks.

She wasn’t wearing her glasses, and she looked like a small child. “Ophelia, sweetheart. What’s wrong?”

“It’s Mama. She’s outside in the front yard because she doesn’t want me to hear her, but I was going downstairs to get a drink of water so I did, and she’s crying real hard and I can’t make her stop.”

I hugged her to me, rubbing her back until her sobs subsided. Then I slid from bed and patted the spot where I’d been. “Lie down here and wait for me until I come back, okay? It’ll be all right.”

“Miss Celeste says everyone has sad moments sometimes and that it’s okay to cry because the tears take away the sadness to make room for happiness.”

I pressed her nose with my index finger. “Well, that must be true because Miss Celeste is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.” I stood and tucked the covers around her. “Do you want the light on or off?”

“On, please.”

“You got it. I’ll be back soon.”

I had trouble finding my bearings in the dark, the dream still vivid in my mind. I grabbed hold of the banister with both hands as I descended the stairs.

The front door was partially open. My bare feet felt the humidity-damp wood of the porch and grass as I followed the sound of racking sobs to the barren corner of the yard opposite the giant oak tree where Addie and I had played as children.

Only a stump remained to mark the oak’s twin that had been hit by lightning long before I was born.

The sap inside the tree had conducted the heat so that the tree burned from the inside, leaving the outside bark intact so it appeared that the tree was whole.

The oak had been cut down, but the stump had been allowed to stay.

Throughout my childhood, my father would occasionally make noise about having the stump removed, but I would protest saying it was as much a part of our house’s history as the red roof, and he’d always relent.

It was the only time I could recall any of us winning an argument with our father.

I don’t know why I’d decided to be the dead tree’s advocate. Maybe because I was fascinated by a living thing that could remain so beautiful while its heart and soul turned to ash.

I found my sister sitting on the ground next to the stump, her head bent forward with her forehead resting on her knees as her shoulders shook with choking sobs. I sat down next to her, feeling the scratchiness of dead leaves and knobby roots against my bare legs.

I waited quietly, sitting in the empty yard with the burned-out stump, listening to my sister cry and the screeching of a nightjar in the distance while lightning bugs dotted the dark with their signatures of light.

“I hate that damn bird,” Addie finally managed through softening sobs.

“I’ll let him know next time I see him.” I waited for a reaction, and when she didn’t say anything else, I said, “Thanks for rescuing me at Target. I was praying for a hole to open up in the floor of the restroom and swallow me, but you were the next best thing.”

Addie sniffed loudly then scrubbed her palms over her face. “You’re welcome.” I heard the hint of a smile in her voice. “She doesn’t mean it, you know.”

“Then why doesn’t she say those things to you?”

Her laugh sounded brittle, the edges hoarse from crying. “If I knew the answer, I’d be a billionaire on the lecture circuit. Instead, I’m here in the trenches trying to figure things out a day at a time.”

“Welcome to the club,” I said. “I just don’t remember getting the invitation to join this particular club or I would have thrown it away.”

“Same,” she said, turning her head so I couldn’t see her starting to cry again.

“What’s wrong, Addie? Is there anything I can do to help?”

She stuck her legs out in front of her next to mine, then surprised me by resting her head on my shoulder.

“Mother’s dying, Phoebe. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but this is the beginning of her end, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

I’ve never known a world without her in it, and I can’t.

..” A deep sob convulsed throughout her body, transferring her pain to me.

I put my arms around her, and she clung to me like I had all the answers. Somehow the hierarchy of responsibility that had once been captained by our father had skipped everyone in between to land on me, and I was wholly unprepared.

I couldn’t tell Addie that the answer didn’t exist and that we were embarking on a journey where the path disappeared for long distances and that the destination stayed the same no matter what we did.

It wasn’t about fairness or birth order.

We were sisters, and we needed to find a way to navigate together.

“I know. It feels like half of our lives is being erased. When Mother dies we’ll be orphans, and I don’t think it matters how old a person is, facing that certainty scares me more than anything.”

“Maybe they’ll find a cure in time to save her?

” Her voice was so hopeful that I wanted to lie to her, to give us both more time before we had to face reality.

Instead, I tried to pretend that I had everything under control, and that even if I didn’t have the answers I at least understood the nature of the beast lurking in the woods.

“I don’t know if this will help you, but I’ve found it a little easier to consider Mother as a person separate from this disease by seeing it as a physical thing.

A monster called dementia. It’s an insidious burglar who steals one thing at a time so that no one notices until the safe where you stored all your memories is empty. ”

She was silent for a moment and then barked out a laugh.

I pulled away. “What’s so funny?”

“I was trying to picture the monster, and I keep seeing Barney the purple dinosaur.”

“You’re weird,” I said, even though I was smiling. “I loved that show even though you hated it.” I started humming the theme song under my breath before we both fell into a long silence.

“Please don’t leave.” Her voice was so quiet that it took a moment for me to register her words.

“I have to, Addie. I have a house and a job in Oregon. A whole new life I’ve built all by myself. I’m happy there.”

“No, you’re not.” She said it with such conviction that I wondered how she knew.

“Am I so awful that you can’t stand the thought of living near me again?” she asked, her voice heavy with unshed tears.

I hugged her tighter. “No, Addie. Of course not. Even during our roughest spots, I always knew you were my ally. I knew you were the one who chose my Christmas presents because Mother didn’t have a clue and you knew me better than anyone.

You taught me how to ride a bike because Daddy wouldn’t since he thought I didn’t have good-enough coordination to avoid getting hit by a car.

And for the short time you had your VW Bug, you taught me how to drive a stick shift, even though I scared you to death when I got behind the wheel. You told me I could do it, so I did.”

She was silent while we both remembered the times when we were good together, small snippets that often got overlooked in the large sweep of our childhoods, but they were the parts that shone the brightest.

“Please, Phoebe. I can’t do this on my own.”

I pulled away, wishing she could see my face in the darkness. “I’ll never leave you on your own, Addie. I’ll never be further away than a phone call or a plane ride. We’ll always be sisters.”

I felt her looking at me. “Will we? Because I think there’s something else that’s keeping you away. Something you’re not telling me. And sisters should tell each other everything.”

I studied the pale shapes of my fingers against the skin on my leg and listened to the sounds of the night marsh. “There is. I’m just not sure you want to hear it.”

“Try me.”

I began to speak before I could stop myself, telling her about my dream of the car and the bridge and the water. The lone survivor. And all the reasons why I thought the person climbing up the bank had to be me.

When I was done Addie didn’t say anything, and for a moment I thought she’d fallen asleep. Finally, she said, “Why do you think it’s you? Can you see your face?”

“No. That’s the thing. It’s like there’s some sort of protective filter that only allows me to see what I can handle. The faces of the two people in the front seat are completely obscured. So is the license plate. It’s as if my subconscious is trying to protect me from the truth.”

“And it’s always been that way—just a snippet?”

“Yeah. Except since I’ve been home this time, I’m starting to see more detail. Like I’m being teased. Or warned.”

“Warned?” she asked.

“Yes, because all the other dreams I’ve had before and since have showed me outcomes.

Not always in time to do anything about them, but enough to know when they happened that what I’d seen was a premonition of something that would happen.

And I always recognized the players inside the dream, and the actual event always happens shortly after I had the dream—no more than a week usually. ”

“Except this time.”

“Right.”

She was silent, the blinking of the lightning bugs like a marquee around her thoughts. “So maybe it’s not a premonition at all.”

“That’s what I thought, too. But Liam thinks that when I first had the dream, it was a premonition at the time I first had it, and then the event occurred without me being aware of it.

My mind keeps showing it to me until I can figure it out so that I can have some kind of closure.

Otherwise, I might never stop having the dream. ”

She turned to me in the darkness. “And that’s why you don’t want to move back here? Do you not have the dreams when you’re in Oregon?”

“No—only the night before I flew to Charleston. And I’ve been having that dream along with a few others ever since I’ve been back.”

“So you told Liam. Anybody else?”

I stood. “No reason to. I only told Liam because...” I tried to remember. “Because he’s a good listener, and I needed to tell someone. You didn’t seem available.” I reached out my hand, and after a pause she took it, and I hauled her up so she stood next to me.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“Me, too.”

We stood facing each other in the darkness as the shrill call of the chuck-will’s-widow continued its nocturnal litany of soulful angst.

“You should call Dale,” I said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because from what I’ve seen, he makes you happy, and I think you do the same for him. He’s a nice guy, which is something I don’t think you have a lot of experience with. Let something good come out of all of this, Addie. And maybe my dreams will stop, and we can both move on.”

“Do you really think that?”

“Mostly.” I didn’t specify which part. “Come on, it’s late. Let’s go back to sleep.”

“You go on ahead,” she said. “I need a little more time to think.”

We said good-night then I made my way back to my room where Ophelia was still in my bed, spread out on her back like a starfish, the bluebird of happiness charm glinting from the light of the bedside lamp.

I pulled the covers over her before kissing her forehead and turning off the lamp.

“Good night,” I whispered before curling up at the foot of the bed and closing my eyes, too tired to dream at all.