Page 58 of That Last Carolina Summer

“If a hurricane happens during migrations, some birds will take a detour to avoid the storm. Others will use the prevailing tailwinds for a boost. Others will become trapped in the storm, some in the eye of the hurricane, unable to escape. The ones who survive can be blown miles off course and end up in unlikely places where they will need to learn to adapt. We all experience storms in our lives, despite our best efforts to take a detour. Landfall can sometimes find us in a new and unexpected place, and sometimes to our surprise it’s the place we were always meant to be. ”

Excerpt from the blog The Thing with Feathers

Celeste

A LOUD CRACK of thunder awakened me. I sat up and fumbled for my glasses before looking at my alarm clock.

Eight minutes after three o’clock. No light came from outside, telling me that the power had gone out.

Fortunately, it wasn’t anything I needed to worry about.

Liam had added a backup generator that would automatically switch on at a power interruption, something that happened frequently in coastal South Carolina.

Liam had yet to add one to his own house, which surprised everyone except me.

The house he currently lived in was the house he’d shared with his ex-wife.

It was temporary, like his marriage had been, and not something he wanted to sink any more money into, only hanging on to it because it was the house Will knew.

I thought about checking on Will, just as I’d done when he was little and afraid of storms, then remembered that he’d stayed at Ophelia’s.

I left Annie sleeping in her bed and went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea.

As I waited for the kettle to boil, I stood at the window and glanced out into the yard, picturing the birds sheltering from the wind and rain.

I thought of the phoebe bird that perched on my windowsill each morning, waiting for me to open my curtains and greet her.

Will insisted that it was just coincidence that the bird would wait to fly off until I’d appeared at the window.

But he was wrong. Birds were much smarter than most people thought and a lot smarter than many humans I’d met.

Knowing I’d never get back to sleep, I took the cup up to Julie’s room.

It was located at the front of the house and had a large double window, which was why I sometimes brought small projects up here to work on.

Presently I was attempting to repair the albums that Elizabeth had damaged and add blank pages so she and I could add more of the loose photos to the existing album.

My plan had been to bring them back in the morning before Elizabeth might notice. Despite her memory lapses, her mind was still sharp enough to detect when things were out of place or didn’t look right. Like when she observed that Phoebe was wearing Addie’s necklace and made her take it off.

After turning on the small television to the Weather Channel, I sat down at the desk and pulled a handful of photos from a baggie.

These were more pictures of Addie and Phoebe as schoolgirls and had already been sorted by Phoebe with names and dates on the reverse side.

I opened a box of adhesive squares and got to work, soon losing myself in the sound of the rhythm of the rain hitting the window glass.

It took almost an hour to finish filling up three pages, front and back. Drawing the family album toward me, I flipped it over to insert the new pages. I opened the back cover and paused. A concert program had been placed between the last page and the cover, as if an afterthought.

I ran my finger over the front, recognizing it.

It was from the last holiday program Julie had sung with the choir her senior year.

The last concert before she disappeared.

Somewhere in Julie’s box of mementos there was an identical program.

Except this one had Addie’s name written across the top.

Adeline Waring Manigault . Each capital letter was elaborately drawn with loops and swirls as if she’d been practicing calligraphy.

There was something about the A that drew my attention. Something that made it seem familiar.

I stood and turned on the overhead light to see better, holding the program up near the window where the growing light of day had begun to touch the glass. I stared at it until I remembered where I’d seen it.

I opened the closet door and peered up at the box Liam had brought down for me before.

I should wait and call him to get it down again.

But I couldn’t. I had to know. I dragged the desk chair over to the closet and very carefully climbed onto the seat.

I knew better than to try and lift the box off the shelf so instead I nudged it little by little with my fingertips.

When it had cleared about four inches or so, I leaned away from it and nudged it just a bit farther so that it toppled over, landing upside down on the floor.

Lowering myself to sit next to it, I righted the box and unfolded the top.

I dug through the layer of mementos before I reached what I was looking for.

The sheet music for Jubilate Deo was there, with Julie’s name written on top with purple glitter.

I opened the music and saw the cryptic words written between Julie and someone else whose name started with the letter V .

Except it wasn’t a V . I turned the music upside down.

It was a decorative capital A , just like the A in Adeline written on the program.

I continued to sit on the floor, listening as the rain and wind softened their assault on the roof and windows and dawn lit the sky. My head spun with possibilities and a growing fear I could not name.

I was still sitting on the floor when the phone rang downstairs.

The ringing stopped and then started again as I made my way down the steps, taking longer than usual because my legs were shaking.

I finally reached the phone when it began ringing for the third time.

It was Liam. And even as he told me to stay home because the roads were wet and littered with debris, I knew I had to go to the hospital.

I needed to speak to Addie, to ask her why she’d lied about her and Julie just being acquaintances.

And I knew it was a lie. I had proof in the handwritten notes from two young girls on the edges of a piece of choral music.

Addie begging a reluctant Julie for a ride because Addie had wrecked her own car and wanted to get somewhere.

Somewhere Julie didn’t want to go. Julie and her car had disappeared at the same time, leading me to thoughts about what might have happened that I didn’t want to contemplate.

I shut my eyes, trying not to see what my mind insisted on showing me. But there, behind my lids, was Addie’s disturbed painting of Phoebe’s dream with the small object in the water that I hadn’t recognized. Until now.

I drove slowly, my limbs still shaky, my head filled with rotating images of Julie as a child and teenager, along with ones of her as a young woman as I had imagined her to be as she grew older.

But she’d never been given the chance. Despite telling Liam that there would always be a glimmer of hope that Julie was still alive, I had always known this wasn’t the truth.

I just hadn’t had the courage to face it because it hurt too much.

That’s the thing with lying to yourself.

It’s a temporary bandage that becomes harder to remove the longer you wait, until you reach the point where you’d rather live with a lie than face the inevitable.

As I drove to the hospital, avoiding palmetto fronds and tree limbs scattered on the road, I still tried to tell myself that I was wrong.

That just because Addie had lied didn’t mean anything.

Except for those cryptic notes between Julie and Addie that hinted of Addie coercing Julie to go somewhere with her.

Even that wouldn’t have meant anything if Addie hadn’t said they weren’t more than just acquaintances.

There had to be a reason for her to lie, and since Julie was missing, the reason had to be very important.

My anger made my hands shake on the steering wheel.

Anger at Addie, but mostly anger at myself for deliberately looking the other way despite all the signs that Addie knew something about Julie’s disappearance.

Her unexplained antagonism toward Liam and me should have been the first sign that I should look more closely.

We both knew about Phoebe’s premonitions and how people in close proximity to her were the usual subjects.

She must have been terrified that Phoebe would have a dream about Julie and expose Addie’s connection if Phoebe spent enough time with either me or Liam.

But Phoebe did have a dream about Julie, except she didn’t know it.

And she must have told her sister because Addie had painted it.

I remember the unsettled feeling I’d had when I’d looked at the painting, seeing the angry strokes and the haunting quality of the marsh at night.

I wondered if I’d known then its connection to my missing granddaughter and if I’d simply become so accustomed to lying to myself that I ignored my heart and head telling me to look closer.

There were so many pieces to this puzzle.

And there, slotted somewhere near the middle, was Elizabeth.

There was no doubt that Elizabeth loved her daughters.

She loved them enough to protect them any way she could.

And in that, I wouldn’t judge her. Because I knew that if the tables were turned, I would do the same.

There is no fiercer love than that of a mother. There is also nothing more blind.

Whatever Addie’s secret, her mother knew.

And so had her father. I recalled how Elizabeth had gone to the cemetery to visit Charles because, as Phoebe had told me, she’d said that there needed to be a reckoning.

She’d taken Addie’s necklace to the cemetery for a reason.

And when Phoebe and Liam had brought Elizabeth back to the house, she’d pointed to Addie’s empty neck and told her that her father wanted her to wear it.

What did that mean? Why was the necklace so important?

I closed my eyes as anger and hatred exploded inside of me.

A car honked, shaking me out of my stupor and forcing me to pull to the side of the road.

I couldn’t let those emotions consume me.

Charles Manigault was dead, no doubt facing the consequences of his actions in the next life.

If there was ever a reason to believe in heaven and hell, he alone would be reason enough.

I rested my head against the steering wheel, breathing deeply. If I had a heart attack now, Charles Manigault would have another win on his side, and I was not willing to give him one more victory over me and my family.

After putting on my turn signal, I eased back out onto the highway, my thoughts on Elizabeth and my certainty that whatever Addie had done Elizabeth knew.

She clung to her memories with an admirable tenacity.

I had no doubt that Charles was behind any decision to remain silent, just as much as I knew Elizabeth wouldn’t have gone against her husband.

But now that she was losing her memory, she craved atonement before it was too late.

I thought about the damage Elizabeth had done to Addie’s yearbook photo, obliterating the pearl charm necklace.

And why she’d brought the replacement necklace to the cemetery.

It was important, somehow. Important enough that Phoebe had dreamed about it.

And Addie had put it in her painting. I realized now that the object I’d seen glittering in the painting was undoubtedly the necklace.

It held the key to unlocking the past. I just couldn’t quite figure out how.

There were plenty of available parking spots, and I took up two spaces because I couldn’t manage otherwise. I made my way up to the hospital entrance, my head down to avoid the glare of the sun. It was time for an overdue reckoning.