Page 8 of That Last Carolina Summer
I slid out of bed and stretched, feeling the tightness in all my muscles. A long swim would take care of it, but I had more pressing issues I needed to deal with first. I quickly showered and put on a clean T-shirt and the same jeans I’d worn the day before.
My stomach rumbled as I stuck my head inside Addie’s room and then my mother’s to find both beds empty.
The downstairs remained quiet, and there were no lingering scents of breakfast cooking.
Slowly, I descended the stairs while checking my phone for messages and found two.
One was from my friend Holly letting me know that the house was fine and that she’d hung up a hummingbird feeder outside the kitchen window.
The other was from Addie. It was short and to the point, omitting punctuation and complete words, but the gist was that she’d gone to the grocery store with our mother and that she’d left the card for the neurologist on the hall table.
My phone buzzed with an incoming text. It was another message from Addie telling me to make sure I’d removed the card before she got back so our mother wouldn’t see it.
This might have been a typical exchange between sisters, but with Addie I knew she was offering a quid pro quo: she was sacrificing her own time to get groceries, so I needed to do my part by calling the neurologist. I bristled, knowing that Addie had been sitting on that card for over a month and could have already had the appointment by now.
I took another step down, then stopped as I noticed the faded spot on the wood of a single stair halfway up the flight.
It had been Bailey’s favorite place to nap, and she’d worn away the stain over the twelve years we’d had her.
My mother hadn’t wanted a dog at all, and when I’d brought home a stray, she’d made it clear it would be my responsibility, but she didn’t make me give it up.
Which made me wonder why this stair had been excluded from the remodeling and staining that had happened nearly a decade before and years after Bailey had died.
I heard a soft humming from the back porch and hurried down the rest of the steps, snatching up the business card on the foyer table as I passed it.
I glanced at it long enough to read the name: L.
M. Fitch, MD, with an office address on Coleman Boulevard in Mount Pleasant.
I shoved the card into my pocket before opening the back door.
I found Ophelia lying faceup with her head tilted backward over the top step, her bare feet facing me and tapping against each other to the beat of a silent tune.
“I didn’t know you were here,” I said. “I thought you’d gone to the store with your mother and Mimi.”
“They didn’t ask me.”
I paused then crossed the porch to sit down on the step beside her. I followed her gaze up to the blue sky that promised another heat-soaked afternoon. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing. I’m waiting for interesting clouds.”
“Yeah? What kinds of clouds are interesting?”
She shrugged. “Ones that don’t look like clouds. Sometimes I see cats and dogs and birds and sometimes people. I like to make up stories about them.”
“That sounds fun. What else do you like to do?”
Ophelia shrugged again. “I like to play with my friend, Emily, but she’s at camp this month, so I mostly read and look at clouds.”
I felt an unreasonable anger rise, and I had to remind myself that Ophelia wasn’t me. “What about riding your bike? Do you like to do that?”
She nodded vigorously. “Yeah, but my tire has a flat. Mimi said she’d get it fixed, but I think she forgot. We used to go for walks, too, but she doesn’t like to do that anymore.”
I frowned as I watched the lazy glide of a snowy egret, its yellow feet dangling beneath its white body.
My stomach rumbled loud enough that Ophelia heard it. “Are you hungry?”
“Yeah. I haven’t had anything since our pizza last night.”
“Me, either. We don’t have any cereal in the pantry, and the milk smells bad.” She said this matter-of-factly, like she was used to it.
I stood. “Then come with me. We’re going to walk downtown and get something to eat.”
We exited through the front door, leaving it unlocked because I didn’t have a key and I didn’t know if I’d be back before Addie. Ophelia stopped at the top of the porch steps, her eyes wide with worry. “Just don’t tell Mama or Mimi. I’m not supposed to leave the house when they’re not here.”
I felt relief that there was at least one rule. “But you’re with me, and I’m the next best thing to a mother and grandmother.”
“That’s not what they say.”
I tried to keep my voice neutral. “Really? And what do they say?”
She frowned as if trying to remember. “That you’ve picked up bad habits since you’ve been living so far away and that they don’t want any of them to rub off on me.”
“Really,” I said, wanting to ask more questions but unwilling to put Ophelia in the position of an informer. “Well, then. I won’t tell if you don’t. It will be our little secret.”
She laughed, showing me her chipped tooth, and I smiled back at her, happy to have someone with whom I could celebrate the uniqueness of imperfection.