The Prayer Box, page 25
Zoey . . . the e-mails . . . the call to the Seashell Shop yesterday from a woman looking for me. It all made sense now. For whatever reason, Gina had tracked us down. “Gina . . . what are you doing . . . ?”
At the counter behind me, a woman tapped her credit card against the wood, impatient for two glasses of iced tea to go. Sandy glanced over from the main register. I was conscious of past colliding with present, the pileup of two speeding trains on the same track, reaching the same point at the same time, going opposite directions.
“Hello-oh?” Gina’s voice clattered above the din of activity. She stiffened her arms in the air, presented them again. “Give me a hug already.”
I hugged her, taking in the cloying scents of perfume and cigarette smoke. Her body was thin, the muscles and bones tight beneath the surface. “I . . . I can’t talk right now.”
“Oh, no problem.” She held on to me a moment, then let go when she was ready, the way a business executive clenches a handshake just an instant longer to let an underling know who’s in control. “I’ll just go hang over there on the sofas. I’m wiped out after that concert. I’ve been backstage. I met the guys last night when I couldn’t find you.” Pulling a wadded-up five-dollar bill from her small straw purse and setting it on the counter, she added, “Bring me a chai latte when you get a chance, ’kay?”
“Okay.” I nudged the money aside. I just wanted Gina as far away from me as possible. I needed to think, but I didn’t have time to figure her out right now. There was too much work to do. Sandy was clearly wondering what was going on. Letting customers come behind the counter was against her rules and the health department’s. We’d all been warned to mind our p’s and q’s, in case anyone official happened by. I couldn’t let Gina mess things up for me or for Sandy. Or for the kids.
Ohhh . . . the kids. The last thing my daughter needed was more of Gina’s pipe dreams. Zoey was so fragile right now.
I grabbed the shop phone, dialed Paul’s number, and braced the receiver on my shoulder while I finished the tea and delivered the customer’s order, then helped the next person in line.
The wind was buffeting Paul’s phone as he answered. “Hey, I was just thinking about you,” he said without waiting for me to tell him why I’d called. “Wondered how opening day was going. There’s a report on the Stranding Network about a manatee cow and calf, stuck in Dough Creek up in Manteo. I’m just picking up J.T. from the school. I don’t know how the parents survive this carpool lane, by the way. It’s like demolition derby. I think some lady in a minivan just gave me the ugly finger. Anyway, I’m headed up to Manteo. I thought maybe the kids—well, and you if you can get away—might want to go along and see the manatees, watch the Stranding Network in action.”
“Thanks, Paul.” How was it that he was always there, saving my life before I even knew I needed it? He was like Superman in a Hawaiian shirt and mismatched shorts. “I can’t go, but it’d be great if you could take the kids. I know they’d love it. We’ve been really busy here at the shop.” And my sister’s sitting there, taking up space on one of Sandy’s sofas while she waits on a chai latte. “It comes and goes in waves. The crowd thins out a little, then it gets busy again. More of Sandy’s high school help should be showing up any minute, which means she won’t need Zoey.” With any luck, Paul would get here before Zoey made it back from the grocery store, and he could wait for her outside. I didn’t want her to see Gina until I could figure out what angle my sister was playing this time.
“Be there in a wink,” Paul said.
“Thanks.” He couldn’t imagine how much I really meant that.
I continued with the rush of customers, all the while watching the door and hoping to intercept Paul or Zoey or both. Things had calmed and I was up to my elbows in the dishwater when Paul came in the door. J.T. trotted in behind him and threaded his way to the coffee bar, carrying a DNA model he’d made from toothpicks and gumdrops in science class. Across the room, Gina was busy flirting with someone’s husband. I was glad when she didn’t seem to notice J.T.
Sandy walked to the counter to admire J.T.’s model. “You all go talk a minute,” she said, shooing me off, then casting a curious glance toward Gina, who was entertaining the guy on the sofa with something on her cell phone. They were shoulder-to-shoulder, laughing, all the signals of flirtation traveling back and forth.
I guided Paul and J.T. toward the front door, anxious to get them out of the place and away from Gina.
“You should just blow this joint and come with us.” Paul wagged an eyebrow as we stepped onto the porch. “Stranded manatees—you don’t see that every day.”
“Can’t.” I paced to the edge of the porch, distracted as J.T. followed me, trying to explain the pieces of his DNA model. “J.T., not right now, okay? We’ll look at it tonight.”
Zoey was coming up the road on the bike. I blew out a tension breath, stretched the knots from my neck.
Paul frowned at me. “You okay?”
Nodding, I moved toward the steps to catch Zoey in the parking lot. “Thanks for letting the kids come with you.”
“Sure. No problem. I’ll just drop them by your house when we’re done.” Paul helped unload the groceries from Zoey’s basket and put the bike in the rack. A few minutes later, they were driving away in his pickup.
Inside the shop, the crowd had thinned, the music fans heading for yet another free concert. Gina moved toward the coffee bar as her person of interest disembarked from the sofa and walked out the door with an annoyed wife.
“So who’s the nerd?” She shrugged vaguely toward the front window, where Iola’s hummingbirds were slowly disappearing, dispersing to the winds with customers from everywhere.
“What . . . ? Who?” I ran water in the sink and started washing the parts of the blender. The whole area was one big sticky mess. A coffee carafe slipped from my hands and landed in the soapy water, hitting the other dishes with a clink. Having Gina nearby made me as nervous as a squirrel crossing eight lanes of traffic. I didn’t know which way to run.
She rolled a look at me. “C’mon, the one you ditched your kids with just now. The Don Ho wannabe. Looks like he’s stuck in the seventies.”
“You know what, Gina? Shut up.” A spatula clattered against the counter, and Sandy took notice as she walked out the back door with a tray of sweetener packs. “He’s a nice guy. And he’s just a friend.”
Gina lifted her hands in mock surrender. “Well, sor-reee. My bad. Just saying, he doesn’t seem like your type, that’s all. You usually go for tall, dark, and . . . hard to get along with. That one doesn’t look like he’s got any money, either. Dr. Strangelove was a jerk, but at least he was loaded. I never liked him, though. Too controlling. Sometimes it’s like I didn’t teach you anything.”
“You . . .” I pressed my lips together, reining myself in. I didn’t want Sandy to hear our family drama. Fortunately my new boss was still out back. “Why are you here?”
Gina’s eyes turned the tinny blue-gray of a storm cloud just looking for a place to rain. “What? I come all this way to make sure you’re all right, and that’s what you have to say to me? I was worried about you, you know. I hear on the news that Trammel Clarke has been arrested—which made my day—and I go looking for you, and the gardener tells me you’ve split. He let me in, by the way—you know the gardener always liked me. Anyway, I picked up some things for you. Clothes, a little jewelry.” Slick white-blonde strands fell forward over her gold hoop earrings as she bent and pulled something from her purse—a ziplock bag with pieces of jewelry that Trammel had hidden away so I couldn’t use them to buy an escape. Some of it had been mine before I came to Trammel’s place—awards I’d won at shows, jewelry that had been given to me by horse owners grateful after a big win.
Gina held the bag between two fingers and smiled. “Yours, I believe. It helps to know people, Little Sister. Actually, you ought to get half of everything that jerk owns, but I have a feeling the Texas Medicaid system and the injury lawyers are going to beat you to it.”
“Oh . . . wow.” I reached for the bag, and Gina held it out of reach playfully. Trammel was gone from our lives for good. He couldn’t hurt us anymore, and that jewelry would make everything so much easier, including paying the medical bills. Thank God.
Could God use someone like my sister to work a miracle? After so many weeks of scraping by, this felt like a miracle. If I was careful, I could start buying the tools I would need to take on some handywoman jobs. Meanwhile, I could work at Sandy’s however much she needed me, maybe make some driftwood boxes to sell in the shop, as Sandy had suggested. The one for Zoey had come out beautifully.
I had the strangest temptation to show it to Gina, to see if she remembered when Pap-pap had given me the treasure box.
“Who’s your favorite sister now?” She grinned smoothly, the skin around her smile as tight as a drum in a Mexican tourist shop, her lips artificially plump, her teeth three shades beyond white.
“Okay, right now you are.” I grinned back at her, and for just a moment it felt like we were kids again, playing Top Cops or Cagney & Lacey in the orchard beside Meemaw and Pap-pap’s place, picking rotten mulberries off the ground and throwing them at bad guys. “You have no idea how much this is going to help.”
“What are big sisters for?”
“This is your sister?” Sandy was on her way into the shop again. I had no choice but to make introductions. As usual, Gina was all smiles. She could turn on the charm when she wanted to. She praised the store, gushed about how beautiful the island was, lamented the lingering evidence of hurricane damage, and complimented one of the teenage helpers’ jeans and the other one’s haircut. The girls, Stephanie and Megan, were clearly impressed. Gina could be larger than life sometimes.
“So you’re here visiting?” Sandy was pumping for information, not so easily wooed, clearly. She looked like she wanted to check Gina’s purse and make sure there wasn’t anything from the shop tucked in there.
As usual, my sister remained completely cool, dancing around answers with a practiced ease, until a customer came in and required attention. Sandy hugged me before going to help. “Well, listen, thanks for everything you did to help out today and for all the hard work to get the shop open. There’s no way we could have done it without you.” She turned to Gina. “Your sister’s a wonder.”
“Yes . . . she is.” Gina’s lips stretched into a thin smile.
“You two go on.” Sandy shooed us toward the door. “Go enjoy the music and the rest of the day. The girls, and Sharon and I, can handle things.”
“Are you sure?” Part of me wanted to stay here, where the magic of the Shell Shop would keep me safe. Once we were out the door, I had a feeling that Gina would unleash some plan on me. She hadn’t come all this way for nothing. She could have gotten an address for the shop and mailed the jewelry.
“Awesome!” Gina said. “C’mon, I’ll introduce you to the band.”
I didn’t argue until we were outside, Gina turning and starting in the direction of the music, the filmy white dress floating around her legs, the sunlight tracing the outline of her body. She had a bikini on underneath. A very small one.
I stayed where I was. “Listen, I’m wiped out. It’s been a really long day. Besides, I don’t know when the kids will be home.”
“Oh, come on,” she whined. “When did you get so domestic? Give the kids twenty bucks for a pizza, and let’s go. My treat. We won’t stay out late, I promise.”
“Gina, I said I can’t.” The sad thing was that there was a time when I would’ve been jumping in the car with her and taking off in search of guys or thrills or anything that would make me feel like I mattered. “Zoey’s really been going through some things, and . . . it’s complicated. You know what, as a matter of fact, I’d like to ask why you were e-mailing back and forth with her and why in the world you told her she could come live with you.”
Gina’s eyes narrowed in a look of confusion, then widened with convincing innocence. “What? When I found out you weren’t at Dr. Strangelove’s anymore, I tracked Zoey down through Facebook. I wanted to make sure he hadn’t dumped you in a ditch somewhere, for one thing. Anyway, I felt sorry for Zoey because she was so upset about leaving Texas. I didn’t say anything about her coming to live with me.”
I studied my sister, trying to separate truth from good acting. With Gina, it was hard to tell the difference. She could spin a story so fast that reality and fiction were nothing but a blur. “She tried to run away, Gina. If she hadn’t been too sick to get out the window, she could be heaven knows where by now.”
“I might’ve said that you guys could live with me . . . or something like that. But of course I didn’t mean for Zoey to hit the road. What kind of an aunt do you think I am?” Her hips jutted to one side, her arms crossing.
We stood momentarily at a stalemate. Who could say where the truth was hiding? Zoey was emotional right now. She could have misinterpreted whatever Gina had said to her. . . .
Someone catcalled from a passing car, and Gina tossed her hair over her shoulder, watching the vehicle go by before giving me a beseeching look. “Come on, Tandi. We haven’t seen each other in forever. Let’s not fight. With Trammel finally out of the picture, we can go have some fun—do sister stuff. We’ll just hit the concert a few minutes. The kids are gone with your nerdy friend, and the weather’s perfect.” Tipping her head back and closing her eyes, she drank in the air, let it flow over the sunlit curves of her body, molding the dress. “Man, I’d forgotten how amazing this place is. And have you seen the beefcake around here? We’re gonna have such a good time!” She started down the street without waiting to see if I was following.
Before I could decide one way or the other, a delivery truck rumbled into the parking lot. The horn honked, and I jumped back out of reflex. When I caught my balance, I recognized Ross behind the wheel, laughing. He left the engine running and exited the vehicle in one smooth maneuver, swinging to the ground with a hand wrapped around the metal grab bar.
“You scared me to death.” I’d completely forgotten he was hoping to make it home so soon.
A wide white smile told me how glad he really was. “Got you something.” He held up a white gift bag with a logo on the side.
“What?” I reached for the bag, but he scooped me up with one arm and kissed me instead.
“It’s a cell phone. I told you I’d buy you one. Believe me, I had plenty of dead time walking around shopping malls and watching movies while I was on the road. Not a beach within four hundred miles. It stunk.” He kissed me again and set me on my feet, giving me the bag. “Gotta go. Still need to dump some lumber at one of Dad’s houses, then beat it back with this truck. Tomorrow, I’m hittin’ the beach, no matter what the waves are like. Be ready.”
He turned, jogged to the truck, and was gone before Gina could make her way back to the parking lot.
She shaded her eyes as the truck turned onto Highway 12. “Well, well, well, Little Sister. You’re doing better here than I thought. No wonder you don’t want to go scope out the local hotties with me. Who was that?”
CHAPTER 22
I WOKE TO THE SOUND of Gina coming in the door, again. As usual, she was staggering and laughing, making way too much noise. She’d been out every night for the past week, other than the one night she’d stayed home with the kids so I could go to Ross’s birthday party. Gina had come down with some kind of food poisoning that night and she’d been flat on her back on the sofa, feeling too lousy to go anywhere. She wasn’t happy about missing the party. When I got back, she made sure to let me know that staying home was a big sacrifice.
“I wouldn’t do that for anybody but my little sis,” she cooed when I came through the door afterward.
I didn’t bother to tell her that she hadn’t missed anything. By midnight, the party had moved to the beach, but it was pretty much over. Ross passed out on the leeward hollow of a dune, leaving me stuck there until some of the guys finally loaded him into the passenger side of the truck. I drove him back to one of his dad’s empty rental houses, left him to sleep it off, and had Gumby give me a ride home. All in all, the evening stank. Ross had been trying to make it up to me ever since, bringing me little gifts and being sweet. He’d even picked up pizza last night and shown up at the house after I got off work.
“All the man did was have a little fun with his friends, and that’s a crime?” Gina had whispered in my ear as she headed out the door to meet up with a guy I’d only seen from a distance. The date must have been particularly good. At 3 a.m., she was giggling as she came in. Instead of crashing on the sofa in her clothes, she put on her sweats and shimmied into bed next to me. She wasn’t as wasted as I’d thought.
“Hey.” Her voice was soft, intimate. She bunched the pillow under her head, turning toward me in a way that was familiar. Most of our childhood, we’d shared a bed or a bedroom, or a mattress on the floor, depending on where we were living. “Just like old times, huh?”
A wave of tenderness washed over me. Gina was the only family I had in the world, other than the kids. Without her, I would never have survived those first months in foster care. She’d made sure the predator next door knew he would be sorry if he ever touched me. I owed Gina. I wanted the two of us to be close. “Yeah.”
