12
Gavin knew the locals, and the woman in the floral scarf wasn’t one, yet something about her felt familiar, maybe nostalgic, which was really weird. He tried to shake the feeling, but his heart picked up its pace as if he were on his daily run, and his eyes stayed glued to her as she disappeared around a corner.
As a firefighter EMT he saw unspeakable tragedies regularly, so it didn’t make sense that he was experiencing an adrenaline rush for no apparent reason. Was it possible he knew her without realizing it? Maybe someone he’d gone to middle or high school with for a few years before she moved away?
He walked over to the man who’d yelled for her to wait. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” The man looked down at what seemed to be a pair of socks in his wife’s hands. “I mean…” His brows furrowed, and he glanced at the last spot where the girl had been seen. “Yeah.” He shut the hatch to his vehicle.
Gavin closed his eyes for a moment, centering himself. Taking control was second nature to him, and within a few seconds he had his attention back on the samples of antique walnut shiplap in the bed of his truck. He walked back to Roy Ashe, the potential buyer. “I’ll have ten thousand square feet of shiplap by nightfall tomorrow.” He had been busy for days meticulously gutting Sapphira’s house, even sleeping there.
“That’s great. It’s really tough to find this much antique walnut shiplap, but twenty dollars a square foot? That’ll cost two hundred thousand dollars. I’ll pay sixteen. Not a penny more.”
Gavin needed the cash in hand, but he wasn’t bargaining with this builder of fine homes. The man would raise the price by six dollars per square foot for his wealthy clients, and Gavin’s gut said he was a bit shady, possibly the kind of developer who shorted his workers regularly.
Gavin closed the tailgate to his truck. “I need to get back to work.”
“But…we’re negotiating.”
“I don’t think we’re getting anywhere.” As much as Gavin needed the cash, he wasn’t budging. He’d waited nearly two years to dismantle Sapphira’s homestead. He knew its value, and he needed every penny of it. “The price is two hundred thousand. Firm.”
“Do you have any antique sinks, tubs, lighting fixtures, door knobs—that sort of thing?”
“Tubs and lighting fixtures have been removed. Sinks, doors, and doorknobs are still in place. I’ll have eight-inch wide walnut door casings, wainscot, and similar items soon, but right now I’m still dismantling shiplap.”
“Could I take a look at the place?”
Gavin had run an ad in the paper and online. This man was the first to respond. From the start Gavin felt uneasy about him. That’s why he’d set up their meeting at the parking lot of Pier Village to show him a sample. He was a builder, and he lived two hours from here. Gavin had nearly a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of reclaimed building materials under a tarp in the carport.
“Not today.” Gavin needed to move the goods to a secure place, perhaps back inside the home, but that wouldn’t happen between when this man saw it sitting on the driveway and when Gavin fell asleep for the night. “Maybe in a day or two.” Gavin tapped the side of his truck. “You can decide and text me about the shiplap, but if someone else is willing to purchase it, I’ll sell it.”
“I’ll take it.” The man pulled out his checkbook. “All of it. Will ten thousand dollars hold it until I have my guy get a truck here to pick it up?”
“Sure will. But he needs to bring a cashier’s check for a hundred and ninety thousand dollars, and I need it in hand before he loads the shiplap.”
“Not a problem.” He held out the check. “Text me the address, and he’ll be there tomorrow night at nine. When you’re ready, I’d like to be the first one to see all the rest of it. Okay?”
Gavin nodded and put the check in his billfold.
The voices of tourists faded, and soon Tara focused on her feet as she tried to find her running stride. She had on running shoes. Where did she get them? When did she put them on? If she had on running shoes, why did she still have on her everyday clothes? Her head hurt with each jarring step. She tuned out the questions and focused on running, trying to smooth out the jolts.
Shade trees brought some relief from the heat. Sidewalks disappeared, and the man’s directions jumbled in her head, the turns and names of streets becoming too wobbly and gray to remember.
Sweat ran down every part of her, and the sand from the ocean had chafed more skin than not. She stopped and closed her eyes, trying to sense what she needed to do. The heat of the day was waning, and birds were starting to sing their evening song. A weird sensation came over her. Her heart felt like the needle on a compass. She turned in various directions until the hidden compass pulled her onward. She opened her eyes and began walking. The sun hung low in the sky across the open marsh. A dock jutted out from what appeared to be someone’s backyard, and its wooden walkway went out into the marsh. She was walking toward the dock when she spotted to her right a blue tarp on the roof of a house she couldn’t see.
Home!
Tears welled. She crossed the road and jogged down a short street until she was in the front yard of the house with a blue tarp. It was cute: white clapboard and brick with red trim.
But the only thing that looked familiar was the tarp. Had the workers changed the outside of her home? There was an old-fashioned streetlamp in the front yard, a fenced backyard, and…Tara ran to the driveway side.
Oh, how wonderful. There was an outdoor shower, enclosed for privacy. She moved to it, opened the swinging door, and turned on the water. She doubted it was connected to a hot water source, but she stepped in anyway and began peeling out of her clothes. There were soap and shampoo dispensers. She removed her scarf and rinsed the sand, sweat, and grit out of her hair and off her body. Then she lathered up her clothes and rinsed them. The tepid water felt delightful. She turned off the water and wrung out her clothes as best she could. She had no way of drying off, but at least she felt clean again before she put her clothes back on.
She didn’t know why her shoes were sopping wet. She’d taken them off while showering, hadn’t she? But they squished with water as she walked around the house, looking for signs of life. She put the wet scarf around her shoulders. It seemed a good idea, for the sake of her sutures, to let her hair and the scarf dry before she put it on her head again. Once inside the fenced yard, she saw no fencing along the back of the yard, but there was an orange electric cord running from the house and into a garden.
Oh, a garden. It looked like a nice one, and she was hungry, but she continued walking around the side of the house. One entire exterior wall was glass, and it had five different doors. If this was her house, she had no doubts that Sean and Darryl had left at least one unlocked, maybe all of them. She tried a knob. It was locked, so she continued down the line. The handle of the very last door turned, and she opened it. “Hello?” She stepped inside. “Sean? Darryl?” Part of the roof was missing, and the blue tarp felt familiar. “Hello?”
The house echoed with the sound of her voice, but it seemed she heard Sean answer softly, You’re home.
Tears welled. She’d felt so very lost for days, and now she was home. Although…her circumstances didn’t really add up. Nonetheless she walked through the rooms. Someone had gutted the place. Why? Numerous walls were missing, and only studs were still in place. Light fixtures were gone, and loose wires hung in their stead. Why would anyone tear apart her house?
She meandered to a set of spiral stairs and climbed them. The loft had a large bed, a full bathroom, and lots of water damage from the hole in the roof. At least the workers had increased the size of Sean’s loft. He’d like that. Even so, the walls were stripped bare. She went back downstairs.
Her stomach rumbled. She pulled the wet dollar bills from her pants. Three ones. That wasn’t enough to buy dinner. She went into the kitchen. There was a row of five tomatoes on the counter along with a loaf of bread. Just in case this wasn’t her house, she put the three ones on the counter and smoothed them.
After locating a cutting board, she sliced a tomato. She found mayo and deli cheese in the fridge, so she added that to her sandwich and plopped it on a plate. While eating she meandered again through the house. One antique door was locked. On a stripped wall with a lone nail, she spotted a skeletal key. She tried it, but it didn’t budge. After setting her plate on the floor, she tried again. With a bit of jiggling and a shove of her hip against the door, it finally opened.
She remained in the doorway. Faint chills ran down her arms. The walls were intact. Moreover, they were covered with framed and unframed pictures and paintings.
Giggles and laughter filled the room. Love was everywhere—drops of sunlight falling like rain.
The room had two easels, art supplies, and lots of pictures. It had layers of dust, as though it were a shrine. Where was she? Why did this house feel like home while looking completely unfamiliar? Dusk had settled in, making it a little hard to see. A photograph lay on a paint-stained counter, and she picked it up.
It was of the St. Simons lighthouse, and it was similar to the one Tara had from her childhood. An older woman and a little girl were side by side, looking at each other. The girl was grinning, and the woman’s eyes held love. The girl had blond hair, and something else about her seemed a bit familiar. Tara flipped the picture and viewed the back.
Sapphira and her precious Siobhan, 1991
Loneliness wrapped around Tara anew, and she was envious of the girl whose name she didn’t know how to pronounce. What must it have been like to be loved by someone while growing up? She put the picture back where she’d found it.
She hadn’t been loved as a child, not by any relative. But she had Sean and Darryl now, and that was enough. They were a family that knew how to be there for one another, how to be a safety net, except she currently couldn’t find them.
Her imagination beckoned her to forget reality and enjoy the moment. In her mind’s eye she saw the woman showing the little girl how to make certain paint strokes and how to mix colors. The girl giggled. “Like this, Nana?” She swooped a glop of paint across the canvas.
“You’re a natural.” Nana smiled, but it soon faded. She took the little girl’s hand and crouched beside her. “Our time is running out.”
“I don’t want to go. Please don’t make me.”
Tears trailed down the woman’s face, but she smiled. “You’ll be fine. I promise.”
“I want to stay with you.”
“I want that too, my sweet Siobhan. I want you here with me.”
Was that how Siobhan was pronounced—Shivaun?
The older woman held the girl’s chin. “You’re amazing, Siobhan. You remember that. I’ve prayed for you, and you’ll be fine. I’m sure of it. But remember wherever you go, whatever happens, this is your house and your home. Yours. Do you understand me?”
The girl nodded.
“What’s the address, Siobhan?”
The little girl repeated it.
“That’s right.” The woman kissed her face a dozen times, and Tara could feel it on her skin. “You always remember that. I can’t keep your mama from taking you. I tried. I hired a lawyer, and we did our best. Still, I have no legal right to hinder her plans, but I’ll always be here. This home will always be here for you.”
The voices faded, and when Tara opened her eyes, her cheeks were wet from the emotion the dreamlike scene had stirred in her.
Voices broke through her thoughts. Were these real, or were they her imagination playing games with her like Nana’s and Siobhan’s voices?
Women laughed, and Tara knew they were real.
“I just need to set this inside, and we’ll be on our way.”
Inside?
Tara left the art room, tiptoeing until she was able to peek around a hallway wall so she could see the glass doors.
The lone unlocked door was open now, and four women were hovering just outside it. “It breaks my heart to tear down Sapphira’s house. She spent more than twenty years holding on to this place, neither moving nor renting it, all in hopes that Siobhan would return.”
Siobhan? Why would Tara have imagined saying that name right?
“Oh, honey,” a woman said, “we know all that, but you keep saying it as often as you need to.”
“Look,” one of the women gasped, and Tara thought she’d been spotted.
“There’s a purple hydrangea blooming amid the pink ones.”
“Is that on the same bush?” one asked.
“Yeah. Look.”
The women stepped away from the door, and Tara used their distraction to scurry through the living room and kitchen and out the side door, which put her on the driveway. She looked for somewhere to go for cover until they were gone. If the house was sitting empty, she could come back and sleep in it once the women were gone, right? She scanned the nearby properties.
The garden.
She hurried across the backyard, slipped between rows of corn, and crouched. Her heart pounded, and as the minutes passed, she sat in the dirt, waiting. Sugar snap peas dangled from the vine in large clusters. She pulled the damp scarf off her neck and tied the ends of it to create a cloth carrier, and as she picked the sugar snaps, she put them in the scarf. She ate one and found it succulent and tender. They would make a nice breakfast.
After picking about four cups of sugar snaps, she was overwhelmed with tiredness and sank to a comfortable sitting position.
Who was she? What was she doing stowing away in someone’s garden? She’d been through a lot in life, but she couldn’t recall ever feeling this disconnected. Sleepiness took over, and she rested her head on her hands. Mosquitoes bit and other things too, but she was too sleepy to care.
Metal banged, and Tara bolted upright. Blackness was everywhere. Where was she, and why was she covered in dirt? She got up, still holding a scarf full of sugar snaps. A light shone from somewhere, illuminating a path, so she followed it.
Moments later a woman screamed, a bloodcurdling howl, and then she clutched her chest. “What are you…”
The woman looked behind her, and Tara saw a small house she’d not noticed before. “Thief!” The woman pointed. “Luella. Dell. Sue Beth! Someone’s stealing our crop!”
Three women came barreling out of the building. “Julep! Are you okay?” someone asked.
One woman banged something metal against a pot. Another had a flashlight, but she dropped it, and the last…had a gun!
Tara released the scarf and took off running.