Jonathan Swift once said, “He was a bold man who first ate an oyster.” I have to agree. Oyster shells aren’t pretty. Actually, they look like they could have once been pretty shells, but were mangled, digested and spat out by snaggle-toothed sharks. Just the sound of someone eating one grosses me out. So, I prefer to leave my oysters to their ecosystems, and they prefer it, too. Once oysters reach adulthood, they stop being free swimmers and find a place to live. They cozy up among the other oysters, create cement, and glue themselves down. They can’t do their important work – being built-in filtration systems – without first settling into their permanent homes.
Over the next few weeks, I was an oyster. Desperate to affix myself to Tipee and make it my permanent home, I focused on work. And because of my panic issues, I clung to my comforts: the store, the apartment, Henry, Willie and Sam. I barely left the building, except to walk Willie or see Sam at sunset. And why should I? I had everything I needed right there, and with so much work to do, I barely noticed that I was cloistering myself.
We followed up the Agatha Christie party with a slew of others, at least one per week. Stephen King. Edgar Allan Poe. Anne Rice. And we were planning to cap off our Fright Nights on October 30th with a celebration of ghost stories, The Haunted Bookstore.
For the children, we hosted a Princesses and Pirates party, a Curious George celebration, and an art party for Eric Carle (a lot more clean up with this one, but worth it).
The novelty of my book parties didn’t wear off, as I suspected. Instead, the more parties I had, the more excited people became. In spite of Clara’s efforts, the stigma she’d attached to attending my parties (that no one should step foot in Beach Read if they want to keep to her good side) fizzled into nothing. Attendees didn’t care. Her own sister didn’t care. Aunt Charlotte attended every grown-up party, dressed to the hilt, happy for the opportunity to strut her designer wares (and perhaps get out from under the wing of her sister for a while).
And since I no longer had to dish out thousands of dollars on repairs (at least not yet), we were making money! Sales were so good that I no longer had to worry about whether or not I’d make the deadline. All I had to do was keep up the momentum. Had I not been granted the extension, the repairs would have eaten up all my profits and Beach Read would have been beach history.
If I was the oyster, Sam was the glue. We clicked into a peaceful and perfect place. Trips to Fayetteville stopped. Meetings at the shore at sunset continued (unless he was on a call or I was in the middle of a party – and in this case, we met on the roof). Every spare minute we had (and some we didn’t), we spent together. Though I wouldn’t admit it to him, I liked our arrangement. With him fully aware of my deficiencies (and not trying to fix everything) and with sex on hold (though I was just as willing as I was before), the pressure was off. I could just be with him, and being with him was as close to heaven as I could get.
The muggings stopped. The red hair Sam found didn’t earn much information (the sample was too small for DNA and without the telling root), except that its previous owner was a frequent drug user and not a real redhead. One unidentifiable hair didn’t prove anything. And as Sam predicted, Ricky Wakefield started behaving himself. Efforts to catch him in a drug deal failed. So, both cases floated, dead in the water.
I filled the pages of Sam’s beautiful journal anyway, but it wasn’t entirely easy. The first few pages were all about the Peacock party and I littered all the white space. I sketched out the vandalism on the mermaid, drew the layout of the first floor, and even mapped out where people were when the redhead went missing. The party, Ricky Wakefield, David Love, Lucius Kayne, Molly Tubbs, everything I knew (or thought I knew) splattered the papers, and getting it all out was cathartic.
But, then I came to my attack and robbery – the only thing left to journal – and I froze.
Instead of purging my own terrors, I found myself writing and rewriting Raina’s Rolodex verse. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. My spirit of fear still battled the other three, and this one issue (at least) was at a stalemate.
Sam often asked to read the journal, but I didn’t let him. In it, I’d also purged what I knew about him: the remarks the women made in the bathroom the night of the party, his comment to Aunt Beverly about being unable to move forward, his trips, and Mason Cook. If the journal was meant to be a place where I could share all my thoughts, it had to include anything or anyone I had questions about, and Sam met that criteria. I knew him, but in some ways, didn’t know him at all.
Besides, I’d taken one page to practice writing my potential married name, Delilah Duffy-Teague, Delilah Teague, Mrs. Delilah Teague, like I was a lovesick middle-schooler. And though Sam had taken all my deficiencies in stride, I worried he’d view this as freakily obsessive.
We had come to the final week of October. For all her issues, Clara had a winning idea. Octoberfest was going to be big. Early in the week, vendors started rolling in and claiming their spots along the boardwalk. Mobile food trucks arrived to set up posts. Stores and restaurants received larger than normal shipments. Hotels were booked. The weather was supposed to be a perfect seventy degrees and sunny all weekend. Clara had organized everything (except the weather, I think) from the fall decorated city lampposts to the central location for costumed children to receive candy and carve pumpkins (fishing pier). Octoberfest would be a feather in Clara’s wide-brimmed hat, and that would have to suffice because she wouldn’t earn another for Beach Read.
Beach Read wasn’t closing! Things weren’t only looking up, but they were soaring, Superman-style into the heavens. But, it’s just when things are going well when someone comes along, rakes you up, and swallows you whole.