Soon enough the two-lane main road would be jammed with the returning crowds. She and her sisters used to love waiting for their summer friends. Every year she’d stood at the end of this very pier, waiting for the arrival of the Logan family, for Mack to sneak up behind her while she fished and slap her on the back, half trying to knock her off her feet. One time, two weeks into summer, he’d found her in the dark on the edge of the pier. . . .
The day had ended as most days did that summer for twelve-year-old Riley—nightfall arriving without her noticing until she was the only one left on the dock. Low clouds pregnant with rain covered the moon and hid the stars.
Then Mack joined her. They lay back on the dock, life seeming simple in its small graces: an evening crafted from the sound of slapping waves, the cooling comfort of shaved ice amidst a heat wave, a mist from unshed rain, a foghorn sounding far off.
They’d stared into the darkness. Their arms and legs touched, sticky with salt sweat, without any self-consciousness. Mack’s knobby elbow poked against the soft inside of Riley’s arm; she felt his rough scab from last week’s skateboard fall. His legs were moist against hers, his left foot underneath her right. His upper arm rested against hers. Suddenly it was as if they had become one body; she couldn’t feel where hers stopped and his began. Fear prickled the edge of her thoughts—what if she became lost in feeling him and never felt like her separate self again?
Despite this fear, she couldn’t move, the tangle of arms and legs more important than the loss her own being.
He spoke first. “It’s so dark.”
“I know,” she said, her whisper all at once that of someone older.
“It feels like there’s only one of us,” he said.
She didn’t speak again, knowing that this was what she wanted—this oneness—but not able to understand how or why. Time dissolved, and she didn’t know how long they stayed that way, only that she didn’t speak until he did.
“I’m sorry I punched Candler today,” he said.
“Don’t be sorry,” she said, beginning to feel her own toes, her own skin. Relieved, yet noting the loss, too.
They didn’t move for moments longer.
“I know he’s a friend of yours from school and all, but damn, he’s not allowed to pick on you like that.”
“He’s done that since he moved here a few years ago—I just think he hates that I beat him at everything.”
“He still can’t . . . do that. He hit you, Riley. No one is ever allowed to hit you.”
“I know, but I would have punched him back.”
He moved imperceptibly, a tiny movement that might not have been a movement at all, but then she felt her body: her toes, then her legs, her arms and then her rapid heartbeat. They were separate now and he stood, held his hand out to pull her up.
Their words faded into the darkness as if they were spoken and unspoken at the same time; as if they were important and yet not at all, as if they were two people talking or maybe just one. Darkness, she understood later, easily confused the meaning of words, of skin touching skin.
In their remaining summers together she tried to find that oneness again. When it was all over, when youth ended and he chose Maisy, she understood the lesson from the dock that night: she could never again call her feelings of intimacy and oneness love. Nor would she be fooled again into believing that her love was returned, that a boy felt more for her than friendship.
Riley looked down the length of Pearson’s Pier and watched her son bait his hook, reminded herself to live in the moment while remembering the lessons of the past.
The walk to the hospital ran north along the beach, then west at Sixth Avenue for five blocks inland. As she went through the front doors of the hospital, she shoved away the memory of her daddy’s last days here with lung cancer, his lucidity returning only briefly before agony followed when one morphine shot wore off and the next hadn’t yet arrived. She had rushed her words during those brief respites, in a hurry to tell him how much she loved him, how much he’d meant to her, how she cherished him, all the while wondering why she hadn’t said these words all her life.
Kitsy Sheffield’s hospital room was on the fourth floor. Riley kissed her sleeping mama on the cheek, and grabbed the chart hanging off the bottom of the bed to read the night’s statistics— temperature, blood pressure and urine output. She’d learned the lingo during Daddy’s illness.
Kitsy opened her eyes. “Where have you been?”
“Right here.” Riley took her mama’s hand and smiled. “And you?”
“Is that supposed to be funny?” Kitsy fashioned her eyes into narrow slits through which Riley had no idea how she could see.
“Unfortunately, yes. That was supposed to be funny. I was working, and then I waited for Brayden to come home after his last day of school.”
“I was here alone all night, and then for most of today. What if they’d given me the wrong medication, or . . . forgotten about me?”
“Mama, I can’t sleep here—I have Brayden. And I can’t imagine who could ever, ever forget about you.”
“Where are your sisters?”
Riley squeezed her hand. “They’re both on their way. Adalee is driving down from the university this morning; I talked to her last night. Maisy is flying in tomorrow afternoon, five days earlier than she was supposed to come.”
Kitsy’s eyes opened wide. “Maisy is coming early? You mean, all this time, all these years, all I had to do was fall down the damn staircase to make her come home? So, all my girls will finally be here.”
Riley laughed and released her mama’s hand, dug into her purse for a muffin wrapped in a napkin. “I brought you contraband—your favorite cranberry muffin from the store.”
Kisty attempted to scoot up in bed, but with her ribs wrapped and her wrist in a cast, she couldn’t move. She exhaled. “Thanks, darling. Now give me updates on the party.”
“Mama, you’ve only been here for one day. There’s nothing new to report.”
“I will delegate responsibilities to each of you girls,” Kitsy said as she held her muffin in the air. “I have sorted it in my mind and I want to tell each of you what to do. I can still write. Thank God I sprained my left wrist.” She held up her muffin. “You’ll help me and take notes, Maisy will stay for the summer and Adalee will run—”
“Whoa, Mama. Your only job right now is to get better. We can handle the rest.”
“No, you can’t. I’m the only one who understands the big picture.”
“Just prepare yourself for a couple of reality checks. I highly doubt Maisy will stay for more than a week, if that long, and Adalee sounded like we’d ruined her summer. I’m not sure how much help she’ll be.”
“Oh, that will change when I talk to them.” Kitsy took a bite of the muffin. “You’ll see.”
Riley leaned back in the hard metal chair and breathed in the scents of multiple flower arrangements around the room. “It’s all under control, Mama.”
“Now you listen to me, young lady. Just because I’m all tied down in a hospital bed does not mean that I am not in charge. It does not mean you can sass me back or tell me what to do. Do you understand?”
“Mama, quit it. Don’t talk to me like I’m twelve years old.”
Kitsy closed her eyes. “God, sometimes I wish you were. Then I could change so much about what has happened.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Riley stood up, offended.
“You know exactly what it means. I would never have let you go out that night with a boy who forced himself on you. I would have made sure you finished college, got a degree.”
“Mama, I’d like to blame this tirade of yours on some kind of drug you’re on, but sadly, I can’t. Your hurtful words aren’t softened just because you’re lying in bed with casts and bruises. No one ever forced himself on me. So stop it.”
Mama’s anger was legendary. There were rants at the dinner table about her daughters’ grades, fiery speeches in the town hall over the installation of the new stoplight and public outcries about Mayor Friscoe’s affair with his son’s second-grade teacher. The storms always passed as quickly as they came and Mama’s remorse was genuine each time.
“Oh, baby. You know I don’t mean it. My hip is throbbing with some kind of new pain I’ve never felt before. I can’t roll over. My ribs hurt every time I take a breath and they won’t give me any more pain meds until Doc comes in this morning. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.” Tears formed in the corners of her eyes.
“I know,” Riley said, as she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. God, how many times had this scene been repeated? Somehow Kitsy Sheffield managed to apologize without ever saying “Sorry” or “Forgive me.”
Dr. Foster’s presence at the bedside startled Riley. “Where did you come from?”
“Snuck in while you two were bickering.” He smiled.
“How is she?” Riley pointed to Mama.
“Don’t be talking about me like I’m in a coma,” Kitsy warned. “I’m right here.”
Riley rolled her eyes at Dr. Foster. “Please tell me that the drugs you’re giving her are what’s making her so mean.”
He laughed, picked Kitsy’s chart off the end of the bed. “The meds and the pain—the combination often puts patients in foul moods.”
“Stop it,” Kitsy hollered, slammed her free hand on the metal bed rail; muffin crumbs landed on the floor. “I’m. Right. Here.”
Dr. Foster slipped his stethoscope under her hospital gown and listened to her chest, then looked up, spoke directly to her. “I was worried about your lungs, but you sound fine and the scan is normal. You can go home tomorrow, but you’ll need plenty of help. We’ll have to arrange for home care . . . unless . . .” He looked directly at Riley. “Unless you can take care of her full-time.”
“No.” Riley exhaled the word with more force than she’d meant to show.
“Absolutely not,” Kitsy said in unison. “We can hire help. Riley has a son, a store to run and a week’s worth of parties to finish arranging.”
Dr. Foster looked down at Kitsy over his glasses, which were perched on the end of his nose. “Now you be sweet to your daughter, and I’ll send the social worker in to help make arrangements.”
Kitsy batted her eyelashes at Dr. Foster—Riley swore her mother had just flirted with the doctor.
Kitsy’s eyes filled with tears again and Riley saw, as she often did, the needy woman underneath the tough exterior. Mama had learned early how to use her wiles to get what she wanted. But there was another side to her that appeared when she and Riley discussed books and running the store together. If Riley lost the store, she feared that she would also lose that sweet connection with her mother. No matter what Mama said, Riley understood that saving this store was as important to Mama as it was to her.
The door swished shut and Riley sat down, pulled her chair up next to Mama. “You have to tell me everything about this chondrosarcoma. I will not let you ignore your health just for a party.”
Kitsy looked toward the window. “Listen, Riley. Waiting a week or two to get treatment won’t matter. It’s a rare form of bone cancer.” Kitsy smiled. “Of course I’d get the rare form. It’s only stage one because we caught it early. I need surgery—that’s the first step: remove it. I have decided to do it at a specialty sarcoma center. After that we’re talking about other treatment, depending on how I do. Fiddle dee dee . . .” She made a gesture of dismissal.
“That’s not funny, Mama.”
“Of course it is.”
“Where is this specialty center and when are you going? Why can’t I tell Maisy and Adalee? Why can’t you go now?”
Kitsy closed her eyes. “M. D. Anderson is in Houston, Texas. No, you can’t tell your sisters and of course we can’t go now. Maisy and Adalee are coming to see me.” She opened her eyes. “Don’t you see? They’re coming here, now. All of us will be together.”
“Okay,” Riley whispered. “But why Texas?”
“Because they’re the best, that’s why. Of course”—Kitsy’s voice lowered—“you know how we—you and me—choose the books we order for the store? How we know what the book clubs will want? You know how we don’t talk about it to anyone else, ever?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“This bone cancer is the same thing. It is ours to keep until we need to share it with everyone else. Okay?”
Riley nodded, swallowed the tears her mama hated to see fall. “That’s just it. I can’t run the store without you.”
Kitsy’s eyebrows lifted. “You have never, ever said that before, Riley.”
“Said what?”
“That you can’t do without me.” Mama turned her head away.
“I’m sure I have. I definitely have told you that. The store is . . . hollow without you. You’re its heart. I’m just its arms and legs.”
Kitsy didn’t look back at Riley. “You can go now, dear. I need to rest.”
Riley didn’t move, holding Mama’s hand in her own. A nurse entered the room, pushed a clear liquid into the port of the IV. Kitsy looked back at Riley, squinted. “I think I’ll sleep for a bit. Don’t you dare go adding that stupid Create Bad Art Night to the week’s events just because I’m laid up in bed. No decent bookstore has a Create Bad Art Night.”
“Mama, relax. It’s called Artist Night.”
“That’s what I said,” Kitsy mumbled, and closed her eyes.
Riley gathered her belongings and kissed her mother on the forehead before she left the room. Of course she’d already added Artist Night, in which all local artists would come to display and sell their art—just one more chance for the bookstore to make some profit.
On the walk back to the store, Riley stood on the sidewalk that ran parallel to the beach, where sprigs of grass sprouted through the cracked concrete. The number seven lifeguard stand stood in front of Riley, blocking her view to the water’s edge. What if her mama was right? What if Riley hadn’t gone out that night? Maybe she wouldn’t have crawled into the vacant lifeguard stand while a bonfire roared farther down the beach, and inside her heart.