Lizbeth took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She dug nervously into the sand with her fingers and said, “Gray, I don’t know where this is going. It’s so new and exciting. I know I’m not thinking straight, pardon the pun.”
Gray chuckled and Lizbeth went on. “Let’s just take it slow, one day at a time, because to tell you the truth you scare the hell out of me.”
Gray reached down, retrieving one of Lizbeth’s hands from the sand. She squeezed it lightly and smiled at her. “All right then,” she said, and stood up. She helped Lizbeth to her feet. Gray looked into Lizbeth’s face and then let her eyes wander down to Lizbeth’s chest. She pulled her eyes away and started laughing. She said, “Okay, but I don’t know how slow it’ll go, if you keep wearing things like that.”
#
Gray and Lizbeth killed an hour on the beach looking for shells and then loaded the tourists back in the boat. Gray took the boat back to the docks and the passengers disembarked. Lizbeth found it amusing when the tall Gray exchanged bows with her much shorter guests as they were leaving. The man who had taken Lizbeth’s picture was the last to go.
He pointed at Lizbeth and said to Gray, in very broken English, “Very pretty.”
Gray grinned. “Yes, she is.”
Lizbeth was sitting on a short piling at the end of the dock smiling at Gray when she walked up. She stood up and fell in step with Gray toward home. Lizbeth was giggling when she said, “I think that’s the first thing either one of you said all day that you both understood.”
They burst out laughing and continued to do so every time they looked at each other, all the way home.
#
Gray dropped Lizbeth at her cottage and then pulled a Jeep Wrangler out of a raised garage behind Fanny’s house. Lizbeth stood on her porch and waved goodbye as Gray slowly rolled down Howard Street. Lizbeth went into the cottage, showered the salt water and sand from her body, and changed her clothes. After making a sandwich for lunch, Lizbeth settled in for an afternoon of studying.
Lizbeth listened to the radio while she worked. At one p.m., the Hyde County Emergency Services Department released a public advisory. According to the National Weather Service, Earl, now a category four hurricane, was making a northeastern turn off the coast and was forecasted to collide with the Outer Banks. Hyde County was expected to receive significant wind, rain, and storm surges that could flood the low-lying areas, both on the mainland and Ocracoke. Presently, they anticipated a mandatory evacuation for Ocracoke Island on Wednesday, September first, beginning at five a.m. for all residents and visitors.
Gray’s grapevine had been on the money. Lizbeth thought about leaving. After all, a category four hurricane was nothing to take lightly. A storm of that magnitude carried sustained winds of 131 to 155 miles per hour and a storm surge of 13 to 18 feet. Lizbeth looked at the ceiling and thought about the whole room being underwater. She began to wonder if she was crazy for even thinking about staying.
If she was going to leave, she should pack up now and go, but she’d never leave without saying goodbye to Gray. The wait in the ferry line was going to be long, with the hundreds of tourists all attempting to flee at the same time, and then she would have to drive another two hours to get inland. She looked at months of research spread around her. Lizbeth could lose it all if the house flooded. She immediately stopped what she was doing and refreshed the upload of all her files to her online backup. Lizbeth knew she wasn’t leaving, but she wasn’t taking a chance on her research.
While she was waiting for the upload to finish, her cell phone rang. It was Mazie.
Lizbeth answered, “Hey, sweetheart.”
“Well, you sound chipper. Island life must be agreeing with you,” Mazie said.
Lizbeth grinned to herself, saying, “Yes, I have to say it is exhilarating.”
Mazie got to the point of the call. “I assume you are packing the car. When should you be home?” Mazie must have heard about the mandatory evacuation order, too.
“I’m not leaving.”
Mazie registered her shock with a high pitched, “What!”
“Gray says we’ll be fine, so I’m not leaving,” Lizbeth explained calmly.
“They said everyone has to leave Mother, that’s what mandatory means. And who the hell is Gray?”
“You don’t have to leave if you own property and this is the Jackson house, so I can stay. Gray and her grandmother, Fanny, live across the street. Fanny is eighty-five and has never left the island during a hurricane and their house has been standing longer than this one. I think I’m safe.”
Mazie wasn’t buying it. “Have they ever been through a storm as big as this one?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, in 1944 they endured a storm surge of 14 feet.”
Mazie backed off a little. “Well, I see you’ve done your research.”
“I’ll be fine, Mazie. Don’t worry.”
“I’ll worry till it’s over, but if you really want to stay, I guess I can’t make you leave if the state can’t.”
“No, you can’t,” Lizbeth said, and laughed.
“Mom, you sound different, almost giddy. What’s up with you?”
Mazie was very intuitive. She always had been. Even as a small child, she could discern Lizbeth’s moods. Although Lizbeth had tried to shelter Mazie from the pain in her marriage, Mazie always knew when her mother needed time alone or a simple hug. Their closeness made the rest of life more bearable, but right now Lizbeth wished Mazie wasn’t so perceptive.
“It’s the sea air, I guess,” Lizbeth answered, trying to sound convincing.
“I don’t believe it, but if you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll wait. You won’t be able to keep it from me long though. You’ll tell eventually.” Mazie’s laughter reminded Lizbeth of her own.
People said the two looked alike. They had the same hair and eyes, but Mazie was tall like her father, which, Lizbeth thought, made her daughter look like a model. Lizbeth was so proud of Mazie. She was happily married to a wonderful man and she had achieved every goal she had ever set for herself. At least Lizbeth had done one thing right. She had raised an incredible young woman.
No matter how much she admired her daughter, Lizbeth was not ready to share Gray with Mazie. She responded to Mazie’s last comment, trying to sound innocent, “There’s nothing to tell. I’ve had five wonderful days here and I’m just happy, that’s all.” She tried to change the subject. “I saw twin dolphin calves this morning. It was amazing.”
“I wish I could have been there.” Mazie paused and Lizbeth heard someone else speaking. “Mom, I have to go, my car’s ready. Promise me you’ll be safe.”
“I’m in good hands. These O’cokers won’t let anything happen to me, I promise.”
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, sweet girl. Bye, bye.”
“Bye, Mom,” Mazie said, and then added with a giggle, “I hope he’s good-looking.” Then she was gone.
Lizbeth hung up the phone. She said to the folded phone in her hand, “Yes, Mazie, she’s very good looking, not he.”
Oh, if she only had the guts to really say that. She had no idea how Mazie would react, but for some reason she wasn’t really afraid of it. Mazie was wise beyond her years. Somehow, Lizbeth knew Mazie would stand beside her no matter what. It was the rest of the world of which she wasn’t so sure. What was it Molly had said? “If you care more about what people think of you than being who you really are, then pack now, leave, and never look back.”
“One thing at a time, Lizbeth,” she said aloud.
After a few hours of studying, the five hours of sleep began to catch up with her. Lizbeth crawled in the bed in her room and took a nap. She dreamed of dolphins, and waves, and sunsets. She woke refreshed and was surprised to see that the digital readout on the microwave said seven fifteen when she walked into the kitchen. Gray must be home by now.
Lizbeth was afraid Gray might have come over while she was sleeping and she had not heard her. She quickly made a salad of the remaining vegetables, forcing herself to eat it, even though she was anxious and really didn’t want any food. She went back upstairs, brushed her hair, and checked herself in the mirror. She changed to a fresh tee shirt, because her sleep wrinkled the one she was wearing. Satisfied that the white scooped neck tee and blue shorts looked good enough, she went out on the porch to look for Gray.
Fanny was in her customary rocker. Lizbeth called out to her, “Good evening, Miss Fanny.”
“Come on over, young’un, and sit a spell.”
Lizbeth crossed the street and bounded up onto the porch. She took the adjacent rocker and fell into rhythm, rocking with the older woman.
“Gray tells me yer stayin’ through the storm.”
“She seems to think we’re safe, don’t you?” Lizbeth asked.
“Lord honey,” Fanny said, chuckling. “When it’s my time, I’m a goin’. Runnin’ to the mainland won’t stop that.”
This pronouncement did not reassure Lizbeth. “But you don’t think I’m making a mistake staying here?”
“No, I think we’ll be fine. Don’t feel like a bad one coming.”
Lizbeth was risking being caught in a nasty hurricane, because this old woman didn’t feel a “bad one coming,” but she thought she could trust Fanny and Gray. Where was Gray? It was almost eight o’clock.
Trying not to be too obvious, Lizbeth asked, “Did Gray get her boat out of the water?”
“She come back ‘bout an hour ago, dropped off the boat on the trailer and parked the Jeep. She went back to hope out some more folks.” Fanny used the word hope to mean help, another idiom. “She’s tied down the skiff, but she’ll leave it in the harbor staked out.”
“Skiff? Is that what she does her crab pots and nets with?”
“Gray’s granddaddy left it to her. She lets Cora Mae use it and Gray fishes on it some in the cold months.” Fanny winked. “Haulin’ tourons pays better than haulin’ fish.”
Lizbeth smiled at the memory of Gray on the water this morning. “She sure is in her element out there on the water.”
“Gray is as kin to a dolphin as you can be with two legs. She ain’t happy unless she’s in or on the water,” Fanny said.
“I don’t know how she stayed away so long in Texas. She just seems to belong here.”
Fanny scoffed, “She weren’t happy, I’ll tell you that. She drug back up here looking mommicked to death. The sea is life’s blood to her. She needs it. Gray wouldn’t survive out there in the world.”
Lizbeth thought about Fanny’s comment. She knew the old woman was right. Gray wouldn’t survive, at least not happily, off this island. She’d be like the killer whales whose dorsal fins collapse in captivity. It was a visual clue to the great loss the animal felt. Gray could never swim in a circle; she would have to be free. A pain shot across Lizbeth’s chest.
The women rocked silently for a few minutes, waving and speaking to all who passed on the street, most of them locals calling out Fanny’s name in greeting. The village was quiet, as most of the tourists had started leaving that afternoon. The sun had set on a clear sky, the calm before the storm.
Lizbeth spent the quiet time mulling over what Gray said about being attached to something you knew was going away. Was it better to leave now, before anything happened? Would she be better off not knowing if Gray was the thing she’d been looking for, or would she spend the rest of her days and nights wondering what might have been? If Gray began to mean more to Lizbeth, would she be able to walk away, go back to Durham, and leave her here? Because that’s what it would come down to, leaving Gray behind. There was no way this ended any differently.
What about how Gray felt? What if Gray fell in love with Lizbeth? Could she be hurting Gray as well? Lizbeth felt the tears begin to well up in her eyes. The emotional highs and lows of the past two days were beginning to get to her. She was trying to think of a way to get off the porch without appearing rude, when Gray’s voice took her from her thoughts.
“Well, this is a nice surprise.” Gray was coming through the gate. She smiled brightly at Lizbeth. She was dirty and sweaty and it looked hot and sexy.
Lizbeth blushed and smiled back. It was automatic every time she saw Gray. The flush would come and a grin she could not control would seize her face. “We were just visiting,” she said, while watching Gray enter the porch, the tempo of her heartbeat increasing with each step Gray took toward her.
“How’s it to the creek?” Fanny asked. Lizbeth thought she was asking about the harbor since it used to be called Cockle Creek.
“Everything’s tied down. A lot of folks got their boats out this afternoon. Nobody’s panicked. It’s kind of a wait and see attitude at the Community Store.”
“It’s so quiet,” Lizbeth said. “It’s peaceful.”
“The tourists have left for the most part. The announcement came through at eight thirty. The mandatory evacuation begins at five a.m.” Gray raised her eyebrows, looking at Lizbeth. “Sure you want to stay?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Lizbeth said, before she had a chance to stop herself. All that thinking about not getting involved with Gray flew out the window.
“Well then, while you and the old woman there finish chewing the fat, I’ll excuse myself to take a shower.” Gray started into the house, stopped, turned around, and asked Lizbeth, “Will you be here when I get back?”
Fanny couldn’t see Lizbeth’s face as Lizbeth turned toward Gray. She smiled seductively up at Gray, and raising one eyebrow, said, “I don’t know. Are you worth waiting for?”