CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE #2
I breathed around the declaration. The old me would’ve said that it was fine, that they should stay on the Cape for the whole summer as planned.
And, no, I did not need them to come back to be okay.
But I would be so much more okay with them by my side.
This time, real friends would get real talk too.
“I would love that,” I said. “Thank you.”
I would’ve gone on longer, but a figure walking past the massive picture window had me sputtering out hasty goodbyes. I stowed my phone and took six steps toward that table—the one with porcelain plates and teacups and silver pieces. A watch had once rested there so out of place. Calling to me.
Not today, though. The space was empty, and something else was calling.
I moved as quickly as I could with bandaged wounds shortening my steps. When I wrenched open the front door, her silhouette was still visible at the end of the block. She held a leash attached to a little dachshund.
Normally, I was the type who kept to herself and didn’t interfere. I didn’t ask too many questions. But heartache and grief, love and second chances had reset those parts of me too. A mix of deep sadness and inexplicable thankfulness had me calling out, “Ma’am, wait!”
The woman halted and turned. Perplexed, she put her dog into a down position as I approached. My heart broke again as I thought of Anne Shirley.
“Do I know you?” she asked. Her blue linen set looked fresh in the midmorning sunlight.
Yes. “No, I mean . . .” I took a few seconds to deal with the enormity of what I was about to do. One, two, set. Some things I would keep from old Sylvie. “This is going to sound really strange, but I’m only trying to help.”
Her eyes bugged. But she stayed.
“Your name starts with an N, right? Norma, wait . . . Norah?”
The light left her face as she nodded slowly. Her mouth dropped open before she leaned in. “Did Del send you? I haven’t seen her yet this summer. Are you like her? Can you see things?”
A coffin. A cat carrier. A friend wearing a dozen craft-fair bracelets.
“Um. I don’t know. But I got this really strong feeling when you walked by.” Now I stepped forward, sucking back a weighted breath. “You should stop whatever you’re doing and go to the hospital.”
“How could you possibly . . . ?” Immediately, a hand flew over her chest. “Come to think of it, I’ve been having this strange pain in my shoulder. And some nausea.”
I nodded. “Have them check your heart.”
“My God.” Norah glanced left, then right, then tugged at the leash. “Okay. I’ll go. I’ll go in right now.” Three steps, then “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
My own heart flew from my chest when Norah quickened her pace down the block. I didn’t know if my efforts would be enough to save her. But I had hope.
As my dad emerged from the grocery store, I waved him over. It was time to face the cabin. Before we left, my mind went backward and forward to a striped ginger face—the haughty expressions there—and a wayward tail that brushed my forehead while I was trying to sleep.
I’d never asked for that ornery cat, but I’d grown to like her, so much that I would’ve kept her. Loved her. But Anne Shirley belonged with Norah. She was never supposed to be mine. When this feeling came to me on Cedar Street, it wasn’t something foreign. I already knew it.
I was wrong. There were ghosts here.
My courage grew, little by little, as I stood in the Bearberry Cabin living room, a spare key from that fake speckled rock tucked into my hand. Grocery bag, courtesy of Dad, at my feet. My pulse eventually came around. It was okay—I’d lived here (halfway). It was okay.
The smell of pine cleaner was the same as the first night Tía Viv and I had trudged in here.
I spun a slow circle. While I now had my own place like I’d planned, the cost had been so great.
“Unfair” was the only word I could find.
I would’ve given up a hundred creek-side cabins to have my tía again.
When I finally went through each room, those spaces were free of our sweaters and suitcases, our potions and perfumes. But they also weren’t.
Vivian was present in more than just memory.
Her imprint was everywhere, like the one that hadn’t faded from my left arm.
I didn’t fully understand until I went to the kitchen.
I was trying to be normal, filling up a reusable water bottle, putting away the small jar of Jif (Dad—Dad) and the bag of fresh rolls and lunch meat and a prepackaged Chinese chicken salad for my dinner.
I saw it then from the kitchen window—the mark Vivian had carved into this place.
Chills swarmed over my body as I dared to look again. “Tía, por Dios. How?”
But why was I asking her when what stood outside was so much bigger than the workings of one lost loved one? This was something you asked the stars about.
I will always be with you, she’d said.
My eyes blurred with tears as I tried to run, then remembered I couldn’t.
But I got there. I got to Bearberry Creek.
Tía Vivian’s beautifully carved bridge was still there.
I ran my hand over cherry blossoms and varnished teak.
Real, so real. And more than impossible.
Time had saved me. And time had saved my tía’s artwork.
The bridge led me to another place that I finally felt ready to face. The garage stood as tall and wide as ever. I walked over, and my entire body remembered the whirring, sanding, grinding sounds that had lasted from dawn to midnight. She never stopped. Working. Living. Loving. She never stopped.
I stopped, though, at the old white Ford that was parked in the rear. I peeked in, swallowing a lump when I saw the ancient Thomas Guide map book resting on the floor. (It really, really hit me then—how many places I had been. How far I’d traveled to be here.)
Finally, I moved to the garage door. The hinges creaked my way inside. I flipped on the lights and welcomed the dust motes swirling in the fluorescent glow. The feeling here wasn’t fresh and new like the cabin. This workshop felt used. Earthy sawdust and sharp, varnishy scents clung to everything.
I dropped a breath or two when I saw the massive item standing near the far corner of the workspace. It loomed—promising and exciting and devastating. A cream-colored tarp was draped over it, ghostlike.
Had this been here the last time I’d come, right before I destroyed the watch?
I couldn’t remember. I’d been too quick and frantic.
It had to have been here. And like the bridge, whatever was underneath that tarp had outwitted time.
This was no small thing. The imprint of her buzzed in between my bones.
On an exhale I yanked away the tarp. My eyes filled again when I saw the subject of the stained glass design she’d inlaid into rich cherrywood. The story it told—impossible. The image and what it meant was too much to process.
Go on. Just keep going. That fateful voice came again, so strong.
From where I stood, there was nowhere to go but forward, straight into the center of the wardrobe.
It felt like a fable. My own Narnia, the Latina retelling.
I swallowed, pausing for two, then three beats, before I gently pulled the knobs.
The interior was cedar-lined; the odor was unmistakable.
Craftsmanship spilled from every groove and peg.
No doors or portals waited to take me to another elsewhere.
(Hadn’t I done enough of that?) But the space wasn’t empty.
On the bottom shelf lay a caja de suenos. Heat surged through my chest as I stared at the polished cherrywood. My tía had promised to make one hundred boxes. In the end, she made only one.
I dashed the back of my hand over my eyes and reached for it. Set into the mosaic lid, a dozen shades of blue formed a vast ocean, waves cresting. I lifted the lid to reveal the fresh cedar lining. The box was empty, but the carved inscription on the base stole every new breath I’d been granted.
It’s not your time.
I managed to get to a nearby stool. I had to sit.
It’s not your time.
(To go. To die.)
This is what Tía Vivian had known before I had known.
This is what Delilah Abernathy had seen before I had seen.
Her words were never about any ocean summer dream. Her words weren’t about Penn or me loving someone who would never be mine. All along, Del had been telling me that I was going to live.
It could’ve been thirty minutes or three days that I sat on that stool, bent over Tía Viv’s workbench, remembering and processing.
Opening and closing my fist as I tried to place an infinity of new truths into that secret space.
It was becoming too heavy to carry. And it was becoming so loud inside my head, as if a hundred woodworking tools and a stormy ocean and a forest of creatures were set off at the same time.
I almost didn’t hear the engine in all that noise. The slamming door. The footsteps. As it turned out, there was still space left in my ability to be shocked. There was space for what would happen next.
For Patrick Gerrity to ease through the doorway.