Chapter 17
I went home Friday afternoon. With Beck and Aunt Leah gone, the house was mine. I also wanted to see the sun rise over the
water. I missed it. Trish invited me to a luncheon for her sorority that was being held at the Charleston Tea Garden. The
Tea Garden was the oldest and only large-scale commercial tea garden in North America. Their teas tasted like God planted
them in the garden of Eden. For that reason, I was more than happy to take the thirty-minute ride to Wadmalaw Island. I hadn’t
visited in a long time. I always stocked up at the store on the way out.
As we left the building, Trish asked, “So are you going home or back to the cabin?”
“The cabin is closer than home. It makes sense.”
“Good,” Trish said, bumping her shoulder against mine. “You’ve been away for almost a month. I need to see where you’re living.”
“Can you stay for the weekend?”
Trish shook her head. “Maybe next week.”
My disappointment over the Manning High thing had me out of sorts. I hadn’t shared it with Trish yet. I could really use her company, but at least she was visiting. Once we arrived, she popped her trunk and removed a weekender bag.
“Surprise!”
I pulled her into a hug. “You know I was feeling some kind of way.”
“You know I like to surprise you, girl.”
Removing her sunglasses as she entered, Trish did a quick assessment of my new home. She went into all the rooms. Nodding
as she exited the bathroom, she said, “Very cute. Conducive to setting the atmosphere for the next great American novel.”
She stopped at the wall of quotes and settled there, her head tilting right and left as she read.
I left her there and went into the kitchen to check the fridge for food. “It’s lean in here!” I called out. I poured lemonade
and joined her at the wall of quotes, skimming them again.
Trish took her glass from me and said, “We’ll order takeout.”
We went out to the screened porch and sat. Trish nodded toward the view. “This is pretty.”
“I love it. I use it more than the open porch.”
“There are too many bugs out there,” Trish laughed. “I saw them as I was coming in.”
“Did you feel any spirits?”
“Too much haint blue for that,” she said, looking around the porch. She saw what I saw. It had a blue ceiling and was sparsely
furnished with a sweetgrass basket with blue trim in one corner and a two-foot bottle tree in another.
“How are the kiddos?” Trish asked.
I told her about the contest and Regina.
“Let me get this straight—you found a teenage you, just with better handwriting and more confidence?”
I hesitated before speaking, the truth sitting heavy in my chest. “Certainly more talent than I had.”
Trish shrugged. “Your whole face has changed. You hear yourself, right? She’s not just a student to you; she’s a little mirror.
Like you’re watching the version of yourself who didn’t get permission to dream yet.
” Her words grounded us both. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.
She’s your do-over. Helping her is helping you. ”
I harrumphed. Her words settled between us, quiet, undeniable, and probably true. I stared out at the view and let them sink
in; they hit as solidly as the large oak tree in my line of vision.
“I have to pee, and we need to order food.” Trish opened her phone and walked back into the house.
While Trish was gone, I called Ms. Kate to ask if we could see the museum tomorrow. She told me the time she was usually home
from church and said we could come after.
We were fans of pizza. Trish found a place in Hollywood with a respectable number of five-star reviews. She ordered, and we
pulled out our laptops while we waited, determined to get some work done. I was close to having a solid forty pages and feeling
good about them.
After dinner we drifted back onto the screened porch. The sky was blue-black now, the marsh beyond us blurred into shadow.
Crickets hummed. Somewhere in the distance, an owl lifted a slow, echoing hoot into the night, and I remembered Ms. Kate’s
birdhouses.
Trish tucked her legs under her. With all the introspective magic she always had, she said, “You have something on your mind.
I didn’t want to ruin dinner by asking about it.”
I stared at the bottle tree in the corner, casting colors from the reflected light of the porch lamp. I told her about my
trip to Manning High, finishing with “It was awful. I went through that whole yearbook, page by page, and there was no John
Miller. Not one. And then I realized Mom wasn’t in it either.”
Trish’s eyebrows lifted. “So she lied?”
“Yes, which means she’s lying about a lot more.” I couldn’t stop my memory from going back to the high school office. “I just stood there in that office flipping through faces like I was hunting ghosts.”
Trish was quiet for a long moment. Not pity. Just presence. “Did you ask her about it?”
I shook my head, staring into my glass. “No. I drove back here instead. I couldn’t face her. Not yet. I need more information.
I need to talk to Mrs. Simon’s lead.”
“Good.” Trish said it without hesitation. “You don’t owe her the chance to rewrite the lie. She’s had decades to tell you
the truth.”
I looked up, startled by how fiercely Trish spoke.
“I keep going back and forth. Part of me feels disloyal. Like I’m sneaking around behind her back.”
“You’re not sneaking. You’re finding your truth the way you need to find it,” Trish replied.
I swallowed. “What if it’s something terrible? What if I’m the child of something awful—rape, or . . . something worse?”
Trish didn’t flinch. “If that’s true, then that belongs to the adult who committed the violence. Not to you. You are not the
shame in the story.”
I blinked hard, because tears were too close. “I don’t know whether to be angry or sad.”
“You can be both,” Trish said softly. “And you don’t have to protect your mother from the consequences of her secrets.”
I let that sit in the warm night air. Her words spoke truth to my power. My first instinct was right. It was time for me to
figure it out.
“And to think, the email from Joy started all this,” Trish said.
Trish and I sat there for a few more minutes while I processed our conversation. The sounds of evening hummed around us, giving me the atmosphere I needed for my thoughts. A moth thudded against the screen.
Trish popped up. “The bugs are about to get vicious. Let’s go watch a rom-com or something.”
I smiled, and we went back into the house.
The next morning we ventured out and found a breakfast place that served the best biscuits, grits, country ham, eggs, and
potatoes that I had had in a long time. We made pigs of ourselves, cutting off the gluttony at the right hour to venture over
to the museum. We decided to walk off the food, so we dropped the car off at the cabin.
Ms. Kate was already on her porch. As we got closer, I could see that she was on the phone. She paused her call and said,
“It’s open. Go on in.”
We explored quietly. I experienced the same tug of emotions I felt the first time. Trish lingered over the artifacts, tools,
books, and heirlooms until we reached the wall of paintings where the room itself seemed to breathe.
“These should be in a gallery,” Trish said, marveling at the work. “I’d buy them.”
“Galleries are for selling.” We had not heard Ms. Kate come in. We turned to her, and she continued, “Them not for sale.”
“Excuse me, I just meant they’re so beautiful,” Trish said, asking for pardon for what must have seemed like a blunder on
her part.
“Ms. Kate, I want you to meet my best friend in the world.”
Ms. Kate joined us in front of the paintings, and I introduced Trish to her. After, Trish said, “You and your son are very
talented.”
Ms. Kate smiled, but as always when her or Erik’s art was the subject of a compliment, the smile was good-mannered; there
was no happiness. “Thank you,” she said.
After a time, we left the museum, and Ms. Kate locked the door behind us.
“Do you have questions about anything?” Her question was for Trish.
“No. It’s well done,” Trish said to Ms. Kate, and then to me, “I feel inspired.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “To set a book in Charleston?”
Ms. Kate asked, “Oona write also?”
“Historical fiction,” Trish replied. “Mostly during the Regency era. I find that time fascinating and full of possibility.”
“All times have possibility. God is there, even when we don’t see him, and the stories need to be told.”
Trish seemed to soak in her words before replying. “I think I’ve been intimidated about setting a book in Charleston. It’s
home. The bar would be so high for me.” Trish was right about that. I could only imagine what her parents, especially her
mother, would say if the local reviewers didn’t give it five stars. Trish continued, “But seeing the artifacts here and already
knowing a lot about the history of the rebellion and Caw Caw”—she sighed long and hard—“it feels inevitable.”
“Inevitability is a gift,” Ms. Kate said.
We left the museum with her words creating quiet between us. I didn’t know what Trish was thinking about, but the decisions
I’d made about looking for my father sat squarely on my chest. I turned Ms. Kate’s words over in my mind as we walked back
to the cabin. Inevitability. A gift. Maybe that was what this season about finding my father and my connection to Joy was
for me. Inevitable. As with a good novel, I deserved a story that ended with a truth that was inevitable.