On Folly Beach Read Free Page B

sunset she watched settle over the Folly River. Their home on Second Street, with its broad porch and flaking yellow paint, was the house her father, a Charleston lawyer, had built for her mother for a summer escape from the heat of the city right after they were married. Everything about the house had her mother’s touch, from the eyelet curtains in the two bedrooms and the large picture window in the front room that faced the street, to the baskets of sand dollars and collection of sea glass that dotted the windowsills.
    Seeing them and touching them each day brought her mother back into her life again, somehow making Maggie feel less lonely and wanting. It was why, when her father died, she’d moved here permanently with Lulu, waiting for the next phase of her life to start.
    She found Lulu in the backyard, nearly hidden by the bedsheets hanging on the clothesline. Cat was supposed to have folded up all the linens and brought them in before the evening chill made them too damp to fold, and Maggie sighed inwardly as she stepped forward.
    The sheets whipped in the unseasonably warm air, hiding and then uncovering Lulu in quick succession, and bringing to mind the end of a movie reel. Maggie’s hair whipped around her head, ruining the curls Cat had spent an hour ironing into her hair. Trying to tuck the loose strands behind her ears, she marched toward her sister, preparing to scold her for not being ready to leave.
    She stopped suddenly on the other side of a white cotton flat sheet, the yellow thread used to mend a hole flashing at her like a skittish cat. Peering around it, she saw Lulu kneeling in the sandy grass where she’d stuck a slender tree branch, its bark darkened and slick from being underwater for a long period of time. Maggie watched as Lulu lifted a green Coca-Cola bottle and inverted it before sliding the open end onto the stub of a severed limb; then Lulu sat back on her heels to admire her handiwork.
    Wind whipped sand up from the ground, stinging Maggie’s legs and smudging the black line Cat had insisted on drawing on them. But Maggie didn’t move, entranced instead with the sound of the wind in the bottle, a keening of depth and otherworldliness—a sound that spoke to the naked part of her that she’d never shown to another human being. Except once.
    “Lulu?”
    Her sister turned abruptly, knocking the branch and making it lean.
    Maggie lifted the sheet and stepped under it before kneeling in the sand in front of Lulu. Lulu’s hazel eyes were wide with surprise and something else that Maggie thought might be anticipation.
    “Did you hear it, Mags?”
    Maggie nodded. “Yes, I did.” Out of habit, she brushed a strand of light brown hair behind Lulu’s ear, a losing battle with the wind. “What’s it for?”
    “It’s a bottle tree. Jim told me about them. He said that African slaves used to put bottles on the trees outside their houses to scare away evil spirits.”
    Maggie wrapped her hand around the damp branch and straightened it, using her other hand to pack sand firmly at the base. “I didn’t know that Jim was superstitious.” She avoided looking at Lulu, afraid to see in Lulu’s eyes the same eagerness she felt to talk about him.
    “He wasn’t. Not really. He said that he’d been listening to bottle trees his whole life, on account of the people that worked for his mama and daddy on the farm. He said that it wasn’t really important if you believe in it; it was important just to have that little piece of something that reminded you of some place or someone you loved.”
    Lulu pursed her lips the way she did when she was debating saying something more, and Maggie knew to stay silent. Finally Lulu said, “Keeping away bad spirits is a good thing just in case, don’t you think?”
    Maggie stared into Lulu’s eyes. “You don’t really believe in bad spirits, do you? Because if I think you’re serious about all of this, I’m going to take you to see Father Doyle tomorrow