The Sea Glass Sisters Read Free

order to save the seaside store that has eaten up most of her cash reserves after the hurricane damage last year.
    So far, Uncle Butch has threatened everything from a legal filibuster involving easements on the farmland to the equivalent of a family shunning. It won’t do any good. Aunt Sandy is the baby of the family, and only slightly over five feet tall herself, but she is a force of nature. The rebel. She won’t cave, no matter how much everyone espouses the logic of finally letting go of the beachfront retirement dream that has kept Aunt Sandy and Uncle George away from the family compound for the past eighteen years.
    I haven’t ever seen her little store by the sea, even though it’s just a day’s drive away. If I did anything to encourage this post-empty-nest life my aunt and uncle have carved out for themselves, I’d never hear the end of it, especially now that they’re getting older. My mother can’t fathom why anyone would want to live more than a stone’s throw from their children and grandchildren.
    But lately I understand it. Sometimes when I’m coming home after a long third shift on the boards, I want to run away to the beach myself.
    I watch the fight across the street until it finishes. Uncle Butch stalks off to his vehicle and drives away, spewing gravel and burning rubber all the way up the street, a skill he undoubtedly perfected as a high schooler with Elvis hair, cruising in his ’57 Chevy. The maneuver loses some of its effect when it’s done in an old, potbellied Suburban and you’re only going a half mile up the street.
    The next thing I know, I’m laughing, and I wonder if I’ve really lost it this time. Maybe this is the final tipping off some invisible cliff.
    You’re just tired, I tell myself. You need to catch a few hours’ sleep, then go to work. Stay on the routine. Keep up the hope. Dispatchers aren’t supposed to get involved with the cases that come through the 911 phone lines, but the truth is, the calls stay with you. You go into the profession because you want to help people. You can’t just turn that on and off.
    A blonde curl peeks from the shadows of my purse—the photograph on a flyer seeking any news of Emily. They called off the search for her today. There’s simply nowhere else to look.
    I remind myself again to have hope. If you give up, it’s like saying that little girl isn’t coming home.
    But the tears press anyway, and I pull the shades, slide into bed, and close my eyes. I’m just . . . so . . . tired. . . .
    The doorbell rings downstairs as I finally start to drift. Who in the world? No one in the family would bother ringing the bell. They’d come in through the garage.
    I ignore it, hoping it’s just a package delivery, something Robert ordered online for the cabin. With so much vacation built up after seventeen years with the auto company, he has plenty of time to work on the place.
    The doorbell rings again. Twice. Close together. Insistent.
    I get up, put on a robe, and head downstairs. Before I reach the front door, I recognize the halo of auburn hair on the other side of the leaded glass. Mom. Why she’s ringing the bell, I can’t imagine.
    I open the door, and she thrusts a white pet carrier my way. She has her cat, Honey, dangling under one arm and a sack of kitty chow under the other. “You’ll have to keep Honey for me.” As usual, it’s an order, not a question. She jabs the pet carrier outward again. “Here. Take this.”
    I relieve her of the carrier and the cat chow as she breezes past me into the house. “Mom, what are you talking about?”
    She strokes Honey’s head so hard that the cat’s eyes bug out with every pass. “I’m going to Sandy’s and talking some sense into her. It’s the only way. I am not having this family, or this farm, torn apart so my sister can sink the last of her money into that stupid shop of hers. Mother and Daddy didn’t give us this land so we could sell it and run off to some hut