The Sea Glass Sisters Read Free Page A

on the beach.”
    “Mom, in the first place, it’s a store, not a hut. In the second place, she’s a grown woman. And in the third place, she’s been there for almost twenty years now. She knows what she wants.”
    “She doesn’t know anything. She’s sixty-five years old, for heaven’s sake. How much longer does she think she and George will be able to stay there anyway?” Mom paces down the entryway, Honey’s rear end swinging against her hip. The cat’s feet flail, searching for a toehold. I know the feeling.
    “Mom, you can’t make Aunt Sandy and Uncle George pull up stakes and come back. Maybe they never will. Maybe when they finally can’t run the shell shop anymore, they’ll just . . . retire there on the Outer Banks.” It sounds nice. Retiring on an island.
    Mom pulls a sheet of instructions from her pocket and leaves it on the dining table as she passes. Honey braces a claw on my mother’s hip, tries to retract herself from the elbow hold. Mom hasn’t even noticed so far.
    “I’ll tell you what’ll happen. She’ll sell that property and throw the money into that shop, and then when another storm comes along, or she or George experience a health crisis and they can’t live in such a remote place anymore, they won’t have anywhere to come home to. And we’ll be stuck with strangers building houses right in the middle of all of our places. Butch doesn’t have the money to buy the land from her, and neither do I.”
    Honey has finally gone into full-out escape mode. My mother releases her, and she jumps to the floor and skitters away, skidding on the tile as she disappears around the corner.
    Mom barely gives the cat a second glance. She has bigger fish to fry. “I’m going there to talk some sense into her, face-to-face. That’s all there is to it.”
    That’s the second time she’s said it. And this time, it genuinely worries me. “Mom, you’ve never once been out to Aunt Sandy’s place in all these years, and now, suddenly, you’re going? And then what? You’ll kidnap Aunt Sandy and Uncle George and force them to come back to Michigan?”
    Her green eyes flare, then narrow beneath windblown shocks of hair. She’s not used to being talked to like this. No one talks back to the principal. It’s hard for her to get used to civilian life. Even harder, since, after nearly thirty years of dedicated service, she was caught in the squeeze play of an unpleasant consolidation between two schools.
    Retirement isn’t suiting my mother. That school was her heart and soul. “George isn’t even there with her right now. He’s in Kalamazoo, taking care of his mother. He has been there off and on for months. The poor man is commuting back and forth between Michigan and Hatteras Island, trying to see to his mother’s care and help Sandy keep that shop afloat. It’s ridiculous. Their family is here. Their children and grandchildren are here. Someone has to force Sandy to see reason.”
    “Mother, you cannot fly to North Carolina on your own.”
    “I’m not flying. I’m driving.”
    “You definitely can’t drive to North Carolina.” I’m guessing that trip would take twelve to fourteen hours. Just a couple months ago, Mom ran her car into a ditch during a three-hour drive to my great-aunt’s house. I think she fell asleep at the wheel, but she won’t admit it.
    “Oh yes, I can. There’s some worry about a storm on the East Coast mucking up the airports. I don’t want to fly and end up trapped out there.”
    “So your solution is to drive ?” Like Uncle Butch burning rubber in his old Suburban, this would be funny if it weren’t so serious.
    “Yes, that’s my solution. And if you’re so worried about it, you can come with me. We’ll only be gone a few days.”
    Her gaze catches mine, and suddenly I realize this is why she’s really here. This is what she’s had in mind all along.

CHAPTER 3
    He’s there in the woods. I hear him moving in the shadows. A sense of warning