August’s hands on my arms tighten to the point of pain, and then three things happen at once.
I see Lo reach for the hammer at her feet.
I hear August roar with rage.
And I watch as a tree limb thicker than my body slams into the front window, bringing rain, broken glass, and what feels like a tornado with it.
Hurricane Lizzie sweeps into the Rosalie, and death follows.
MARIE
August 5, 1984
This is how it happened.
I woke up on what turned out to be the last day of my life—my old life, my normal life, the life where I thought I knew what kind of person I was—and decided to tell Landon about the baby.
I’d known myself for only a little while, maybe a couple of weeks, and there were still times I tried to pretend it wasn’t real. It didn’t feel real in a lot of ways, not that early. I was nauseous, a kind of motion sickness that struck even when I was standing still, and my breasts ached the way they did just before I got my period, but those things were fairly easy to ignore.
Still, it was there, like a sore tooth, a persistent throb of worry in the back of my mind, and at night, I’d lie awake, considering my options.
The first and most obvious option was that I would go to Mobile and, as ladies around here euphemistically put it, “get things taken care of.”
That was the most sensible one, but I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to go by myself, and who could I tell? My mother was a kind and good woman, but our relationship had always been a little formal, a little distant, and the thought of telling her—of the shame in her face—was scarier even than the thought of going alone.
I could tell Tim, of course. We’d slept together a handful of times by then, and he’d assume it was his. But Tim was too sweet, too honest, and the thought of lying to him about something like that—of putting that weight on his heart when he’d done nothing but love me—was too much to bear.
Lo and Frieda…
They would have been with me, no question. They would’ve assumed it was Tim’s, and I wouldn’t have to lie, just not correct them, but something about that felt just as bad as lying, and the plain truth was I wasn’t good at lying.
It almost makes me laugh to think about it now. How in the end, all I could think was something you usually saw stitched onto samplers in old ladies’ houses or posted on a kindergarten bulletin board: Honesty Is the Best Policy.
Funny—in trying to be honest, I only ended up committing myself to a lifetime of lies.
So that morning, the morning before Marie, I woke up knowing that the only thing to do was tell Landon the truth and see where the chips fell.
So much of that day still feels like a dream. It had started too early, with the shrill ringing of the phone. My brother had been at camp that summer, the same one Mama and Daddy had sent me to, right on the Tennessee line in Ardmore, and for whatever reason, he and some of his bunkmates had gone out the night before to do… I don’t know, whatever stupid things young boys do when they’re teenagers and trying to prove their masculinity. In Adam’s case, it had ended in a broken leg and a concussion, and Mama had been frantic to reach him.
He’d always been her favorite.
She wanted to go to him, but she didn’t drive—do you know, I never asked her why that was?—so it would have to be Daddy behind the wheel, but she couldn’t stay behind, not when Adam needed her.
It probably sounds awful, my parents leaving me alone with a storm headed our way, but I was the one who urged them to go. Marie wasn’t really supposed to be all that bad, truth be told. A Cat 1 that might fizzle into a tropical storm before she even got to us. And I promised them that, should things turn, I’d go stay with Frieda and her aunt. They had a storm shelter, and I’d be safe there. It was much more likely that I’d lose power for a bit, and they’d be back by the next night anyway.
And I craved the solitude, storm or no storm. With the inn empty of guests and my parents gone, it might be easier to listen to my own thoughts, my own soul, and decide what to do about the baby.
So after they drove off in our sensible station wagon, I, almost without realizing it, found myself making my way down the beach to the little house Landon had gotten for Lo.
She wouldn’t be there that day; I knew she would be at her mama’s store instead, helping Miss Beth-Anne prepare for the storm. She’d mentioned it the night before on the phone, her sigh so loud I was surprised my hair didn’t blow back.
“Honestly, the best thing that could happen to Beth-Anneandme would be all that plastic shit getting washed out to sea, but I guess that’s bad for, like, dolphins or whatever,” she’d said, and I’d laughed. It must have sounded weird, though, because Lo suddenly asked, “Are you okay?”
I almost told her then. Part of me wishes I had. Who knows what might have happened if I’d just spilled the whole story, then and there. It would’ve been awful, I know that. For all I know, it might even have been deadly, too. But it would’ve been different, and that’s all I have ever been able to think about. That surely, there had to be some other outcome, some other fate than the one headed to us on Marie’s back.
But that had been another thing I wasn’t brave enough for, so I’d just told her I was worried about the storm, and then we’d moved on to other topics.
She didn’t talk much about Landon at that point, but then he barely ever mentioned her, so I never really knew where they stood with each other, and honestly, even if I’d asked, I’m not sure either would’ve told the truth.
