Greeting
Chapter 1
April 16
It is spring in Sunset Beach, which is second only to fall in Sunset Beach. Summer is a necessary time for the town since most of the people who live here make the bulk of their income from the tourists who arrive in summer, tripling the population for the high season of Memorial Day through Labor Day. But in the spring (and fall) the weather is lovely, the tourists are mostly gone, and the beaches are less crowded. Everything is less crowded. In spring the people who live here year-round are especially grateful they do.
This week is no exception, as the forecast is for temperatures in the seventies and no rain. When Sylvie checks the weather on her phone, she sees only a line of suns. If she had a yard, she’d be outside gardening on a week like this. But Sylvie doesn’t have a yard anymore because she has moved to an “active living community.” There, retirees like herself and her husband live in a little (less to clean!) one-level (no stairs to climb!) house with a yard the size of a postage stamp (no grass to mow!). Everything about their living situation tends toward less activity, which has begun to suit Sylvie just fine.
Though she doesn’t like to admit it, she’s not a young woman anymore. In fact, some might call her old. She is confronted withthis truth whenever she sees her face. Or whenever she looks at her husband, Robert, who has morphed into an old man, with hair growing out of his ears and eyelids that have pleated, the flesh drooping down over his eyes, reminding her a little of a basset hound they once had. Though she would never say that to him.
How did this happen?She sometimes thinks when she looks at Robert, and always when she looks at herself,How did we get so old?Sylvie is thinking about being old a lot more since their son and his family visited for the weekend just a few days ago. The thought of the weekend makes her eyes stray to the large manila envelope she has tucked out of sight in the space between her nightstand and the bed. She’d promised to mail it this week, but the week is almost over. Sylvie turns away from the envelope, leaving it behind by leaving her bedroom.
She goes to the kitchen instead, busying herself with something else besides the envelope and what is inside it. Though she’s already made lunch for Robert (she wasn’t hungry, but he was), she needs to decide what to fix for dinner. She has been thinking about what to fix for dinner for decades now, yet the question still regularly stumps her. She rummages around in the refrigerator at their prospects, which are not so good. She really needs to make a run to the grocery store, another errand she has been putting off, but not for the same reasons she has put off going to the post office.
Sylvie opens the pantry door as if something magic will appear before her eyes. But, to quote the old nursery rhyme, the cupboard is bare. Sylvie thinks maybe she and Robert will just go out to dinner. They go out to dinner too much now that they are retired. She admits this. But it’s so nice to have somewhere to go, to chat with other people, even if those people are only the restaurant owners and servers. It adds some excitement to theday. Retirement is, as her friend Bea says, “six Saturdays and a Sunday.” Sylvie used to look forward to weekends. Now her life is one long loop of them. It’s not that retirement isn’t nice. It’s quite relaxing. It’s just sort of, if she’s being completely honest, boring.
Sylvie shuts the pantry door and goes to stand at the kitchen window, which looks out over their suggestion of a backyard. From the window she spots a large lizard strolling across their back deck. He stops to tip his head toward the sky as a large red plume emerges from his neck. She calls out to Robert, “That big ole lizard is back!” and smiles to herself as she hears a hurried shuffling of feet in response. She doesn’t know what it says about their life that a lizard sighting is cause for excitement, but as the young people say, it is what it is.
Sylvie observes the lizard’s attempt to attract a mate, both intrigued and horrified by the strange ritual taking place on their porch. Robert comes to stand beside her, and they watch side by side without speaking. Once, a female lizard appeared and the male jumped on her. The two wrestled around in a violent sort of way until Sylvie banged on the glass and they both ran off. Perhaps this will occur again. Sylvie finds herself hoping for it, just for something to happen.
Robert turns to grin at her, and for a fraction of a second she fears that he has forgotten who she is, that he will ask her name and try to introduce himself. It would not be the first time. But no, he is smiling just to smile. Today is one of his good days, and he must know it as much as she does, though they will not put words to it.
She thinks of the envelope again as the lizard gives up his quest for a mate and wanders off. Watching him go, she decides what she’s going to do, committing before she can talk herself out of it. She turns away from the window to look at Robert. “I have to run an errand,” she says to him. “Just a quick one.” She smileseven as a sick dread fills her stomach over the part she is leaving out. A half-truth is not a lie, she reasons.
“We’re woefully low on food, so I need to pick up something to make for dinner tonight. What are you in the mood for?”
Instead of answering, Robert takes her in his arms and dances her around the kitchen, humming “I’m in the Mood for Love.” Sylvie laughs, and the dread she was feeling dissipates some. Robert takes her on a rotation of their small kitchen before letting her go. He steps back. “I could come with you?” he offers.
“No,” she says as her heart picks up speed. If Robert joins her, he will wonder why she’s stopping at the post office. He will ask what’s in the envelope she is mailing. Sylvie doesn’t want Robert to know what’s in the envelope. She doesn’t want anyone to know what’s in there. She wishes she didn’t herself.
“I’ll be quick,” she tells him. “And you hate grocery shopping.”
She gives him a reassuring smile, though it’s herself she’s trying to reassure. She adds, “Just don’t come in here and make any food while I’m gone. I’ll be back in plenty of time to make us dinner, and I wouldn’t want you spoiling it.” She gives a little laugh, an effort to make light of what she has just said to her husband, speaking to him as if he were a child, thinking of any other things he could attempt that he shouldn’t while she is gone.
“And don’t go for a walk by yourself, okay? Wait for me, and we can do something when I get back. I won’t be gone long.” She says this again, wondering if she should leave him alone at all. But no, she will continue to think positive: He is having a good day. He knows who she is, he’s in good spirits, he’s recognized the routines of their day, and he’s been oriented to his surroundings. (These are all the things Sylvie has learned to watch out for from googling.) A couple of quick errands should be fine. She worries too much.
She huffs out the anxiety that has built up within her as Robert nods his assent to all she has said, not seeming to notice her safeguarding. And if he does, he doesn’t mention it. Neither of them ever broaches what is happening to him. Theirs is a tacit pact to ignore it until a time comes when they have to address it. But Sylvie does wish she could talk to him about it. To do so would be to share the burden, just as they always have when hard things have come along. But would that be selfish of her to force the issue if he’d rather not face it? She fears it would, so she keeps quiet. Instead, she asks him for ideas of what they could do when she gets home.
“It’s such a pretty day,” Robert says. “We could take our chairs out to the beach and sit.”
They love to do that. It is one of their favorite things about living in Sunset Beach. They have so much time together now. Time they’ve waited so long to have. And yet the more time they have, the faster it seems to slip away.Not yet, she thinks.Not yet.
“Yes,” she tells her husband. “That sounds lovely.” She is already looking forward to that moment. In just a few hours it will be the two of them with their toes in the sand and the ocean as their vista. They might even take along books to read. Nonfiction for him, fiction for her, just the way it’s always been. “Let’s do that. Anything you want.”
He waggles his eyebrows and she sees the young man he once was. That was a long time ago and no time at all. “Anything?” he asks, and she laughs as he takes her in his arms again, spinning her around the room one more time.
Chapter 2
This story starts with a hot dog. That’s boiling it down some (get it—hot dog, boil?), but without that hot dog, it’s fair to say that none of the rest of what’s to come would’ve happened. Two postal workers, Martha and Stacy, got a craving for a hot dog, a very specific hot dog from a very specific place called Burg Dog, and decided they just couldn’t go on with their workday without one.
They talked about how good those hot dogs were so much that they convinced the new girl at the post office, Nadine, to hold down the fort while they ran over to Shallotte “real quick” to get them all hot dogs for lunch. (Even though we all know no one runs “real quick” over to Shallotte.) Someone had to stay at the post office to take care of the customers, and being the newbie, Nadine was the easy pawn in Stacy and Martha’s plan to cut out of there.
It is a Thursday, after all, which in many towns like Sunset Beach is Friday eve. And it is springtime to boot. The flowers are blooming, the sun is shining bold and bright in the sky, and the air feels fresh and hopeful. It is the kind of spring day when you can smell the green in the air. So naturally Stacy and Martha wanted a little field trip away from work. Who could blame them?
Those two were breaking rules and taking risks by leaving in the middle of a shift, but Nadine figured what business was itof hers if they did? It wasn’t her neck on the chopping block if they got caught. Nadine’s biggest concern was whether she could hold her own with the customers who came in while Stacy and Martha were gone.
“What do I do if they ask to speak to whoever’s in charge?” she asked Martha, who actually was in charge, just before they left.
