“Butwedidn’t agree,” Nadine says. “We didn’t, and we don’t.” She looks at her fellow hostages, at Morrow and Blythe and Sylvie. “We’re in this together. We’re staying together. Right, ladies?” They nod in resolution, their decision certain. They are proud and afraid all at the same time.
Morrow knows they have done the right thing in sticking together. At least she hopes they have. She feels a surge of camaraderie, a bond forged akin to the kind that soldiers find in foxholes. She wants to hug each one of them, but she stays in her place. They all do, even as Tommy storms around cursing and muttering at their mutiny.
This event, Morrow thinks,is something I will only ever have in common with the women in this room.This matters, though in the moment she cannot gauge how much. Perhaps they will walk out of this—she has to believe they will walk out of this—and never see one another again. Still, as Tommy goes back to the phone to tell the negotiator they don’t have a deal after all, Morrow hopes they will stay in one another’s lives after today. She thinks of what she came here to mail and how satisfying it would be to have friends like these to talk to about it. She hasn’t found friends in this town like she’d hoped, yet it was her dream to move here, to live by the sea.
Sometimes she thinks it was inevitable, being named for a woman who wrote a famous book about the ocean. She does not remember a time she was not drawn to it. Perhaps her mother planted the idea in her head when she was a baby, whispering to her about all the gifts the sea could give her. She likes to picture her mother holding her, the two of them looking out at the water together as the waves crash and the seagulls call to one another. She likes to think that happened often, but she never got thechance to ask her mother. By the time she was mature enough to think of such questions, her mother was gone. Whether it did or didn’t happen, her love of the beach is something that has defined her for as long as she can remember. Throughout her life, she did anything she could to get back to it, living fifty-one weeks a year for one week every summer.
So after being a good sport through countless moves for Kevin’s job, when he took a remote position and told her she could choose where they would live, the decision was a foregone conclusion. They moved to Sunset Beach the year Maya started high school. Other than Morrow, no one in her family was really thrilled with the decision.
While Kevin liked the proximity to golf and the water, he complained bitterly about the lack of direct flights every time he traveled, which was a lot. Their son was out of the house by then, so he didn’t really have a stake in where his parents lived. But Maya, her baby, her only daughter, barely spoke to her during her entire ninth-grade year, giving her the silent treatment for moving her away from her friends and her school. The move had come at a cost—Morrow still has sticker shock—and yet she has what she’s always wanted. Or what she always thought she wanted.
She feels that niggling sense that perhaps her life would be better if she hadn’t decided to move them here. She wonders if she made a mistake choosing her wants over her family’s. As a young mom she used to hear that you should take care of your own needs first, then the needs of your family, citing that airplane example about the oxygen. But that really only applies if the plane is crashing. In Morrow’s experience it doesn’t always work that way. The people you love can come to resent you for choosing yourself, silently judging you for prioritizing your wants over theirs.
But at the time, when presented with the option, Morrow couldn’t help but think,If not now, when?She didn’t want to wait for retirement to live in a place she loved, only getting the best part of her life at the end of her life. So when she had the chance, she took it. And now she is here, in the place she loves most of all, a place she longed to be, in a hostage situation. The irony is not lost on her.
Chapter 27
While they wait for the pizzas to arrive—it is taking a lot longer than Sylvie expected—Tommy has gone back to rifling through the mail, threatening again to open the envelopes and read what is inside. “It’s illegal, Tommy,” Nadine scolds him. “A federal offense.”
Tommy points at the poster of the USPS logo. “Ohhh nooo. The Sonic Eagle is gonna get me!”
“Just leave it alone,” Nadine says. “People sent those letters expecting them to get where they’re going. You don’t have the right to interfere with that.”
At least a year ago—maybe longer, time runs together—Sylvie had watched an interview about a man who had picked up thousands of pieces of mail that had been strewn about on the side of the highway. The man had said that when he called the post office to report what he had found, they told him those letters had been deemed undeliverable. The man was upset and held up what looked to be a personal card, perhaps for a birthday or graduation or in sympathy, lamenting that whoever sent that card, and whoever it was intended for, would never know what happened to their attempt to communicate.
Since then, Sylvie had thought of that news report from time to time. She could still see that pink envelope in her mind, the man’s sad face as he held it up for the camera. It had been tossedaside like trash. Yet someone somewhere had gone to a store, taken the time to select the card, written a message in it, found a stamp and addressed it, then sent it on its way. That person had trusted that it would reach its intended recipient, only to have it left on the side of the road. Even now they might be wondering whatever happened to it.
It was just another example of how humans try, and fail, to connect with one another. And yet we persist, reaching out in hopes of receiving love, acceptance, validation, forgiveness in return. She thinks of Tommy’s efforts to reach Nadine, misguided as they are. She thinks of her own reasons for coming to the post office today, of how by pleasing one person she loves, she will be hurting another. She doesn’t know how to prevent what feels inevitable.
She should’ve known her son was up to something when he asked her to go for a walk with him at the town park when he visited last weekend. A lovely piece of land that sits right on the Intracoastal Waterway, the park features swings that overlook the water, paths for walking, and picnic tables. Many times she and Robert have gone there to have a picnic. It is a peaceful spot, a place ideal for reading or reflecting or gathering.
The town market is held there every Thursday, which is where Sylvie gets her produce since she no longer gardens. And on Wednesday nights from Memorial Day to Labor Day, there is a free concert. They try to go at least a few times each summer, choosing the performers who sing the oldies. “Oldies for oldies,” Robert says. Once they stumbled upon a wedding being held there, and once they saw a gaggle of girls taking their prom pictures down by the water, all willowy beauty and bright eyes.
She and her son had strolled along the sidewalks, enjoying the spring weather. She’d been happy, grateful for a little alone time with her only child, apart from his wife and daughters, who hadgone to the beach. Lulled by his ruse, she’d been blindsided when their conversation turned. “Dad seemed out of it last night,” her son had said, seven words that sank her. Sylvie willed herself not to stop in her tracks, to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She thought she’d covered for Robert, that Robert Junior and his family were none the wiser.
Robert Junior, who goes by Rob, continued. “He’s called me before and been confused. One time when he spoke to the girls, he couldn’t remember their names. They were pretty rattled by it.” He glanced over at Sylvie, but she made no comment, so he kept talking. “I know you love living here, but I’m not sure the two of you should be so far from family,” he’d said. “You’re all on your own here.”
Yes, Sylvie had thought.And we like it that way, the two of us against the world. It was the way we started, the promise we made on our wedding day.But she hadn’t said it. She hadn’t said anything, so Rob did. “You have to think about the what-ifs—”
“Put that stuff down and come sit.” Nadine’s voice pulls Sylvie out of her recollection. “The pizza should be here soon.”
Tommy looks up. “I don’t have anywhere to sit,” he says, sullen.
Nadine gestures to a space near where they are sitting on the stools. “You can sit on the floor and lean against the cabinet.”
Sylvie watches as he acquiesces to Nadine. Sometimes it seems that Tommy forgets that he’s in charge, that he’s the one with the gun. She gives Nadine a sly wink, a reminder of what she’d said in the bathroom. The stage is set. Seated, with a place to rest his head, he can eat the pizza, get full and sleepy, and nod off, and then they can flee. A surge of optimism courses through her. It is almost over. Whereisthat pizza?
“In my day,” she says, just to fill the quiet and try to make the time go faster, “everyone wrote letters. There was no email. Nocell phones. You called someone at their home or, if it was long distance, you wrote a letter. That’s how you kept in touch.”
Morrow chimes in. “I remember. We had pen pals. We wrote thank-you notes. We passed notes in school. I would meet kids at camp in the summer, and we’d exchange letters all year long until we went back to camp the next summer.” She pauses. “I wonder where all those letters are now.” She smiles. “They’d be fun to read.”
“There was something satisfying about receiving a letter,” Sylvie agrees. “The anticipation of wondering what was inside, what bit of news or unexpected declaration might be waiting.”
Morrow, who guesses she’s probably the only other person in the room to recall a time before email existed, nods.
“I was a schoolteacher before I retired,” Sylvie continues. “Used to be letter writing was an actual unit that was taught as part of English, which is what I taught. The students had to learn how to write a formal letter, a friendly letter, a thank-you letter, and the different parts of each one. We were quite formal about it all.”
Now we aren’t formal enough, Sylvie thinks.Everyone is so casual about everything. Too casual.But she does not say this. Instead, she says, “I would have each student write a letter to the business of their choice and ask for something, something that had to do with that business.” She gives a little laugh. “Oh, the things we got in return. It was such fun!”
