Ellen Block - The Language of Sand

Abigail stowed her dinner in the empty bread bag and took it to the car.

Tonight the moon was high, making the street signs legible—that was if they weren’t obscured by branches or leaves. Abigail was still getting the hang of how the island was laid out, reading Merle’s map by her dashboard lights. The roads didn’t run on a grid pattern; quite the opposite. Each curvy lane unraveled of its own accord, unrepentantly irregular, like the rest of Chapel Isle.

The first few properties were unchanged since the previous evening, not a hinge or windowpane disturbed. Abigail was thankful for that. Midway through her route, she took a break to gobble down her dinner. As she sat in the station wagon eating, headlights appeared, glowing in the distance. Then the lights began to flash. It was a police patrol car.

“Uh-oh.”

In her side mirror, Abigail saw Sheriff Larner climbing from the cruiser.

“Evening, Abby.”

“This must seem a little suspicious, me sitting in my car on a dark road, eating a sandwich by flashlight with a hammer in my lap.”

“Not what I expected. Care to tell me what you’re doing?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“No such thing as a short story around here.”

“I’m checking on Lottie’s rental properties for Merle because…uh, because I owed him a favor.” Abigail intentionally avoided the specifics of how she came into that particular debt.

“Oh, right, the infamous fight at the Kettle.”

“It’s infamous ?”

“Only to the people who’ve heard about it.”

“Wonderful.”

“So Merle sent you to…?” Larner expected her to fill in the blanks.

“Test the doors and windows. See if any of the units have been broken into.”

The sheriff cocked his brow. “Guard duty?”

“Merle can barely walk and it’s basically my fault. It’s just for a week, until he’s better.”

“A week, huh?”

“I know, I know. I’m turning into a nuisance, what with starting that fight and the changes I’ve made to the caretaker’s house.”

Her comment visibly caught the sheriff’s attention. Abigail presumed that whatever she did, whether buying a paintbrush or washing her laundry, somebody had already reported on it to everyone else. Wasn’t that how the grapevine worked? And wasn’t Larner the person who’d warned her about it?

“What sorts of changes are we talking about?” he inquired coyly.

Abigail’s defenses went up. She chose her answer prudently. “A little paint. That’s all.”

“Paint never did anybody any harm.”

“Let’s hope not,” Abigail said under her breath.

“You almost finished with your security detail?”

“I have some more houses to visit, then I’ll be off the streets,” she joked.

“Be careful. We haven’t caught the guys responsible for those break-ins. Watch yourself with that hammer, ’kay? Lucky for you it’s not considered a concealed weapon.”

“Okay. I mean, yes, sir.”

With that, the sheriff rode away in his patrol car.

Aside from the police cruiser, Abigail hadn’t seen anybody else drive by in the past two nights. There had been dozens of people at the bingo game. Where were they, she wondered.

At home , she surmised. With their families.

The children would be in bed. Their parents were probably watching television or washing the dinner dishes, getting ready to call it a night. Abigail envied them. She couldn’t see them, didn’t know who they were or where they lived, yet those nameless, faceless people had what she longed for. They would wake up the next morning and their lives would be the same.

The last house on Merle’s map was a white bungalow with flowers blooming out front. Yawning, Abigail circled the building. She glanced at the windows and halfheartedly shook the doors until a set of headlights brightened the road.

“Don’t let it be the sheriff again. I can only take so much humiliation per night.”

The approaching vehicle was a truck rather than a car. Abigail stopped where she stood. She’d left the hammer in her station wagon. The lights grew closer. Whoever was driving would be able to see her shortly.

It could be anybody. Including the thieves.

Abigail hid. Kneeling behind the bushes, she peeked between the leaves. The twang of country music was coming from the truck, along with a woman’s giddy laughter. Two silhouettes hovered in the truck’s cab. The driver pulled to the side of the road, preparing to park a few yards behind her Volvo.

“No, not there. Keep going. Keep going,” she whispered.

The truck’s engine shuddered to a halt, the lights dimmed, and the giggling ceased as the two shadows melded into one.

“Oh, jeez. I could be here all night.”

She considered her options, most of which were mortifying. A woman wandering from the bushes of a deserted house was going to seem odd, and even if she could get to her station wagon without the two lovers in the truck noticing, they would hear her start the car.

“Why do you care? Remember, you’re a badass. You’re infamous . You scoff in the face of adversity. You also talk to yourself too much.”

Abigail emerged from the brush, intent on strolling to her station wagon in a composed fashion. Except her legs moved faster and faster until she broke into a trot.

“Stop. I hear something,” the woman in the truck said.

Two bewildered faces stared at Abigail from behind the steamed windshield. Mid-stride, she locked glances with the female passenger, a woman with wavy hair and wide, plaintive eyes. Abigail recognized her as one of the “hens” sitting with Janine Wertz at the bingo game. Behind the wheel of the truck was Clint Wertz, his arm slung over the woman’s shoulder, her blouse unbuttoned. Abigail jumped into her car and peeled out. She couldn’t tell who was more embarrassed. Her or them.

Even in the dark, the caretaker’s cottage looked better with the grass cut. Abigail sat in the station wagon with the headlights illuminating the front yard to soak in her accomplishment while trying to forget about her awkward run-in with Clint Wertz. Ruth had been right about him. He was bad news, news Abigail would have preferred not to have firsthand.

She got out of the station wagon and heard a crunch. Abigail scanned the ground and the car seat. There was nothing there. When she shifted her weight, the crunching came again. She dug in her pocket. It was the newspaper article from under the bed.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said, feeling guilty for having crumpled that fragile slip of paper.

She went inside, smoothed the clipping on the dining-room table, and reread its heading: BISHOP’S MISTRESS SINKS.

The article was dated 1909. It was about a trade ship from Boston bound for Charleston that was caught in a hurricane that blasted the southern coastline. The storm wreaked havoc from Florida to Delaware. The ship met its end by smashing into a shoal in the Ship’s Graveyard, east of Chapel Isle. Fifty-nine men were lost. No bodies were recovered. The last portion of the article insinuated that the Bishop’s Mistress had gotten trapped in the graveyard because the lighthouse beacon hadn’t been visible to guide it safely into harbor. The final sentence read: A tragedy has befallen the Bishop’s Mistress, perhaps one that was avoidable.

The question the last line raised lodged in Abigail’s mind. A sunken ship, drowned sailors, a spectral lighthouse keeper—the pieces were falling together in an eerie way. She fought the impulse to return to the basement and sort through the ledgers for an answer. Wesley Jasper had kept such precise notes, she was certain there would be some annotation of that night, some clue to the events that occurred.