Sandcastles Read online

  A hollow gap in time and space sucked the air from my lungs. I tugged at Dean, urging him away with me, away from the weird lady. But Dean and his curious soul stood firm, now staring at her with the wide eyes of someone seeing a UFO. I pushed him forward, but he remained glued with that mischievous grin I’ve learned to love so much.

  “Let’s see what she has to say.”

  “We came to buy an air compressor.”

  I pulled him away, and he followed me like a puppy.

  We walked a few tables over and found the air compressor booth and a man, with a huge nose and even bigger ears, hunched over the counter reading the Providence Journal.

  “Are you Ernie?” I asked.

  He looked up from the newspaper, offering me a welcome smile. “Yes I am. The one and only.” He stood up and opened his arms up to me. “You look just like your father. My God. It’s uncanny.” He walked up to me and took me in his arms, squeezing me in a bear hug. “Your mother told me I should be expecting you.”

  “Yes. Apparently, my father only wants your air compressor.”

  His face lit up. “Smart man.” He winked and turned to the corner of his booth where a shiny red cylinder sat. “Last time I went to your father’s garage to get my tires rotated, we talked about it.”

  “I’m glad I’ll get him a gift he’s going to like,” I said.

  “It’s the last one I have in stock. So, he’s going to be a happy man. They don’t manufacture them like this model anymore.”

  “Fantastic.” I handed him my credit card.

  Once we finished our transaction, I carried the compressor under my arm and braced for the bumps and shoves of the crowd.

  We walked past the psychic, and her eyes bore into mine again. I shivered.

  Dean veered off in her direction, stranding me in a sea of stupid people who banged into me and ushered me along like a rotten log in a dirty river.

  I backed away, tearing myself from her eyes. I hid behind a rack of lip-glosses, taking in the full side view of them both beginning their dance of curiosity. I watched as the weird lady charmed Dean with a crooked smile. She took his palm and studied it.

  “You have allergies, I see,” she said, speaking with a serious tone.

  Dean arched his eyebrow. “No. You’re wrong on that one.”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m not wrong. You have allergies.”

  “Tell me more, then.”

  She dropped his hand and pointed to her tabletop sign. “I can do a basic life reading for ten dollars. But if you want to find the root cause of that allergy, I’ll have to do the more intense Tarot Card Reading for forty-five dollars.” She pointed her eyes at him. “It’s the only way to know for sure what’s going on.”

  I charged toward them. “Don’t throw your money away, Dean.”

  The lady smiled up at me.

  I looked down at Dean. “This is ridiculous.”

  “She’s got me curious. I can’t leave now.” Dean stretched his eyes up at me. “I could have allergies I don’t know about.”

  “You’re going to pay her forty-five dollars to tell you you’re allergic to a tree?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Maybe I pay you too much money.”

  Just then a cute blonde, with a set of eyes as blue as the Caribbean, walked out from behind the booth’s back curtain. “Auntie, just do his palm reading. I’m sure you can figure out his allergy from it. Even I can.”

  “My niece, she’s cute as anything, but a real know-it-all,” she said, whispering to Dean.

  Dean, being the true gentleman, leaned into her and handed her a fifty. “I want the entire story.”

  I bit my lip, placed my Windex and air compressor on the sticky ground, and settled in for what I could only guess would be one of the most ridiculous ten minutes of our lives.

  The blonde smiled at me with an apology written all over her pretty face. “I tried.”

  We lingered on a gaze, and in those few seconds, familiarity worked its way in. “I know you from somewhere.”

  An awkward clench to the jaw replaced her smile. “Yes, you do.” She met my eye again. “I’m Willow. Willow from Bowdish Lake Campground.”

  The past crash-landed in front of me. Willow. Braces, coke bottle glasses, pimply faced, weirdo Willow. “Wow. You look different.”

  She smirked and tossed her hair over her golden shoulder. “And, you look the same.”

  “Thanks,” I said, prematurely accepting that as a compliment.

  She mocked me with an arched eyebrow. The same arched brow she had used on me many times over at the campground when I’d laugh at her predictions. She’d predicted when the wind would blow, who would win the potato sack race, how many fish people would catch. She’d freaked us all out when she had predicted the campground owner would receive a call that his father had suffered a heart attack, and he did.

  “How have you been?” I asked to be polite, eyeing Dean’s psychic reading progress.

  She hugged herself and looked around the booth with a wishful smile. “I’m doing fantastic.”

  “I can see that.” I scanned the booth with all its eccentrics—a colorful pie chart of the zodiac signs, a sculpted hand detailing palmistry that sat on top of a column, the likes of which you’d find on an old historic building, a sculpted head with hollowed eyes detailing phrenology, and another chart, this one so colorful it hurt the eye, detailing some weird thing called Hemphta.

  She hugged herself tighter, warming into a smile. “My aunt and I set up this booth a few years back, and it’s working out pretty good I have to say. Her wife owns a wellness center, and we tried to talk her into setting up there, but she says it’s not spontaneous enough for her taste.” She rolled her eyes and chuckled. “I’m a yoga instructor there, and I love it. She doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

  Her face lit up in the most beautiful glow when she laughed. Even her eyes smiled. She locked onto my gaze, and I fluttered inside.

  I tore away and landed back on Dean.

  Her aunt narrowed her eyes, staring at Dean with great concern. “The silver truck.”

  “That’s not mine. It’s hers.” Dean cocked his head at me.

  “What about the silver truck,” I asked, stepping up to them.

  “Someone’s trying to steal it.” She dropped Dean’s hands and sat back. “You should go. Go now.”

  I turned to Willow. “Is she for real?”

  “He’s smashing your window right now,” the aunt said.

  Willow stepped forward. “You should go.”

  I reached down for my air compressor and cradled it like a football. “This is silly.”

  “You’ve got a purple hangtag with the letter E on it,” her aunt said. “And the hoodlum has your laptop on the ground already.”

  Fuck.

  I dashed off, leaving the Windex behind. I ran through the crowd, stomping on feet and pushing people out of the way.

  When I broke through the exit, my pocketbook flew off my shoulder, spilling some change and a tube of lipstick. I grabbed my pocketbook, tossed it over my head and shoulder, and gripped the air compressor tighter under my arm. I tore off through the lot.

  Please God, let that wacko be wrong.

  # #

  I stood in front of a minivan, blocking its way. Finally, I saw my break in the southbound lane and went for it, running across. Dean called out to me. I looked over my shoulder and saw the panic stretch across his face. Then Willow threw her hands up to her pretty face in horror. That’s when I heard the horn wail from a truck that had come out of nowhere in the southbound lane. I dropped the compressor and leaped forward, catapulted by superhuman force, and shoulder rolled off the road and onto the dusty grass. My father’s compressor flew through the air as the truck ran over it. It flew straight up and over me, landing in the trees a dozen feet away.

  The sting of the gravel on my face didn’t hit me until the truck, and the ones following it, skidded to halt. A bird chirped
above my head on the telephone line. A car door opened and slammed shut. Dean yelled out to me. “Good God woman! What were you thinking?”

  “Go,” I yelled to him. “Run to my truck before the hoodlum steals it.”

  He gripped his hair as if he had just survived the near wreck. “Nobody is breaking into your precious truck,” he yelled to me. “The lady played us for a few bucks is all.”

  “My aunt seldom gets these things wrong,” Willow said, catching up to Dean. He scanned the road as he crossed it. Panic returned to his face. “Shit.” He ran off toward my truck, kicking up dust with his dress shoes. I looked past his skinny body and saw what he saw, my truck door wide open and the shadow of a man’s head in my rear window. I rose to my feet and sprinted ahead, forgetting my pocketbook on the side of the road and my father’s birthday present in the trees.

  “Hey,” Dean yelled out as he bolted down the road.

  The man swung his head around, then hopped out of my truck and ran down Pulaski Boulevard, clutching his pry bar and pulling up his saggy pants.

  Dean got to my truck first and fell against it, panting.

  Willow and I ran up to him, doubling over in equal panting.

  Sweat rolled down his cheeks. “Holy shit,” he managed, steadying against the truck. “I wonder if this means I really do have allergies.”

  I noticed my laptop case on the ground. “Oh thank God.” I reached down for it.

  Dean gulped. “Really? You’ve got blood dripping from your mouth and you’re worried about a laptop?”

  I tasted the blood, suddenly. “I’m bleeding?”

  He handed me one of his terry cloth towels. “It’s dripping down your chin.”

  I pressed it against my lip and watched as the traffic began to move again. A few cars passed us by, yelling out their windows at us.

  “Never just a typical day at the office with you, is it?” He took over nursing my cut, dabbing the towel against it with great care. “This package of cloths is the only one I managed not to drop on Pulaski Boulevard.”

  “I’ll buy you more,” I said.

  Willow brushed past us and sat in my driver’s seat. She gripped the steering wheel and shook it.

  Dean pressed my lip harder, and I winced.

  “I’ve got to stop the bleeding somehow. You can dash out in front of a tractor trailer truck but you can’t handle a little compression?”

  I trusted Dean. He looked out for me. He enjoyed playing the wise assistant, and I couldn’t bring myself to ruin that for him. The day he stopped jeering me would be the day I would no longer trust him. In all of my thirty-one years, I’d never met someone I could trust more.

  “No lectures or else you’ll never come back to this place with me again,” I said.

  He stared at me with blankness, undeterred by my empty threat, as he continued to try and fix me as he always did.

  “Looks like he broke your steering column,” Willow said, sliding out of the front seat. “You’re not going to be able to drive it.”

  I stepped back from Dean, pressing the cloth to my lip myself now. “I just canceled my roadside assistance the day I bought this.”

  “I’ll call your insurance company and see if they can send someone to help.” Dean pulled out his cell phone.

  Willow placed her hand on my arm, and her eyes twitched slightly as if something important just dawned on her. “I don’t mind driving you somewhere.”

  “I don’t want to put you through the trouble,” I said, trying to be polite.

  “It’ll give me a good excuse to get away for a few hours.” She eased her hand down the length of my arm, then playfully wrestled with a smile. “You’re not going to deprive me of that, are you?”

  Her challenging gaze and teasing question stirred me in a strange, unsettling way. It tickled the dormant parts of me, somehow reaching down into my soul and bringing me out of the depths of a sensual hibernation I didn’t realize I had even entered.

  Chapter Two

  Willow

  The first time I caught a glimpse into the future, I was attending Christmas Eve mass at Saint Ann’s Catholic Church with my parents. My mother leaned over and asked me, “Would you please pass me the songbook?”

  When I handed it over, she smiled and patted my leg. Her hand warmed me, even through my thick wool pants. Then, the church and all its people blurred, leaving only my mother in my view. A bright halo of white surrounded her, and I had the peaceful sense that angels were among us, blanketing me in peace. Then, I looked down to her lap and saw a cute baby wearing a pink dress and a white bonnet. The baby sucked her thumb and gurgled. I sensed my mother’s love for her, and a weird jealousy poked at me.

  I looked back up at my mother’s face. Her smile vanished. She tugged at my sleeve and wore the same face she did whenever I got hurt or came down with a fever. “Are you okay?”

  I looked in her lap. “Where did the baby go?”

  “What baby?”

  My father shushed us.

  “The baby in your lap.”

  “I wasn’t holding a baby, sweetheart.” Panic traced her voice.

  My father grabbed her wrist and pulled it, flashing us both a stern look. “That’s enough. We’re in church.”

  She snapped her eyes away from me and looked up at the altar and at the priest who recited the offertory hymn.

  I stared at her, at her trembling lips and the red blotches that popped up all over her face and neck, and wondered where the white halo, the peace, and the cute baby had gone to. Later when we walked out to the car, I clasped onto my mother’s hand. “I saw a baby. I swear, I did.”

  She shushed me and pushed me along.

  Her eyes flashed a fear I’d only seen the time that old man rear-ended us on the way back from the beach the summer before.

  My father pointed his stern gaze straight ahead, ignoring me as usual.

  We didn’t speak another word about that day. In the months that followed, my mother and I baked cakes, painted Easter eggs, went shopping for pretty dresses, and never once did she talk about the baby growing in her belly. I never asked about it either, out of fear she’d look at me again with that awful fear in her eye.

  Later that year, on a sweltering hot day in August, when my mother and father first introduced me to my baby sister, Mary Rose, I kept my mouth shut about how I had already met her eight months earlier in the pew at St. Ann’s Catholic Church.

  My mother adored Mary Rose. Her perky giggles and pretty blonde curls placed her far above me, the one who freaked her out. When she cried, my mother laughed. When she threw a tantrum, my mother smiled. When she broke my favorite doll by smashing it against the ceramic floor, my mother pinched her cheek and cooed, “You’re my little doll smasher, aren’t you?” She rubbed her nose against the tip of Mary Rose’s.

  Not long after Mary Rose turned a year, I caught my second major glimpse into the future. It came to me the day I sat in a circle with my mother and Aunt Lola and urged Mary Rose to take her first step. We sang put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking across the floor. Mary sat in the middle of our circle and giggled. I wanted her to walk to me first, mainly because if she did, my mother would be equally as happy with me as with her.

  Mary Rose didn’t disappoint. She did it. She stood up, wobbled a bit, and then headed straight toward me. I opened my arms up wide and sang louder. She giggled, wobbled, and landed in my arms.

  She hugged me, and immediately the room turned foggy. The same peaceful, white-glowing haze from the day I saw Mary Rose as a baby on my mom’s lap in church filled the room, and suddenly, I found myself sitting on my front porch, struggling with a jigsaw puzzle. I looked up and saw a young girl riding her big wheel bike in our front yard. She waved at me as she passed by the porch. I waved back. One moment I saw her pretty blonde curls blowing in the wind, the next she disappeared. She drove off the tall wall that separated our yard from the street below. I sat still, scared, not knowing if the girl had c
racked open her skull and died right there on Third Avenue.

  I opened my mouth to scream for help, but my voice got caught in my throat. I closed my eyes, steadying to push out the scream. When I opened them back up again, I sat in a circle with my mother and aunt on the floor in my living room, hugging Mary Rose.

  I stared into her big blue eyes. She pulled my hair, bringing me back to the present moment, to our circle, to the joy of her first steps. I hugged her again. I couldn’t stop the tears.

  “Why are you crying?” Aunt Lola asked, scooting in closer and turning our circle into a lopsided triangle.

  “I saw Mary Rose on a big wheel falling off a high wall.”

  My mother pointed her finger at me. “Stop talking that kind of nonsense.” That same dreadful fear I’d heard in her voice that day in the church now stretched into every line on her face. “I mean it. Stop it.”

  I shrank backward and released Mary Rose into the safety of Aunt Lola’s arms.

  After that incident, I saw visions all the time. I only had to touch certain objects and I’d see scenes of someone’s life. Some were fun to watch, and others scared me. I learned how to escape out of them when one time, a man with a long straggly beard looked right at me in one of those visions and I told him to stop it just like my mother had told me. It worked. The man disappeared in a flash, and I reentered the present.

  I only had to say stop it, and I’d snap out of it.

  Overall, I kept my visions to myself. Only once I weakened and told my mother about a scary vision I had of a little boy being taken away by a clown in a van. I ran to her and started crying, wishing she’d protect me and erase the visions for good. She helped me in her own way by marching me into the bathroom and sticking a bar of soap in my mouth to cleanse my sinful thoughts. She cried along with me, telling me we needed to pray as hard as possible for my soul. She pulled out her rosary beads and recited the prayers while I stood in front of her with a bar of soap.

  I never told her about another vision again.

  Instead, I turned to Aunt Lola.