Page 3 of Dreams of Falling
“And you have no idea what?” The thread of panic that had woven into my voice surprised me.
There was a longer pause this time, as if Ceecee was considering the question. And the possible answer. “I thought she might have wanted more spare rags for the refinishing. I keep a bag on the floor of the pantry. It’s empty, though. She must have forgotten she’d used them all.”
“But she was looking through the drawers and cabinets.”
“Yes. When I saw her car pull away, I thought she was just running to the hardware store. But the police have checked—she didn’t go there. Your daddy and I are beside ourselves with worry.”
I closed my eyes, anticipating her next words.
“Please come home, Larkin. I need someone here. I’m afraid...” Her voice caught, and she was silent.
“Ceecee, you know Mama is always off in one direction or another. You’ve always called her a dandelion seed—remember? This wouldn’t be the first time she’s run off without explanation.” The words sounded hollow, even to me. My dream returned to me suddenly, jerking me backward as if I’d finally hit the ground, the air knocked from my lungs.
“She always comes back the same day,” Ceecee said fiercely. “They’ve checked all the roads within a hundred miles of here. Your daddy’s driven Highway Seventeen all the way up to Myrtle Beach, asfar south as Charleston.” She paused again. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I had a dream last night. I dreamed I was falling.”
I stared at the black letters against the white background on my computer screen, lines and symbols that suddenly meant nothing at all. “Did you land?” I asked.
“I don’t remember.” There was a long silence and then, “Please, Larkin. Something bad has happened. I feel it. I need you to come home.Weneed you to come home.”
I closed my eyes again, seeing the place I was from, the creeks and marshes of my childhood that fed into the great Atlantic. When I was a little girl, my daddy said I bled salt water; it was in my veins. Maybe that was why I didn’t go back more than once a year, at Christmas. Maybe I was afraid I’d be sucked in by the tides, my edges blurred by the water. There was more than one way a person could drown.
“All right,” I said. I opened my eyes, disoriented as I imagined the brush of spartina grass against my bare legs, but saw only my metal desk under fluorescent lights. “I’ll take the first flight I can find into Charleston and rent a car. I’ll call you to let you know when to expect me.”
“Thank you. I’ll let your daddy know.”
“And call me if you hear anything about Mama.”
“Of course.”
“Have you called Bitty?” I asked.
Her voice had a sharpness to it. “No. I’m not sure if she’s really needed—”
I cut her off. “Then I’ll call her. If something’s happened to Mama, she’ll want to be there.”
“She’ll just make a fuss.”
“Probably,” I agreed. But despite her own flurried wind, Bitty always helped me find the calm in the eye of whatever storm I found myself. “But she loves Mama as much as you do. She needs to know what’s happened.”
I could hear the disapproval in Ceecee’s voice. “Fine. Call her, then. But please get here as soon as you can.”
Immediately after I hit the “end” button, my phone buzzed withanother incoming call. I recognized the 843 area code, but not the rest of the number. Thinking it might have something to do with my mother, I answered it. “Hello?”
A deep male voice, almost as familiar to me as the sound of rain in a flood-swollen creek, spoke. “Hello, Larkin. It’s Bennett.”
I quickly ended the call without answering, and put my phone on “silent.” I felt as if I were back in my dream, falling and falling into a dark abyss and wondering how long it would take before I hit the bottom.
three
Ceecee
2010
Ceecee stood halfway between her kitchen door and the detached garage, retracing Ivy’s steps and trying to figure out what Ivy had been searching for. She’d studied the antique desk, now stripped of its finish, the drawers pulled out and stacked—a gutted fish with only skeletal remains. She reexamined the pantry and the open kitchen drawers, trying to see whether anything was missing. To find any message Ivy had been trying to leave her.
The more Ceecee didn’t see, the more worried she became. She’d turned to head back into the garage when she heard the cough of an exhaust pipe and saw a plume of black smoke billowing down her long driveway. She knew who it was before she caught sight of the outrageous orange hair reflecting the afternoon sun, or the faded and peeling paint of a once–powder blue Volkswagen Beetle, circa 1970.
Bitty had been too old to own a Beetle in the seventies and was definitely too old for one now. She’d always said it was the only car built to her small scale, but she looked ridiculous, especially with that hair and her penchant for rainbow-hued flowing robe things that made her look like she’d been in a preschool finger paint fight. Perpetually single but with a swath of brokenhearted suitors left in her wake,retired art teacher Bitty lived her bohemian lifestyle on Folly Beach, earning her living as a painter, with occasional intrusions into Ceecee’s life.
