Page 14 of Happy Harbor
“Oh, Adeline had everything laid out. She put money aside for it, and her friends at the church are handling everything. She was very specific that she didn’t want you to have to take time away from your job to plan a funeral.”
“That sounds like her,” Josie said, tears streaming down her face.
“So I can expect you? On Monday?”
“Of course. I’ll be there. Thanks for calling.”
She pressed end on the call before she broke into a million pieces. She hadn’t sobbed that hard in her entire life. Her grandmother was the one person she could always count on, and now she was gone. She wouldn’t be there for a weekly phone call or video chat. She wouldn’t be there to write sweet Christmas cards and send birthday flowers. The one person that she could always rely on, the one who would love her no matter what happened, was gone.
“Mom? What’s wrong?” Kendra was standing behind her. “I heard you crying from upstairs. Is this about what I did?” For the first time in a long time, she heard empathy in her daughter’s voice.
Josie cleared her throat and stood up to face Kendra. “No, honey. That call was from someone in Happy Harbor.”
“Where Nana lives?”
The tears welled again. Josie nodded. “Yes, where Nana lives.”
“What happened?”
Without warning, her sobs returned, and Josie could hardly form words. “She’s gone. Nana’s gone...”
She felt the warmth of Kendra’s arms around her as her face pressed into her daughter’s shoulder. How was she ever going to survive this world without the one person who believed she could do anything?
CHAPTERFOUR
They drove down Main Street, the inland areas on one side and the river on the other. Kendra looked out the window, her eyes wide. “What did you do for fun as a kid? This place seems kinda boring.”
Josie chuckled. “I made my own fun. Poor Nana was always over at the school trying to get me out of trouble. Of course, then she’d make me work in the garden instead of hanging out with my friends. That was punishment enough for me. I hated working in the garden.”
“Yeah, I’d hate that too.”
Josie pulled down a side street and into the driveway of a small white home. Joe Strand’s office had been there for years, and she could see nothing much had changed. In fact, Happy Harbor still looked just like it did when she was a kid. Time stood still in places like this.
“Here we are,” Josie said, turning to retrieve her purse from the floorboard behind her seat. “Ready?”
“I guess so. Hey, maybe Nana left us a million dollars or something.” Her eyes lit up.
“Nana didn’t have a million dollars.” Josie opened her door and stepped out, the warm Lowcountry air smacking her in the face. It wasn’t even spring yet, but the warmer temperatures had already arrived.
She looked up to see the moss hanging from the trees, which seemed to reach out in every direction, trying to grab onto whatever life was walking by. When she was little, those trees scared her to death as their shadows cast against her bedroom walls. Nana told her they held the souls of her ancestors, and they were there to protect her. Still, she remained scared and started sleeping with two night-lights just to keep the shadows out of her room.
“This place stinks!” Kendra said, pinching her nose and squinting her eyes.
Josie laughed. “It’s pluff mud from the marsh.” Pluff mud was either a welcome smell to those who’d grown up around it or a very unwelcome one to visitors who weren’t expecting an assault to their senses. It held the memories of everything it had consumed over time, and the smell was hard to describe. “When animals and plants die, they break down into bacteria?—”
“Ewww. I don’t want to hear any more.”
“Come on. We’re going to be late.”
They walked up the two front steps and into the small waiting area. It used to be a foyer when it was a house, and the original creaky wood floor was still there. Dark as it was, there were a million scratches and gouges from decades of wear. Joe had old church pews on each wall, so Josie sat on one while Kendra chose the other. It wasn’t long before her earbuds were in, and she was staring at her phone in typical teenager mode.
Shockingly, the five-and-a-half-hour drive from Atlanta to Happy Harbor hadn’t been as bad as Josie feared. Of course, she did her best to veer away from controversial topics like school. Even though she knew she needed to deal with her daughter’s recent behavior, she couldn’t think about it right now. Her sole focus was getting through the reading of the will, the funeral, and then getting back to Atlanta.
“Josie Campbell, is that you?”
She looked up to see Joe Strand standing there. He had definitely aged since she last saw him, his white hair much thinner now. His waistline had expanded even more, and the buttons on his shirt looked like they might pop off and put her eye out at any moment.
“Hey, Joe,” she said, standing up.
