Return to Sullivans Island by Dorothea Benton Frank Page A

good for your brains, you know.”
    “Yeah. Metabolism. Endorphins. Tone. Fat-burning machine. I know, I know.”
    “Ah! I see you’ve read the literature! And I bought this for you yesterday at Staples.”
    Sophie handed her a shopping bag.
    “What’s this?”
    “It’s a journal, a dozen number two pencils, and a pencil sharpener.”
    “Oh, that’s so sweet! Thanks, Aunt Sophie!” She hugged her aunt and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You always think of everything!”
    “I wish that was true! But you fill those up with all your thoughts and all the things that happen to you. Before you know it you’ll have enough material for a book. Anyway, sweetheart, I’d better get going. My crazy twin is probably marinating in a putrid mood.”
    “Oh, I hate for you to leave! I never get to see you.”
    “Are we pouting?”
    “Yes. We’re pouting.”
    “Tell you what. I’ve got some time at the end of September. Why don’t I fly in and take my favorite niece shopping for clothes or something, I don’t know, get our hair done? We can spend some time together and really get caught up.”
    “I think your niece would love that. This hair has to go.”
    “It’s a little wild. Interesting but wild.”
    Sophie smiled at Beth. She wished then that she had married someone and had a girl like Beth to call her own. But that didn’t seem to be what the universe had planned for her.
    “Okay, sweetheart, I’ll call you, okay?”
    “Okay. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
    “Right now I wish there were two of you so I could take one with me.”
    “Hmmm. Is that a twin thing? What if you put me in your pocket and I turned out to be like Aunt Allison?” Beth giggled and Sophie gasped in mock horror.
    “Hush! You’d better keep that sharp tongue in your mouth!”
    “I’m only kidding!”
    “I know, baby. Keep yourself busy. Start writing that book.”
    “Right! I’ll get right on that. Have a safe trip, okay?”
    “And remember, if you need—”
    “A thing? I’ll call you first!”
    Beth stood at the top of the steps and watched until her aunt had backed out of the yard in her rental car and disappeared down the street. Earlier that day she couldn’t wait until everyone was gone and suddenly she felt herself slipping into loneliness, that awful pall of sadness that plagued her from time to time. Those feelings were sometimes so hopeless that she frightened herself. But she knew there was a kind of manic quality to her personality, and at the first signs of despair, she would do certain things to shake it off. Sometimes she would eat. For years she bit her fingernails. Later on as she learned more about the world and herself, she knew that by merely placing herself in the sun for an hour or so, she would feel a considerable improvement. And having Lola’s company had helped immensely.
    She decided to take Lola for a walk to see what was going on in the neighborhood.
    She hooked Lola’s leash to her collar and set out toward the western end of the island. Lola trotted along beside her, seemingly happy to finally be alone with Beth. She passed Stella Maris Church and kept to the left, continuing on Middle Street until she reached the old Hagerty property. What was this? It appeared that the five acres the Hagerty family had owned forever were being subdivided. What would become of their Fallout Shelter where she had played spin the bottle as a young girl just learning about the mysteries between the sexes, or the dilapidated train car that for some unknown reason had been sort of set up as an ersatz museum before she was born. That train car had seen a lot of beer cans and bongs in her teenage years. The stories about how they got it on the island in the first place were always a great topic of discussion among the boys she knew.
    “In the middle of the night, they closed down the causeway to traffic and brought it over on a flatbed—”
    “No way! It wouldn’t clear the bridge—”
    “Y’all are crazy.