The Tidewater Sisters: Postlude to The Prayer Box by Lisa Wingate Page B

remember what happened. They figured the less the Townleys were reminded of us, the less chance there was.”
    My stomach feels like one of the dishrags in Laura’s kitchen, filled with dirty water and discarded food, slowly being squeezed dry. Filthy streams run everywhere, but through them comes clarity. Now everything makes sense. “The accident was Daddy’s fault? Daddy ran them off the road?”
    Even Gina seems to feel remorse over this disgraceful piece of family history. “After the DUIs, you know what would’ve happened to Daddy if he got caught again, Tandi. He would’ve been in prison. For a long time. And where do you think we’d have ended up then? Mama’d never held down a job, and she sure wasn’t going to come back to Pap-pap’s again when she knew they were trying to get custody. I couldn’t tell you about the accident or Luke. I had to keep it secret.”
    You should’ve told. It would’ve been better if Daddy had gone to prison. But I don’t say it. I understand the warped logic and misguided loyalties of a messed-up childhood. I know exactly where my sister was coming from. I’ve been there.
    Instead of going to prison, my father ran out on us a few months later and eventually drank himself to death. I wonder who else he may have damaged before it finally happened.
    I think of Luke, of what Laura has told me about him, about his life, and I’m overwhelmed with guilt. If my father had faced up to the truth, if my mother had told, if my sister had set the truth free . . . so many things could have been different.
    “At least now I know,” I say numbly, and then open the car door. The box with the wedding dress goes on the passenger seat beside the tobacco tin.
    I tell my sister good-bye and back away, and she’s still standing in the parking lot when I leave. I wish what has been broken between us could be fixed. Not all things are so easily made right, but the anger slowly cools. I feel it chipping off and falling away as I drive mile after mile, racing toward the Tidewater while the sun rests on long, lacy clouds near the horizon.
    Some good can come of this, even now, even after all these years, if I can find Luke Townley. If he hasn’t disappeared into the world again.
    I try to call him, but there’s no answer on his phone or Laura’s.
    I hold my breath as the scenery grows more and more familiar, and I cross marshes, sedges, and Tidewater irrigation channels. All around me, crops peek from the soil. Fresh, green leaves. New things from old.
    A rebirth.
    And then, up ahead, in the field across the road from the one where my grandfather grew long, straight rows of corn and sweet potatoes, there is Luke on the tractor. Boomer sits in the cab with him, the two of them turned around and watching the cultivator cut the soil.
    I think of an old sermon my grandfather quoted from time to time—something about not looking back when you’re plowing a field, but instead finding a mark in the distance and focusing on that. Otherwise, the rows won’t come out straight.
    I understand the meaning now in a deeper way. Both Luke and I have spent far too many years looking back,wondering if something could have been different that bittersweet summer when everything changed.
    But it’s time to look forward. Hatteras Island, with its storms and its recoveries and its hardy, determined people has taught me one overarching lesson, and I know I must not only remember it but live by it. The past must be let go before the future can be grasped.
    I feel the burden lifting as I hurry from the vehicle and step over the ragtag fence to flag Luke down before he turns to plow another row. He sees me and waves. My heart beats fast as he stops the tractor at the edge of the field, releases the hydraulics, and turns off the engine. Quiet settles over the field after the tractor wheezes to a stop.
    The evening Tidewater sun silhouettes Luke’s form and Boomer’s as they cross the grassy margins, but I am only