tomorrow morning?” she asks.
“ Yes.”
“ It’s a date. My family will be gone and the house will be empty. It’s always a little sad for me to be left behind like that. So, after running tomorrow, why don’t you get cleaned up and then bring our coffee over to my house? I would like to walk on the beach and drink my coffee, after running.”
“ See you tomorrow.”
She gets up, blows me a kiss across the counter, and walks back to her car.
Packing Up
Her sister Cara is OCD at the best of times, and never more so than when she is packing up for a trip. While there is a lot less to pack up on the return leg back to Ohio there is still enough to make whichever neurons are in charge of the obsessively compulsive fire obsessively and compulsively. Clorox wipes are passed over everything that is being taken home. And then the items are stored in Ziploc bags of all sizes and shapes, acquired for just this reason. The husbands and cousins take it all in stride, having witnessed it year after year, and loving her enough to accommodate her quirk.
A regular production line of rinsing and drying and wiping and packing has been organized and is making short work of the few remaining items that are to be returned. Each year the beach house has acquired more and more things that simply stay at the beach house. And Shannon refuses to allow Cara to clean those things.
“ It’s my house, and even though you are my sister and I love you, I will not be told, in my house, what to clean or how to clean it,” she has told Cara.
And thus much of the house is off-limits. Which only makes those things that are on Cara’s list that much more precious for cleaning and receiving of much more focused attention.
All her workers were incentivized to move quickly because this year, during their last night bonfire, Cara has arranged for fireworks to be fired from the beach out over the ocean. She has invited a few of the North Topsail regulars, and has arranged for donations to be made to the police department, the fire department, the local clinic on the island, the hospital on the mainland, the coast guard, the turtle rescue hospital, the bird sanctuary, and to the dune preservation society. In short, she has greased every palm that needs greasing to make this once in a lifetime event happen. The police have strung hurricane fence from the water’s edge to the dune a couple of hundred yards on both sides of the house, and they have stationed a few reserve officers to move along anyone who tries to cross the barriers. The fireworks will be brief, maybe fifteen minutes, but they will be spectacular as only fireworks over water can be.
She has planned this as part of her campaign to make every July in Topsail unique and memorable in everyone’s minds. To help make the last day at the beach one that they will treasure forever. It is part of her theory that every day is pretty much like every other day and that all these similar days simply blend together into one forgettable montage or routine and that the things that we remember are the outliers, the things that are different. Too often the only things that are different are the profound and unexpected sadnesses. Car accidents, illnesses, divorces. And Cara will have none of that. She wants there to be spectacularly good shared memories in everyone’s minds.
Therefore every year at the beach house she tries to create a landmark event. And her theory has been proven correct. Part of the family lore and part of the family vocabulary revolve around how the different years are identified. There was the pig roast year, the sailboat year, the tree planting year, the deep sea fishing year, the paragliding year, and on and on. Each year has had its signature event. This year will be remembered by the entire family as the fireworks year. And this year will also be remembered by Shannon and Joe as the year that Shannon met Joe.
Cara thinks back to earlier that day when Shannon had asked