Driftwood Summer by Patti Callahan Henry Page A

woman’s life, there was a night she didn’t talk about, a night that had changed everything.

FIVE
    MAISY
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Maisy stared out the window, dropped her forehead onto the double-paned glass, her ears popping from the descent into Savannah. Winding waterways carved the land into marsh-bordered islands. The water reflected the setting sun, throwing the light back in glitter. The beauty here felt bound to her soul. Perhaps she had only fooled herself into believing she had severed the tie. The four-and-a-half-hour flight from Laguna to Atlanta, and then Atlanta to Savannah was more than a passage from coast to coast, more than a three-thousand-mile journey. It was a passage through time back to her childhood, back to when she left twelve years ago.
    Even high in the sky, Maisy sensed the pungent air of her hometown, the salt smell of sea and marsh. She closed her eyes and imagined her California comfort points: her apartment decorated just the way she liked it, Peter holding her and telling her he loved her, the beautiful fabric and furniture in the store. She had longed for Peter to come with her on this trip; she’d even been foolish enough to ask. But he didn’t know how to explain to his wife why he would make a trip to Georgia. Yes, his wife. Maybe, just maybe, this week away would make Peter miss Maisy enough to finally leave his wife.
    Maisy reminded herself of all the reasons she’d left Palmetto Beach in the first place. Well, not all the reasons. First of all, who would want to live in a place that was practically empty three-quarters of the year? Her eyes swept to the east, toward Palmetto Beach, a blur on the horizon, a forty-minute drive from Savannah. Her hometown was meant for visiting. The population more than doubled by Memorial Day. Some of the houses where the townies lived full-time were smaller than those the summer people inhabited for three months.
    Escape was all Maisy had wanted, yet she’d also loved the summer people because they made the town come alive. The school year had been a breath-holding wait for summer. Maisy had often wanted to be one of them—coming into town on Memorial Day with a car packed full of bikes, swimsuits, suitcases and beach toys on top of the car. She imagined they lived glittering, fabulous lives in Philadelphia, New York or Indiana in a mansion on a hill or a penthouse in the city.
    The summer people came from someplace else , but in the end they all dug their toes into the same sand and bought ice-cream cones from the same shack next to the boardwalk. What was fleeting and dreamlike to the guests had once been Maisy’s mainstay. What had been their reprieve had been her permanent dockage. Not anymore.
    When the cars would arrive on Memorial Day weekend—station wagons, Mercedes, Volvos, sometimes the dad following in his Porsche—the three sisters would gossip about each family, and joke about the silly names they called their cottages: Shore Thing; Big Chill; Merilee by the Sea; Sandity, etc. . . .
    “Ah, the crazy Whitmans are here. I wonder if their aunt will skinny-dip in the country club pool again,” Adalee would say.
    “The Murphy brothers came again. . . . I wonder if Danny is here or if he ended up in military school,” Riley would say.
    Maisy and her two sisters didn’t need the movies; they had the summer people and their stories, their secrets: which wives cheated on their husbands when the men left for the week to work; whose “perfect” kids bought pot from the local boys; whose mother needed a scotch on the rocks by ten a.m.
    To the vacationers, they had always been the Sheffield sisters, one entity. Back then Maisy would have followed Riley anywhere. And she had. . . . While the plane descended, Maisy remembered the night their sister Adalee was born and Maisy had followed Riley into the woods.
    Ten and nine years old, Riley and Maisy had watched from the bedroom window as Mama and Daddy drove off to the hospital in