I slowly pulled into the paved driveway of 58 Seashell Lane, wondering how many more ridiculous ocean-themed street names this tiny beach town could come up with. Already, I saw a Rip Tide Avenue, a Surf Circle, and, my personal favorite, Beach Street. Immediately after putting my rustic Toyota, which had certainly seen better days, more specifically when the second Bush was president, in park, I took in the place where I would be spending the next three months. The house was a charming beach bungalow, whose sky blue paint was becoming chipped after years of enduring the coastal weather. It was small; only one story with a old, rickety-looking front porch that was painted a creamy white. The home was charming and idyllic, the kind of place that I would imagine to be in a Nicholas Sparks' movie.
A summer away from Philadelphia would be good, I reasoned, for what felt like the millionth time during the two hour drive. A summer spent relaxing in the minuscule beach town of Mystic Falls, Virginia would be just fine. I could spent my days on the beach, working on my tan that always seemed to disappear too quickly once September came along. I leaned back against the head rest, toying with my keys, the sharp metal biting into the delicate pad of my thumb. It was all going to be just fine.
My cellphone buzzed in the cupholder in the center console, amid the various candy wrappers and a sticky substance that I couldn't quite identify. I snatched the phone in my sweaty hands and read the latest text message - from my father, of course. He was asking if I had made here safely, as Google Maps projected that I should arrive at exactly 3:23 and it was, as the clock on my phone told me in tiny black letters, 3:25, and if I had enough gas to get me there or if I had to stop at some seedy Sunoco along the way. I replied back with just a bare skeleton of how the drive went, that I was here and fine, and that, yes, the full tank of gas that I had when I left Philadelphia was enough to get me to Mystic Falls.
I sighed. I breathed. I tried to remind myself that this summer would not last forever.
My eyes flitted to the review mirror where, there in the backseat, tucked in the floral carseat my parents bought me as a baby shower gift, was my girl, all nineteen and half pounds of her. She was sleeping soundly, having fell asleep way back when we were just getting out of Wilmington, without a single worry in this massive world. A part of me felt jealous of her, wishing with everything that I had that I, too, was worry-free. She was beautiful, my daughter. And I'm not just saying that because I was biased either. I've had complete strangers come up to me and comment on her appearance, her soft tendrils of deep brown hair and petite pink lips. She was a Gilbert, through and through. All of the Gilberts were given the dark hair and small lips. She resembled me in nearly every way, except for the blue eyes beneath her paper thin, veiny eyelids. Those were a gift from her father and mostly likely the only thing that she'll ever receive from him.
And they served as a reminder of the greatest mistake that I ever made.
When I emerge from the car, I'm greeted with the salty sea breeze. Aunt Jenna and her boyfriend, Alaric, had happily invited us to spend the summer at their home. I had accepted, only after my parents insisting that a change of pace would probably be good for me. That I needed to go somewhere beside Philadelphia. But they told me this with a funny look on their faces, like one would be telling someone that a loved one of theirs just recently passed away. I pulled my girl from her carseat, receiving a tired whimper in response, but she quickly fell back asleep, content in the warm cocoon that was my arms. Carefully, I shifted her weight to my hip and crossed the driveway, walking up the rickety wooden front porch steps, and rang the doorbell.
I wait. One, two minutes. Nothing. No doors opening, no sounds of greetings, no hugs, no cooing over the baby. I ring the doorbell two, three more times, waiting two minutes in-between. I huff, stepping backwards, and searching for any sign of life. No lights on in the windows, no noises. There's only one other car - a silver Volvo - in the driveway, parked next to mine. Balancing my girl on my hip and attempting not to wake her, I reached for the cellphone in my back pocket, hoping that Aunt Jenna didn't forget that I was coming today.
"What are you doing?"
Startled, I jump and my phone clatters to the wooden porch floor. A girl, no younger than me, is standing on the pavement leading to the house, hands on her hips. She's wearing Nike shorts and a thin tank top, her hair pulled up in a high pony tail, and sweating profusely, looking like she just got back from an intense run in the summer heat. She's breathing heavily. "Well?" she demands, raising her eyebrows up high.
"I, um..." I glance back at the house, my eyes meeting the '58' on the mailbox in curvy, black script. Did Aunt Jenna give me the right house number when she texted me with her address? Or what if I somehow misread the message and now I'm standing on a complete stranger's front porch? Suddenly, I'm all panicky and I'm not sure what to say or do. I open my mouth to say something, to explain and diffuse the situation, when the girl interrupts.
"Look," She stomps up the stairs, yanking her earphones out and wrapping them quickly around an old metal iPod, "if you're selling anything, we don't want it, okay? And seriously, don't come back. Oh God, are you one of those Jehovah's Witnesses people?" The girl watches me, waiting for me to say something, explain why the hell I'm here. When I don't, she crosses her arms against her chest.
"I'm Elena," I tell her, as way of explanation, holding my daughter closer to me. "I'm sorry. I must have the wrong house number or something, but I'm supposed to-"
"Oh!" And, just like that, all irritation disappears off of the girl's sweaty features. "Oh. My. God. Of course! Jenna told me that you were coming and I just totally forgot. I just went for a run. I'm training, you know. There's an annual half-marathon in August and I came in second last year and I'll be damned if that happens again." In one motion, she swoops down, retrieving my phone and handing it back to me. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that there was no damage done to the fragile screen. Her hand searches for something in her shorts pocket and soon emerges with a metal key. She shoves it in the doorknob and turns it, then pushes the door open. I hesitate for a moment, wondering if I really should be following a stranger into what I think is my aunt's house, when she looks back at me, motioning for me to follow. So I do.
The house is exactly how I imagine a beach house would be. All light and airy, with white furniture and pictures of palm trees. Light hardwood floors make up the living room and the walls are painted in an off-white color. The curtains and couch cushions are the same light teal. The air smells like cotton and coconut. There's a basket full of seashells on the coffee table. The wall to the right of the entrance is covered with bookshelves and a flatscreen television. Upon closer examination, the books are a vast collection of historical nonfiction, ranging from ancient Rome to the Cold War.
"Well, come in, come in," she smiles, and I watch her stumble around the living room, trying to casually fluff up the throw pillows and put away the magazines and half-empty cups on the coffee table. "Seriously, make yourself at home. Mi casa es tu casa. Is that even right? I took, like, a year of Spanish back when I was a freshman and literally don't remember a thing. Can I get you anything? Water or are you hungry? You must be hungry after such a long trip. Jenna said that you live in Philadelphia, right?"
And she literally says all of this in one breath. I wonder how a single human could possibly conjure up that much energy when I barely had enough motivation to get out of bed in the morning. She's still cleaning too, dusting off surfaces and folding blankets. It was almost like inviting strangers into her home was something she did on a regular basis. Really, though, I didn't even know who this girl was. Where was Aunt Jenna anyway?
"Um, yeah. Just outside of Philly," I tell her and my heart swells with longing at the name of my home. She leads me into the kitchen where, upon seeing the view from the glass doors that take up most of the one wall in the kitchen, my jaw drops. The ocean is just a couple dozen yards away. I knew that Aunt Jenna lived close to the water, but I didn't realize they had beachfront property. I've seen the ocean many times in my life, but I'm sure you see the ocean in a whole new way when you're looking at it while drinking your coffee in your kitchen every morning.
The girl, however, seems use to the view. She opens a few cupboards, taking out glasses and filling them with lemonade. She's rambling but I'm barely taking in her words. "I've been to Philly a couple of times. It's nice, I guess. We just did the usual touristy stuff. You know, the whole Liberty Bell and Betsy Ross House stuff-"
"I'm sorry," I interrupt as she slides a cup of the lemonade towards me. "But Aunt Jenna didn't mention..." I trail off, not sure how to word it.
"Oh!" The girl shakes her head, laughing a bit. "I'm Caroline. I can't believe that I didn't introduce myself. I'm Alaric's daughter."
I had known that Alaric had a daughter, vaguely remembering overhearing that detail while listening to my mother's phone conversations with Aunt Jenna. But, for some reason, I just assumed that the daughter was a child, still in elementary school or something. And it's not like we ever had the chance to meet. Jenna was always moving quick with her boyfriends, a trait that my mother was constantly scolding her about. It's been at least a year since Jenna last came to visit, so none of us had the chance yet to meet Alaric, or his daughter.
"Oh, right, of course," I nodded, feeling stupid, and taking a sip of the lemonade that tasted sweet and slightly minty. "Jenna told me that Alaric had a daughter."
"That's me. Is the lemonade good? I made it from the mint that I grow. Well, I grow it at my boyfriend's house but I still call it my garden," Caroline tells me. But, before I can inform her that her lemonade is the best thing that I ever drank, she cocks her head to the side, looking at my sleeping daughter, whose head is on my shoulder, her drool slowly seeping into the cotton material of my t-shirt. She was going to wake up soon. "And this is Charlotte, right? Jenna was telling me about her."
I nod. "Charlie, for short," I explain, watching carefully. Slowly, gently, Caroline reached out and brushed Charlie's springy, brown curls, tucking a piece behind her ear. She had a full head of hair when she was born and, eleven months later, it was stubborn and the curls refused to stay in one place. Even though I knew that I was being ridiculous, that Caroline would probably never hurt my baby, I still tensed up, a mama bear protecting her cub.
But Caroline doesn't seem to notice and, instead, just smiles at my girl. "She looks a lot like you. She's really cute."
I brace myself for the inevitable questions to come. Things such as Well, are you still with the father or..? and How old are you again anyway? I dreaded these questions, and usually fumbled through them in awkward replies. It happened everywhere - in grocery store lines and at banks and nurses I run into while visiting my dad at his work. They always commented on how beautiful Charlie was, before quietly asking those personal questions, with a smile on their faces as if that made it okay to ask. As if I didn't already know how fucked up everything was.
To my surprise, however, Caroline doesn't mention any of these questions. Just going to tell me stories of her past adventures in babysitting and, after hearing several of them, I made a mental note not to ever ask Caroline to babysit for me. Not that I would ever ask her to anyway. She seemed like the type of person who loved to talk about herself and, really, I didn't mind. I didn't do much talking lately anyway.
Maybe it was rude of me to think this, but I was irritated at Jenna for failing to mention that Caroline, a girl my age, would be thrown in the mix. I didn't want to get to know her. I didn't want to hear about all of the fantastic future plans that she had and how just wonderful her life was. I didn't want to get close to her. This summer was supposed to be just some time to myself. To come to terms with everything that had happened, to try to figure out what I was going to do in the fall. Already, I was signed up for fifteen credits at a community college. I didn't want to do all of the girl stuff, like shopping for bikinis and painting toenails. It already seemed like Caroline was into that type of stuff and I just wasn't.
After a few minutes of talking, mostly done by Caroline, of course, she shows me to my room. The house was only a single story, so she led me down a hall, the walls painted a sunny yellow and with pictures of Jenna from her college years as in white frames. She took me to the last room on the left of the hallway and the first thing I noticed is the white wooden crib in the corner of the room. The rest of the room is small but it's not like I need much space and, besides, it's only for a couple of weeks. There's a twin sized bed, pushed up against the wall with the window which, unfortunately, only had a view of the street and not of the ocean. There was an empty closet along with a dresser. And that was pretty much all that could fit in the room.
"Sorry about the size," Caroline says, setting my navy blue duffle bag down on my bed after she insisted she would bring it in from the car and after I insisted that she didn't have to. She won, of course. "But usually the houses on the shorefront are small. We don't pay for the space, though, we pay for the view. My dad and Jenna should be back soon." She sits down on the edge of the bed, toeing off her sneakers.
I sit down on the bed, which has a light blue and white quilt on it and I know that it was made by my mother and Jenna's mother, Grandma Marie, who died a few years ago, judging by the designs on the quilt. I run my finger over the blue stitching. Charlie is beginning to wake up and I know that it's just a matter of time before she begins eagerly exploring her new surroundings, crawling around the dirty floors and putting a bunch of nonsense into her mouth. I was already dreading it, with the house not being baby-proof and all. My eyes caught a million small items that Charlie could potentially choke on as soon as I walked in the door.
"Where are they, anyway?" I ask, taking out a rattle from my purse and handing it to Charlie before she would start throwing a fit. She needs to be fed soon, too. And I was going to have to change her diaper. I started searching my overpacked bag for diapers and wipes and the ointment I always use since Charlie still gets wicked diaper rash. I would have to unpack all of our stuff, which was going to take a little while considering I had to organize all of our clothes, separate them into piles, because the last thing I wanted was to have to scramble through Charlie's clothes, looking for matching outfits and such.
Caroline takes a moment to answer, as if she's trying to choose her words carefully, which seemed a little odd. Finally she says, "They're just at a meeting with the lawyer. It's not a big deal or anything. It's just..." she trails off, looking anywhere but me. For a moment, just a split second, I catch her eyes looking sad, like she was almost ashamed, but that look quickly disappeared. She stands up quickly from the end of the bed and claps her hands together. "Okay, well, how about I show you around Mystic Falls? You'll love it. It's seriously the best place in the world."
I wasn't exactly sure how right she was about that. How could a place so small be the best place in the world? But I nod anyway, mostly because I'm too polite to say no. Charlie's wiggling in my arms and I can feel a tantrum coming if I don't get her fed and changed quick enough. It's embarrassing, having to deal with the baby in front of Caroline. "Okay," I say, handing Charlie the rattle, hoping to calm her down for just a few more minutes. "I just have to get Charlie ready first."
"I'll tell you what. I'll shower and get dressed and meet you in the living room in, say, twenty minutes?" Caroline smiles, winks at me, then gathers her shoes from the floor. "I'll take you to all of the best places around town. Trust me, this is going to be your best summer yet." She leaves the room and, a minute later, I hear the shower starting to run.
Just in time, apparently, because this is when Charlie starts throwing a tantrum and I hope the shower sounds block the volume of my daughter's screams. She's always fussy after a nap that lasts too long. Going out to explore Mystic Falls was the last thing I wanted to do, especially with a cranky kid. I stand up, swaying slowly side to side, holding her and trying to calm her. She's not budging though, just tears and her red face distorted in sleepiness and frustration. As I hold her, I think about how fast things change. Old Elena would have loved to spend a summer in a quaint beach town. Now, though, I want home and the comfort of having baby gates in all of the doorways. Two years ago, everything was impossibly, impossibly different. It produced a type of nostalgia that was almost too painful to bear.
As Charlie continues carrying on, I throw my head back and blink fast, trying to get rid of the tears forming in my eyes. A lump forms in my throat like it always does when I'm about to cry. "Shh," I tell her, whispering. "I got you, baby, I got you. And we're gonna be just fun, huh, Charlie? We're gonna be just fine." I tell my daughter the lie, looking into her icy blue eyes that haunt me of all of my mistakes and regrets.
Damon is coming soon.