And now Pippin and Grey Hawthorne, siblings born seventy-three seconds apart, were back after being gone for twenty years.
They stood on the sidewalk in front of a decrepit looking house that sported a combination of Cape Cod and old Southern Coastal architecture, complete with a million paned windows, a screened porch on the left side of the house, a wide sitting porch, and a lookout at the top of the structure with a view straight to the harbor. A widow’s walk, Pippin thought, where a wife could keep watch as she waited for her husband to return from sea.
Behind it was Roanoke Sound, Bodie Island with its lighthouse, and beyond that, the Atlantic.
The house was so much bigger than Pippin remembered, and she remembered it as huge. In its heyday, it had to have been a spectacular house. Now, it sat neglected, longing for fresh paint, new shutters, and some tender-loving care. A shiver passed over Pippin and her hand moved to her neck. She looked up at the widow’s walk. Had her mother stood up there, staring towards the horizon while she waited for Leo to come home to her?
Pippin let the thought pass. She was hypnotized by the overgrown property as much as by the house itself, although both were in dire need of repair and upkeep. Her gaze skittered over the lawn that was little more than a map of weeds. Over the walkway leading to the wrap-around porch, more weeds grew between the red bricks. Over the flowerbeds that had probably once bloomed with hydrangeas, hyacinth, daisies, and who knew what other plants, but which was now filled with an abundance of yet more weeds.
For a moment, she closed her eyes and envisioned what the property could look like. In her mind’s eye, she saw it blooming with a perennial garden, annuals tucked here and there for added color and variety. The massive overgrowth of pampas grass behind their father’s dry-docked fishing boat could be cleared out and replaced with an enclosed vegetable garden.
Grey could renovate the massive house, bringing it back to habitable. Because right now, from the looks of it, it certainly wasn’t.
Grey looked at her with eyebrows raised and chin lowered. “We can’t keep it.”
She opened her eyes again and gave him a side glance. “We could.”
He shook his head. “We can’t.”
“Oh, but we could.”
Grey ran a hand over his face, ending by rubbing the stubble that had recently turned into a beard. Although his hair was chestnut, his Irish came out through the iridescent orange hairs peppered throughout. “Pippin, it’s been vacant for twenty years. I can see from here that the porch has dry rot. The place probably has termites. It’s not a matter of if in North Carolina, it’s a matter of when. Look. Half the windows are broken. That screen door is hanging on one hinge. And God knows what it looks like inside.”
“They left it to us,” she said. It wasn’t a plea, but a statement of fact. After Grandmother Faye died, Pippin found her parents’ will, leaving them the old beach house in Devil’s Cove. She and Grey had both thought the place had been sold when their father vanished. Why their grandparents had kept it from them, they’d never know for sure, but Pippin could venture a guess. Faye blamed their mother for their father leaving. She’d held out hope that her son was out there somewhere and that he’d come home. The house and boat hadn’t belonged to Pippin and Grey, but to Leo. It was as if holding onto it made it their own lighthouse…a beacon that would guide Leo home.
Only Leo had been gone for two decades. He was not coming back. All this now belonged to the twins. “Nothing’s keeping you in Greenville, Greevie,” she said.
He didn’t respond, but he knew it was true. He worked for a construction company, but it wasn’t a career. Neither of them had found their passions. Maybe this house—and coming back to Devil’s Cove—maybe these things would help them discover their paths.
Pippin saw movement from the corner of eye. She could just make out a pink nose poking out of the pampas grass. Slowly, it inched its way into the open. A dog. A very mangy looking dog. It was honey colored—and incredibly thin. When was the last time the pup had eaten?
“All right, let’s get it over with,” Grey said.
Pippin glanced at him, nodding. When she looked back to the yard, the dog was gone. She sighed, hoping it would be able to find its next meal. To Grey, she said, “Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.”
Her brother shot her a side-eye glance that clearly said he thought it was probably worse than he thought, but he led the way up the brick walkway. “Be careful,” he said, pointing to the patches of rotted wood on the steps.
Like all the beach houses on Rum Runner’s Lane, the house was built on stilts, pilings, and piers, elevated to protect it from flooding. They walked up the steps to the porch, jigging and jagging to avoid the damaged wood, as if they were trying to avoid cracks in a sidewalk. As Grey carefully took hold of the handle of the screen door, it let out a horrific creak, the last rusty hinge releasing its hold. “Watch out!” he shouted.
Pippin jumped back as the screen door fell. The bottom of it hit the torn-up porch, but Grey caught it and deftly moved it out of the way, leaning it up against the house.
They stood side by side, facing the front door, a haunting feeling coming over her as if this house was going to change things for them. At the same time, she felt like they were in a horror movie in a too stupid to live moment. Don’t go in. Bad things will happen. You may never come back out.
Pippin took a deep breath, swallowing her anxiety. This had been their parents’ home. Her home when she was little. An image of her and Grey splashing around in a pink plastic kiddie pool flashed into her mind. A memory of standing next to her mother, the solidness of her leg underneath one of the gauzy skirts she’d always worn. Her mother pacing back and forth as she stared out at the lighthouse on Bodie Island and at the horizon beyond.
Gooseflesh rose on her skin. “We can’t sell this house,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Grey opened his mouth, looking ready to contradict her, but stopped when he saw her face. “Are you okay?”
“They lived here.” She pressed her fingertips against the front door and pushed. It creaked as it swung inward. All she could see was a vast empty and dark room. A room she and Grey had run through and had played hide and seek in. She folded her arms over her chest and looked at him. “We lived here.”
He turned his back to the house, facing the yard, plunging his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His brow furrowed as he studied the property. “There used to be a fence and a gate, didn’t there?”
She tried to remember, thinking back to her childhood before Grandmother Faye and Grandpa Randal had taken them to Greenville. The image appeared in her mind’s eye. Grey was right. There had been a white picket fence enclosing the yard. Any remnants of it were long gone. She remembered a distinct clicking sound. “We would go through the gate and walk to the pier sometimes,” she said.
“I remember that.” Grey cupped his hand against the back of his neck. “She—Mom—used to tell me not to go near the water.”
It was true. The house was on the beach, but Cassie hardly let them go out there. Pippin and Grey had given her a run for her money, always escaping and running down the worn boardwalk that led from the house to the sand. Now they fell silent, giving into the memories that surfaced. Grey rocked back on his heels and peered up at the porch ceiling, hands still in his pockets. The traditional haint blue paint was old and peeling. Grandmother Faye had had the same cool blue color on the ceiling of her front porch. “It started with the Gullah communities in South Carolina and Georgia,” she’d told Pippin. “The color kept away the haints.”