Secrets in the Sand by Carolyn Brown

            She scanned down the letter to what Clancy had written. Since leaving high school, he’d graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor’s degree in geology and chemistry and a minor in education. Then he’d enlisted in the air force and had been stationed in Virginia for most of his four-year career and had gone to graduate school for a master’s in education. Just recently he’d come back to Oklahoma and started teaching in an Oklahoma City high school. Under Marital Status, he had marked an X beside Divorced.

            So, he probably had married Melissa after all. But what had happened? By small-town society’s rules, Mr. and Mrs. Clancy Morgan were supposed to be living happily ever after. Suddenly, Angel wished she had subscribed to the Tishomingo weekly newspaper. Then at least she would have known who’d married whom, who had children, and so forth.

            When her granny had driven their old green pickup truck out of Tishomingo that long-ago fall day, Angel hadn’t even looked back in the rearview mirror for one last glimpse of the place where she’d lived since she was three years old. She hadn’t left anything behind but heartaches, and she didn’t need to look back at the fading lights of town to recapture them. They would be with her forever.

            She looked through the newsletter to see what Billy Joe Summers was doing these days. She hadn’t seen him at the dance even though she’d scanned the ballroom several times to see if there was a six-foot, five-inch gangly man standing shyly on the sidelines. Billy Joe had always been nice to her, and that awful night on the sandbar when she’d sat with her feet in the warm water, it had been Billy Joe’s name that Clancy had mentioned so scornfully.

            “Hello again, Mr. Henry.” Angel picked up a worn teddy bear sitting on top of her filing cabinet and held him, just for old times’ sakes. Mr. Henry had listened sympathetically to all her tales of woe in the years since she’d been given him for her fifth birthday…and here she was, still feeling sorry for herself.

            She wondered how her memories of Tishomingo could still be so vivid. After all, she hadn’t ever wanted to go back, even though she and her granny had lived there for fifteen years, since the day she’d turned three years old. Angel had spent her babyhood in nearby Kemp, and although they visited her great-grandpa at the farm there a couple of times a year, she couldn’t recollect anything about it.

            When Angel had turned eighteen, her great-grandpa Poppa John had died and left his twenty acres to his only child—Angel’s grandmother. After his estate had been settled, Angel and her granny had left Tishomingo and gone back to Kemp. And it hadn’t happened a minute too soon, in anyone’s opinion. Memories flooded her mind. “Don’t stay out late, Angela. We’ve got to pack in the morning,” her granny had reminded her. “Got to be out of the house before midnight or pay more rent, you know.”

            “I know.” Angela had gone out the front door and walked west toward the dam. All summer she’d gone swimming every evening in Pennington Creek, and it was a good thing August had arrived, because her bikini was beginning to look as worn-out as her jeans. Most times, it seemed like just a hop, skip, and jump from her house to the swimming hole, but that evening the walk took forever.

            Angel had shimmied out of her shorts and shirt, tugged the top of her bikini down and the bottoms up before she sat down on the sandbar and waited for Clancy. She picked up a twig and drew an interlocking heart in the sand. She put her initial in one heart, Clancy’s in the second one, and wrote baby in the part that interlocked. She loved him, and he loved her. The secret that they had been hiding all summer would come out as soon as she told him her news. Sure, they were young, but she had a scholarship, and he didn’t have to go to Oklahoma University. The important thing was that they would be together.

            She soaked her feet in the lukewarm water while she waited. Clancy wouldn’t be there for another half hour so she thought about all the scenarios lying ahead. She’d known the first time they’d accidentally met each other in this very place that she was flirting with big trouble, but she’d been in love with Clancy Morgan since kindergarten. If he would just touch her hand or kiss her one time before she moved away, she could survive forever on the memories. That he didn’t want anyone to know they were dating stung a little, but now their secret would be out in public. Clancy was a good guy. He would do the right thing.

            She was so deep in her thoughts that she didn’t even hear the car tires crunching on gravel when he drove up close to the sandbar. He sat down beside her, and she quickly ran a hand over the heart she had drawn. He was a smart guy. If he saw the secret in the sand, he would know immediately why she was smiling so big. She wanted to tell him and then feel his arms around her, and hear him telling her that everything would be fine.

            Clancy plopped down on the sandbar. Usually he drew her into his arms and kissed her the minute he arrived, but not that night. “We need to talk, Angela.”