Secrets in the Sand by Carolyn Brown

            Abby hadn’t embraced her gifts yet, but one day, she would. One day, Abby would receive a communication that couldn’t be denied or passed off as her imagination. Reva wished she could do more to help Abby recognize her abilities. But as Grayson had told her many times, “You can’t push the river.” She could only toss seeds upon the water and hope they would float to a fertile place that would support their growth.

            Still feeling Grayson’s presence beside her, Reva wheeled her suitcase out a set of double doors to a curbside pickup lane that smelled of car exhaust and stale cigarette smoke.

            At the preappointed spot, a spindly, bored-looking man wearing camo pants and a plain green shirt leaned against a white-paneled van. Reva had expected a vehicle with a logo for the wildlife center on the side, but this looked more like a prison van. All her insecurities and doubts about the wisdom of leaving home for so long rose up to choke her, but she swallowed them down. “Hello?”

            Immersed in his cell phone and his cigarette, the van guy seemed not to notice her. He took a slow drag from his cigarette, blew the smoke out sideways, then looked at her through one squinting eye. “Sorry. I’m a little hard of hearing. Come again?”

            She spoke a little louder. “Is this the transport van to the wildlife refuge?”

            “Yep, and you’re the last to load up.” He dropped his cigarette and ground it into the pavement with his boot. “You ready?”

            She remembered the feeling of being protected and guided by Grayson, and she pulled that feeling around her like a blanket until she almost felt as if his hand rested at her waist. “I’m ready.”

            The driver hauled her suitcase into the back of the van, then waited while she dug into her purse and brought out a few dollars to plunk into his palm. He pocketed the money and grinned. “Get on in.”

            The row seats behind the driver were all filled with college-age students, many of whom had backpacks taking up the space beside them. Reva hovered in the van’s open doorway. “Hello, everyone. I’m Reva. It’s nice to meet y’all.”

            A chorus of unenthusiastic “hey” and “hi” and “hello” responses were even further diminished by the fact that only one of Reva’s fellow passengers managed to look up from their cell phones. But from the middle seat, a pretty girl with purple-tipped dreadlocks waved and smiled. “Hey. I’m Dana. You can sit next to me.”

            Dana scooted closer to the window and stowed her backpack under the seat. Reva squeezed past the beefy guy with military-short blond hair on the end of the row to take the middle seat.

            Startled, he looked up from his phone, then smiled. “Oh, hey.” He took out one earbud and moved his long legs out of her way. “Come on through.”

            Reva got settled, then held out a hand and introduced herself to each of the kids in her row. As the van trundled out of the Miami International Airport complex, the kids in the two other rows looked up from their devices and started chatting with one another. A girl from the back put a hand on Reva’s shoulder and introduced herself. A guy from the front turned around and said hi. Feeling more included, Reva relaxed. She reminded herself that kids these days used their phones as a way of coping with social anxiety the way she had once kept her nose buried in a book.

            Once the van passed the brightly lit streets and began to bump along dark highways and back roads toward their final destination, everyone disappeared again into their electronic devices. She turned to her own cell phone for solace as well.

            Hey, Abby, she typed. My flight landed safely and I’m on my way to the internship. Wish me luck! I hope everything’s going well back at the farm. How was the school tour today? How is the new kitten? Did you get an appointment at the vet’s office for tomorrow?

            She hit Send, then tucked her cell phone into her purse’s side pocket. Then she stared out the window at endless pine forests until the lumbering lurch of the van lulled her to sleep.

            ***

            Quinn put on his headphones, turned up the volume on his playlist, and began the painstaking process of regrouting the vintage floor tiles in the pool-house bathroom.

            First, he scraped out the top layer of the old grout with a grout saw—a small, handheld, inefficient tool that made his hands cramp.

            The whole time he did it, he fumed.

            How in the hell was he going to sell this place for a profit with a damn petting zoo next door? He might’ve just sunk a bunch of money—the last of his money, in fact—into a horrible mistake. Even after agonizing over all the potential pros and cons, he had failed to uncover a bigger con than all of his worst imaginings.