Secrets in the Sand by Carolyn Brown

            It seemed like she was the only human in the universe.

            So why couldn’t she manage to relax? She ducked underwater to get her hair wet, then slid up onto the seat, tipped her head back, and willed her tense body to let go. Every muscle, every tendon, every molecule was clenched like a fist ready for battle.

            Georgia dropped the ball and nosed it toward Abby’s wineglass. Abby tossed the ball a few dozen times, then plunked it into the hot tub where Georgia wouldn’t go. “No more playing.”

            Georgia settled on her haunches, elbows to the ground and feet pointing straight ahead in the classic cattle-dog pose. Eyeing the floating ball the way her ancestors had once eyed flocks of sheep, she waited patiently for Abby to make the next move.

            Abby sipped her wine and surveyed her aunt’s domain. Three—no, four—cats lounged within sight: Max, the big, gray tabby; Princess Grace, the elegant Siamese mix; Glenn, the black-and-white-spotted feral with a notched ear; and Jessie, another gray tabby with a notched ear. The others were all off doing cat things. Across the fence that separated the parking lot from the blue clapboard farmhouse, the petting-zoo animals rested in the big, red barn. Down the hill toward the bay, an owl hooted, answered by its mate a short distance away.

            If Reva had been here, she would have told Abby what the owls were saying. “I’m here,” probably. And “I’m here too.” Animals weren’t always running off at the mouth like humans. Most often, their calls back and forth were quick check-ins establishing location and well-being.

            Family keeping up with family.

            Something her parents had never seemed interested in. When Abby spent summers with Reva and Grayson, her parents hardly ever called. When Abby graduated from high school, they exchanged their three-bedroom house for a top-of-the-line home on wheels and offered to pay a year of storage fees for her stuff until she could “get the hang of adulting.” When she graduated from college with a business degree, they didn’t come; they’d been too busy avoiding the hot Louisiana summer by touring every campsite in Oregon.

            When Abby cut herself adrift from her own life, she should’ve known to ask Reva for help first. Reva was a generous and forgiving Mother Earth, while Abby’s father (Reva’s brother-in-law) made Narcissus look like a philanthropist. Abby’s mother, well, she was more like a ghost. Even when she was there, she wasn’t really. Winston Curtis was the dense magnetic planet that kept his wife’s dimming star from spinning off into oblivion. Whatever he said, she echoed, because she wasn’t a whole person without him. Full of their customary thimbleful of compassion, they had advised Abby to tighten her bootstraps.

            So when she found herself sitting in a leaking dinghy watching her bridges burn behind her, and her parents had given unhelpful advice but no actual help, Abby had asked her aunt Reva for a patch of uncharred earth on which to land. “Yes, of course,” her aunt had replied without skipping a heartbeat. “You’re welcome to stay for as long as you like.”

            Family taking care of family.

            Abby thought of the little girl she’d met today—Angelina—and hoped that if the child couldn’t be with her family, at least she lived with people who loved her. Everyone, human or animal, deserved a home in which they knew unconditional love and acceptance. Abby thought of the child she’d had to leave behind in order to save herself, and swallowed a mouthful of wine along with the worry and regret that never left her mind. That it wasn’t her child didn’t make it better.

            With the comforting bulk of the house behind her, Abby leaned her head back and let her feet float up. A couple of early stars winked on in the deepening sky, and solar lights glittered off to the left, lighting a flagstone path to the aviary and the pavilion. Straight ahead and down the hill, a fenced pasture surrounded the swimming hole whose brown water glittered dimly as the sun’s last ray disappeared beyond the horizon.

            The granddaddy oak Abby remembered from every summer of her childhood stood guard over the wooden dock. Fifty feet up into its fern-covered branches, a tire swing’s hefty rope was tied so older kids could swing far out over the pond before letting go.

            Beyond, rolling pastureland led down to a wide strip of marshland that bordered the bay a few miles away. A boat’s motor made a whining sound in the distance; someone night fishing or checking trotlines.

            Abby heard a munching sound and peered into the gathering shadows. At the property line between her aunt’s farm and the new neighbor’s estate, two long, curving horns bobbed in rhythm—a goat with his head buried in the privacy hedge. “Gregory.” Out again, that bad, adventurous goat. “You could teach Houdini a thing or two.”