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The Sea Prayers

By Normandie Fischer

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Locked-away memories belonged to the dark, not streaking like fireballs into the middle of a shimmery day. Hadn’t Agnes rendered any bugaboos powerless under layers of to-dos and long lists of what-ifs?
She’d tucked them away. Far away. And so she responded to the postman’s whistle like metal shavings to a magnet. She dropped her sponge and hurried toward the front of the house, immune to thoughts of overdue notices that showed up with awful regularity. She could hope, couldn’t she, that today good news would appear in her mailbox—a check, an invitation, a validation of some sort?
Link’s tail swished across the hardwood floor, and he snuffled to get out. “Stay,” she said, extending her hand, palm out, as she stepped onto the porch and let the door close behind her.
“Hey, Ms. Jones. How’s it going?”
“Billy.” She focused on the stack of mail in his hand. “I hope you’re well.”
“Doin’ great, thanks.” The round-faced septuagenarian, who acted younger than some in their thirties, held up an envelope that seemed innocuous enough to keep her excitement brewing. “You need to sign for this one.” He handed her a certified mail receipt. “Something important’d be my guess. California. Los Angeles.” He winked. “Maybe Hollywood’s come calling. Maybe they discovered that little beauty you got living with you.”
“Maybe,” she said, signing and handing back the receipt.
“You have a great day, ma’am.”
“You, too.”
The envelope weighed heavily in her hand as she stared at a return address she didn’t recognize. D. Evermire in Los Angeles. She squinted. Who did she know in California named Evermire? Named D-something Evermire?
The realization smacked her like a slap to the face, stinging and sending shock waves all the way down her spine. And there it was. The him of her past.
But he couldn’t have found her.
Darlington Evermire. Dar…ling…ton. The syllables separated, marbles clicking against each other.
She was going to faint.
She never fainted.
Bracing herself against the porch rail, she scanned the front yard and the street beyond her wooden gate as if he might be lurking behind a hedge or in one of the cars crawling into town. Oh, maybe not him, but someone, some hireling who’d located her. How had he ferreted her out when no one in Beaufort, North Carolina, even knew?
“God, please.” She whispered the words to a heaven she’d railed against ever since… ever since that night. And its aftermath.
She pressed a fist against her stomach as if to hold back the bile. How had her accidental sperm donor—or, to be more precise, her rapist sperm planter—found her?
When her knees threatened to buckle, she clutched the railing with suddenly sweaty palms. Sweaty was a trick in fifty-eight degrees. It had been seventy-one yesterday, but now cold was scurrying in. Scurrying down to her belly, too, in spite of that sweat.
Agnes pushed away, turned, and stepped blindly into the front hall. The screen door slammed behind her, and she locked herself in before dropping the bulk of the mail, minus the poisonous letter, on the hall chest. Link pressed against her thighs, offering his head for a pat. She gave it absently and as absently plodded, one foot in front of the other, slowly up the wide, curved staircase to the second floor, the dog one step behind. At least no one other than Link was near enough to hear her sharp puffs of breath, the creak of that loose board on the fifth stair, the slide and slap of her faux-Uggs as she followed the path of the Oriental runner past a guest-room door to her own room, and then into her bathroom. With the door locked, she slid down the wall to the floor, raised her knees, and laid her forehead against them.
It all came back. The noise, the smells, the sloshing liquid and sloshed pretty people hadn’t been what she’d expected when she’d agreed to go to the club that night. It just went to show what she’d known about pretty much anything outside of classes.
She’d been so stupid.
During the years between his first oozy smile and now, she’d done her best, her very best, to forget that Darlington Evermire—Darling to his adoring fans—had ever lived. She would have managed it except for a certain expression in her daughter's eyes, a certain tilt to Brisa's chin—or maybe it was Brisa's toffee-colored skin and the lush curls of her black hair that reminded Agnes of the man who’d stolen her innocence and changed her life forever.
She splashed water on her face, dried it, and then carried the offending letter back to her room, where she tucked it out of sight in her underwear drawer, away from prying eyes. Not that her daughter normally came into her room.
If only Agnes could burn the letter, but she’d signed for it, giving proof it had come into her hands. She wished she could wipe it, him, from her thoughts, but once seen, always remembered. The ability to hold onto images and words had been a gift during her student days; it was useless now. And, no, she wouldn’t consider that the letter’s words might be benign.
Not if Darlington Evermire had penned them.

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