Free The Sandcastle Sister by Lisa Wingate Page B

stand beside me. Lily has us shift back and forth to get the picture just right. Suddenly she is Little Miss In Charge.
    “Lily . . .” I’m getting antsy to be through security and on my way to Evan.
    “I want to remember this,” she protests. “Okay, now I want just you.”
    “Lily . . .”
    “Smile. This is, like, the last time I’ll see you single. When you come home, you won’t be a Gibbs anymore.” The pout lip is the one she deployed so skillfully as a child. It’s still irresistible.
    I strike the dorky selfie pose that Lily and her friends love on Facebook, hand on my hip, head tipped to one side.
    She snaps several shots. “There, now that didn’t hurt so much, did it?” She tries to give me the phone. “Check the pictures and see if you like them.”
    “I’m sure they’re okay.”
    “Check and see.”
    “No, it’s fine, really. I hate pictures of myself anyway.”
    Lily rolls her eyes. “What ever .” Glancing toward the ticket counter, she moves to grab her bags without even hugging RC and Johnny.
    “Aren’t you going to say good-bye?” I remind her.
    “Oh, yeah . . . Good-bye.” Lily isn’t very emotional about this parting. I’m surprised. I thought she would be. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m making a big deal of it because I’m headed to another continent. It’s not like we’ll never see RC again.
    But then, Lily ends up dragging out the good-byes anyway, chattering on about the museum on the Outer Banks and how, before we left the beach house, she read on the Internet that they have an internship program there. She’d like to come back and learn more about the Lost Colonists of Roanoke Island and whether those people really do have something to do with the story keeper necklaces and our heritage among the Melungeons of the mountains. “Besides, I like the beach a lot. It’d be fun to come back and . . .”
    Someone taps me on the shoulder, and I jump at first. A sailor in uniform extends a hand my way. At first I think he’s going to ask me to snap a picture for him. Instead he holds out what looks like a key chain and says, “I think you dropped this, ma’am.” He releases it into my hand before I have time to argue. I catch it to keep it from falling.
    It’s fairly heavy, but there are no keys on the ring, just some sort of metal bauble clutched between my fingers. It rolls into my palm as I open my hand.
    I do a double take, feel my mouth slowly dropping open. If I was looking for one final sign . . . if I needed one, here it is. A tiny silver replica of the Eiffel Tower catches the light against my skin. It’s the sort of thing you might pick up in a tourist trap. But how did it get here? And why did that guy . . .
    I glance up, and all eyes are on me. Mouths strain to withhold giddy grins. Faces beam with expectation.
    “What’s going . . . ?”
    Snickering, Lily presses a hand over her mouth, extends the cell phone my way. “Look. Look at the picture.”
    “Huh?” I do as she asks, and as I focus on the tiny screen, everything is suddenly perfectly clear . . . Why there were problems with the Jaguar to prevent us from coming earlier for a standby flight. Why Johnny and RC were so happy to drive us all the way to the airport. Why Johnny insisted on walking us in. Why Lily was delaying just now. Why she took the pictures when and how she did. Why they’re all smiling at me like three Cheshire cats in a tree.
    They’ve been waiting for someone, and that’s him behind me in the picture. At six foot four, Evan Hall stands out in any crowd.
    I whirl around, and he’s only a short distance away. His grin stretches ear to ear. He nods at the tiny Eiffel Tower, forgotten in my hand. “It’s not exactly Paris in the springtime.” His eyes are the deep, fathomless blue of the ocean he has secretly crossed to come to me. The sort of ocean so powerful that it washes away the evidence of all things left behind by others. “But the Outer Banks