Free The Sea Glass Sisters by Lisa Wingate

look comes my way. “That’s not soon enough. Do you think those kids want a mother boohooing at every one of their little milestones this year? They want you to celebrate with them, Elizabeth. They’ve got enough of their own worries. They don’t need to be worrying about you. They need to know that you’ll be okay when they’re gone. That you and Robert are looking forward to new frontiers too.”
    I try to think of it this way. I try to think of Robert and me doing things together again, just the two of us. Maybe going up to the north woods and spending time in the cabin?
    Then I wonder if he’s even interested. I can’t tell Aunt Sandy that, of course.
    “Like when George and I came here.” She takes a breath, and I can tell she has a story she wants to share. She tells me about their first trip to the Outer Banks—a vacation Uncle George won through a sales contest at his job. She admits that they argued all the way from Michigan that first day. She wished they hadn’t even taken the trip. “But you know, the vacation gave us a new dream, a dream we could share together. We saw that old house by the highway in Hatteras Village, and I think we both knew. Putting a shop in there was our future. It seemed crazy, but it was what we needed. We never looked back, and we’ve never been sorry. This part of our life has been one of the best parts. The shop, the grandkids coming to visit, our house with the path to the shore. A whole new experience, instead of sitting around mourning what’s gone. I’m just . . .”
    Movement on the side of the road catches my eye, and I shut out the rest of her sentence. There’s a woman running from a beach house, sloshing through the water in the front yard with something in her arms. I lean down and look in the side mirror after we pass. Something’s wrong. . . .
    “Wait! Stop!” I reach across and clutch Aunt Sandy’s arm, strain against my seat belt to get a view over my shoulder. “Turn around! Somebody’s got a problem back there.”
    Aunt Sandy cuts the wheel, circling a sand-covered pile of flotsam at the edge of the road. Our view is blocked momentarily, and then we see the woman. She’s in the ditch now, running. There’s a baby in her arms. Limp. My heart lurches upward, my mind rushes, and for a moment I wonder if this is a dream—if I’m really back at Aunt Sandy’s house, asleep.
    But it’s real. It must be.
    We squeal into the ditch, and the Jeep rams into a sandbank as it slides to a stop, tossing me against the seat belt hard enough that I’m addled for a moment before I spring the buckle, jump out, and run to the woman.
    She’s carrying a toddler, a little girl. The baby’s wispy blonde hair is plastered to her head, muddy and wet. For an instant, my thoughts stall. I wonder again if I’m dreaming of Emily, but this child is younger.
    “She fell!” the woman screams, her face flushed and covered with dirt and tears. “She fell off the deck into the water. I only turned my back for a minute. Oh, dear God, save my baby. She’s not breathing. She’s not breathing! Help my baby!”
    There’s a split-second fear that I will freeze, but I don’t. A calm slips over me. A clarity of thought. A step-by-step logic that comes from training. “How long?”
    I take the girl and lay her on the storm-washed sand alongside the road, shaking her to see if I can stimulate a response, but there is none.
    A four-wheel-drive truck pulls over and two men run our way, but I’m barely aware of them. The script is in my head, but not only the script. There’s also the emergency training I’ve been through as part of the department.
    Until you’re in the situation, you always wonder if you could do this in real life. Now it feels like second nature. “Find a landline and have someone call 911!” I say. Then I check her airway, give a quick breath into her mouth, feel for the rise and fall of her chest, try again to rouse her as the men in the truck