Beyond Molasses Creek Read online

  Acclaim for Nicole Seitz

  “I look forward to a new book by Nicole Seitz because I know I’ll be treated to a well-written, thought-provoking read. Beyond Molasses Creek does not disappoint. Nicole is a writer I can count on to consistently tell a story containing deep characters and original plots.”

  — Marybeth Whalen, author of She Makes

  It Look Easy and The Mailbox

  “[The Inheritance of Beauty] gives us pause as we consider the road ahead, and it also makes us thankful for the world we have today. Any story that causes that much reflection is one to be appreciated.”

  — The Huffington Post

  “Seitz grabs the reader by the heart at the beginning of the book and doesn’t let go until the end.”

  — ChristianBookPreviews.com,

  regarding The Inheritance of Beauty

  “[The Inheritance of Beauty is a] tender tale of childhood secrets and lifelong ties, from a skilled writer who understands the beauty of enduring love. George and Maggie will make you want to learn your own family stories!”

  — Lisa Wingate, national best-selling author of

  Larkspur Cove and The Summer Kitchen

  “In The Inheritance of Beauty, Seitz has skillfully brought life, depth, and beauty to an often forgotten part of society, reminding readers of the power in strong bonds of love and friendship, the weight of memory and childhood, and the significance of reckoning with the past. Through the voices of an intimate group of individuals brought together in an elderly center, a haunting story unfolds with striking fluidity and the underlying presence of spirituality. Seitz has weaved into the lines of this moving page-turner a mysterious tale of healing, wrought with a sweet touch of southern warmness that truly speaks to the soul.”

  — Noni Carter, author of Good Fortune

  “Nicole Seitz joins a long line of distinguished novelists who celebrate the rich culture of the Lowcountry of South Carolina . . . She joins Josephine Humphries, Anne Rivers Siddons, Sue Monk Kidd, and Dorothea Benton Frank in her fascination with the Gullah culture. Her character, Essie Mae Laveau Jenkins, is worth the price of admission to The Spirit of Sweetgrass.”

  — Pat Conroy, best-selling author of The

  Prince of Tides and South of Broad

  “This beautifully written, imaginative story of love and redemption is the must-read book of the year. The ending is so surprising and powerful that it will linger long after the last page is turned.”

  — Cassandra King, best-selling author of The Same Sweet

  Girls, regarding A Hundred Years of Happiness

  “An unforgettable novel about sisterhood, salvation, and miracles.”

  — Karin Gillespie, author of Dollar Daze, regarding Trouble the Water

  “Seitz has a gift for creating wonderful characters . . . marvelously memorable.”

  — Publishers Weekly review of Saving Cicadas

  “Nicole Seitz takes the loose threads of her characters’ lives and ties them together in a vibrant pattern of love, forgiveness and truth. In words that resonate with emotion, Seitz writes of things that are only understood with the heart.”

  — Patti Callahan Henry, best-selling author of Driftwood Summer

  “ . . . A surprisingly creative tale that will leave readers guessing until the end.”

  — River Jordan, author of Saints in Limbo, regarding Saving Cicadas

  “Her words are magic. Pure magic.”

  — Tim Callahan, author of Kentucky Summers:

  The Cave, the Cabin, and the Tattoo Man

  Beyond Molasses Creek

  Books by Nicole Seitz

  The Spirit of Sweetgrass

  Trouble the Water

  A Hundred Years of Happiness

  Saving Cicadas

  The Inheritance of Beauty

  Beyond Molasses Creek

  a novel

  Nicole Seitz

  © 2012 by Nicole Seitz

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Interior sketches created by Nicole Seitz.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Seitz, Nicole A.

  Beyond Molasses Creek : a novel / Nicole Seitz.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-59554-505-3 (trade paper)

  1. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Self-realization in women—Fiction. 3. Kidnapping—Fiction. 4. Female friendship—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619.E426B49 2012b

  813'.6—dc23

  2011041984

  Printed in the United States of America

  12 13 14 15 16 17 QG 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To those who long to be free.

  I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

  —MICHEL ANGELO

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  One: The Stone Garden

  Two: Destiny

  Three: The Elephant and the Great White Bird

  Four: Monsoon Season

  Five: Make Yourself at Home

  Six: Faith and Postcards

  Seven: Sunshine All the Time

  Eight: Uncertainty

  Nine: Letters from Heaven

  Ten: At First Sight

  Eleven: Pot Roast Says I’m Sorry

  Twelve: The Book of the Gods

  Thirteen: The Sketchbook

  Part Two

  Fourteen: Pinky Promises

  Fifteen: Delivering the News

  Sixteen: Poodle Skirts and Aprons

  Seventeen: Co-Cola Bottle in the Sun

  Eighteen: The Radio

  Nineteen: Supper with Old Friends

  Twenty: You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me

  Twenty-One: On Education and Freedom

  Part Three

  Twenty-Two: Maharajgunj Road

  Twenty-Three: Gods in the Garden

  Twenty-Four: Thieves

  Twenty-Five: Escape

  Twenty-Six: How It Will End

  Twenty-Seven: Jasper Farms

  Twenty-Eight: Fate and Strangers

  Twenty-Nine: Tears and Molten Wax

  Thirty Drawing: Clues

  Thirty-One: Homesick

  Thirty-Two: Evolution of a Co-ed

  Thirty-Three: Daddy’s Girl

  Thirty-Four: Up in the Air

  Thirty-Five: Shangri-La

  Thirty-Six: The Invitation

  Thirty-Seven: Rude Awakening

  Thirty-Eight: Dusty Files

  Thirty-Nine: Steak au Poivre in Paris

  Forty: The In-between

  Forty-One: Falling in Love

  Forty-Two: Collecting Evidence

  Part Four

  Forty-Three: Can’t Take It with You

  Forty-Four: Elusive Hope

  Forty-Five: Where Did All the Time Go?

  Forty-Six: Enlightenment

  Forty-Seven: Getting Ready

  Forty-Eight: The Bridge

  Forty-Nine: Oh, Won’t You Stay

  Fifty: Dear Ms. Green

  Fifty-One: Newspaper Man

  Fifty-Two: Shout to the Sky

  Fifty-Three: The Call

  Fifty-Four: Awakening

  Fifty-Five: Great
White Bird

  Fifty-Six: Crossing Over

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Ally

  WHEN I WAS A GIRL, I WOULD LIE ON THE BANKS OF Molasses Creek with soft green grass beneath my back and look up into the sky, dreaming of being there. In my upside-down world, the clouds were pieces of land that I would hop to and the vast blue sky was the river, the ocean that would beckon to transport me far, far away. That vast blue sky has taken me to all sorts of foreign lands since then. Sometimes the most foreign place is home.

  I’ll be flying in just a few minutes, cloud-hopping back to a city I never thought I’d see again.

  I close my eyes and imagine myself feeling weightless again, my body traveling at five hundred miles an hour yet perfectly still. Someone clears a throat. I open my eyes and see a woman before me in uniform, standing at a podium. She’s holding out her hand. “Oh yes,” I say. I reach in my bag and pull out my wallet. Through the airport window, a jet leaves the wet runway and rises into thick gray rain.

  I hand the uniformed woman my driver’s license, and she looks at me to see if there’s a match. “My hair’s a little different now,” I explain. “And . . . I’m a little older.” So much about me is different now. I wonder if she can read it in my face—the years, the tragedy, the love, the moments of hope. I smile at her, but she doesn’t return it. They’ve gotten a lot stricter with flying these days, and that’s not such a bad thing. I don’t mind waiting a few minutes longer to take my shoes off and have them search my belongings. There’s a poor old lady up ahead of me, hunched over. They have her to the side and are patting her down. Really? Her? Never in a million years. After flying as many times as I have, you get an eye for these things.

  The woman hands me my license back and the young lady behind me reaches to hand her a passport. “Charleston is very nice place,” she says in a foreign accent. You can tell she’s worked hard on her English. That warms my heart. I take a deep breath and move to the conveyor belt. I set my shoes in a gray bin along with a lightweight jacket and carry-on bag. The top of the bag is open and when I set it on its side, a large, tattered book peeks out. My heart flutters and my mind spills over with images, sketches of my life, as if I’m having one of those near-death experiences and life is flashing before my eyes.

  I blink and move forward. Did I remember my pencils? Yes, I did.

  I shuffle along with everyone else, barefooted, until I pass through the metal detector. Oh, the things I’ve seen people get caught with over the years—guns, drug paraphernalia, tiny switchblades in unusual parts of the body. Some people are flat-out crazy and criminal.

  Criminal. Crime. Why would anyone ever return to the scene of the crime? For closure? To find that part of them that was lost there? To make things right? I’m going back for all of these reasons. I can’t believe it. I never thought I’d see the day.

  The airport is fairly empty this time of the morning, but our wait isn’t long. A cup of coffee and a People magazine later, we’ve entered the plane. It’s a Boeing 737. I look into the cockpit to see who’s flying us. I’m looking to see if a certain old lover is there, but that would be too much of a coincidence, even for me. I nod at the pilot, a fiftyish gentleman I have never seen before, and carefully eye the flight attendant. She’s about thirty-five, a little heavy in the hips, blond hair, nice looking. Back in my day she never would have gotten a job here. Back then, getting and keeping a stewardess job was as hard as making the cut on American Idol. But not today. Times have changed. Part of me wants to relieve this lady and do her job for her. I could take care of this entire plane, all these passengers, all their needs, without blinking an eye. I’m not too old, no matter what they suggested. So what, my back went out and I dropped a cup of coffee on a passenger. It happens. My heart just wasn’t in it anymore, and when your passion leaves you, well, it might just be time to move on to something else.

  To be honest, flying turned painful emotionally as the years went on. I was always torn between wanting to fly to the other side of the world and keep searching—or going back to see him. A woman is lucky in life if she finds true love. Twice as lucky if she holds on to it. Three times the luck if she loses it and it comes back to her even stronger than before.

  I’ve got to go back. I can’t believe I’m going back. I left in the first place because of him, and now, I can feel this strong pull within me—he’s pulling me. He’s leading me, telling me I must return to the scene of the crime, where my whole life changed in an instant. It’s now or never. No more wasted time.

  I close my eyes as the plane rumbles to takeoff. I’ve never been much of a praying woman, but this time, I hear the faint mumbling of the young lady beside me. I turn to look at her, a pretty girl, obviously nervous about flying today too. Her eyes are closed and fists clenched. We all have our fears, don’t we? Our own stories. And our reasons to go back to the place that changed us. She catches my eye. I take a deep breath and give a reassuring look. I squeeze her hand like I’ve done a thousand times with passengers, then turn to the window as the plane lifts off the runway. My heart lifts along with my stomach, and I say a little prayer to the clouds for the both of us. Great white bird, take us over the river. Make us brave and remove our fears.

  I think of his rugged face, those dark eyes, those sweet lips smiling for me. I know what I promised you, but you know me, Vesey. You always have.

  Sometimes stepping back in time is the only way for a girl to move forward.

  Part One

  In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

  —LEONARDO DA VINCI

  ONE

  The Stone Garden

  Mount Pleasant, South Carolina

  Ally

  THERE’S A BEND IN THE CREEK WHERE MARSH GRASS waves, calling egrets and ospreys from their high places. It’s as familiar to me as the bend in my elbow, yet now, years later, it almost seems exotic. Standing here, I can’t look at the creek and not see them all—the Ganges, the Seine, the Baghmati—all the beautiful rivers that have carved valleys into my soul.

  I’m home now, Huck on the Mississippi, winding my way, finding my way home.

  Why did someone have to die for me to come back? I wonder. Isn’t it just as glorious and miraculous a waterway as any other?

  I am sitting Indian-style in my stone garden, at least it will be after I’m done with it. Right now, it’s just a patch of grass in Daddy’s yard. It’s overgrown, wild and empty at the same time. Much like my heart. I close my eyes. I can see them all around me, the statues I’ve collected over the years. I’ll put them all over this yard and create my own Garden of Dreams. It was the last place I was truly happy. A faraway garden. Stone statues. True love. Daddy would understand. If I’m going to stay here for any time at all, I’ll have to do things my way, and right now, I feel destitute. I need someone to carve a god of peace for me, something I can touch and hold, something to take away this awful, gnawing grief.

  I am too old to be sitting on the ground in the middle of the yard. The neighbors will think I’ve gone batty. I push to standing and wipe off my ample rear. I head to the dock and breathe in the salty marsh air. I see a rope hanging off the edge and disappearing into the water. Daddy’s crab trap. I breathe in deep and exhale. Tears spring to my eyes and I fight them off.

  Crabs. I’m hungry. Is it possible I’m hungry after eating a whole rotisserie chicken with coleslaw on the side? I look down at my ripply thighs. The sunlight this time of day does a number on me, pulls out every little bulge and pocket, every wrinkle. I will miss my father, I will, but I do not miss shorts weather in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Some people are not made to wear shorts. I struggled through it in Bali and on the shores of Hawaii, but only because I did not know a soul there. Here? Here, there’s a slew of people who’ve never even left this pla
ce and know the old me from long ago. Can you imagine? Can you even imagine never wanting to see the world, to partake in it all? To find your place in it?

  I pull up the trap to see if anything is in there. Of course, there’s not.

  “Give it time.”

  A voice like butter rolls down my back.

  I drop the trap with a splash and nearly fall into the water. Clutching the pole, I turn around and realize the sun is beaming off my flabby arms. And there he is. There he is. Just look at him. Is it possible black people don’t age the way we do?

  “Dad-gum, Vesey. Scared me half to death!”

  “Sorry, Miss Ally. Here, lemme help you up.”

  He reaches for me, a long, strong, sinewy arm with forearm muscles rippling. I feel faint. This is Vesey, Ally Green. The boy you played with when you were little, the one who was off limits because you are white and he is not. Vesey Washington. This is the South and always will be. Remember that.

  “Thank you, I’m . . . I’m fine,” I say. “Just been a long day. What with the . . . well, coming home and all.”

  His face breaks out into a grin, not a sly one, but a genuine, heartfelt smile with teeth so white, I’m feeling dizzy again. Reminds me of the white sands in Fiji, so pure.

  “You are a sight for sore eyes, Mr. Washington. You still climbing trees or something?”

  “Or somethin’. Look here, just come over to see if there was anythin’ you needed from me. I been checkin’ on him, Doc Green, every day for a good while. Hard to break the habit.” He looks down at the cracks in the pier, then off into the sunset behind me. “I’m real sorry . . . a good man, he was. Good man.”

  “Thank you. Yes, he was.” I turn around and face the sunset too. In a minute it will be gone, just a memory, like Daddy. The red meets the greens of the trees, and the yellows and oranges fan out to pinks and purples, and yes, this is one of the most spectacular sunsets in the world. In fact, wherever the sun sets is where I want to be. So tonight I want to be right here, on this dock, with Daddy’s house behind me and Vesey just feet away. We watch the sky silently for about thirty seconds, and then the sun dips behind the trees and it’s gone for another day.