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Six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch.
The mother and father smile. Their shy little Clairey letting her voice be heard. Alison seeming finally to have unclenched. The mother and father join in. For a moment they are a family, singing.
Daylight come and me wan' go home.
A father knows it already: this is a memory.
As the night deepens, people kick off their sandals. Husbands reach for wives. They dance and drink and feast beneath the star-crammed sky. All the while, though they don't feel it, sand flies devour their flesh. The next morning at breakfast the guests scratch furiously at their limbs.
"I didn't feel a thing."
"Sneaky little suckers."
Claire is bitten terribly. Her legs and feet are covered. A bite on her eyelid causes it to swell so that she can hardly open her eye. The mother purchases Benadryl at the resort shop and Claire spends the day in a groggy haze, scratching.
Alison takes her sister's hand and pulls it away. "Don't." She presses her palm to her sister's skin. For a brief moment Claire is soothed. "Poor Clairey. You're just too sweet."
* * *
DURING THE last days of vacation, adults begin to speak of their return.
"When we get home, remind me to take the car in."
"Let's be sure to call the Vitales about dinner."
"Don't let me forget to sign the boys up for Little League."
The sisters' parents are no different. Two days before their departure, as they lie on the beach, the mother remembers that she has unread library books, by now overdue, on her bedside table. When they get home she will return them and take out new ones, and this time she will actually read them. This vacation has reminded her how much she loves to read. The father announces that when they get back he will start going to the gym in the morning before work like he used to, no excuses. They are energized. Excited, even, to be off this island and back home, where their plans can be implemented, this energy put to use. The vacation has served its purpose—it has made them eager to be home.
A few days ago, they imagined leaving their jobs, their houses, their lives behind and moving down here. Some of them even spent an afternoon viewing properties with a Realtor. Now they see that they were simply indulging a fantasy that, like most fantasies, is not something they actually want. They would grow bored here. The bright colors would grate on their eyes. The sound of the ocean would torment them.
* * *
GUESTS DEPART daily. The resort shuttle takes them in reverse, up the palm-lined drive, onto the rutted public road, past concrete houses, roosters and goats, clothes on clotheslines fluttering over sandy yards. At Sir Randall Corwin International Airport, they walk back across the tarmac, up the stairs onto a plane, speed back down the runway, and lift into the sky. They touch down in Boston or New York or Chicago amid a papery snowfall and drive the dark roads home.
Inevitably, they leave things behind—in their rooms, by the pool, buried in the sand. The staff gathers these objects at the lost and found, but they are rarely claimed. Once a month, Gwendolyn from the spa drives the items to Bendy Harbour Baptist Church. A gold necklace with an amethyst pendant. A denim jacket. A red shawl. Infinite sunglasses. A camera (the roll of film inside never to be developed). A legal thriller. A wristwatch with a green face.
* * *
ON THE day before they return home, Alison, Clairey, and their father walk down the beach to where the local woman who braids hair sits beneath a faded blue umbrella. Their father hands the woman sixty dollars, takes a picture of the girls (the woman looking up briefly—humorlessly, the father thinks—from combing Claire's fine white hair), and returns to his lounge chair.
Excerpted from Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin. Copyright © 2020 by Alexis Schaitkin. Excerpted by permission of Celadon. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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