The Ocean Inside Read online

  Outstanding praise for Janna McMahan and The Ocean Inside!

  “One of those books that you don’t want to put down until the end.”

  —The Sandlapper

  “A lingering and bittersweet coming-of-age tale.”

  —Charleston Magazine

  “A moving and gripping tale of an American family.”

  —Lisa Alther, author of Kinflicks

  And praise for her debut novel, Calling Home!

  “What a lovely, vivid, immediate novel Janna McMahan has written! Calling Home will make you want to call your mother, lock up your children, and find—or hold tight to—the love of your life. This novel will delight and transport all who read it.”

  —Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author

  “A raw and realistic coming of age story…McMahan gives a rich and multidimensional view of life in small-town Kentucky that does not simplify or romanticize country ways…a complex and sophisticated story that will resonate with readers everywhere and will hit home for anyone who grew up in small Southern town with dreams of a better life.”

  —New Southerner

  “Calling Home is a lovely book. It will resonate with everyone who ever loved, left or returned to a family—and in a way that’s all of us. Janna speaks to us in a strong, original voice. I hope we hear a lot more of it.”

  —Anne Rivers Siddons, New York Times bestselling author

  “Heart-wrenching…”

  —Kentucky Monthly

  “Calling Home is a gritty, down home, contemporary and very real novel. Janna McMahan is a writer who knows how to get out of the way and let the story rip. Each vibrant, well-developed character’s voice rings true. McMahan presents the struggles of the working poor and the small farmer, the aspirations of parents for their children, the passions and problems of family life. She has a special gift for dialogue. This beautifully written, heartbreakingly realistic novel is a page-turner of the first magnititude.”

  —Lee Smith, New York Times bestselling author of On Agate Hill and The Last Girls

  Books by Janna McMahan

  CALLING HOME

  THE OCEAN INSIDE

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  The Ocean Inside

  JANNA McMAHAN

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  This novel is dedicated to my beloved mothers-in-law, Ruth Ann Cotterill and Anne McConnell Cotterill. Both librarians, these two women happily clipped and collected for me.

  They were greatly loved and are most sincerely missed.

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to fellow cancer survivor Elizabeth Grimball, a brave young woman who freely shared her thoughts and feelings about battling this disease in childhood.

  I’d also like to thank Dr. Laura Basile and Dr. John Cahill for their medical advice, John Bolin for his theology guidance, Monica Francis for her insurance knowledge, Gerald Lonon for insight into real estate development, and First Sergeant Angus MacBride of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources for beautiful descriptions of shrimping. Thank you to all the helpful reference librarians at Richland County Public Library, Debra Bloom in particular. Also, thank you to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division for information on drug smuggling.

  My gratitude goes to my supportive friends and family who read my work, catch my mistakes, share great ideas, and in various ways contribute to my success as a writer. Thank you to Amy Barnes, Robin Riebold, Doreen Sullivan, Mary Jane Reynolds, Deirdre Mardon, Jeffrey Day, Brian Ray, Kate Spurling, Jill Todd, Shelby Miller Jones, Lisa McMahan, and my mother, Edith McMahan.

  A big ole thanks to my brother, Robb McMahan, for the catalyst of my first laptop and the missive “Now you have no excuse. Write that novel.” You’re the best brother in the world.

  Thank you to my bighearted friend Carolyn Mitchell for sharing her Pawleys Island beach house with my family. I can never repay your generosity. Also, thank you to Bunni Crawford for an invitation to a swanky party at her island home. The crab cakes were divine and the gossip even better.

  My appreciation always to Katherine Fausset, my insightful and encouraging agent at Curtis Brown. I’m so pleased we found each other.

  Thank you to John Scognamiglio, Editor in Chief of Kensington, for lovely covers, editorial guidance, marketing support, and creative freedom.

  Thanks to my family, Mark Cotterill, and our daughter, Madison, for being ever patient and supportive. I’m glad you’re both artists who understand that creativity takes time.

  The Silver Gardens

  Come to the silver gardens of the South,

  Where whisper hath her monarchy, and winds,

  Deftly devise live tapestries of shade,

  In glades of stillness patterned,

  And where the red-bird like a sanguine stain,

  Brings Tragedy to Beauty.

  —Archer M. Huntington

  Contents

  Chapter 1: Night Swimming

  Chapter 2: Island Life

  Chapter 3: Taking a Ride

  Chapter 4: Preexisting Condition

  Chapter 5: Focus

  Chapter 6: The Black Fountain

  Chapter 7: Side Effects

  Chapter 8: Pleasure Pain

  Chapter 9: Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves

  Chapter 10: Storm Surge

  Chapter 11: Hardship Cases

  Chapter 12: Comfort Zone

  Chapter 13: One More Time

  Chapter 14: New Friends

  Chapter 15: Death Knocks

  Chapter 16: Homecoming

  Chapter 17: Collapse

  Chapter 18: Wings

  Chapter 19: New Normal

  Chapter 20: The Swing of Things

  Chapter 21: Emancipation

  Chapter 22: Charity

  Chapter 23: Road Trip

  Chapter 24: Holding Hands

  Chapter 25: Making Waves

  Chapter 26: The Way Home

  Chapter 27: Invisible

  Chapter 28: Wrack Line

  Chapter 29: Bluffing

  Chapter 30: Baby Steps

  Chapter 31: Jezebel

  Chapter 32: Winds of Fortune

  Chapter 33: Lowcountry Boil

  Chapter 34: Limited Options

  Chapter 35: A Call for Help

  Chapter 36: Home Calling

  Chapter 37: Treading Water

  Chapter 38: In Over Her Head

  Chapter 39: The Drug Dealers Next Door

  Chapter 40: Sea Change

  Chapter 41: Sister Secrets

  Chapter 42: Testing the Waters

  CHAPTER 1

  Night Swimming

  Not halfway there and yet her shoulders tingled with fatigue. Going out was always a fight, the incoming Atlantic shoving her back, impeding her progress. Sloan swam slowly, methodically, one stroke following the next in perfect rhythm with a head turn and measured breath in between. Pier lights appeared from behind a jetty and she stopped, treading water, triangulating herself against the faint illumination of home.

  An occasional figure moved on the beach, dark against the lights rising behind dunes. Tonight she hadn’t worried that her mother might see her drop her clothes to the sand. Her parents were at a charity benefit in support of a cure for some disease or another. They were always attending these events even though her father grumbled. But her mother was poised for the next illness or disaster, always extending her checkbook to those less fortunate. Sloan had come to question her mother’s commitment to these causes. Somehow, her actions appeared desperate at times rather than altruistic.

  Her parents looked like old money when they left, Sloan’s father in his worn tuxedo and her mother in a rose-colored d
ress, understated as always. A string of inherited pearls encircled her delicate neck. But her parents seemed somehow out of kilter in their evening attire with the summer sun bright on their shoulders. It was the gentleness of his hand against her back as he helped her into the car when only moments before they had argued. This particular argument was the same as always—money, work, the pressure of social obligations.

  They seemed at a truce when they left. Sloan stood on the screened-in porch watching them pull away, the oyster-shell drive popping under the car’s tires. Ocean breeze fingered her hair while a lump of dread formed in her stomach. Sloan had come to anticipate this emptiness, the sensation of a roller coaster hung at the bottom sweep of a drop, pressing down, never leveling out.

  She was nearly ill with this sinking feeling at times, but she could never pinpoint why. Sometimes it didn’t have anything to do with her parents or her SAT scores or even her total lack of social life. When that vacant sensation crawled in her stomach she gravitated to the beach. It was an odd impulse that had made her wade into the dark water the first time.

  She hadn’t meant to go so far. She knew better, but she walked forward into the waves until she was gently lifted, her tenuous connection with solid earth dissolved. She had floated there, her arms moving listlessly, barely enough to keep her head above soft swells, knowing an undertow could carry her to sea.

  But she had sensed the tide was coming in and she had been correct on that all-important account. The current caught her up and swept her along parallel to the beach. At the northern tip of the island she was pushed inland where the water squeezed into the creek behind their home. There she was deposited on the steps of their dock as if the hand of a god had laid her there. She crawled into their barnacle-encrusted wooden boat. Like most everything else of value in their lives, the watercraft was inherited from her great-grandfather, a once regal thing grown shabby under her father’s watch.

  Stars had been distinct that moonless night as she tiptoed down the dry planks of the slender walk from the dock. Palmetto fronds clacked and marsh grass shushed as she sneaked toward her back door. Inside, her parents dozed on the sofa, a movie playing soft blue against their faces.

  She had remained careful since then, checking the weathered tide chart on the storage shed door to make sure of the water’s movement before she ventured into the surf—a calculated risk. She was a strong swimmer. Her mother had made sure of that, hauling Sloan and her little sister to lessons at the YMCA for years, until Sloan had flatly refused to go another chlorine-stinging lap.

  Her mother would have a meltdown if she knew Sloan was out at night, swimming into the distance, leaving her younger sister alone in the house. She’d be grounded for a month if discovered, perhaps for the rest of the school year. Still, Sloan craved the heart-pounding adrenaline from this secret endeavor, a feeling far preferable to the palpitations of anxiety and dread that came upon her so naturally. She felt wild and independent knowing she could slowly drift to the black below or be attacked by a rogue shark. Everyone would wonder what had happened to her. Was she kidnapped? A runaway? There would be headlines in the Pawleys Island Gazette—“Local teen disappears, worst feared.”

  Gauging her level of exhaustion as moderate, Sloan started toward shore. She’d make it. She always did. Today was not her day to die. She struggled on. The journey back was always easier, as if the world were behind her pushing her home.

  Twenty minutes later her feet found sandy purchase and she stumbled onto the beach so limp it was impossible for her to feel any emotion, except perhaps relief that she had survived once again.

  Soreness would grip her muscles the next few days, a constant reminder of her triumph over the abyss, over exhaustion, over herself. Her mother would comment that her moody nature had ebbed. Her grades would improve. She would be at peace for a time.

  It was not the death-defying act that buoyed her but the clandestine nature of it that was her companion. I have a secret, she would think to herself over the next few weeks when she quarreled with her mother or struggled with calculus. I’m strong. I’m a survivor.

  CHAPTER 2

  Island Life

  Emmett Sullivan pressed open the hatch to the widow’s walk atop his house. His golf shirt billowed in the rush of salty air as he climbed the last few ladder rungs and stepped into a 360-degree view. The Atlantic tumbled in on the east side of the island. To the west, the creek was placid, the marsh grass still and straight. Only a cat’s-paw ripple in the channel betrayed the current below where the incoming tide married the creek. Here at the northern tip, a wide sandbar tightly packed with cordgrass squeezed the channel more narrow each year. It was healthy compared to the southern end, where the clockwise motion of the Atlantic chewed away the island’s sandy fringe and depleted the creek.

  Emmett scanned the beach for his daughters’ bright bathing suits. They were in their usual spot, away from the grip of undertow between islands but close enough to be seen from the widow’s walk.

  He clicked the walkie-talkie. “Sloan, it’s Dad.”

  One of the tiny people on the sand below moved. A moment later, he heard his older daughter’s bored tone crackle to life in his hand.

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “Your mother says it’s time to come in.”

  Sloan motioned to Ainslie and began cramming things into a bag. Ainslie, true to form, ignored her sister, enthralled with something in a tidepool, probably crab holes or a starfish. Emmett knew how things would transpire. Ainslie would ignore her sister. Sloan would practically drag her to the house. Later, Sloan would let her mother know, in that universal sardonic teenager tone, how much she hated having to baby-sit, AGAIN.

  The girls trudged back, lugging buckets and bags. Sloan wore her straw hat and Jackie-O glasses. She was no doubt slathered from head to toe in sunscreen in her battle to stave the freckles that sprinkled her mother’s skin. Then there was Ainslie, his sun-drop baby, all nut brown skin, dark eyes and hair just like Emmett’s before the gray invaded. Emmett could relate to his nine-year-old’s desire to stay out all day. His own childhood had been spent in similar pursuits on this island, he and his brothers wading tidal creeks and crawling sand dunes from first light to dark.

  The girls left the hard-packed beach for the loose sand of a path that snaked between dunes. The sand pulled at their steps, their flip-flops kicking up sprays of granules behind them. They worked their way through gnarled cedars, a stand of only a dozen or so trees. When he was a boy, this island had been thick with cedars, low-slung and hardy from weathering storms. Emmett and his brothers hacked through them, cleared secret rooms in their dense branches.

  Their mother banished them from the house each day until supper, so Emmett followed Rick and Judd around the island. They rode bikes the three miles down to the public beach at the island’s southern end where new, pale girls in bikinis appeared each week. They hung out with locals who leaned over the creek bridge, fishing poles tailing line into rippled waters, buckets and coolers smelly with flounder and spot. At low tide, the boys dug oysters and clams. They came home with split fingers and a sack of jagged bivalves.

  They shed their cut-off high-tops in a muddy heap outside, hung their stinky shirts and shorts on the clothesline and showered in the changing area under the house. The shower stung their skin with sweet prickles of pain and washed rank pluff in a gurgle down the drain. They ran up the back stairs in the buff, their mother snapping a tea towel at their bare bottoms as they streaked through the kitchen. A few days later their clothes would appear, fragrant and folded, in their chests of drawers.

  Emmett often lamented that his girls would never know the luxury of being kicked out and free to roam. Lauren kept a close eye on them—they were never unaccounted for, never left to their own meanderings, particularly Ainslie, who was still a baby in so many ways. But Ainslie was tough, athletic, and energetic. Emmett wished Lauren would let her join the other kids who explored the island on bikes and slender sc
ooters. Often Emmett thought Ainslie should have been born a boy; perhaps then her mother might have cut her some slack. But to Lauren, girls were supposed to be pink bows, tea parties, and piano recitals.

  Poor Lauren had struck out with both girls in that respect. Where Ainslie was rambunctious, Sloan was introverted and somewhat dark of nature. She had inherited his family’s artistic talents but also a more brooding, sensitive side that was puzzling. Sometimes when Sloan would give him a certain look Emmett could see contempt, so bald and honest it seared his soul. She apparently found him incompetent, but then the girl would roll her eyes and he would convince himself it was only puberty talking.

  He could feel the girls rattle into the house, but up this high, wind smothered most of their noise. He sensed water running in their bathroom beneath him. He reclined against the bench and scanned the horizon of startling orange burn pooling over the mainland, its reflection quivering in the creek. Out to sea, the sky was licked with lavender like the heavens of a Renaissance painting.

  “Want some company?” Lauren appeared at the hatch. Wind whipped her blonde bob in a frenzied dance. She held a glass in both hands. “I come bearing gifts.”