Where The Waves Break

I could hear it. We could all hear it. The sound of a fight. The rising voices. The ugly words. The sound of defeat. The slamming doors. The broken antiques from their relationship.

Lacey slowly opens my bedroom door and sticks her head in. “Greta?”

“Come here baby doll.” I opened my arms and let my eight year old sister fall into them.

It was a quarter to ten on a Thursday night. Christmas was just five days away and my parents were screaming at each other. It had been going on for about forty minutes and showed slow signs of stopping. For the past forty minutes I had been trying to figure out what it was they were fighting about. Lacey and I sat on my bed, listening to our parents when suddenly it came to a silence. We flinched when the slamming of the front door shook the house and an engine roared, speeding away from us.

My mother appeared in the doorway, teary eyed, and holding my suitcase. She smiled slightly and put it on the floor. “I want you to pack about three weeks worth of clothes. It doesn’t matter if they’re clean or not, just get packed. We’re leaving in an hour and a half. Do not ask why or where, just do it. And Lacey, come with me.”

I nodded and did what I was told. I moved fast, throwing my favorite sweaters, sweatshirts, long sleeve t-shirts, jeans, and sweats in my large suitcase that I used when we went to the Outer Banks, every summer, all summer long. It was obvious why we were leaving. My mom wanted to get away from my dad and she was taking all five of us with her. I just didn’t know why.

Like she said, with in an hour and a half we were all loaded up. My older brother, Nathan, had put all of his things in his car. I stood on the porch with my two little brothers, and little sister, watching as my mom and Nathan packed as fast as they could. No one said anything or asked where my dad was or where we were going.

Within minutes my mom was telling us where to go ‘Dustin, you can ride with Nathan. Caleb, Lacey, and Greta, you’re stuck with me. Now lets go, I want to get there early tomorrow.” All five of us looked at each other. None of us knew where ‘there’ was except our mother, but we knew better than to find out. By now it was past midnight, and where ever we were going, it was going to take some time.

“Nathan, I want you to stay right by me. Pay attention while you’re driving, it’s going to be a long drive. I’ll call you when I want to stop somewhere.” My mom ordered. She kissed both Nathan and Dustin’s heads. “And you,” She said to Dustin, “get some sleep.” He nodded, obviously too worried to reply. I got in the passenger seat of my mom’s SUV and waited for everyone else to get in.

Its hard to think straight when there are a ton of questions floating around in your head. Where is our mom taking us? How long will we be there? What was the fight about? Where did my dad go? Does he plan on coming back? Does my dad know we left?

Nathan, Caleb, My mom and I were standing around a gas station at about three in the morning when my mom’s phone rang. We all stared at her, wondering if it was our dad. But when she answered she was smiling, she noticed us all looking at her and shooed us off with the flick of her wrist. Nathan went back to sit inside his car and Caleb went to go back to our mom’s truck.

I was freezing, standing outside in pajama pants, a sweatshirt, and slippers but I wasn’t ready to sit back down yet so I went into the convenience store. I poured a big steaming cup of hot chocolate, grabbed a two pack of pop tarts, and paid. When I went back out in the parking lot my mom was still on the phone. I ventured over to Nathan’s car and slid into the passenger seat. Dustin was sprawled out sleeping in the back.

“Hey,” Nathan said and took the hot chocolate from my hands. I opened the pack of pop tarts and offered him one, which he ate in between sipping my drink.

“Do you know why they were fighting?” I asked and put my head on his shoulder.

He shrugged, “I know just as much as you do.”

“So, you have no idea where we’re going?”

“I am assuming the beach house.”

“You think?”

“This is the way we go. Where else would we go? She’s asking Cat to come out right now.” We both turned our attention to our mom, still on the phone outside.

“How do you know its Cat?” I asked.

“I heard her ask if the kids would be okay missing school and if Kennedy would mind.”

“So she’s taking Cat with her?”

“Of course, Cat’s a mom and her best friend. We’re going to the beach house, she’s going to want Cat and her kids to come with us. She’ll have someone to vent to and cry to and her kids will keep us occupied.”

I smiled. Cat is my mom’s best friend and has been since they were about six, who lives in New Jersey also. Her husband, Kennedy, along with herself, had went to school with my parents. Cat works from home and Kennedy’s an architect. They have four kids, Hunter, who’s twenty, Ryder, who’s eighteen and my best friend, Con, who’s thirteen, and Chelsea, who’s nine. It happened to work out that we all have someone to be with. My dad used to joke that my mom and Cat had planned it.

Shortly after Nathan was born my mom and Cat had bought a beach house in the Outer Banks, North Caroline that has more rooms that even with nine kids, we don’t know what to do with. They’ve been going to the house since the year they bought it. There was never a summer that we didn’t, Lacey was even born out there. Over the summer, we’ll leave our houses about a week after school lets out, and return a week before it starts. My mom owns a bakery, so she usually just leaves for the summer; calling the bakery a few times a week to check up on them. Cat is pretty much the same way, leaves when she wants and returns when she wants.

As for the men, they pretty much had the summer and an empty house to themselves. They would come down as much as possible, usually as the same time, so it wasn’t just them surrounded by women and kids.

But this was different. Never to my knowledge did we ever go to the beach house in any other season. I had thought about making Nathan or Ryder drive me down there because I wanted to get away sometimes. But I knew it would break my mom’s heart to do that to her.

My mom tapped on the window and opened the door. “Hey. Are you staying with Nathan or coming back with me?”

I took the hot chocolate out of Nathan’s hands and said, “I’ll go with you.” I turned to my older brother, “You’ll be okay?”

He smiled, “Of course,”

I hopped out of the truck and followed my mom to hers. When we got there Caleb and Lacey were fast asleep in the back and my mom motioned for me to be quiet. For the rest of the ride it was quiet and dark. Even though it was about five in the morning, and I had been awake all night long, I found I wasn’t tired at all. I contemplated asking my mother what was going on, but she looked so content driving in the early morning, and I didn’t want to be the one to ruin her happy mood with what had happened just hours before.

So, for the next three and a half hours we sat in silence, despite the low murmur of the radio. Finally, after eight and a half hours of driving, we were pulling up to the beach house in North Carolina. When we parked in the driveway my mom turned to me and smiled, “It’ll be a great Christmas, we’ll be in the best place on the earth,” she said and got out.

Nathan went to get our bags out of the trunk mom stopped him, “We’ll get them later, lets just get some rest.”

I yawned and practically ran into the house. As I always did when I first got here, I took a deep breathe. The summer house was my home. It was the place that I dreamt of when I couldn’t sleep, the place where I grew up. Every year that I came back I was a year older, and a bit different. It was place where all of my favorite memories and people were. New Jersey was just a place that I went to school at and was forced to be. The Outer Banks was a different place entirely. It was home.