𝐋𝐔𝐃𝐈𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐒. ᵒᵘᵗᵉʳ ᵇᵃⁿᵏˢ ¹

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 03.

    I felt a breeze shiver up my legs, and I turned my head to watch my grandparents drag their boat. Caroline's hair was blowing in the wind and Daryl held down his baseball cap with a strong hand, while they both pushed and pulled with the current against their small boat.

    Suddenly, the screen door flew open with a strong gust of wind, startling me. I rose from the futon sofa and walked over to close it, the wooden floor feeling cold against my feet. I decided to close the windows in the living room, too. They were somewhat hard to shut, and I figured it was because they'd been open for so long and hadn't been closed for some time. The thin blinds no longer swayed in the breeze and clattered against the windows, and the only sound left to hear from outside was the wind brushing on the house's walls.

    When they were finished, I was sitting back down on the sofa, listening to the person on the radio. Caroline waked in and said that I shouldn't listen to the people on the station, because it would only make me worried. So, she turned it off and put it in the cabinet. There was no TV to put on, but I didn't really want to watch anything anyways. Caroline settled herself at the round dining table and pulled out a deck of cards.

    "Wanna play?" She suggested, a wide smile on her lips despite the circumstances outside. She held up the red deck of cards. "Pass the time before dinner."

___

        I watched the waves pile over each other outside my window most of the night. I had been sitting under the warm covers of my new bed, gazing outside at the raging water, which had blew past the dock.

Caroline had came in eventually and sat on the edge of my bed. We talked for a while, and I asked her questions that I was too afraid to ask earlier.

    I liked having a grandmother. Especially the fact that she talked and listened to me. Our conversation panned out over an hour, and at some points we couldn't stop laughing, almost waking Daryl up. As we talked about my parents, and about the island, I grew more and more fond of her. She talked to me like I was her long lost sibling, that she hadn't seen in years.

    It was quite a refreshing feeling, having someone you've barely met talk to you like they've known you forever. While we laughed, I came to a realization that she'd been wanting to talk to someone like me, a granddaughter, for so long, except she never got the chance to since my parents hid me from everything. It saddened me that I could have known my grandparents sooner in my life, and maybe visited the island more often during my childhood. Caroline even said that she would have taught me how to surf if she still knew how.

I was happy that we had already made a bond so quickly. It was unexpected too, that we would get close only after the first day. She reminded me of my dad, with the way they both throw their heads back when they laugh, and the specific way they roll their r's when speaking. I saw his face in hers as well, and it made me think of how much of a great mother probably Caroline was for my father.

"Lunch is ready," I heard Caroline announce from the front of the house, as I sat on my made bed.

I had spent the first half of my second day unpacking all my clothes, realized that most of them didn't fit the island picture, stared out the window for the water, and organized the pin board with my own pictures I brought from home. I had eventually changed out of my pj's, that I noticed were way too silky against the cotton sheets I slept on, and made a mental note to ask Caroline if we could go shopping one day soon.