Carolina Mist (15 page)

19

M
eri Puppins was a very smart dog, indeed. Smart enough to wake Abby, rather than Belle, early in the morning when she wanted to go out.

“Oh, Meri, please, can’t you wait?” Abby groaned. “It’s not even six.”

The little dog continued to dance around the side of Abby’s bed with increasing impatience.

“Okay, okay. Damn, and it’s cold, too. Cold and early,” Abby whined and reached for her robe. “If you’re as smart as Belle says you are, why don’t you teach yourself to tell time? See, then you’ll know not to wake me up until the big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the seven.”

Abby slid her feet into her slippers and followed the dog
to the steps, turning on the light at the wall switch before descending. She yawned as she made her way to the kitchen. She had not slept well again. She had thought that a noise somewhere in the house awakened her, but she had not been able to tell where it came from. It had happened before, this vague noise-in-the-house sensation, and she did not like it. It was creepy. The house was too big, and there were too many places where someone could sneak in.

Maybe she should get a dog. They say that burglars avoid houses that have dogs.

Oh. Of course. She had a dog.

She was, in fact, following it to the back door right at this very minute. Not bothering to turn on the kitchen light, she felt for the back-door key on the wall and fitted it into the lock. As Abby pushed open the back door, Meri froze on the back step and barked with the zeal of a Doberman. In that second, Abby saw a dark form rise from the top step. She slammed the back door, frantically fumbling with the lock. “Abby! Abby, it’s me, Alex.”

Alex?

“You scared the crap out of me,” she grumbled as she unlatched the door. “What are you doing sitting on the back steps at six a
.
m
.?”

“Drinking coffee and waiting for you to get up.” He held up an empty cardboard cup from the local convenience store. “Can I come in? It’s pretty damn cold out here.” Abby stepped aside to let him in as Meri sniffed at his pants leg suspiciously. Satisfied that he posed no threat, the little dog brushed past him and continued her path to the backyard.

“Abby, what was that little furry banshee thing?”

“That was Meri Puppins. And there’ll be hell to pay if your grandmother hears you call her a thing.”

“What’s a
…
what did you call it?” He peered through the curtains at the back door.

“Meri Puppins. She’s your grandmother’s dog. A gift from Naomi. Belle adores her, so unless you want to incite Belle’s wrath, you’ll refer to Meri as ‘she’ rather than ‘that thing’ or ‘it.’ ”

“I’ll try to remember that.” He grinned as he took his jacket off and slung it onto the back of a nearby chair.

“So.” She leaned back against the cold enamel of the stove, as if finding a man on her back porch at the crack of dawn was an everyday event. In truth, she was struggling for something to say. After several weeks of calling him with no response, having him there in the dimly lit kitchen, with the morning sky not yet aglow with the new day, disconcerted her.

“So,” he replied as he crossed his arms over his chest. “I guess I’m a little early.”

“I’m sorry you had to wait outside,” she offered.

“I didn’t mind,” he told her. “It was sort of pleasant, just me and the stars and the new day. I actually enjoyed it. At least I did until the cold set in.”

“How long were you sitting out there?”

“Maybe forty minutes or so.”

“Why so early?”

“I came right from the airport. I was in Dallas all week for depositions. When I called into the office yesterday, my secretary told me that you’d called. I thought I’d just as well come here on my way home, just in case something was wrong.”

Meri Puppins announced her presence at the back door by lightly scratching on it. Abby turned the key, let Meri in, then relocked the door.

“Was there?” he asked.

“Was there what?”

“Something wrong?”

“Not exactly wrong,” she told him, “but there are some things we need to talk about.”

“No time like the present.” He shrugged.

“Right.” She nodded. “Let me just run upstairs and get dressed.”

“Well, if you’ll tell me where you hide the coffee, I’ll put a pot on while you’re changing.”

She directed him to the cupboard and fled quietly up the steps. Rummaging for a pair of clean jeans and a sweater, she tried to shake the sleep from her brain.

This is it,
she told herself.
This is my chance. Unless he left Melissa in the car, I have him all to myself. I can tell him everything. And we will find a solution. And I can start making plans to get on with my life. Yes!

She pulled long woolly socks up to her knees, then danced into her soft, near-threadbare jeans. She was almost whistling as she drew the gray-and-white-flecked sweater over her head and tied her sneakers. A stop in the hall bath to dash water onto her face and tame her hair as best she could, and she was on her way down the steps. She was rehearsing what she’d say as she swung open the kitchen door.

“Look, Ab,” he said softly from the back door, where he stood looking out the glass panels toward the Sound.

He moved slightly to his right to make room for her without turning.

She shared his silence as the sun poked its first light through the skeletal trees that rimmed the waking waters just beyond the carriage house.

“It never changes,” she heard him say. “All these years later, it looks exactly the same. The water still turns the same shades of orange and gold, and Leila’s carriage house still looks like it’s on fire when that first light hits it. I can remember when I
w
as a kid, waking up early and looking out the window to this house, and seeing it all, the house and the carriage house and the trees, all wrapped in the early-morning mist. Some days, it would be so thick, I couldn’t see the house at all, as if it had floated down to the river and drifted on out into the Sound while we slept. I’d watch until the sun came up and burned away the fog, so that I could see that the house was still here, and that you were safe.”

She looked up at him wordlessly, the sudden image of a young Alex, silhouetted in the front bedroom window of Belle’s house, flashing before her eyes.

“I wondered what you were looking at,” she mused. “Sometimes, I’d wake up early and look across the
street and wonder what you…
that is, wonder if anyone else in
Primrose was awake yet. Sometimes I thought I’d see someone at the window.”

“That was me.” He looked down and smiled. “Thinking about you. Seems I never thought about anything else, back then.”

“They were good summers.” She nodded as she turned from the rising sun and sought to busy herself by getting out cups and the sugar bowl and cream for their coffee.

“They were the best,” he agreed, “the very best days of my life. There came a time when only the memory of Primrose kept me focused on what mattered and what didn’t. That first summer, when I stayed home, sometimes when things hurt badly, sometimes I’d picture myself in Primrose, out on Leila’s dock, or down by the inlet, just watching the water. I’d try to picture what you’d be doing each day, and I’d try to imagine myself there with you.”

“Why didn’t you write to me?” she asked.

“Sure. ‘Dear Abby,
I’
m sorry I can’t join you in Primrose this summer, but my dad has run off with his secretary, who is, oh, a year or so older than my sister, and Mom is, needless to say, a bit unnerved. Particularly since Dad closed out their bank accounts before he and little Courtney left last week for Mexico. Good-bye, Stanford, hello, state school (assuming I make enough money on my construction job to pay the tuition). Have a good summer. Have a good life. Your friend, Alex.’ How would that have sounded?” he asked somewhat bitterly.

“It would have sounded like the truth,” she said. “It would have sounded like something I could understand.”

“I’m sorry, Abby,” he whispered. “Everything just hurt too damned much that summer. Not the least of which was thinking about you being here and me not. I wanted to be riding bikes with you down Cove Road. I wanted to row out to the Sound to fish in the early morning. I wanted to climb the ladder to the loft in Leila’s carriage house on rainy days and smell the hay and sit on the front porch at night and talk about who we’d be when we grew up. I wanted not to be in Seattle, watching my mother’s life fall apart and knowing
that nothing I did or said could give her back the slightest bit of what had been taken from her.”

The sound of small dog feet tap dancing across hardwood drew their attention to the front hallway.

“Ha!” Belle exclaimed as she passed into the kitchen, her eyes lighting up as she spied their unexpected visitor. “I could tell by the way Meri P. was dancing around my bed that something was going on, but I didn’t dare hope to find you here, Alexander. What a wonderful surprise!”

Belle reached both arms out to her grandson and all but disappeared within his embrace.

“Good morning, Gran.” He kissed the top of her head, his large hands unconsciously smoothing back the errant strands of white hair that had slid from their pins at the nape of her neck.

“It is, in fact, a good morning.” She beamed. “Now, what brings you here at the crack of dawn?”

“Well, I was on my way back from a trip and decided to come here first before going on to Hampton.” He watched as the tiny woman filled the tea kettle with water and placed it on the stove. “I thought I’d stop in and see how you two were doing.”

“We’re doing just fine.” Belle patted him on the arm. “What do you think of my new little friend?” Belle nodded toward the floor where Meri Puppins sat.

“Cute, Gran,” he told her. “Who brushes out all that hair?”

“Why, I do, of course.” Belle grinned. “You know all these articles about the elderly doing better when they have a pet? It’s all true, Alexander, indeed it is. Why, I just feel happy all over when that little dog sashays into the room and I know she’s looking for me. She knows who her best friend is, don’t you, Meri?”

Alex and Abby exchanged grins as Belle leaned over to scratch Meri between the ears.

“Now, what’s for breakfast, Abigail?” Belle asked as she poured her tea and headed toward the morning room. “Bring your coffee, and come keep me company, Alexander.
If we don’t bother her too much, perhaps Abby will make blueberry pancakes.”

“
N
ow, this seems to be a familiar sight,” Alex said from the doorway, where he paus
ed to watch Abby as she aimed
the nozzle of the water canister at the wall and attacked the old green paper.

He’d spent much of the morning chatting with Belle, then, exhausted from not having slept on his late-night flight from Dallas, he had fallen asleep on the sofa in the front parlor after lunch. Having awakened a few hours later in a silent house, he had gone searching for signs of life. Belle had fallen asleep in the morning room while watching a movie. Not finding Abby on the first floor, he’d gone up to the second, then followed the sound of her radio until he found her scraping yet another wall in yet another bedroom.

“Only way to get it done is to do it.” She grinned.

“What can I do to help?” he asked.

“If you’re expecting me to be polite and say, ‘Oh, nothing,’ you’re going to be disappointed,” she told him.

“No, no,” he assured her. “I’d like to help.”

“Great. You can take one of those large trash bags and fill it with the scrapings, then take it downstairs and out to the back where the trash cans are.”

“Are you planning on doing this in every room in the house?” he asked as he filled the third plastic bag with sticky pieces of spent wallpaper.

“Yes, sir, I am.” She smiled resolutely.

“Why?”

“Because”—she took a deep breath—“the better the house looks, the better the price I’ll get for it.”

“You’d sell this house?” Alex dropped the bag onto the floor, and it landed with a
whoosh,
sending paper dust like cold, gooey lava through the opening of the bag. “Abby, I can’t believe you’d even consider such a thing.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, clearly stunned by her announcement.

“I really don’t have a choice.” She turned to face him. “I
can’t afford to keep it, Alex. I have no income, and what little cash I had when I got here is just about gone.”

“Abby, I can’t imagine this house belonging to anyone else.”

“I can’t think about that.” She turned back to the wall.

“Look, there has to be some way,” he began.

“There isn’t,” she snapped. “And besides, I have to get on with my life. I have to get back to the business of finding a job. Of getting back on track. I cannot spend the rest of my life in this house with no one
but…
”

His head jerked up, and she stopped mid-sentence. “With no one but an old woman?” he finished the sentence for her.