On Folly Beach (10 page)

The back of Emmy’s neck prickled again as she grabbed the door more firmly this time but stopped as a familiar sound crept across the lawn toward her. The door banged shut again as Emmy realized she’d let go of it, her legs already leading her back down the steps toward the sound of wind through the glass lips of empty bottles.

She found herself in the middle of the yard and closed her eyes to listen for a moment, then followed the sound to a hidden corner behind a large palmetto tree. The bottle tree stood as tall as Emmy, its metal trunk as thick as her arm. Delicate branches reached out toward the sky in no apparent pattern, their randomness adding to its beauty. Bottles in rainbow hues sat perched on each limb, affixed permanently on their branches, allowing the wind to visit without disruption.

It was just like the one in her mother’s garden and her homesick-ness hit Emmy with the suddenness of a clap of thunder. Reaching up, she touched a green bottle, amazed to feel it solid and real beneath her fingertips, as if to assure herself that this figment of home wasn’t just in her imagination. Emmy walked around the tree, admiring its artistry, stopping when she’d gone three-quarters of the way around. Staring at a wide-lipped amber-colored bottle that had been placed nearly perpendicular to the branch, she saw something that seemed to have been caught inside.

Leaning closer, she gingerly pushed on the bottle watching as its position on the branch allowed it to move. She ducked beneath it to peer inside, and spotted a rolled-up piece of paper. Her well-honed curiosity regarding old writings and their histories overrode the twinge of conscience as she managed to roll the piece of paper to the edge of the bottle lip before plucking it out of its prison.

The paper was damp, but not yellowed, telling her although it had been in the bottle for a while, it wasn’t that old. Her academic curiosity now firmly swatted away her conscience as she unrolled the piece of paper to reveal a single sentence written in bold, spidery strokes: Come back to me.

“You’re trespassing.”

Emmy dropped the note in surprise as she turned toward the woman’s voice. “I’m sorry.” She stooped to pick up the paper, hoping the old woman couldn’t see too clearly through the thick glasses she wore perched on her pert nose. Holding the paper low, Emmy began to roll it up as she spoke. “Actually, I’m Emmy Hamilton. I’m renting this house for a few months.”

“Exactly. You’re renting the house, not this tree. So you’re trespassing.” The woman’s sharp hazel eyes followed Emmy’s hand as she moved to return the note to the bottle. “I suppose you never heard about curiosity and the cat.”

Emmy fumbled with the rolled piece of paper, and it fell to the ground again. “Oh,” she said for lack of anything better before she squatted and retrieved the note. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to pry.”

“Really? Then what do you call messing with other people’s things?”

As Emmy stood there searching for an answer, she got a better look at her interrogator. The woman was short, probably no taller than five feet, and probably somewhere in her seventies. Her long hair was more gray than brown and worn in two braids, which fell over her shoulders. She wore a sleeveless white blouse tucked into the top of a pair of elastic-waisted jean shorts. Ugly brown sandals covered small, squat feet devoid of toenail polish. But that detail, Emmy noted, went with the rest of the woman, who was adorned with neither jewelry nor makeup.

Emmy swallowed, embarrassed and angry at the same time yet also somehow relieved that she was still capable of feeling something other than just grief. “Look Ms. . . . ?” When the woman didn’t interject her name, Emmy continued. “You’re right. I was prying. I suppose it’s my nature—I sort of specialize in old documents, so any stray piece of paper always seems to snag my attention. I’m sorry. But as I mentioned, I’m renting the house, which, I assume, includes the grounds, so I don’t think I can rightly be called a trespasser.”

Without a word, the old woman turned around and began to walk away toward the driveway. Emmy hurried after her. “Wait. Are you Abigail?”

“Nope.”

Emmy paused, confused for a moment. She hadn’t thought Abigail had sounded that old. “Are you her son’s fiancée, then?”

The old woman let out a loud harrumph, which could have been a laugh, and kept on walking.

Feeling winded from the unaccustomed exertion, Emmy finally caught up with the stranger in the driveway. She stopped while the woman kept walking, a stray thought solidifying in her head. “Wait . . . please. The bottle tree makes noise, but none of the other ones I’ve seen do except for the one my mother has in her backyard. Are you the artist who made them?”

The woman stopped and slowly turned around, but didn’t say anything, as if waiting for Emmy to say something else.

Emmy continued. “The sound reminds me of the ocean, although until today I’d never even seen the ocean before. It’s like a song, isn’t it? Sad and haunting, but full of memories, too. And possibilities. Is that what you want people to hear?”

Something flickered in the woman’s eyes, but she gave no other indication that she’d heard anything Emmy said. “I’m Lulu O’Shea. My nephew owns this house.” She spoke through thinned, tight lips, as if they were used to having words pried out of them. Before Emmy could ask her anything else, Lulu turned without another word and started walking away.

Come back to me. Remembering the rolled-up note, Emmy again jogged toward the older woman, who was walking faster than any septuagenarian had a right to. “Wait. Is that your note in the bottle?” Emmy didn’t think it was, since the writing was definitely that of a male, but she wasn’t ready for Lulu to leave, either.

In answer, Lulu called over her shoulder, “Don’t you go scratching those wood floors in the house. They’re Brazilian cherry, and my nephew went to a lot of trouble to get them here.”

Breathing heavily, Emmy watched the woman’s departing back before a large dog pulling a teenager on a skateboard down the street captured her attention. The boy flashed her a peace sign as he sped by, leaving her alone except for the noise of the wheels on asphalt.

A fat raindrop hit her on the top of her head as she opened her trunk, and by the time she’d reached the back steps with her suitcases, she was completely soaked by the sudden downpour. “Welcome to Folly Beach,” she said under her breath as she struggled up the steps to the screen door, managing to thrust it open and throw herself and her suitcases onto the covered porch. She listened to the patter of the rain on the marsh, feeling more lonely than she’d ever felt in her life, and realizing that she’d forgotten the combination for the lockbox.

She slid to the floor, not even bothering to find a chair, and rested her forehead on her knees, and wondered how long it would be before the rain stopped and she could shove her suitcases back into the trunk and leave this place far behind.

CHAPTER 5

FOLLY BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA

January 1942

Lulu sat on the edge of her bed and watched as Maggie got dressed for her date with Mr. Nowak. She called him that, even in her head, though she’d only ever thought of Jim as just Jim. There was something grown-up about Mr. Nowak, and she couldn’t even picture him as a little boy. He was nice and all; he just wasn’t Jim.

Lulu wondered why Maggie had suggested Andre’s even though it had been Maggie’s favorite place for fried shrimp ever since Maggie was little and their parents had taken her there for special occasions. But Lulu knew, too, that it had been the first place Jim had taken Maggie, and she couldn’t understand why Maggie would ever want to go there with somebody else. Lulu thought maybe it had just popped out of Maggie before she had had time to think, the way Lulu sometimes still announced to the world that she needed to go to the bathroom before realizing she’d said it out loud.

Still, as Lulu watched Maggie choose her second-best church dress instead of her best—which she’d worn when she’d gone with Jim—she figured that maybe Maggie hadn’t forgotten after all.

“Have you seen Cat?” Maggie asked as she stared at herself in the mirror with her head tilted in the way she did when she couldn’t decide about something.

“She’s been in her room since we got home. I think she’s pouting.”

Maggie raised an eyebrow at Lulu but didn’t argue. “She has such good taste. I’d really like her opinion.”

Lulu imitated her sister’s tilted head, wondering if a person really did see things differently when not looking straight at it. She saw the Maggie she loved with all of her heart, the sister she’d always thought was beautiful. But now, with her head to the side, she saw the Maggie that Cat probably saw when she called Maggie a frumpy housewife. “You need dark red lipstick like Cat. It’ll make you look prettier.”

Maggie screwed up her face as she stared at her reflection. “I don’t have any.” She seemed to think for a moment. “I guess I could go ask Cat if I could borrow hers.”

Their eyes met in the mirror, and as Lulu noticed how the gray dress fit too loosely over her sister’s body, and how the fabric looked more like a bedspread than something somebody should wear on a date, she had an idea. As she slid off the chenille bedspread, she said, “I’ll go ask.”

She crept across the hallway and gently turned the doorknob of her old bedroom to peer inside. The curtains were drawn against the dying light of day, and Cat lay under the bedcovers on her back with a black silk mask over her eyes.

Being as quiet as she could, Lulu crept over to the chifforobe and pulled out her secret box. With a quick glance over to her sleeping cousin, she reached inside and pulled out the sand-dollar earrings and tortoiseshell barrette before returning the box to its secret location.

After shoving her treasures into her pockets, she tiptoed silently across the room to the dressing table where Cat’s “secret potions,” as she liked to call them, lay scattered across the lace doily Maggie had made by hand, which was now stained with makeup. She searched for the tube of lipstick she’d seen Cat use and found it in the back corner, the top lying to the side.

Very carefully, Lulu picked up the tube and its lid before quietly tiptoeing back to the door. As she stuck her fingers in the crack of the door to pull it open, Cat spoke from behind her.

“What are you doing?”

Lulu turned around, her hands at her side and her fist closed tightly around the lipstick. Cat was leaning on her elbow, her eye mask pulled up to her forehead. “I was just getting some of my stuff.”

Lulu began to back toward the door but stopped when Cat spoke again. “What’s in your hand?”

“Nothing.”

Cat sat up in bed and slid the mask the rest of the way off. “Show me nothing.”

Knowing that if she didn’t open up her fist Cat would force her to, Lulu slowly opened her fingers, one by one, to reveal the tube of lipstick.

“I hope you weren’t planning on playing dress-up with my lipstick. That’s my favorite shade and I can hardly find it anymore.”

“I wasn’t going to waste it,” said Lulu, feeling insulted. She’d never played dress-up like the other girls, preferring instead to read or draw. “I was getting it for Maggie so she could wear it tonight on her date with Mr. Nowak.” She realized she’d made a mistake before the last word came out of her mouth.

“You little thief,” Cat said, springing from the bed and marching toward her. “Give it back. Now.” With one hand on her hip, she held the other one toward Lulu, palm up.

Lulu clenched her fist again. “But Maggie doesn’t have any lipstick to wear.”

“Well, now, that’s her problem, isn’t it? Give it back.”

Lulu realized that her hand was shaking as she lifted her arm to allow the tube to drop into Cat’s outstretched palm.

“If you steal something from me again, I’ll throw you over my knees and take a switch to you—just see if I won’t. You’re not too old to be spanked, no, sirreee.”

Lulu felt the heat in her cheeks not only at the prospect of somebody like Cat spanking her, but at knowing that she’d let Maggie down. Before she started to cry, she faced the door again and began to pull it, but paused when it was only halfway open. She was breathing heavy, as if she’d been swimming for miles, and she wasn’t really sure what she was going to say until she’d already said it and it was too late to pull it back.

“You should let me have that back, Cat.” She swallowed, trying to be as brave as Maggie always told her she was. Somehow, thinking of her sister did make her braver. With a stronger voice, Lulu continued. “Or I’ll have to tell Maggie that I saw you at the pavilion kissing that soldier when you were still married to Jim. Or that you told Jim that Maggie didn’t like him anymore and wanted him to stop calling on her. I didn’t figure out that it was a fib until after you were already married and it was too late to tell Maggie, but I bet that if I told her now, she wouldn’t let you live here anymore.”

It was real quiet for a minute, and all she could hear was her breathing. But she could smell Cat’s perfume, so she knew her cousin was still behind her, and she flinched, waiting. Then she heard Cat’s bare feet padding against the wood floors, followed by the bedsprings squeaking and the unmistakable sound of something small and hard hitting the ground and then rolling for a short distance.