On Folly Beach (14 page)

Heath interrupted her thoughts. “I’ll go and bring everything else in. You stay here and get acquainted with the place and don’t argue. The neighbors will call my mother if they see you hauling anything inside.”

Without waiting for her to argue, he opened the front door and, with Frank offering encouragement, brought the rest of her belongings in from the car.

After piling everything up in the middle of the living room, he said, “Look, I’ll wait to work on the dock so you can get settled in without listening to the hammering. But feel free to call me if you need anything.” He handed her a business card, and she took it.

“Thanks, although it looks like your mother has pretty much covered all of the bases.” Emmy offered him a tentative smile, and tried not to feel too eager to see him leave. But there was something about him that irked her—something that felt as out of place as a biography shelved in the fiction section.

“Yeah, except for not telling me I had a tenant.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Well, then, I’d better get going and let you unpack.”

After Emmy thanked him again and they said their good-byes, she let him out of the front door. She watched him through the window as he took a bike leaning against the tall palmetto tree in the front yard and rode away with Frank jogging next to him, and wondered absently if his fiancée was now his wife and if she’d come with him to Folly Beach.

Emmy turned away from the door and realized she still held his business card in her hand. Holding it up, she looked at it, seeing for the first time the embossed drawing of a bottle tree, an identical replica of the ones etched into the front-door windows. Bottle Tree Building and Design. Heath Reynolds, FAIA LEED AP. There were an Atlanta address and two phone numbers, both starting with area code 404, which wasn’t South Carolina.

Emmy stuck the card into her back pocket, knowing she wouldn’t call him. He irritated her in the way sand in a shoe did, not overtly annoying until you realized you’d created a blister by ignoring it. She pushed aside thoughts of the bottle tree in the backyard, and the note inside, and of his grandmother Maggie, who’d been lost in a hurricane because she’d been waiting for somebody who never came, and she tried very hard not to think how much she and Maggie had in common.

IN THE YARD BEHIND FOLLY’S Finds, Lulu clutched her pruning shears in one hand as she straightened from the cherry laurel bush she’d been grooming. She stood back and admired the way the dark green leaves were a perfect backdrop for the scarlet-colored bottles on the tree next to it. She loved this garden, loved tending it as if it were a child, and in many ways, it was. John was long since grown, and so was his son. But her garden remained. The living plants came and went, but her bottle trees were always there. Tourists and locals alike came to see her garden, and quite unexpectedly, she’d created a flourishing business in custom orders, ultimately shipping her trees up and down the Eastern seaboard.

Jim’s tree was long gone, taken like so many other things by Hugo, but she still remembered the spot on the vacant lot where it had stood. She still visited it, leaving a handful of sand each time she went, just so he’d know she’d been there. Prickly blackberry vines had consumed the back and side fences of the old lot, claiming more and more ground each year, no matter how much Heath tried to beat it back. She liked the vines and the sweet dark berries, remembering how Jim had liked the blackberry jam she and Maggie had made.

Lulu touched a bloodred bottle on a low branch of a tree, feeling the hum of air inside of it as if it were a living, breathing thing. It gratified her to be doing something useful that allowed her to stay on Folly Beach, where the cycle of the tides and the influx of summer people came and went, leaving things pretty much the way they’d always been after they were gone. Lulu didn’t like change; it messed with the natural order of things.

She thought about the woman in Heath’s house and pursed her lips. She didn’t like her. She was an intruder just like all the summer visitors, except that this one wasn’t planning on going away again. Lulu wanted to think that it wasn’t personal, that she’d dislike any newcomer threatening to stay longer than the summer season. But this Emmy Hamilton was different. There was something familiar about her. Not familiar in the way one would recognize an old friend, but familiar in the way a person recognizes the scent of the air before a storm. Maybe it was the haunted look that bracketed the woman’s eyes that made Lulu think of Maggie. Or maybe it was the prodding inquisitiveness that reminded Lulu too much of herself.

She remembered how excited Abigail was to have found someone to buy the store so she wouldn’t have to dismantle it and sell it piece by piece. But, Lulu knew, memories couldn’t be dismantled like a jigsaw puzzle. Memories were like pilings on a house; once you started sawing away at one of them, the house would fall.

She turned back to the cherry laurel bush she’d been trimming, admiring the dark blue fruits that suddenly seemed as precarious as her past. Yes, most memories were meant to be kept intact. And, she thought as she lopped off a thick stem, the bright green leaves and cluster of fruit falling at her feet into the sandy grass, some secrets were never meant to be shared.

CHAPTER 7

FOLLY BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA

February 1942

Maggie rested her elbows on the front counter at Folly’s Finds and watched Lulu finish her after-school snack and drain the last drop from her Coca-Cola bottle. She knew it would find its way to the box in the storeroom, where Lulu’s growing collection of empty clear and colored bottles was kept. She’d made a tree for Mrs. Bailey, her friend Amy’s mother, and two other people who’d seen it had asked Lulu for one, too. Lulu hadn’t thought about charging for them yet, except in Coca-Colas and other bottles, but Maggie would have to step in if she thought that people were taking advantage of her sister’s generosity and artistic bent.

The bell over the shop door rang, and Maggie looked up with a smile, expecting to see the deliveryman who brought their gallon jugs of drinking water every week. There was no drinking water on the island, which was one of the reasons why her father had never stayed more than a week at a time while her mother had been alive and the main reason he cited why he rarely returned following her death.

Maggie’s heart lurched as she recognized Peter’s broad shoulders in a herringbone swagger coat, the slicked-down brown hair as he took off his hat.

“Margaret, it’s good to see you again.” He held his hat in his hands, his eyes piercing.

“Peter,” she said, trying not to sound as overjoyed as she felt—one of Cat’s rules. But he’d gone for two weeks back to Iowa and his father’s factory, as well as too many other places for her to remember, according to Peter, and she’d missed him. She could even admit that she was so happy to see him that she forgot to be angry that he hadn’t written to her, nor given her an address to be able to write to him. He’d left suddenly, with only a short note telling her he’d gone tucked into her front door.

He placed his hat and gloves on the counter and took both of her hands in his before squeezing gently. “How are you?”

Ignoring all of Cat’s advice, she blurted out, “Better—now that you’re here.” They’d been out exactly four times, yet his absence had made her feel as if she’d known him forever.

His eyes warmed, and for a moment, Maggie was sure that he was going to lean across the counter and kiss her. But then he spotted Lulu sitting on her stool and watching him carefully, and he dropped Maggie’s hands as he focused his attention on Lulu.

“Just the young lady I was looking for.” Reaching inside his overcoat, he said, “I’ve been to New York and found something I thought you might like.” He removed a brown-paper-wrapped package and handed it to her.

Lulu slid from the stool and hesitantly took a step forward. “What is it?” she asked without smiling.

“Lulu, your manners.” Maggie frowned at her little sister, wondering when Lulu’s reticence had turned into rudeness.

“Thank you,” Lulu added quickly. “What is it?”

Peter laughed, apparently charmed by her youthful honesty. “Open it and see.”

Lulu accepted the package and, after contemplating it for just a second, ripped at the paper, letting it fall to the floor. When she’d unwrapped the package completely, Lulu’s habitual frown gave way to a lopsided smile. “The Quest of the Missing Map,” she read out loud. Then, holding it up to Maggie, she said in a much louder voice, “Golly, Mags. It’s the brand-new Nancy Drew—I haven’t even seen it yet! Can I go show it to Amy?” She looked up at Maggie with an expression of unbridled joy, a look that Maggie hadn’t seen on Lulu’s face since Jim died, and all of Maggie’s reasons for not being left alone with Peter fled.

Forgetting to remind Lulu of her manners, Maggie said, “Sure. Come back before four so you can do your chores before closing.”

Lulu grabbed her navy blue wool coat from the coatrack and ran to the front door. But before she reached it, she raced back and stopped in front of Peter. “Thank you, Mr. Nowak. I really like my book.”

Then she flew out the door, not even bothering to put on her coat.

Maggie smiled at Peter. “Thank you. I haven’t seen her that excited about something in a long time. Her smile is the best gift you could ever give me.”

He reached into his other inside pocket and pulled out another small package also wrapped in brown paper, and slid it in front of her on the counter. “Don’t speak so hastily.”

“What is it?” she asked, and then they both laughed as she realized that she sounded just like Lulu.

“Open it.” His amber eyes were lit from within, and she shuddered involuntarily, remembering something Cat had told her about how a man could make you feel when he touched you without any clothes on. Maggie figured she now somehow knew what Cat had been talking about. She tried not to think of Jim and his chaste kisses, or the way he was afraid to hold her too tightly.

She grabbed a letter opener from the mason jar by the cash register, then used it to gently open the package, sparing as much of the paper wrapping as possible so she could reuse it. She peered inside and found neatly folded tissue paper. With her forefinger, she tentatively moved the tissue aside and stopped. A blush suffused her cheeks as she raised her eyes to Peter’s.

“I hope it’s not too personal a gift, but a good friend assured me that in these times, it’s perfectly acceptable for a gentleman to provide a lady with any items that she might have use for but is unable to find.”

Feeling slightly mollified, she looked inside the package again, where two pairs of neatly folded silk stockings lay nestled in tissue paper. At least he hadn’t included a garter belt because then she would have just died of mortification.

“I haven’t seen silk stockings in a while.” She held the package to her chest, feeling wanton, and beautiful, and desired by a handsome man. “Thank you, Peter.”

He put his elbows on the counter, leaning toward her. “It’s the least I can do. You’ve made my time on Folly something to look forward to.” His eyes darkened as he regarded her, and she found herself frantically trying to think what Cat would do, yet every answer only deepened her blush.

Peter smiled as if reading her mind. “You can wear them tonight. Thought we could go to the Folly Bowling Center. They’ve got the biggest juke box in town, so I hear, and there’s going to be dancing. I’d love to be able to show you off.”

“I’d love to.” She smiled back at him, their faces close, and wondered if tonight would be the night he’d kiss her again. The bell over the door jangled, followed by a blast of cool air and high, shrill laughter. Maggie looked up to see Cat and her officer standing much too close, the officer’s hand resting possessively on Cat’s hip. Cat wore her green coat, the one Lulu had given to Maggie for each of her dates with Peter, and as Maggie watched his expression, she could tell he noticed it, too.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant. Hello, Cat.” She smoothed a pleasant smile on her face as the handsome couple entered the store, the light suddenly gone from the small space.

Cat’s expression gave no indication of her mood, making Maggie wince. It was easier to deal with her cousin when she knew for sure what to avoid saying.