On Folly Beach (32 page)

Abigail walked through the living room, giving only a cursory glance to the stacks of books; then she flung open the French doors at the back of the house. “Might as well let the fresh air in now while it’s a bit cooler.” She walked forward onto the screened porch and peered into the backyard. She clucked her tongue as she took in the half-built deck. “You and Heath and your unfinished projects. I’m sure that must mean something.”

Lulu snorted again and Emmy shot her a pointed look.

Abigail continued. “You didn’t tell me you had an osprey nest back here.”

“A what?” Emmy came to stand next to Abigail, following her gaze to a tall pole with a platform that had been constructed near the half-built dock.

“Heath told me he’d built a nesting platform but he forgot to mention that he’d gotten a couple of the ospreys to nest in it.”

“What do they look like?”

Abigail looked at her oddly. “They’re pretty big—a lot of people confuse them with eagles. Except they’re brown on top and white on the bottom, and their wings have a bit of a bend to them.” She turned to face Emmy. “Sometimes, to get the fledglings to leave the nest, the parents will refuse to give them food.” They both returned their attention to the empty nest. “And sometimes those same fledglings will go find another nest, where other adults will feed them until they’re ready to leave on their own. Makes them seem almost human, doesn’t it?”

Emmy wasn’t sure how to respond, so she remained silent, watching the abandoned nest and how the afternoon sun created an orange halo over the sleeping marsh. “Where are the birds now?”

“Starting in August they begin migrating south, some to Florida, some all the way to Cuba or South America. But they’ll be back in March to lay their eggs. They’ll come back to this same nest—the same couple, too. They mate for life. Although when they migrate they might go to a completely separate continent, they’ll always return to the home they share together.”

Emily thought of the large birds leaving their nest and each other, secure in the knowledge that they’d see each other again in the nest they’d shared. “Not so human,” she said, her breaking voice ruining her attempt to be flippant.

Abigail put a hand on Emmy’s arm. “Give it time, Emmy. Just not too much time.” After squeezing her arm, Abigail turned and went back into the house, as if knowing she needed to give Emmy a few moments to compose herself and accept that she’d been called a fledgling from another nest who’d just been told it was time to fly.

After a few deep breaths, Emmy followed Abigail into the house. “Can I get anybody coffee?”

She stopped, spotting Lulu sitting on a footstool in front of the pile of books Emmy hadn’t searched through yet, a thick clothbound volume opened on her lap. Lulu’s pale skin had whitened even further, and her hands shook.

Going quickly to Lulu’s side, Emmy attempted to take the book from Lulu’s hands but Lulu held on to it. “Are you all right?”

“What’s wrong?” Abigail asked as she came to stand behind Emmy.

“I’m fine,” Lulu barked, still clutching the book.

Abigail leaned over, seeing for the first time the words written in the margins. “What is it?”

“That’s one of the questions I wanted to ask Lulu. In the box of books you sent to my mother’s store, as well as in a bunch of the books stored here in Heath’s house, I’ve found notes written in the margins of some of them. They appear to have been written by a man and a woman as an odd correspondence, although I have no idea of the chronology. There’re no initials or signatures or anything to identify the writers, but from what I can tell, the handwriting looks the same in all of the notes.”

“What kind of notes?” Abigail put her hand on Emmy’s arm so she could get a better look.

Lulu hesitated, and for a moment, Emmy thought she might close the book and refuse to let them look. Instead, Lulu lifted up the book for the other women to read, her spine stiff and her attitude even harder to hurdle than usual.

Silently, Emmy and Abigail read, “Love is a tyrant. Resisted.” I must see you. When?

“The first part is John Ford, from The Lover’s Melancholy,” said Abigail. “But who wrote that in the margins?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering, too. That’s the woman’s handwriting—the man’s is different enough that you can distinguish between the two.” Emmy took a deep breath, realizing that both Lulu and Abigail could be related to the writers and decided to leave out her suspicions that the lovers were involved in a clandestine affair. “They used these books to communicate with each other for some reason.”

Emmy walked over to her laptop and picked it up to show Abigail. Handing it to her, she said, “I’ve been keeping a list of the books and notes I’ve found so far to see if I could put them in some type of order. As you can tell, they seem to be pretty random—except for the tone. Some of them are simply love letters, others are more desperate or angry, and a few are just eager for the next time they could see each other.” She paused as she considered whether to continue, and her hesitation had as much to do with sparing the feelings of Abigail and Lulu as it did with her reluctance to simply let go.

Lulu continued to sit silently with her arms crossed tightly over her chest while Abigail read over the document on Emmy’s laptop. When she looked up, Abigail’s eyes were wide. “Where’s that envelope of photos I gave you?”

Emmy thought for a moment, embarrassed to admit that she’d only glanced at the photos briefly before sticking them back in the envelope. She was pretty sure the envelope was on the kitchen counter, though, and she excused herself to go find it. Handing it to Abigail, she asked, “Why do you need them?”

Abigail sat down on a sofa and placed the laptop on the coffee table so she’d have both hands free to look at the pictures. “Well, as I’m sure the thought has already occurred to you, these books were Maggie’s, so there’s a good chance the woman’s handwriting is hers. Since she wrote on the backs of the photographs, we can compare.”

Carefully, Abigail slid the pictures out of the envelope onto her lap. The first was a picture of the same little boy Emmy knew was Abigail’s husband, John. Emmy stood to retrieve the book Lulu still held, and when Emmy bent to get it, she again had the odd thought that Lulu wasn’t going to give it to her. Instead, Lulu thrust the closed book at her. “Don’t know why you want to dig up the dead. The dead should be left to rest in peace so the living can get busy with the business of living.” Their eyes met and Emmy was certain that Lulu wasn’t just talking about the unknown lovers.

Emmy brought the book back to Abigail, then flipped through it until she found the woman’s handwriting. Abigail placed the photo of John wearing a cowboy hat, boots and holster on the page opposite and flipped it over where the words Johnny November 5, 1944 were written on the back. They both bent over to look more closely, glancing up at the same time.

“They’re identical,” said Abigail. “Look at the way she curls the bottom of her lowercase y’s. And see here—” She pointed at the r in both the word November and tyrant. “They’ve both got a little curve at the top. It’s very unusual—unusual enough to make me say that both of these samples were written by the same person.”

“Maggie? Are you sure she’s the one who wrote on the backs of all of these photos?” Emmy took the rest of the photographs and turned them upside down, sorting through them. All of them had something written on the back, and all in the same handwriting. She stopped when she saw the words Our wedding day June 11, 1943. Flipping it over, Emmy found a black-and-white photograph of Maggie wearing a smart skirt suit with hat and gloves next to an unfamiliar man wearing the uniform of a naval officer. She held up the photo to show Abigail.

“This is definitely Maggie, isn’t it?” Emmy asked.

Abigail read the back, then took the photo before holding it up to show Lulu. “This is definitely Maggie. And this must be John’s father. Is that right, Lulu?”

Lulu pursed her lips, tightening her arms across her chest. “I think Maggie would want us to stop prying into her business. She was a very private person.”

Abigail rested her hands in her lap, still clutching the photograph. “But aren’t you the least bit curious? I’m wondering if the man’s handwriting is John’s father’s. I can ask John if he has any letters written by his father that we can compare. All I know about him is that he was stationed at the naval air station in Charleston during the war and met Maggie while dancing on the pier.” She smiled. “That happened a lot back then. The high emotions of wartime brought people together a lot quicker than usual.”

Lulu was staring hard at them, as if they’d missed something obvious, but she wasn’t giving anything away. “I’ve got too much stuff to do today to take a trip down memory lane. Let’s talk about your Web site.”

Abigail held up her hand. “Hold on, Aunt Lulu. We need to look at these photos and the ones on the walls first. Emmy had a few questions.” She took the photographs and spread them faceup on the coffee table so they could see them.

There were several of John in his cowboy outfit and boots, including one of him at the beach with the holster around his bathing trunks. Maggie appeared in most of the photos with John, always nearby, and in many of them, she had a hand on him as if she were afraid to let him go. She smiled in all of the photographs, but the expression in her eyes made Emmy lean forward, trying to see what it was in Maggie’s eyes that seemed so familiar. With a start, she sat back, recognizing that what she saw was reflected every time she looked in a mirror: eyes with a muted light that looked out at the world like those of a caged bird.

Lulu was watching Emmy closely as if she saw it, too. “What do you want to know?”

Emmy lifted a photo from the table. It was a picture of the same man with the unusual eyes she’d seen in one of the framed photographs on the wall. She flipped it over to look at the back but there was nothing marked. “Who is this?”

With only a slight hesitation, Lulu said, “Peter. That was taken at the pier the spring of nineteen forty-two. Somebody gave Cat a camera for her birthday, and she went a little crazy taking pictures of everybody.”

Abigail leaned closer. “I recognize the sand-dollar bracelet—is that Maggie’s arm?”

Lulu shrugged. “Maggie’s or Cat’s—it’s hard to say. It was Maggie’s bracelet—she’d inherited it when our mother died—but sometimes Cat borrowed it. She borrowed lots of Maggie’s things.”

Emmy stood and walked over to the framed photograph. “It’s definitely the same man—see the gold signet ring on his right hand? He sure doesn’t look happy to be photographed.”

“No, he hated it. That’s why we only have two photographs of him.”

Emmy jumped, unaware that Lulu had moved to stand behind her. Turning back to the four hanging pictures, she pointed at the wedding photo. “I believe this is Catherine, right? But who’s her groom?”

A smile lit the corners of Lulu’s eyes, as transforming to her face as the lifting of a veil. “Jim Brier. He was killed at Pearl Harbor.”

Emmy studied the photo again, looking for clues of impending tragedy in the same way she’d studied her own wedding photos. But the faces were young and without guile, although her first impression that Catherine’s expression was more of surprise and victory than of joy remained.

“How sad. Did they have any children?”

Lulu shook her head. “No. They weren’t married very long before he was sent to Hawaii. She was very beautiful, wasn’t she? Almost as pretty as Jolene.”

Emmy frowned without responding, still trying to figure out what it was about the couple that made her uneasy, like considering sitting in a stuffed chair with visible springs. “Was Jim a local boy?”

“No. He was from Lafayette, Louisiana. He’s the one who told me about the bottle trees.”

Facing Lulu, Emmy said, “So, in a way, they’re his legacy. Sort of like his own children that have lived beyond his years.”

For a startling moment, Emmy thought Lulu would cry. Apparently, Lulu did too because she turned away and said gruffly, “Let’s talk about the Web site.”

“Fine,” Emmy said, deliberately repeating Lulu’s words, “what do you want to know?”

“When are you going to hire Jolene? I’ve seen what she’s sent you and it’s excellent work. You’re costing me dollars here in potential orders.”

Emmy raised her eyebrows. “Are you even prepared for more orders? It looks like you’ve got your hands full as it is.”

Lulu mimicked Emmy’s expression. “I’ve spoken with Janell. She’s taking a class to learn how to bend metal in a controlled fire so she can make the tree trunks for me, which will make my turnaround a lot quicker. And I’ve got a stockpile of bottles that should last into the next millennium.”

Abigail approached and put an arm around Lulu’s shoulders. “Trying to rid the world of evil spirits one tree at a time, hmm, Lulu?”

Lulu snorted but Emmy hardly noticed. She was remembering the way Lulu had looked when they were discussing the photograph of Catherine and Jim. “How old were you when Jim married your cousin?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Abigail squeezed Lulu’s shoulders before answering. “She was nine. Why?”

Emmy looked at Lulu, surprised to see her wearing a pleading expression. She swallowed her words, saying instead, “Just curious. I was trying to figure out how long this bottle-tree obsession of hers has gone on.”

Abigail turned away, satisfied with Emmy’s answer, but Emmy kept looking at Lulu, wondering why she didn’t want a childhood crush brought up after more than sixty years.

“So why don’t you go ahead and hire Jolene and get it over with already?” Lulu demanded.

Lulu’s voice brought Emmy back to the present. “Because I haven’t received any competitive quotes yet. And because she might be an alcoholic, which would make her unreliable. I can’t afford that right now—especially with a new venture in this economy.”

“Would you at least talk with her?”

Emmy studied Lulu for a moment. “I’m curious. Why is it so important to you that I hire Jolene?”

Lulu dropped her gaze, shaking her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”