On Folly Beach (33 page)

Lulu’s lips thinned as she glared at Emmy. “We both lost our mothers at a young age. It’s an odd bond, but there it is. Other people don’t understand what kind of a loss that is unless they’ve lost their mothers at the same age themselves. I knew why she couldn’t continue to see Heath after he was diagnosed. I’m not saying that I thought she was doing the right thing, but I understood it—and I was the only one. I’m still the only one.” She shot a quick glance at Abigail. “It makes her feel not so all alone, and I’m glad. Maggie did that for me, and maybe this is my way of returning the favor.”

Emmy remembered what Abigail had told her, about how Jolene reminded Lulu of somebody she owed a debt to, and Emmy wondered if it could have been Maggie. But a niggling doubt remained, fueled by Lulu’s antagonism and her reluctance to discuss the past and an old infatuation.

Emmy nodded her head, as if accepting Lulu’s explanation. “I’ll be happy to talk with Jolene. I wanted to before, but she went back to Atlanta. I’ll admit her Web site pages are extraordinary.”

“I’ll have her call you and make an appointment, then.”

“Fine,” Emmy said. And then, as if somebody invisible had nudged, she added, “Thank you.”

Abigail stood. “Well, I guess we should leave you so you can get back to your books.” She led the way to the door, with Lulu and Emmy following.

They said their good-byes, and when Lulu and Abigail were almost down the steps, Emmy remembered one more thing she needed to ask. “Have you been able to locate that last box of books?”

Abigail turned around and shook her head but Lulu kept walking. “I’ve looked everywhere I could think of at the house and haven’t had any luck. I’ll keep looking, though.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Instead of turning around to follow Lulu, Abigail studied Emmy for a moment. “Don’t spend too much time in the past, you hear? Sometimes you remind me of Maggie. I think sometimes she forgot that she had a life in the present.”

Emmy stammered, too hurt and a little angry to come back with a response.

Lulu called back over her shoulder, “Or maybe she’s just being nosy.”

Ignoring Lulu, Abigail said. “I’ll let you know if I find that box.” Then with a wave, she turned around to join Lulu in the car.

Emmy closed the front door, remembering too late what Heath had told her about Maggie selling the house to Peter Nowak. For a brief moment, she considered running out to ask Lulu but decided she’d be better off catching her at work. Her interaction with Lulu had exhausted her, and she didn’t think she could take another wayward glance or half-truth answer.

With her back leaning against the door, Emmy’s gaze slid to the copy of Mansfield Park she’d placed on a side table before answering the door. Picking it up, she read the notation again: This must end. I am near desperation—the kind of desperation that can drive a man to murder. I’ve been lying awake at night, trying to think of a way out of this intolerable situation. I need to talk to you. Meet me.

She shivered again as a breeze blew through the opened French doors, bringing with it the pungent smell of the marsh and a whisper of music through the bottles in the bottle tree. They sang a song of unknown origin—a tune that tripped Emmy’s memory and made her want to dance and cry at the same time. Emmy moved to the French doors and closed them, shutting out the marsh, the music, and the odd sensation that the world was conspiring to teach her steps to a dance she didn’t want to learn.

CHAPTER 17

FOLLY BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA

May 1942

No light shone through the blackout curtains in Maggie’s room, but she knew it to be near dawn by the sound of the birds outside. Her eyes stung from another night spent tossing and turning, listening to Lulu’s breathing as she waited in utter darkness for morning. Peter had been gone for more than a week, and the temperature had risen quickly into the eighties, bringing with it high humidity that draped Folly like a wet sweater. Everyone seemed cranky, with news of more rationing and reports of even more ships falling prey to an accepted U-boat presence. Even though the Americans were finally claiming their own U-boat victims, with prisoners of one downed sub being sent to nearby Charleston, nobody could seem to shake off the persistent miasma that had settled on Folly along with the sudden change in season.

Maggie slid out of bed, careful not to wake Lulu; then she moved the blackout curtain to the side to let in enough light to see. After hurriedly washing and dressing, she headed downstairs. As she passed Cat’s room, she noticed that the door was slightly ajar, although she knew Cat always slept with the door closed. Curious, she pushed the door open and peered inside, seeing the empty, unmade bed and Cat’s nightgown left on the floor.

Maggie continued down the stairs, expecting to find Cat in the kitchen or parlor, a sick feeling settling in her stomach as she found the downstairs empty. She knew Cat wasn’t patrolling the skies today because she was scheduled to work in the store and her spotter cards were still on the kitchen counter. Saturday was their busiest day and Maggie needed her help. But none of that explained why Cat wasn’t in the house, or why Maggie’s throat had become so dry.

She raised the blackout shades and straightened the parlor, eager to keep her hands busy. Restless now, and knowing she’d go mad waiting for Cat to come home, she grabbed a sweetgrass basket from a cabinet, slipped on her shoes, then headed out to the beach in search of turtle eggs. She’d make a nice breakfast for the three of them, and then hopefully she’d have a chance to talk to them about her plans to deed the house to Cat. If Maggie had to leave with Peter suddenly, she didn’t want to have to wait or to worry about Cat. Lulu would go with them, of course, but Cat would need the house.

She walked slowly through the deserted streets toward the beach, swinging her basket by her side. May through August, the large loggerhead turtles lumbered from the ocean and laid their eggs on the shore before disappearing back into the sea. Since she was a girl, Maggie had come to the beach in the early morning to gather turtle eggs for breakfast, following the trail of gauged and ridged sand until it ended in a slight depression covered with sand and beach debris.

Her mother had taught her to take only as many as they would need and to re-cover the nest so that the rest would have a chance of hatching. Maggie had always wondered how a mother could leave her babies, never knowing if any of them would survive, and if the babies ever knew they’d been abandoned. She hoped they didn’t. After her mother died, she’d lay her cheek against the sand and whisper into the nests that motherless babies could survive, even though the missing would never go away.

Maggie stood at the top of the dunes and breathed in the cooler morning air tinged with salt spray, her eyes spanning the empty beach. Farther down, to the west, she spotted the mounted-horse patrol too far away to wave. Leaving her shoes in the sand, she clutched the basket and scrambled down the dunes to the waterline and began her search for eggs and whatever treasures had been given up by the sea.

Long ago, when she was still a little girl, her mother had told her that what she found on the beach was just reminders that you weren’t alone in the world. That she’d always find what she needed if she looked hard enough. It was a calming thought, and one that ran through her mind when she combed the beach. If she ever had a child of her own, she would make sure he or she would know that one little truth.

Ahead in the near distance, she spotted the telltale dips and sways in the sand and followed them up to the deeper sand of the beach. Kneeling, she placed the basket next to her and began to gently brush the sand away with her hands until she came to the round pearly-white eggs piled on top of one another by their mother and waiting for the call of the moon and the pull of the tides.

After gently taking six eggs from the nest and resting them in her basket, then re-covering the nest, she stood, eager to get back to the house before Lulu awoke but wanting to steal a few more moments of solitude on the beach. She almost wished she’d brought Cat’s camera to capture the beauty of the morning.

Heading down the beach again, she walked near the surf, searching for sea glass. Her mother had called the bits of old glass washed in by the tides the ocean’s jewelry—a treasure hidden in the sand and waiting to be found. As a child Maggie had loving finding the small bits of glass, imagining they’d once been part of a pirate ship or a king’s yacht—a piece of the world outside of Folly Beach that she could hold in her hand. It was her first inkling that the world was much bigger than she could imagine, the sea glass her inspiration for studying world atlases and maps of the places she would one day visit.

She’d walked a good distance, lifting her head only when she heard what she thought was a seabird singing for its breakfast. With surprise, she realized she’d reached the pilings of houses on the east end of the beach, which had been washed away by the great storm of 1939, the storm in which the Folly River and the Atlantic Ocean had almost met in the middle of town. The pilings stood like silent sentinels watching over the ever-encroaching ocean, anticipating their fate.

Maggie heard the sound again, a wild plaintive cry, and swung around to see where it was coming from. A group of skimmers hovered over the water, swerving and dipping, calling out to one another like morning greetings over a back fence. But the sound she’d heard was different: a keening sound that she hadn’t heard since she’d gone to Ethel Perkins’ house to bring food after she’d received news that three of her four sons had been killed somewhere in France. It sent gooseflesh rippling over her skin, leaving behind the airless weight of dread.

She was about to turn back when she saw a flash of color in the sand behind one of the pilings. Slowly she walked closer until she identified the red of a woman’s shoe, one heel hanging on to the bottom of the sole by a hinge of leather. She wanted to turn back, to pretend she hadn’t seen it, to return to her ordinary world of searching for eggs and making breakfast. But since her mother’s death, she had been the one in charge, the one people turned to because she would always do the right thing.

With her hand clutching the fabric of her dress over her heart, she approached until she spotted the hem of a matching red dress and the unmistakable fur jacket, now ruined with water and sand.

Still clutching her basket of eggs, Maggie rushed forward and knelt next to Cat, who barely resembled the woman Maggie had seen the evening before as she left to go dancing on the pier. Her hair was pulled out of its coiled curls, its golden mass in stringy waves over her mascara-stained face. Her red lipstick had faded to a pale pink, turning her face into the pinched underside of a starfish.

But it was her eyes, now a dull green with no hint of light behind them, that alarmed Maggie the most. If it hadn’t been for the sound of Cat’s crying, Maggie would have thought she was looking at a corpse.

Kneeling next to her, Maggie moved to put a hand on Cat’s shoulder, but Cat flinched.

Surprised, Maggie sat back on her heels, resting her hands and the basket in her lap. “What’s wrong, Cat? What’s happened?”

Cat’s sobs had become moans deep in her throat. Turning her face away from Maggie, she said, “Go away. You won’t want to help me once you know.”

“Know what, Cat? You’re scaring me. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

Cat shook her head and Maggie saw that her hands were balled into little fists in her lap, a man’s white linen handkerchief peeking out between her fingers.

Maggie’s eyes widened with alarm. “Did Robert . . . Did he . . . Did he hurt you?”

Cat threw her head back and laughed, a sick choking laugh that had nothing to do with humor. Finally facing Maggie, she said, “No, actually. It’s the other way around. I’ve hurt him in the worst way imaginable.”

Maggie shifted on her knees. “You’re not making any sense, Cat. What’s happened? Tell me so I can help you.”

Cat glared at her with her dead, dull eyes and shook her head. “You’re so good and perfect, Maggie. Do you know how hard it is to live with you? To live with the shadow of your saintliness hovering over me every blessed moment of my day? You don’t know, because you’ve never had a bad thought in your head.”

Maggie wanted to tell Cat that she was wrong, that so many times over the years since her mother’s death she’d had to cling to a deathbed promise to keep her from screaming out loud. Instead, Maggie reached for Cat, offering to comfort her in the same way Cat had done when they were children and Maggie was having bad dreams. But Cat pulled away again, and dread began its thick pulse through Maggie’s blood. “That’s not true, Cat, and you know it. Please tell me what’s wrong. Please tell me so I can help you. There’s never been a problem we couldn’t work out together.”

Cat struggled to a stand, her broken shoe making her twist her ankle in the soft sand. “God, Maggie, don’t you see? You’re so good that you can’t see the evil in other people. You don’t even suspect that it’s there.” She waved her hands at Maggie. “Go away. Go away before I tell you something you don’t want to hear.”