On Folly Beach (45 page)

“But you’re not a history fan.”

“Not personal history, no. I’ve never seen much point in reliving the past, as you know.”

“So what’s changed?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the pictures on the walls in my house—how I didn’t know who those people were. And Lulu . . .”

“What about Lulu?”

“Well, she’s not here yet, which is strange. She’s usually the first one at any gathering, helping out behind the scenes, staying on the periphery to watch people. Something has happened, and it has to do with those damned books you found.” His eyes darkened as he looked at her. “She’s seventy-seven years old. How does a person get to be so damned old and still be afraid that the past is going to catch up to her?”

Emmy studied him closely, wondering if he was still talking about Lulu. Glancing down at the letters, she noticed the woman’s handwriting, recognizing it from the dozens of times she’d already seen it. “Not that I needed any further confirmation, but it’s the same, Heath.

Maggie’s handwriting is the same I’ve been reading in the book margins and on the photographs in your house.”

His jaw hardened. “I’m not surprised. There’re some interesting tidbits in the letters. My father and I read them for the first time last night.”

She looked at her watch. “It’s still early. Would it be all right if I read them now?”

Heath indicated an old leather couch pressed up against the wall under the flag. “Go ahead. We figured you’d want to.”

She settled down on one side of the couch while Heath sat next to her, his arms folded as Emmy began to read.

The letters started in August of 1943, apparently after Robert’s deployment overseas. It was hard to tell exactly where because it was never mentioned, most likely for fear of censorship, but they talked about his being far from home and wanting to eat a hot dog again.

She looked up. “When did you say they were married?”

“June 1943. Why?”

Emmy shrugged. “Because these don’t seem like the letters from a newlywed, that’s all. I remember Ben’s letters to me. They were full of mundane stuff, too, but there were . . .” She paused, remembering how she used to sleep with Ben’s letters pressed against her chest, and how the paper wilted, as if mourning his absence. Emmy continued. “But there were the emotional aspects, too. There’s none of that stuff here.”

“It was a different time. Maybe men were pressured to be more stoic.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. History is full of letters from soldiers writing home. Have you ever heard about the Sullivan Ballou letter from Ken Burns’ Civil War series? It makes you weep, it’s so beautiful. He wrote, ‘My love for you is deathless.’ ” She looked down at the letter in her hand. “I think it makes sense that men facing death have a better insight into their hearts.”

“Sometimes.” Heath looked at her, an understanding passing between them, like two soldiers on the same battlefield. “So what happened to Sullivan Ballou?”

“He died a week later. I always thought how grateful his wife must have been to have that letter from him. But after Ben . . . I don’t know.” Emmy shook her head. “Maybe it would have been easier for her if she hadn’t known how much he loved her. So she wouldn’t know how much she had lost.” The words seemed hollow to her, not quite ringing true anymore.

The leather of the couch creaked as Heath leaned forward. “I’m thinking Ben was a lucky man to know he was loved by you. And that he died knowing that.”

Emmy didn’t say anything for a long moment, the handwriting in front of her swimming through blurred vision. Like when she was called brave, Heath’s words had cracked open something inside the dark part of her grief, like a curtain being raised halfway to let in the light.

“How do you know so much?” Emmy kept her gaze focused on the letter.

“Look who raised me. Besides my mother and father, who are pretty amazing, I had Maggie and Lulu. Pretty strong women all around.”

Emmy nodded, still unable to look at him. She continued to read the letters between Maggie and Robert, all signed with love, but the triviality of the contents belying the word. There was certainly affection, but nothing that would indicate the hell of two lovers being separated by a war.

When she was done, she handed the letters back to Heath. “Thank you for sharing these with me.”

He looked at her oddly. “What aren’t you telling me?”

She was silent for a moment. “I don’t think you’re really going to want to hear what I have to say.”

Crossing his arms across his chest, he said, “Why don’t you start, and I’ll tell you if I need you to stop?”

“All right.” She leaned back. “The big question is to whom Maggie was writing the notes in the book margins since it wasn’t her husband. And Lulu tells me it wasn’t Jim, either—although she could have been lying. But Jim died in nineteen forty-one, and some of the books have a nineteen forty-two copyright date, so that wouldn’t work. The only other man is Peter, and I’m pretty sure the handwriting doesn’t match. Unless, of course, he deliberately disguised his handwriting to be different from his signature in the books to Maggie and Lulu. But why do that if he was already taking such pains to hide the notes?”

Heath’s jaw tightened and Emmy was reminded again of his reluctance to deal with the past or the future. But it seemed to her that his insistence on living in the present was the same as putting blinders on a horse: you missed a lot of what was going on in the world around you. If it hadn’t been for the notes in the books, she’d still be sitting in the back of her mother’s store, unaware of the change of seasons or the way the sun seemed to melt like butter as it settled over the marsh at dusk. Or that ospreys mated for life and that alligators didn’t swim in the ocean.

Heath stood and moved to the window to look out on the street below. “So what are you going to do now?”

“I’m not sure. But there’s something else. It’s a letter from Cat, Maggie’s sister. It was hidden inside a book in the box you found in the attic at Folly’s Finds.”

He faced her, his eyes uncertain, like those of a man about to step onto a tightrope wire suspended high between two buildings. “Who’s it addressed to?”

“It doesn’t say. But I read it to my mother, and we both seemed to think the same thing.”

“Is it something that could hurt Lulu?”

“It might be. Although it also might be something she already knows about.”

“Then I’m ready to stop there. I think we’ve dug up enough of the past for one night.”

“Fine.” Emmy stood, too, feeling somehow disappointed that Heath could see her path clearly but be so blind about his own. “Thanks for letting me see the letters. They’ve raised as many questions as they’ve answered, but thanks.”

Heath straightened. “There’s one obvious thing you haven’t mentioned, and I’m only going to bring it up because it will probably occur to you in the middle of the night and wake you up. I figure I might as well spare you now.”

Emmy raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“The dates of my father’s birth, and Maggie’s wedding to Robert. Apparently, they were married when my father was six months old.”

Emmy thought for a moment. “You’re right. I probably would have figured that out sooner or later, but thanks. Just another puzzle piece to throw on the table. I just have no idea where it fits.”

They began walking toward the door. “Do you think your father knows?”

“He never mentioned it, but I have to assume that he probably figured it out at some point.”

Emmy turned to face him. “You know, if it’s true, then that could be why Lulu’s been so secretive about all of this. Out-of-wedlock babies were scandalous back in the forties.”

Heath’s eyes were serious. “And have nothing to do with us now, and could only upset an old lady.”

Emmy was about to tell him that they both knew that Lulu wasn’t a shrinking violet who shunned scandal—especially one that had happened more than sixty years ago—when the door flew open. Abigail stood in the doorway, her face pale and her chest rising and falling rapidly.

“They found my car—it’s over at the old property on Second Street.” She pressed both hands across her chest. “They found Lulu there, too. She might have had a heart attack and is being rushed to Roper Hospital downtown.”

“Oh, no.” Emmy hugged Abigail. “Is she going to be all right?”

“I don’t know. She’s very lucky. A woman walking her dog saw her fall over and was able to call for help on her cell. The ambulance was there in about five minutes, and they were able to start treatment.” She swallowed. “Thank God that woman was there.”

“Let’s go—I’ll drive.” Heath began shepherding the women through the door. “We’ll take the van so Dad can come, too.”

“What was she doing there?” Emmy asked, trying to sound calm.

“We don’t know. She had a spade with her, like she was going to dig something up.” Abigail choked back a sob and Emmy put her arm around her.

“It’ll be okay. We’ll all get through this together.” She squeezed Abigail’s shoulders, surprised at how much she meant the words.

Then they walked through the quiet group of partygoers and followed Heath out the front door. Emmy stopped for a moment, breathing in the cool fall air, which still smelled of salt and the browning marsh, and wondered what Lulu could have been digging up, and if her past had finally caught up to her.

CHAPTER 25

FOLLY BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA

May 1943

Maggie stood barefoot in the summer grass, her feet and nightgown damp from the misting rain. She waited a moment before venturing too far into the yard, waiting to hear any movement or voices. But the warm night slept, the hum and croak of unseen things muted by the mist.

Slowly, she walked toward the bottle tree, where she unhooked the cobalt blue bottle from the lowest limb and slid the note into the neck. This had become routine, but no less frightening each time she placed a note inside a bottle. She and Peter had agreed on the meeting location in their previous meeting, and she’d left a book at the store for Lulu to give him when he’d returned home that afternoon from another business trip. All he needed was the time, and her note in the bottle would tell him. She’d long since stopped thinking about the guilt, remembering instead what Lulu had told her about Cat and Jim, and how she needed Peter the way that the tides needed the moon.

Maggie stepped back, listening again and watching as a swift dark shadow flew overhead, a night heron in search of supper. She made her way back to the house and quietly entered the kitchen through the back door. She locked the door, cringing at how loud the snap of the lock latching into place sounded in the quiet house.

As she turned around, she stifled a scream as her eyes made out a dark shape in front of her. A cold hand touched her arm. “Mags—it’s me, Lulu.”

Maggie could hear her heart thumping in her ears. Forcing herself to keep her voice calm, she whispered back, “What are you doing up?”

She could feel Lulu’s eyes fixed on her. “I need to tell you something.”

Maggie’s fear quickly subsided into exasperation. Since the baby’s birth, Lulu had become even more secretive and less communicative. She was now ten years old, still too young to be studying the world around her with such quiet, knowing eyes. “Can’t it wait until morning?”

“No,” Lulu whispered, the word coming out as a hiss.

“Then quickly tell me what it is so that we can both go back to bed.”

There was a long pause as Maggie shivered in her damp nightgown. “The last time you left in the middle of the night, Cat came into our room and went to your bed. She sat down and stayed there for a long time while I pretended to be asleep.”

Maggie tasted the roast they’d had for dinner in the back of her throat and for a moment thought she was going to throw up. “And then what did she do?”

“She went back to her room and closed the door.”

Maggie nodded in the darkness, knowing there was nothing she could say.

“I thought you’d want to know.”

Maggie stared at her sister, where the darkness made her eyes and mouth into pools of shadow, feeling incapable of being both mother and father to Lulu, and how she’d failed in so many ways.

“Thank you,” she said, hearing the baby upstairs starting to fuss.

Maggie made her way quickly to the stairs, hoping she could get to the baby before he woke Peter and Cat. When Peter was home, Cat moved the crib into the upstairs hallway so he wouldn’t awaken Peter, which was fine with Maggie since she was the one who would hear his cries long before his own mother.

In the blackness inside the shrouded house, Maggie felt her way along the wall until she fumbled around and found the small lamp she’d set up next to the rocking chair she’d moved from the porch. Standing over his crib, she looked down at the flailing arms and legs, noticing how the baby quieted when he spotted her.

“Sweetheart,” she said, lifting his tiny body with the baby blanket she’d knitted for him. She’d unraveled a shawl Peter had brought back from one of his trips for the yarn to make the blanket since she knew she could never wear it again.

Cradling him in the crook of her arm, she sat in the chair and began to rock. “I just fed you, little man, so you can’t be hungry. Were you just lonely?”