On Folly Beach (55 page)

Emmy looked down at Frank, who’d fallen asleep, as her hand again found the rolled note in her pocket, and she allowed her fingers to fold over it. Leaving things unsaid. His words reverberated in her head, settling with a surety she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

“Speaking of your family, your mother finally admitted to me that she has no interest in retiring and would like to continue working part-time at the store. I pretended to think about it before I told her yes.”

Heath grinned. “Good. It’ll give her an excuse to keep an eye on Lulu, and keep her too busy to get involved with my personal life.”

Emmy raised her eyebrows, then squinted up at him, the sun in her eyes. “Your mother also mentioned that you were finally working on a house plan for the old lot.”

He grinned. “I’m going to build a modest cottage, a sort of up-to-date replica of Lulu’s old house but with better plumbing and central air. And I’ll let her live in it for as long as she wants. I figure Folly Beach doesn’t need another McMansion, but it could use a little reminder of its history.”

Emmy’s spine tingled, making her focus intently on Heath. “You made the right decision. And I couldn’t imagine a better one.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you know this for sure.”

“I do.” She lifted her eyes to the sky, embarrassed as she usually was to discuss it. “Call it woman’s intuition, except mine is always right.” Changing the subject, she asked, “So what are you going to do with this house?”

Meeting her eyes again, he said, “Sell it to you, I hope.”

His words surprised her, making her speechless for a moment. “I . . . I don’t think I can afford it.”

“Aha. At least you didn’t say that you weren’t planning on staying. So that’s a start.”

Emmy stared at him, the words finally spoken out loud. “Yes,” she said slowly, “I suppose I am.”

A wide, easy grin split his face. “Great. My mom will be thrilled, and so will Lulu, although she’ll never admit it. And don’t tell her I said that, either.”

Emmy crossed her heart with her forefinger. “Promise.” They avoided looking at each other as if each were waiting for another obvious name to be added to the list. Finally, Emmy looked back at the house. “Lulu once said something about hurricanes coming every thirty years on the nines. Does that mean the next big one will hit in two thousand nineteen?”

“Yep. But believe me, this house could withstand another Hugo. And that’s not intuition.” He winked. “I know the builder.”

Emmy studied the house, remembering how vulnerable she thought it was the first time she’d seen it, perched between the crouching Atlantic and the flowing Folly River. But now, considering it again, she realized how deceptive the thin pilings were, and how the beauty of the joists and beams belied the strength of the house. She could imagine it bearing the wind and tidal surge of a big storm, emerging bruised, but stronger somehow, too.

Glancing back at the truck, she asked, “What’s the kayak for?”

“To show you the marsh. It’s about time you started to learn your way around. Once you know how to kayak and not get lost, I’m going to teach you how to shag. You can’t live in South Carolina without knowing the state dance. It might even be illegal.”

“Really.”

Heath nodded. “And once I finish the dock, I thought I could leave the boat here, if that’s all right with you.”

“Sure.” She looked at the kayak with apprehension. “I’ve never actually been in one before. But I’m game if you don’t mind a beginner.”

“Come on, then. Help me unhook it and you grab the paddles, and we’ll go see if it floats.”

Emmy looked at him with alarm.

“I’m kidding. Of course it floats. I’ve been in it at least a dozen times and never even got wet.”

Reassured, she did as he asked and followed him to the end of the solid docking. She helped him place the kayak in the water, then stowed the oars inside.

“One second,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

Emmy ran to the edge of the dock, where the bottle tree stood sentry. Sticking her hand in her pocket, she pulled out the note she’d written to Ben, then carefully placed it inside the bright blue bottle, making sure it was in all the way before stepping back. A breeze from the marsh blew at her, bringing with it the scent of the pluff mud as she stared at the rolled-up note, now blurry and distorted from the blue glass of the bottle. The scent was less foreign now, more like an old and favorite perfume trapped inside a winter scarf, remembered still after seasons of forgetting.

Migrating geese called from the azure sky, making their annual trek from the north in an age-old ritual of following an unknown sense of home. The wind rustled the tall grass, making each reed whisper so the whole marsh erupted with conversation. Emmy thought of all the time that had passed since Ben’s death, now knowing it as her waiting time, and she gave a silent thank-you to Lulu and Maggie for teaching her how to know when it had been long enough.

Emmy placed her hand on the bottle, its surface warmed by the bright sun and reflecting its jeweled light like sea glass on the beach. Then taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, she said good-bye to Ben for the last first time.

Author’s Note

SEVERAL YEARS AGO I WAS in the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a family wedding. While there my family and I took a sightseeing tour of the famous Cape Hatteras lighthouse. It was on that tour that I learned of a German U-boat sunk right off the coast from where I was standing.

I’ve always considered myself a history buff, but couldn’t recall ever learning in school anything about Germans being that close to the United States mainland. I was fascinated, and continued to mull over that factoid until the right book came along.

I chose Folly Beach because of its reputation during the nineteen forties as being the place for fun. The Folly Beach pier attracted top-notch entertainers, and it’s rumored that the famous South Carolina dance, the shag, was first performed there. Folly was a spot of light during a dark time in our nation’s history, and thus the idea for a book was born.

Before writing the book, however, I had to educate myself on the history of “Operation Drumroll,” the German code name for the initiative to send a handful of U-boats to our Atlantic coast. It began in January 1942, catching the U.S. completely unaware. In the first six months of 1942, the Germans sank 360 merchant ships and oil tankers—more than had been put down in the Pacific by the Japanese from Pearl Harbor to Midway.

If Hitler had granted his own admiral’s request for more U-boats to be sent, or if the U.S. had delayed even more in establishing a naval defense, blackouts, and convoys through our eastern seaboard shipping lanes, it is completely conceivable that the U.S. would have lost the war before we’d barely begun to fight. As the great statesman Winston Churchill said, “. . . the U-boat attack was the worst evil. It would have been wise for the Germans to stake all upon it.” Thankfully, for us and the rest of the world, they did not.

It was in the course of researching the U-boat invasion that I also came upon two other fascinating historical events that I was also ignorant of—the Duquesne spy ring and the landing of German saboteurs on American soil. By sheer luck on our part and general stupidity on theirs, the spy ring and saboteurs were apprehended before too much damage could be done. But for the purposes of this book, I had to ask myself the what-if question: what if they hadn’t all been caught? And so the story of Folly Beach in the nineteen forties and the real history of World War II melded into On Folly Beach, as told through the eyes of Lulu O’Shea, who is nine years old when the story starts in 1942.

To faithfully portray Lulu’s story, I had to do a lot of research—a lot more fun than it sounds! I found the following books very helpful and interesting, and highly recommend them to those of you who’d like to learn more:

Torpedo Junction, by Homer H. Hickam, Jr.Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America, by Michael DobbsFolly Beach: A Brief History by Gretchen Stringer-RobinsonFolly Beach: Glimpses of a Vanished Strand by Bill Bryan

The Humours of Folly photographs by Frank Melvin Braden, words by Ellie Maas Davis

For those of you who’d like to learn even more, Folly Beach offers plenty of summer rental homes for your own “research.”

Karen White is the award-winning author of eleven previous books. She grew up in London but now lives with her husband and two children near Atlanta, Georgia. Visit her Web site at
www.karen-white.com
.

CONVERSATION GUIDE

On Folly Beach

KAREN WHITE

This Conversation Guide is intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing

A CONVERSATION WITH KAREN WHITE

Q. The idea of the bottle trees is really interesting—how did you learn about them?

A. A friend of mine is from New Orleans, but now lives in Memphis. On a recent visit, I saw that she had a bottle tree in her backyard. She explained what it was, and how she’d bought it in New Orleans and brought it to her new home as a sort of reminder. Like everything in my life, her explanation sparked a story idea.

Q. Do you know anyone else who has a bottle tree, and do you have one yourself ?

A. I don’t have one—yet. But since I first saw one at my friend’s house, I’m seeing them more and more. While looking through a pictorial coffee table book, The Humours of Folly, I saw a picture of a bottle tree in a Folly Beach backyard that cemented my idea to set the book on Folly.

Q. What inspired you to write On Folly Beach? Was it visiting Folly Beach?

A. I knew I wanted to set part of the book during World War II and in the South Carolina Lowcountry. I didn’t have to dig very deep to discover that Folly Beach was the hot spot for dancing and fun during the nineteen forties, and pictures from the era were a wonderful inspiration. I visited Folly Beach after I’d started writing the book, renting a house there for a week during the summer for additional research.

Q. One of the themes of the book seems to be the power of literature over the imagination—both positive and negative. Do you think if Lulu hadn’t read Nancy Drew mysteries, she would have been less likely to spy on others? And is her spying really a bad thing, since she may have prevented a Nazi invasion?

A. I was a voracious reader in my teens, and I can cite specific examples of how particular books changed my way of thinking, or acting, or perceiving the world around me. Yes, I really did have a “Scarlett O’Hara period” during middle school. I do think Nancy Drew and the other books Lulu read definitely had an influence on her, and I hesitate to say that her spying was “bad.”Trying on new identities is part of growing up, after all. And luckily for the citizens of Folly Beach and the rest of the country, Lulu’s “spy period” happened at just the right time.

Q. The idea of leaving secret coded messages in books is intriguing—is this something you’ve done yourself ? If not, how did you come up with the idea for Maggie and Peter to communicate?

A. A few years ago, a friend of mine loaned me an old out-of-print book she’d acquired from a used bookstore. Inside was a handwritten letter dating back to the nineteen forties from a person in Australia. The contents of the letter were mundane, but I was fascinated by the identities of the sender and the recipient.

Of course that sparked a book idea—what if the contents weren’t so mundane? What if they were from two lovers instead—lovers who had something to hide? And that was how Peter and Maggie’s story began.

Q. How did you come up with the framing device of using two different wars to tie together the two different stories?

A. Since the whole history behind the German U-boats off the U.S. coast was one of the idea sparks for this story, I knew I needed something current to counterbalance those events. That was how I thought of two women personally affected by war, but sixty years apart, with a Folly Beach bookstore as a touchstone for both of their stories.