Slow Moon Rising (17 page)

Oh she did, did she? “In Cedar Key?”

The skin around Dad's eyes crinkled. “Do I own another one?”

I smiled. A weekend in Cedar Key . . . I could live with that. “Do I have to take anyone else?”

“Not if you don't want to. We weren't sure if you'd want to take the girls or if you wanted just you and Andre to steal away for a while.”

I allowed my eyes to roam over the book titles on his bookshelf.

“You and Andre doing all right now?” he asked.

My eyes jerked back to his. “Yeah. I'd say so. After my ‘sin of spend' he spent the first week sleeping in the guest bedroom
but moved back into ours once I got a job. Things more or less got back to normal once I started working for you.”

“And Anise.”

“Yes.” I crossed one leg over the other, pumped my foot up and down, back and forth. Cleared my throat to steer Dad back to the discussion about Cedar Key. “So, how's this weekend sound for my mini-vacation?”

“The house is all yours.”

I threw my head against the leather and sighed. “Cedar Key! Here I come!”

“Guess where I'm heading?” I cheered into my cell phone.

“Where?”

I had left a voice message for Kimberly earlier, knowing she wouldn't get it until she had a break between classes. I also knew she'd not set foot in Cedar Key since Mom had died. From the sound of her voice, she could use a vacation as much as I.

“I'll give you a hint. My car is pointed toward the west and I'm on a long stretch of road between the Gulf of Mexico and Otter Creek.”

“Oh. You're going to Cedar Key?”

I frowned. “Dad treated me to the weekend at the house. A whole weekend, Kimberly-Boo. No kids. No Andre. No working for Dad and Jayme-Leigh and, thank you, Lord, no working for Anise.” I grinned. “Yippee!”

Momentary silence was followed by, “So what will you do with yourself, all by yourself?”

“Nothing. Or everything. You know how much I love the little artsy shops there. I'm going to buy myself a pair of earrings. And I'm going to sit on Dock Street in the evenings.”

“Isn't it going to be awfully hot this weekend for sitting on Dock Street? Even at night?”

“I don't care, Kim. I'm going to be
freeeee.
”

“Okay then.”

“Join me!”

“What?”

I slowed my car for the truck pulling an airboat ahead of me. “Join me. Come on, Kim. I know you haven't wanted to come since Mom died, but you have to put that behind you. We can make new memories here. I bet Mr. Granger will take us out on a sunset tour in his boat.”

“That's okay, Heather. I've got some things I need to do around the house this weekend.”

“What? Name one thing. I dare you.”

I heard my sister's long sigh. “Heather?”

“Are you crying?”

She breathed in. Out. “No. I'm fine.”

“You don't sound fine.”

“Look, Heather. I only have another two minutes before the children return from break. I can't get into this right now.”

“Into what?”

“I can't—”

“Into what?”

“Ugh. All right. I think . . .”

I heard the deep intake of breath. Another exhale.

“What? What do you think?”

“I think Charlie is having an affair,” she said so quickly I almost missed the meaning.

“What!”

“I have to go. Call you later. Have fun. If you do see Mr. Granger, give him my best.”

With that, the call disconnected.

During the years of our youth, Kimberly and Mr. Granger's son, Steven, had something of a “thing” going. Summer romance, it's called. When she was sixteen and he was seventeen, it had heated up to the near-boiling point, though I know Kim managed to hold on to her virtue. When Steven had gone to college that fall, he'd met someone else, “got pregnant,” got married, and—sometime later, from what we heard—got divorced. His wife had left him with their child—a daughter—and he'd spent the years since as a single father.

In all my years coming to Cedar Key—whether with Dad and Mom or with Andre and the kids—I'd only seen Steven once. He'd been standing at his dad's tour boat dock, talking to his father. A too-thin strawberry blonde child of about eight or nine skipped around him, waving her arms about like one of the pelicans and seagulls swarming nearby. I figured her to be his daughter, but I didn't approach to ask. The last thing I needed on my conscience was talking to Steven and meeting his child. The moment I saw my sister again, I knew, it would spill out of me and she'd be forlorn. Again. Even with Charlie and the boys, the memory of Steven had stayed bitterly close to the edge of her heart.

Charlie. Could he really be having an affair? No . . . Charlie adored Kim. Doted on his sons. He was a good husband. The best father. Kimberly was, no doubt, being overly sensitive
about something. Hormonal. Yeah, that was it. She was hormonal.

Maybe even pregnant again. Okay, yeah, that was probably it. If Mom were still here, Mom would know . . .

I turned off Highway 24 and onto Boogie Ridge, down the road winding between thick live oaks and bushy oleander showcasing white and pink blossoms. Boogie Ridge is actually 154th Street, with a road that loops at the end, affording the houses along the way views into the bayou, spectacular both in the morning and the evening. I slowed my car over the bumps of what had gone from asphalt to sand, tires crunching over broken oyster shells.

Dad's next-door neighbor, an elderly woman named Patsy, stood to the left side of her house, hands splayed on her narrow hips, looking out over the marshland. She wore a pair of khaki slacks, a short-sleeved blouse, and a red oversized hat, the floppy brim of which ruffled in the slight breeze. Hearing my car, she turned, waved as though we were old friends, and started toward me.

The thought of entertaining the woman, kind as she was, didn't appeal to me. My brain scrambled for what I could say that would allow me to make a hasty retreat inside.

Opening the door, I had the perfect response. “Hello, Patsy. Awful hot, isn't it?”

“Honey,” she said, moving toward me, “it's a scorcher, and it's not even lunchtime yet.”

I decided my best plan of action was to walk to her, guide her homeward, and
then
I could follow through with my own mini-vacation plans. “How have you been, Miss Patsy?”

“I'm good for an old girl,” she answered. “You're which one, now?”

“Heather,” I said, placing my hand against my chest. “Ross's daughter.”

“Not the doctor one.”

“No, ma'am,” I said, turning her back toward her own front door, which was really to the side of the house. “What were you looking at out here?”

“Just watching the world turn.” She chuckled. “When you get to be my age, you can do that, you know.”

“Now, Miss Patsy. I've only met you a couple of times, but I've never thought of you as old.”

She cackled. “Well, I've still got enough get-up-and-go to get up and go and I'm old enough to enjoy the days and to go to bed when I'm good and ready.” She chuckled again. “Which is usually pretty early, but you never know. Some nights I don't go to bed until ten o'clock.”

I had to laugh. Patsy—whose last name I couldn't recall—was nothing if not cute
.
“How long have you been here now, Miss Patsy?” We'd reached the stairs leading to the door. She rested a hand upon the weathered wood railing.

“Just two years. Used to come here with Gilbert—my husband—for vacations. Brought the kids here in the summertime. Lost two of my babies here in a boating accident. Did you know that?”

I blinked. I'd had no idea. What sorrows must possess a person in the sunset years of life . . . Would mine be similar? “Two? At the same time?”

She nodded. “You'd think I'd never want to return, wouldn't you, with such a tragedy having occurred here.” She patted
the wood beneath her hand. “‘When sorrow comes under the power of divine grace, it works out a manifold ministry.'” She blinked slowly. “That's from one of my devotional books. Sweet Heather, I'm here to tell you that, nearing the end of my life, the good memories far outweigh the bad. And there were plenty of bad.” She smiled at me. “Come inside and have a bite of lunch with me. Keep a lonely widow company?” She winked.

This wasn't what I'd had in mind when I pictured my time in Cedar Key. “Uh, Miss Patsy, I really need to unpack and . . .”

“Well, you go do that. And then you march right back over here. Just come on up these steps and walk on in. I'll make us some sandwiches—I just made some of my homemade chicken salad—and we'll eat chips and drink iced tea. I won't take no for an answer.” She walked up three of the steps. “Then you can go on and do whatever you came here to do.” After several steps more she looked out over her lawn, called, “Come on, Oreo, let's go inside before you have a heatstroke.”

A black-and-white cat came bounding toward me. I stepped back, and the cat shot past and up to its owner.

“I'll, uh—I'll be back in about a half an hour, I guess,” I said, completely clueless as to how this woman had talked me into eating lunch with her.

“I'll be right here,” she declared. She walked through her door and closed it gently behind her.

After lunch, I left Patsy's and returned to Dad's, somewhat shaken after hearing Patsy's story. I marveled at the
faith she lived by and wondered if my own could stand up to the kinds of tests she'd endured. I wasn't sure if it had managed to survive the few bumps and bruises life had already left me with.

Once I got back to Dad's, I did what Patsy said she was about to do; I curled up on the sofa for a nap. But, sleep didn't come easy. I wrestled with myself. My heart. My life.

Everything had always come easily for me. I was the “pretty one,” everyone said. Kimberly, the oldest. Jayme-Leigh, the smartest. And, when Ami came along, she was known as “the talented one.”

But I was pretty and I knew how to use my looks to get my way in life. Mom once said if I went to a picnic without my basket, I'd manage somehow to get the best from everyone else's. High school was one fabulous party after the other. The homecoming queen's crown rested on my head, and I won a sweet number of local beauty pageants. Not that they meant anything, really, other than a way to connect with Mom.

I didn't want to go to college, but I enrolled anyway. It made Dad happy for a season, but I knew it couldn't last. As much fun as high school had been, I couldn't fake or pretty my way to a diploma. When I met Andre right away my freshman year, I knew I'd come face-to-face with my “way out.” We fell in love and we fell hard, but more than anything, he was my ticket away from disappointing Dad. Dad didn't have to tell his colleagues I'd become a dropout; rather he could boast his role as the father of the bride.

Even with my misstep with the money spending, I'd managed to get myself out of hot water and into lukewarm without too much of a sweat. Not really.

Two hours later, I tumbled off the sofa, made myself a cup of coffee, thumbed through a
Coastal Living
magazine, then grabbed my car keys and my purse and went out to my car.