Sweet Salt Air (12 page)

She could do that. She had no interest in the man.

But those gardens … those gardens held her thoughts as she walked along the road. The promise of them was a drug, and she didn’t mean dope. That smell she couldn’t parse? It was fertility, healing, and hope all at once. She had to get back there, and not with an iPhone. She wanted to use her Nikon, ideally up close with a wide-angle lens, but with a zoom from afar and on the sly if need be. She could make those gardens come alive in print. She could capture that scent. Nicole’s readers would love it.

So would Nicole. It was the least Charlotte could do.

Chapter Seven

C
HARLOTTE DIDN’T TELL
N
ICOLE THAT
she’d been to the Cole place, simply because other things took precedence—namely, the arrival of summer. She knew it the instant she got out of bed Thursday, could see it in how the beach grass stood tall and hear it in the languid cry of the gulls. When she opened the window, she felt a special Quinnie warmth. This wasn’t the sticky heat of the city, but rather a gentling of air that was balmy and sweet. It was also very possibly fleeting, she feared, having spent enough summers here to know how quickly the cold could return. Seizing the moment was key.

To that end, once they finished breakfast on the patio and felt the true warmth of that sun, she suggested the beach. Nicole looked at her, looked at the ocean, grinned conspiratorially, and rose.

An hour later, with no mention whatsoever of the cookbook, they were in the Wrangler, driving in the direction of town only enough to pass the clam flats and reach Okers Beach. Two other cars were already parked on the sandy berm by the path; had it been the weekend, there would have been more. Houses like Nicole’s had their own beaches, but most were on the north side. Okers, being on the south and tucked into a Quinnie curve, offered calmer surf and softer sand. It also offered drive-bys from the Chowder House with sandwiches, chips, and drinks, though when Charlotte and Nicole arrived, lunch was still a ways off.

Dropping their bags, they set up low beach chairs, put on sunscreen, and reached for their copies of
Salt
.

“You’ll finish today,” Charlotte said, eyeing the small wad of pages Nicole had left.

Nicole grimaced. “I know. I’m trying to read slowly. I do not want this to end.”

Charlotte, who was barely halfway through, wasn’t rushing to finish either, and not for lack of interest. If she was bored, she wouldn’t finish; she liked books to sweep her up, and if one didn’t, it was gone.
Salt
offered contentment in a slow savoring, luxury in knowing there was more to read. “What is it about this book?” she asked. “It’s not like the plot is unique. Man and dog are alone. A perfect woman comes for the summer. They try to make a go of it.”

“You make it sound trite.”

“But the way he writes, it isn’t. That’s my point. What is going on here that has us holding our breath?”

Nicole spread a hand on the page before her. “We love the hero. He’s vulnerable. He really needs her. I mean, he’s capable of living alone. He’s done it for years. But his life is empty.” She paused before adding a quiet, “We die for this. Every woman wants to be needed.”

Even with the surf diluting it, Charlotte heard sadness. “Julian needs you.”

“Does he? I mean, if he doesn’t want me with him now, what does that say?”

“It says he doesn’t know how to handle this any more than you do. It says he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing.”

Nicole stroked the book. “That’s what we love about
Salt
. This guy knows what he wants. He’s out on his lobster boat all day long, but he knows he wants to come home to this woman.” Her voice melted. “She’s his dream come true. Is that the sweetest?”

“They won’t end up together,” Charlotte warned.

“How do you know that?” Dismay, then accusation, “Charlotte Evans, you rat, you read the ending!”

“I didn’t,” Charlotte protested, laughing.

“You always used to, and it’s just as bad now as it was then, because I
do
want them to be together.” She swatted at Charlotte’s arm. “You are a spoiler!”

Still laughing, Charlotte fended off another swat. “I have not read the ending. I swear. It’s just that I understand this woman. She lives in Dallas. She’s used to glitz and restaurants and shopping. How can she trade that for life on a small island?”

“Easy, if she loves him enough.”

“You are such a romantic.”

“And you aren’t?”

“Of course I am,” Charlotte conceded. “I love this book, too.” She had a hopeful thought. “Tell me there’s a twist coming that’ll allow her to stay.”

“I’m not telling,” Nicole said and, lowering her sunglasses, began to read.

*   *   *

Thursday was the kind of day Charlotte had dreamed of when she agreed to come to Quinnipeague. They read, they walked the beach, they swam as much as the cold ocean water allowed. By the time the Chowder House van arrived, there were others on the beach. Nicole knew most as summer people, and while there were warm hellos, they kept to themselves.

Summer people were that way. Most were escaping busy lives and welcomed the hush. Locals were the ones who talked.

Today, there was just the smell of sunscreen and surf, hours without awareness of time, and when the sun was at its highest and warmest, crab cakes on buns, topped with Dorey’s special tartar sauce. “Did you know,” Nicole remarked, blotting her mouth with a napkin, “that the French were the ones who first popularized tartar sauce, which was named after the Tatars from Russia and the Ukraine, and that those early versions contained white wine vinegar and capers?”

Charlotte peeled back her bun. “I don’t see capers.”

“No. Dorey uses sweet pickle, parsley, and chive.”

The Cecily Cole effect, Charlotte thought, but didn’t say it aloud. Rather, they went back to eating, back to a serenity stroked by the tempo of the surf and undisturbed by talk of either the cookbook or Julian. The only tears were Nicole’s when she finished reading
Salt
. And they were voluminous, punctuated by multiple
omigod
s and a hand pressed to her chest to steady her heart.

Still she refused to tell Charlotte how the story ended. Rather, after a dinner that night of pecan-crusted cod—a test, since it was one of the Chowder House’s signature dishes, and Nicole wanted to be sure the recipe was right—she let Charlotte clean the kitchen while she dove into a new book. Charlotte, who liked to linger with characters when she was done with a book, was dismayed that Nicole could so quickly put all that emotion aside, but she claimed she needed to immerse herself in another to compensate for the loss. It was escapism at its finest—denial of
Salt,
denial of MS. True to her word, she was quickly absorbed.

So Charlotte went for a walk. There was no heading toward town this time. Right off, she went in the other direction. The night was mild and her step steady. She rationalized, telling herself that she’d been a slug all day—sitting, reading,
eating
—which was true. But she was also curious about what was happening at the house.

She walked in moonlight this time, enjoying the mild air, the sweet smells of nascent blooms. One day of warmth, and the shrubs lining the road added the scent of roses to that of sea salt all the way to the Cole curve, where the tang of pine sap took its place.

She slowed at the curve. She didn’t hear anything tonight. And sure enough, when she went on, all was dark. She walked until she came abreast of the gardens, which, too, were more strongly scented than before. There were flowers here, not just herbs. She would stake her novice nose on it.

Stopping, she sat down right there in the middle of the drive. Far beyond trees, rocks, and the house, the surf rolled in, but its sound was muted enough by those objects not to hide that of small creatures on the move. A chipmunk darted across the drive, it’s tiny tail straight up. A frog jumped, croaked, jumped again, and disappeared into the plants with only the occasional diminishing croak.

Focusing on the woods, she let her eyes adjust to the shadows, separating one tree from the next and—ahhhh, there was the doe. Standing straight and still, it might have passed for a tree had Charlotte not known to look. It was watching her. She held her breath, wondering if it would accept her benignity—wondering, actually, if it would proceed to eat Leo Cole’s goods now that he wasn’t around to see. It didn’t. In time, it simply turned and, without a sound, stepped gracefully into the pines.

Charlotte was thinking that she really wanted to look for the fawn, only that would likely bring the doe back, and this wasn’t her land to disturb—when a dog barked. The sound was muffled; Bear was in the house. Anxious to get out and chase whoever trespassed?

Sitting in the dirt without moving, she waited for the front door to open. Alternately, her gaze skipped to the side of the house from which she half expected a hulking brute of a black dog to burst. What would she do if it did?

Run. Fast.

But there was no sign of Bear, either in that minute or the next twenty, which was how long she sat filling her lungs with Cole air. Its intricate blend of flowers and herbs, warm now and intense, was hypnotic. She half expected that her legs would refuse to move if she decided to leave.

But they didn’t balk when she stood. They were rested and filled with energy—actually took her back to Nicole’s house at a speed she would have marveled at had she been watching the time. Her mind, though, was filled with less honorable thoughts. She was wondering whether, if she returned another night, she might walk through that garden. She was wondering if the light of the moon would allow her to take pictures of the herbs there. She was
wondering
whether, if she was undetected then, too, she might
borrow
a few.

*   *   *

She might have shared the plan if Nicole had been in the kitchen when she returned, but she was asleep, and by the time Charlotte went downstairs Friday morning, the urgency had passed.

Nicole was late joining her. Carrying her laptop, she had apparently been working into the wee hours, not sleeping at all. After reading a tip in one of her favorite farm reports, she had researched and blogged about a new artichoke cultivar with a heart was so tender it could be eaten without being cooked. It was the kind of cutting-edge news she liked passing on to her readers, and having done that at length, she said, she had earned the right to play.

So they spent another warm day at the beach. There were more bodies on towels today; weekenders had arrived, delivered early by the ferry with a guttural noise that could be heard from the pier, and the beach was the go-to spot. Though there was no boisterousness, there were iPod docks and earbuds aplenty. There was also lots of talk, with Nicole in its midst. Many of those newly arrived were people she had known for years but hadn’t seen since fall.

Watching her, Charlotte thought she looked better. She was in her element with people, and though there were questions about Bob and Julian, she handled them well. She even accepted a dinner invitation from friends of her parents, who had half a dozen others coming as well.

“They want you, too,” Nicole informed her when she returned to their towels and stretched out again, but Charlotte shook her head no.

“Why not?”

“I’m not a dinner party kind of person.”

“Are you kidding? You’d be the most interesting one in the room!”

“I hate small talk.”

“You can do it.”

“Oh, I can. I just don’t want to.”

Nicole must have sensed she was serious, because she said, “Then we’ll go another time. You’re my guest. I can’t leave you home alone.”

“Of course you can,” Charlotte scolded. “You love the McKenzies. And besides, this breaks the ice for you. It’s better to see some people now, than everyone all at once Sunday morning at brunch.” Bailey’s Brunch was an annual event, ostensibly to celebrate the summer solstice, though truly to welcome back seasonal Quinnies. Held at the church, it would be the first townwide gathering of the summer, and therefore an important one for Charlotte and Nicole to attend. “Besides, these are your people, not mine.” She paused and said on a lighter note, “See the heads on the bluff?”

Nicole glanced up at the rocks that anchored the far end of the beach. The heads were attached to bodies of local teenage boys, for whom hours on that bluff each summer weekend was a rite of passage. “They’re still at it.”

“Obviously a different crew.”

“For sure, but they do love taking it in. Warm bodies.”

“Warm
female
bodies.”

“And you in a one-piece suit. What happened to the bikinis you loved?”

“The French Riviera,” Charlotte remarked, and at Nicole’s curious frown, said, “Bikinis all over the place, looking great on some bodies and horrid on others, and the occasional one-piece suit looking so much better.”

“But you have the body for a bikini.”

Charlotte couldn’t comment further. “Not like yours. You look amazing, Nicki. You absolutely have to go to the McKenzies’ tonight. Trust me. You’ll light up the party.”

Nicole leaned close to be heard over the sounds of laughter and waves. Her eyes were a crystal-clear green. “Do you know how
glad
I am that you’re here? Come? Please?”

But Charlotte shook her head and smiled. “After a day here with all these people? I’m socialized out. You go. I’ll sleep.”

*   *   *

She didn’t sleep, of course. She planned to, but wasn’t tired, and what she wanted, really, was to photograph herbs. Shouldering the Nikon, she walked down the road, familiar enough now with the terrain to move to the center even before the pavement worsened. She listened for hammering or barking but heard only the reverberating surf, and when she rounded the curve, there was nothing but moonlight on a dark house.

Flash would be a problem. Not only would it skew the true color of the plants, but a sudden glint, no matter now brief, might alert Leo Cole. So, no flash, just moonlight, which gave a silver glow to the plants and was actually charming. She had a steady hand. She also had enough experience taking pictures in the wild to know how to brace her body for greater stability.