Girls of Summer

by C. E. Hilbert

  “Prayer for Charlie: Father, find her. Love her. Be with her always. She needs more than I can give. In my weakness she has found strength.”

  A chill chased a frigid path up Charlotte’s spine as her gaze fell from the bulletin to the marked spot in the Bible. Several passages were highlighted with yellow and underlined in black ink, small notes in the margin, but one piece of text was circled in a wobbly line with the simple note: My Charlie, in the margin. Her father had circled Isaiah 58:11, The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

  With delicate fingers, she flipped through the notes and cards stuffed in specific spots. Over two dozen cards had prayers written for her with the notation of Isaiah 58:11 in the place of an Amen. A tear cascaded over her cheek and splashed against the open page, damping the black ink highlights. Her father had thought of her. And by the looks of his Bible, his thoughts were more than a passing fancy, but true devotion and longing. He couldn’t be with her, so he pleaded to God to step in on his behalf. The hatred mixed with an unknown yearning to be loved and accepted by her father bubbled to the surface. The slow onslaught of tears raced over her cheeks as she hugged the worn book to her chest. “Daddy, help me. I’m so sorry to have quit on you. Please forgive me.”

  Charlotte didn’t know if her prayer was to her natural father or the Heavenly Father she’d been bombarded with from all facets of her life in the past few months. Perhaps her father’s prayers for her life had merely been seeds that needed to be watered by a larger circle, because she could now feel love taking root, digging into the parched soil of her soul and challenging her to try and rip Him out.

  Breathing in the calm she’d sought all those weeks ago in this room, she closed the Bible and pressed a soft kiss to the binding. “Thank you, Daddy. Please help me find Georgie. Help me forgive Mama.”

  She laid the Bible on the reading table and glanced toward the stack of mail on her father’s desk. The siren call of Watershed Industries pulled her to her feet, and she reached for the thick pile of envelopes. Sorting through the mail, she discounted several pieces from distributors and other business partners as irrelevant for the moment. With a shuffle of envelopes, Charlotte sucked in a deep breath and dropped the stack except a single white envelope.

  She twisted the envelope sporting the Watershed logo in the upper left corner. An envelope innocuously waiting for her in a stack of papers from work. An envelope with a broken red ‘confidential’ stamped across her typed name. Confidential correspondence was always passed in manila envelopes or zipped legal briefs.

  Never within corporate stationary.

  This note was from the kidnappers. She was certain of it. Whoever took Georgie was connected to Watershed.

  Bile burned through her stomach and raced up her throat. She yanked the wastebasket beside the desk just before her meager breakfast made a repeat appearance.

  Wiping her mouth, she snatched the envelope from the desk. Clutching it in her hand she raced toward the dining room. She slid to a stop just outside the door, panting against the burning acid in her mouth and throat. She glanced around the room and tried to figure out who to trust. Where to start?

  Mac was chatting with Sheriff Cambry as they leaned over a map of what looked like Beaufort County and the spread of islands dotting the coastline. Georgie could be hidden on any one of those tiny pockets of land. Or north in Charleston. Or New York. Or halfway across the ocean.

  Her vision stopped on her FBI tag-a-longs, and she took a slight step toward them just as her grandmother’s words rushed through her mind. “You want sister, you lose FBI. You must. Blood takes care of blood, myshka.”

  Could she trust them? She couldn’t be certain. And she must be one hundred percent. Georgie’s life was too important to risk on her selfish desire to share her burden.

  She tiptoed around the mangle of wires connecting all of the monitoring devices and slipped into the kitchen. Snatching a coffee mug from the top shelf, she poured a full cup, sloshing the room temperature brew onto the counter and splashing the mangled envelope. “Good night,” she muttered.

  “Well, at least your frustrations are starting to sound Southern.” Savvy’s low country droll seeped from the breakfast nook.

  Charlotte snatched a dishcloth and mopped the coffee. “I can’t even seem to pour a cup of coffee anymore.”

  In the blink of an eye, Savvy’s arms were wrapped around Charlotte. The care she’d longed for her entire life seeped through Charlotte in one hug. Tears that appeared to be ever present streamed down her cheeks.

  “You listen to me,” Savvy’s voice was low but fierce. “You did not cause this situation. Any of these situations. Doing the right thing is always the best decision. Sometimes it comes with heartache.” She stepped back from Charlotte, squeezing her niece’s shoulders. “Your daddy had to make an impossible decision. Fight for you and watch you shredded by your mother or let you go and save his own soul. He fought, just not hard enough. I’m not saying he was right. You should’ve grown up here. With your family. Friends. He regretted his weakness. Didn’t know how to fight your mother. Tried to make amends these past few years. But you didn’t, couldn’t accept his plea for forgiveness. I understand why. Makes me sad. Made me mad every refusal, but it just makes me sad now. But we can’t change the past. All we can do is go into the future with as few past repeats as we can muster.” Savvy wiped the tears from Charlotte’s cheeks.

  “I should never have come here, Savvy. I should have defied the will. Stayed in New York. Georgie would have Watershed and she’d be safe.” Charlotte shuttered her eyes against her aunt’s piercing blue inquisition. Twisting out of her embrace, she walked to the window, the feel of the early morning sun warming her face.

  “Hush. You’re doing your duty. Fulfilling your Daddy’s last request. He wanted you girls to know each other. He wanted you to fall in love with each other. To love the business he created. To passionately pursue his baseball dreams. He wanted you to have the joy he had. His girls. He loved you both. Imperfectly, for sure, but love none the less. I hate repeating myself, but you did not cause these situations.”

  “Really?” Charlotte spat, spinning to face her aunt. “Really? The only reason I jumped at fulfilling the will was the money. The promised salvation to my business. It wasn’t some noble gesture to do ‘right’ by my father. I wasn’t coming down here to make nice with a sister I’d spent over a decade keeping at an assured safe distance. I came down here to try and salvage my business. Not to make Daddy’s ‘girls of summer’ bonding dream come true running a baseball team and Watershed.

  “I dreamed of being a family with Delia and Daddy and Georgie. But I knew Mama needed me more. Sick twisted need, but she needed more from me than anyone else. And every time I tried to choose this life over a life with her, ‘situations’, as you keep calling them, occurred. This,” she began waving her hands in a circle. “All of this, the car, Remy, Georgie, even the fire. All of this screams of Stasi’s jealousy. Granted, the jealousy has escalated from locking me in a closet when I was five so I couldn’t see my father or sending pictures of Georgie at day school with a menacing promise written on the back of the photo. But I know my mother. Somehow, she or the people she is associating with are behind all of these situations. I don’t know why. She needs the money from Watershed more than I do.”

  “What do you mean she needs the money from Watershed?”

  Charlotte shrugged. “Since I received my trust fund from Grandfather Bickford, Mama has been skimming money from me. Sometimes she asks. Sometimes she demands. Sometimes she just takes. But she always needs money. She has a gambling problem. She likes to play poker, but she’s not very good. When I was little, she used to beg my grandfather for money. Screaming and crying at the foot of the stairs. And he would pay her debt, until one afternoon when I was, I don’t know eighteen or so, Baba final
ly said no. No more money. No more ‘free ride’. That’s when she started skimming from my trust fund.”

  “You mean stealing.”

  “I never told her to stop, so I guess I gave permission by omission. When I graduated, I set up the account so that I had to approve every withdrawal. That’s when other things started…”

  Mac slammed the door open snapping Charlotte and Savvy’s collective attention to the doorway. “They think they found her.” The curve of a breathless smile tilted his lips.

  “Oh, well, praise Jesus!” Savvy shot to standing, wrapping Mac in a swift embrace before shuffling past him into the dining room.

  “They found her?” Charlotte stood. Her legs wobbled, but Mac pulled her to him before she could crumble to the floor. “They really found her?” her voice was a whisper.

  He nodded. “The harbor patrol called in a sighting of a woman matching Georgie’s description boarding a boat in Charleston. Some of the agents from SLED are going to meet the harbor patrol and the Charleston PD to coordinate efforts. The harbor patrol was able to stop the vessel before it made it to the Atlantic. Murphy and Cade are heading to Charleston now. Do you want to go?”

  Nodding her head, she opened her mouth to answer but stopped at the vibration of her phone in her back pocket. The caller ID stalled the growing hope in her chest. She paused as she lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

  “Good news about the little girl, I hope, myshka?”

  Swallowing against the thick lump in her throat she nodded with a whispered response. “Yes.”

  “Good, now those men can go chase after and you be alone. Yes? No need to do police works. You prepare for little girl to return home, no?”

  Dragging the phone from her ear, Charlotte lifted her gaze to Mac, hoping her eyes didn’t reveal the turmoil churning through her system. “Why don’t you go with Murphy and O’Neal? I’ll stay here. Wait by the phones with the county guys. Just in case.”

  Giving her a searching look, his brows drew tight. “Charlie is there something you aren’t telling me?” His gaze dropped to the mashed envelope. “What’s in there?”

  “Just something from work dropped off for me to review yesterday.” The lie on her lips was bitter. “I’m exhausted. I should stay here. Wait. It’s for the best. Won’t be any good to Georgie if I’m all tuckered.” She was turning Southern. “Call me as soon as you know anything. OK?”

  “All right. But don’t leave the house. This may be a red herring. Whoever took Georgie, might still want you, too.”

  With a tender squeeze of her shoulders, he pressed a soft kiss against her forehead, and she engaged every bit of her eastern European heritage’s stalwart strength to resist asking him to stay with her.

  “I’ll call you soon.”

  She nodded.

  He slipped through the swinging door to the dining room.

  With a long exhale, she yanked on her wellies, waiting by the door where she’d stomped them off not an hour earlier. Cracking the door to the back porch open, she stepped into the early morning mist of privacy. The spit of gravel slashed against the air in the distance, signaling the rapid exit of dozens of police and her link to safety. With a sigh, she lifted the phone back to her ear.

  “Baba, what did you do?”

  “Got you free, myshka. The tea ladies say no moves made until police gone. Now police gone. Moves to be made.”

  “But…you mean…you don’t know about the letter?” She paused. Her mind couldn’t grapple the all-knowing tea society didn’t know about the envelope clutched in her left hand. “The Babushkas do not know about the letter?”

  “What letter? I knows nothing of letter. I do what you ask. I have tea with my ladies. Tea ladies say no police. So I get rids of police. Always best to do what tea ladies say. Work for me. Work for you.” She could feel her grandmother’s tiny head nod through the phone. “You gets letter? Who from?”

  “My assistant dropped off some odd mail at the house yesterday. It’s marked confidential, but we don’t send confidential notices in this manner. Makes me think that it is not Watershed business.”

  “What it say?”

  Charlotte lifted the mangled envelope to her eye level. “I haven’t opened it.”

  “Why the waitings?”

  “I’m afraid. I don’t know who to trust, Baba.”

  “But this letter. Could be nothings. You worried about unknown. Juz like when little. Open letter.”

  “But if this is from the kidnappers I have to decide. Whether I agree to their demands or allow the police to do their job or…”

  “Or what, myshka?”

  Or what?

  Charlotte didn’t like to think what was behind that choice.

  38

  “Why did you bring her here?”

  The voice echoed in the dark space.

  Male? Georgie couldn’t be sure. He didn’t have a low country drawl. Yet, the sound held familiarity, but her fuzzy mind couldn’t place the accent.

  Georgie remained still, fighting against the urge to stretch her cramped, pain ravaged body. Hard plastic zip-ties cut into her wrists and ankles transforming her limbs into giant pincushions. She felt the crack of dried blood cupping their indentations. Barely lifting her lids, she tried to see her captor, but her vision blurred against swelling acting as a counterweight.

  “I had to be here. It seemed like the easiest place to keep track of the girl and the police.”

  Shocked awareness flowed through Georgie at the sound of the second captor. The slow, Southern female lilt had been scraping Georgie’s spirit for weeks.

  Bridget. Charlotte’s assistant.

  How was she involved? Did Charlotte organize the kidnapping? Had Cade been right? Should she not trust her sister? Tears percolated, but she refused to shed another salty drop for her sister. The sister she’d longed to know and who’d brought nothing but destruction and disgust with every turn.

  “Idiot. All was under control and then you do this.” The man began to pace just inside the entryway.

  “All was not under control.” Bridget said with a pop of her gum. “She saw me. I had to do something.”

  His sigh filtered through the air. “What did Yuri say of this?”

  “You know he hates it when you call him by that name.”

  “I care not about his feelings. What he say?”

  “Well, you should care about how he feels. He’s the one who has gotten us this far.”

  The man snorted a chuckle. “And you the one who mess it up, no?”

  “I got her attention.”

  “And now the entire police of the Carolinas are in house. You get all attentions.”

  Georgie forced her pain-racked body to remain still through the heated exchange, straining to see through her barely open eyelids. In the shadow of the doorway she could almost make out his frame. Maybe six feet, even a little taller. Trim. Definitely male. Short hair? Maybe. Focus, Georgie. Knowing her captor would be important.

  “Don’t worry. As soon Charlotte does her part, this one will be free. No harm will come to Miss Dixon.”

  “Hmm…if you say.”

  The echo of shoes against the rough floor paced one of her captor’s exits. In opposition Georgie felt the click of heels stepping toward her. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel Bridget hovering over her.

  “Why does he think you’re so special?” Bridget asked in a mumbled tone.

  The sound of Bridget’s hands rubbing against each other sent a wave of shivers crashing over Georgie’s frame. The shuffle of her steps away from Georgie helped to slow her racing heart. Her breath caught when the steps stopped.

  “Huh.” Bridget’s voice was low. “Maybe you shouldn’t find your way out of this hole.”

  The click of the exterior padlock shifted Georgie’s heart into high gear. She forced her eyes open. If she stayed passive, a victim, her life expectancy was low.

  Shoving against the floor, she bit her lip smothering the shout
of searing pain ripping through her body. Scooting to sit, she stretched as tall as her zip-tied wrists and ankles would allow. Her chest heaved with the force of breaths struggling to find her lungs. The walls seemed closer with each breath, the low rafters nearer her face. Georgie forced her eyes shut, blocking out the shrinking prison. She wiggled to sit with her back against the cool wall of the cellar and tried to slow her breath. Imagining wide spaces. Walking along the Beaufort River. Lying on a raft with the sun warming her cheeks. Cool ocean breeze lifting her hair. Her breathing slowed, lungs filled to capacity. She pushed a slow breath out and sucked another in. The press of the panic attacks she’d faced since her father’s diagnosis would not overwhelm her.

  She couldn’t allow fear and anxiety to swallow her. She needed to find a way to escape–to stop whatever Bridget and her partners were doing. And, it sounded as if her sister was part of the conspiracy. Charlotte may have fooled them all into believing she was trying to bring her mother to justice, but now, what was Georgie to think? Was Charlotte really a savior or a serpent?

  Escape was her only option. If she was free, Georgie would know the truth. Sliding her hand against the base of the wall behind her, she tentatively stretched her fingers to find the spot. Her great-grandmother had pounded eight nails in the root cellar, long before her daddy was born: four in the walls and four in the ground, each exposed just an eighth of an inch. In the long night of the tornado, Georgie cut her foot on one of the nails in the ground. She remembered wailing when the rusty edge cut the bottom of her foot. Her mother wrapped her foot with a strip of the linen she kept with her to clean brushes and snuggled her close until the storm passed. But when they returned home, her mother demanded her father rip out the nails. Georgie remembered him patting her cheek with a smile, explaining his grandmother used them to dry herbs on twine she twisted through the cellar. She’d pounded the nails herself and only his granny or God would pull them up.