by Karen White
She stared at the pictures for a long time, making a mental note to ask Abigail more about them. Then she poured herself another glass of wine and returned to the stacks of books. Seating herself in her familiar spot on the carpet again, she reached for another book.
The rain continued its deluge outside, and twice she went to the window to check the level in the marsh, watching the tall grass sink lower and lower beneath water. She relaxed when the rain finally tapered to a persistent drizzle when the dock was still above the waterline.
Emmy sorted and inventoried and searched through pages of books for nearly two hours, switching from wine to an unbearably sweet tea that Abigail had sent home with her. Emmy had been assured it was a taste she’d become accustomed to, but she wasn’t sure. Her mother had always made unsweetened tea for her father, which made Emmy wonder what other concessions her mother made when she moved out of South Carolina.
It was nearly seven o’clock when Emmy’s stomach began rumbling, and she realized she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Emmy leaned back and sighed, then surveyed her progress. She’d inventoried about seventy-five books—out of approximately five hundred—and three of them were first editions of moderately valuable volumes. And she’d found three more books with notes—two from the man, and one from the woman. She’d ask Heath again about the first editions, and offer payment or at least a percentage of whatever she sold them for. She was thinking about moving the store’s rare book and document business online, and these three would be perfect on the home page.
She picked up her laptop and opened the correct document and began to type in the appropriate columns:Moll Flanders, Page 105, Female—I saw you today at the Post Office. I waited across the street until you left so others wouldn’t see the way I look at you. She complained to me that you are gone most nights, doing your civilian duty, and I told her she should be proud. I know that I am. I must see you.
Huckleberry Finn, Page 34, Male—Forgive me.
Canterbury Tales, Page 222, Female—Yes, yes, yes. You make it impossible to say no and I can no longer consider the repercussions. All’s fair in love and war, and I cannot think how very true those words are.
Emmy saved the document, then slowly closed her laptop’s lid, not ready to stop but realizing she should to avoid this hunt for two unknown people becoming an obsession. She placed the laptop on a side table and stood, her knees stiff and cracking. As she stretched, she spotted a book about five volumes down in a nearby stack. Crouching next to it, she carefully pulled it out and flipped open the cover to Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
Slowly she turned the opening pages, pausing when she reached the title page. There, in the same scrawl she recognized from Lulu’s Nancy Drew book, were the words: To Margaret, a woman of boundless beauty and substance. Yours always, Peter.
Emmy stared at it for a long time before grabbing the copy of Huckleberry Finn to compare the handwriting. The crush of disappointment surprised her, making her realize that maybe it was too late to avoid an obsession. She wasn’t a handwriting expert by any means, but it was clear even to her that the notes in the book margins hadn’t been written by the mysterious Peter. The unidentified man wrote with the same bold scrawl as Peter, but the words were slanted to the left instead of the right, his L’s and T’s written with loops. Emmy was about to close the book when she noticed one similarity: in the P’s and B’s and D’s, the legs of the letters stood alone, the ensuing curves not intersecting the lines at any point.
Still, the rest of the handwriting was different enough to convince her that there were two separate writers. At least she had a name, and she made another mental note to ask Abigail.
Slowly she closed the book and put it on the side table to go through later. She was walking toward the kitchen to grab a frozen dinner to stick in the microwave when she heard the distinct sound of a key turning the front-door latch.
Emmy was frantically looking for some sort of weapon when a tall, slender woman walked into the kitchen. They stood staring at each other, and Emmy wasn’t sure who was more surprised.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” The woman spoke with a Southern drawl, her voice deep. She twirled a set of car keys in her hand, and when they slipped from her fingers, she left them where they fell.
Emmy almost smiled, remembering a nearly identical conversation she’d had with Heath on her first day in the house. “I’m Emmy Hamilton. I’m renting this house from Heath Reynolds for a few months.”
The woman raised an elegant auburn eyebrow, perfectly formed and set above a pair of large green eyes. Emmy noticed how incredibly beautiful the woman was at the same time she smelled the alcohol on her breath. The woman’s words weren’t slurred, making Emmy wonder if she’d had a lot of practice with that.
“He sure didn’t waste any time. Is he here?”
“Excuse me?”
Ignoring Emmy’s question, the woman walked over to the master bedroom and peered inside at the neatly made bed and the remaining stacks of books Emmy hadn’t yet moved into the great room.
Joining her in the doorway, Emmy said, “If you’re referring to Heath, no, he’s not here. And may I ask who you are and why you’re here?”
The woman looked down at Emmy, exaggerating the difference in their heights. Then she slid out of her high-heeled sandals and began to walk back to the kitchen, barefoot. Emmy couldn’t help but notice how even the woman’s feet were beautiful, the tip of each well-formed toe painted a crimson red.
The woman opened up a cabinet and pulled out a wineglass, then made her way back to the bar in the great room and helped herself to the opened bottle of wine. After taking a sip, she said, “I’m Jolene Quinn. This house was built for me.”
“Oh,” Emmy managed, watching as Jolene eyed the stacks of books along with the spare furniture and framed photographs hanging from the walls. She recalled what Lulu had said about Jolene, how they favored each other but that Jolene was prettier and with a bigger chest.
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Jolene said as she took another sip of her wine. “What is this—early librarian?”
Defensive now, Emmy said, “Actually I haven’t done anything with the place. The furniture and books are Heath’s, but Abigail framed and hung the pictures.” She stopped herself from explaining more about the books. “You know, I don’t think you’re supposed to be here. As I said, I’m renting the house.”
Jolene let out an inelegant snort, then stumbled, sloshing red wine from her glass. “How can that be? It’s my house.”
Emmy reached over and took the glass and carefully set it on a sofa table before leading Jolene to the couch. “I want you to sit here and rest while I call someone to come get you.” She didn’t wait for Jolene to protest, and doubted Jolene could pull herself off from the couch.
Emmy dialed Abigail’s cell phone, and was surprised when Heath answered it.
“This is Emmy. I was trying to reach your mother.”
“She’s right here—she just picked me up from the airport. She’s driving, so I answered the phone. Is there anything I can help with?”
Emmy paused for a moment, trying to figure out how to word her response. “Yes, actually.” She stuck her head around the corner and spotted Jolene now horizontal on the couch, her red hair partially obscuring her face. Her eyes were closed, and she was snoring quietly. “Your fiancée is here, and she’s passed out on the couch. I was wondering if you had any suggestions.”
Heath uttered a muffled curse. “I’ll be right there. I’ll have my mom drop me off, and I’ll drive Jolene home. I’m assuming her car is there.”
“She had a set of car keys when she arrived.”
“I’ll be there in forty-five minutes. Call me if she wakes up before then.”
Emmy hung up the phone and returned to the living room to keep watch on Jolene while she waited. Emmy sat down on the couch opposite the one Jolene was on and noticed
for the first time the beautiful oval sapphire solitaire Jolene wore on her left hand. It was a cushion-cut stone, like Emmy’s grandmother’s ring, and Emmy wondered if it was an antique. Her eyes strayed to Jolene’s face and found that the woman’s eyes were open and silently contemplating her.
Jolene didn’t lift her head when she spoke. “He wasn’t so mean before the radiation, you know.”
Emmy leaned forward, recalling with startling clarity the scar on Heath’s temple. “What radiation?”
But Jolene had already closed her eyes again and resumed her quiet snoring.
IT TOOK HEATH THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES to get there, each minute an agony as Emmy tried to recall each word she’d said to him on the beach.
She heard the car outside and a door shutting. Running to the front door, she opened it before he could knock. After pulling it wide, she held her finger to her lips. “She’s still sleeping.”
He entered, and she saw he wore suit pants and a long-sleeved business shirt with an unbuttoned collar, making her picture him hastily unknotting a tie and discarding it as soon as he could.
He seemed pale and drawn, as if being away from the beach had taken a physical toll. He glanced over at the sleeping Jolene and took in the partially filled wineglass on the table and didn’t seem to look too surprised. His eyes were tired when he spoke, and she tried not to stare too hard at his scar. “Why is she here?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. She told me that the house had been built for her.”
He rubbed the stubble on his jaw, making a rasping sound. “It was. But that was when we were still engaged.” He sighed heavily. “Jolene has a drinking problem. I guess some people have a problem dealing with life when it doesn’t turn out the way it’s supposed to.”
Emmy jerked her chin up, her defensiveness disappearing when Heath ran his fingers through his hair, exposing the scar. She wanted to ask him about it, but held back, unsure if she’d be willing to reciprocate. And maybe leaving messages in bottles was the same as speaking to empty rooms: impotent communication with the ghosts of what might have been.
“She can stay here tonight if that helps. I really don’t mind and she’s already on the couch.”
He shook his head. “No, my mom said to bring her to their house—she went on ahead to put fresh sheets in the guest bedroom.”
They both looked over at the sleeping woman, whose deep auburn hair spilled over the arm, making her look like a princess in a fairy tale. Then Emmy said, “I’ll go get her shoes and car keys and open the car door for you.”
As she collected Jolene’s things, Heath spoke. “I asked Lulu who Peter was.”
Emmy straightened, the high-heeled sandals dangling in her hand. “What did she say?”
“She didn’t.” He grinned slightly. “Once you get to know Aunt Lulu, you begin to understand what each of her silent stares means. The one she gave me was distinctly ‘none of your business.’ You might have better luck asking her yourself.”
Emmy looked at him dubiously. “What makes you say that?”
“Well, she would never lay a switch on you, and some of us have very painful memories of that happening in the past.”
Despite herself, Emmy smiled. “Ouch. Still, I’ll have to think about it.”
He seemed to notice the stacks of books for the first time. “How’s the sorting going?”
“Not too bad. It’s definitely a long project but I’m having fun.” She glanced over at Jolene to make sure she was still sleeping. “I was wondering if anybody has ever noticed any messages scribbled in the margins of the books. There’re quite a few, and I’m wondering who might have written them.”
Heath raised his eyebrows. “Messages?” He shook his head. “Sorry to be so ignorant again, but I don’t think so. Remember, those books came out of my grandmother’s store in nineteen eighty-nine and have remained in storage for twenty years. The only person who would probably know more is Lulu.”
Emmy grimaced. “I was afraid you were going to say that. And I don’t think I’d bother, except . . .” She stopped, aware that she’d been about to tell him that these voices from the past were her main reason for getting up in the morning ever since she’d discovered the first one. That these unknown lovers had awakened emotions in her that she thought were long dead.
His eyes were serious, and again she felt as if he knew what she’d meant to say. “Sounds right up your alley—these messages from the past. Like talking to ghosts, isn’t it?”
Her mother had said the same thing, except to Paige ghosts weren’t just the dead; they were the spirits of what could have been. Emmy had always believed that the specters of her little brothers haunted her mother not because they had died, but because they represented the death of the life Paige had always dreamed for herself.
Heath moved to stand near the couch, where Jolene lay. Looking down at her, he said softly, “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
Emmy turned away and began searching for the car keys, finding them by the door, where Jolene had dropped them. Heath carefully lifted Jolene in his arms, then followed Emmy out the front door to the Audi sedan parked half sticking out into the street. He laid her in the backseat, using his rolled-up suit jacket as a pillow; then he gently shut the door.
“Thank you,” he said, his eyes somber again, making Emmy wonder if what he’d said about not believing in ghosts was true.
“Anytime,” she said as he walked to the driver’s side door and opened it.
He started the engine and backed into the street, waving as he drove by, the tires loud against the wet pavement. When she could no longer see the taillights of the car, she ran to the back of the house and flipped the floodlights on before kicking off her shoes and stepping into the backyard.
The unfamiliar sounds of the marsh sang to her like a lullaby in a foreign language, the tune recognizable but the words untranslated. Her feet sank into the wet grass as she made her way to the bottle tree, her curiosity surrounding Heath and Jolene too piqued to wait until full daylight.
Emmy grasped the bottle in which she’d seen the note and held it up to the floodlight. She squinted her eyes and shook the bottle to be sure, but when she looked at it against the light, she saw that the bottle was totally and completely empty.
Come back to me. She started to cry, recognizing the words that she’d said to empty rooms long after Ben had gone, haunted by the ghost of the life they’d never have.
Carefully, she replaced the bottle, then stood for a long time in the wet, sandy grass under a starry sky. The scent of the marsh at night comforted her like a shawl as she wrapped her ghosts around her, not yet ready to tell them good-bye.
CHAPTER 12
FOLLY BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA
March 1942
Maggie searched for shells and rocks big enough to hold down the four corners of the blanket she’d placed on the sand as far from the surf as she could get it. They would be tucked away behind rocks and the scrubby brush that littered the less-inhabited side of the island, but in full view of the lighthouse on Morris Island.
Not that they would need to seek much privacy. Neither the season nor the currents on this end of the island were conducive to bathers or beachgoers, so they would have the beach to themselves. Large waves crashed against what was left of the section of Morris Island that had once contained not only the lighthouse but the lightkeeper’s house and other outbuildings. The tides and time had long since separated Morris Island from Folly, leaving behind a small creek that ran between the two islands at low tide. But when the tides rose, the encroaching water erased the land around the light like a vengeful finger, drawing in the sand until all that was left was a small spit of land only slightly larger than the base of the lighthouse.
The lighthouse keeper had left and the outbuildings had been dismantled when the light was automated in nineteen thirty-eight, and the Army Corps of Engineers came in and built a steel bulkhead around the base of the lighthouse to protect it from erosion. It
was a lonely place now, which was why Maggie loved it. It was always the place she’d go to think and be alone, knowing she wouldn’t be interrupted. Locals knew that the undertow and currents were too strong here for swimming, yet the summer influx of visitors always meant an occasional drowning. Maggie had grown up believing that the erosion and the currents were simply reminders to those who would listen that man was temporary, the ocean eternal.
She watched as fiddler crabs rode in on a wave, then disappeared like miniature magicians into tiny holes. As a child, she’d spent hours on the beach, watching the crabs and the oddly elegant black skimmers with their red-and-black beaks as she and her mother searched for sea glass, turtle eggs, and other watery treasures given up by the sea. Her memories of her mother were strong here, the in and out of the tide like her mother’s breath. The sound and sway of the ocean was so much a part of her that she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
That was why she wanted to give Peter a picnic homecoming on the beach. His job had been keeping him busy traveling to accounts from state to state, marketing the products his father’s factory had begun making for both the military and civilian sectors. He always sent her presents, mostly books, from his travels, and he’d started to include long letters about where they’d go once the war was over. His words thrilled her, made her think of the future, when the war would be relegated to the past and boys she’d known since birth wouldn’t be dying in the killing fields of Europe and the Pacific. The picnic was meant to welcome Peter back as much as to ground him to her Folly Beach, so he’d understand that no matter how far they might travel together, this would always be her home.
Maggie shivered and pulled her sweater closer around her. It had been an unseasonably warm day, but here on the beach, with the wind blasting around this edge of the island, the temperature was much cooler. Just as she was placing the last rock, she heard her name called. Whipping her head around, she spotted Peter approaching with a bare head, carrying his shoes and jacket.
