On Folly Beach

by Karen White

  Juggling two gift bags with coordinating pink and blue helium balloons, she made it up the stairs of a modest bungalow. It looked like a Folly Beach original that had been updated without losing the character of the house—a straddling of the line that Emmy was growing accustomed to that separated the traditionalists from the newer residents of the island.

  She was surprised to find Jolene sitting on a joggling board on the front porch, nursing a tall glass of something cold. Before she could ask, Jolene answered, “Sweet tea, that’s all. I was feeling warm, so I asked for something cold.”

  Emmy nodded. It was about fifty-five degrees and she wore a sweater, but she could see a sheen of perspiration on Jolene’s upper lip and her hands trembled slightly as she held the glass.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just that . . . I’d like a drink. Real bad. But Lulu said she’d knock me into next week if she found out I’d had a sip.”

  Emmy frowned. “She wouldn’t really, would she?”

  Jolene’s mouth twitched. “No. At least I don’t think so. But I figured it wasn’t such a bad idea anyway. I’m still afraid of her, though.”

  Emmy nodded. “Do you want to walk back in with me?”

  Jolene shook her head. “No, but thank you. I’m waiting for Lulu.” Her lips turned up in a wry smile. “I feel . . . more comfortable when she’s with me. This sounds stupid, but she’s been sort of my surrogate mother through all this mess with Heath. She doesn’t mind me leaning on her, and I need somebody to lean on right now. I can only hope that I can return the favor someday.”

  Again, Emmy nodded, but didn’t go inside right away. “I love what you did with Lulu’s pages on the site. The pictures of her bottle trees displayed like a storybook with changing pages is really brilliant. I’ve gotten a lot more hits since her pages went live. We’re actually getting a backlog of orders. Janell told me that she wants Lulu to teach her how to make the tree branches so that she can help. Which means we might need to do another page to introduce Janell soon, too.”

  “Great.” Jolene’s voice was flat, as if she hadn’t really been listening.

  “Is something wrong?” Emmy asked.

  A furrow formed between Jolene’s delicate eyebrows. “I don’t know. Abigail arrived on foot a few minutes ago saying somebody had stolen her car with the cakes for the party. She thinks it’s just a teenage prank and she’ll get her car back—she’s just worried that the cakes might get ruined. And Lulu should be here by now.”

  Joe, Lizzie’s husband, pushed opened the door. “I thought I saw balloons. Come on in, Emmy. We’ve got plenty of food.” He reached for the two bags. “Glad you could come.”

  Jolene shot them a tentative smile. “I’ll be there in a bit.”

  Emmy nodded and entered the living room, where a few people, early like herself and most of whom she knew as customers at Folly’s Finds, stood or sat in comfortable-looking chairs and a pair of couches upholstered in bright yellow slipcovers. Heath’s father, John, and his wheelchair were in the center of a group of people who let out a laugh at something he’d just said as Emmy approached.

  “Emmy!” he said, holding out his arms. She bent down and gave him a hug and a kiss on his cheek, his enthusiasm at seeing her making her smile.

  “Hello, Mr. Reynolds. Congratulations on the birth of your first grandchildren.”

  Abigail came up behind him holding a tray of what looked like hush puppies. “He says I’ve gone gaga over them, but he should see himself fussing over them. He’s already told Lizzie and Joe that he’s ready for the next one.”

  She extended the tray to Emmy, who took a hush puppy and a napkin. “I can’t wait to see them.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. You will. Lizzie’s in the back bedroom feeding them, and as soon as they’re done, she’ll be out to show them off.” Abigail moved away to another group, holding out the tray.

  Emmy swallowed her hush puppy and was looking around for a familiar face when she felt someone touch her arm. She turned and smiled at Heath, aware of how glad she was to see him. He smiled, too, but his eyes were serious. “You ready?”

  “Sure.” Curious, she followed him down a narrow hallway to a room at the back of the house. He opened the door and stepped back, allowing Emmy to walk inside first; then he closed the door behind them.

  The room was set up as an office, with a large desk and a conspicuously empty spot where a chair would be. A framed American flag, torn and dirty, dominated one wall, while all sorts of military paraphernalia—medals, swords, bullets, and belt buckles that spanned more than a century of battles—were framed or displayed on every wall and available flat surface.

  “Your dad’s office, I’m guessing?” Emmy asked, her eyes going back to the flag.

  “Yes.” He followed her gaze. “My dad brought that back from Vietnam. So he wouldn’t forget, is what he tells us but I think there’s a lot more to that story. That’s one area of his life he doesn’t talk about.”

  Emmy’s gaze didn’t drop. “Ben didn’t either.” The grief this time came to her like the unfurling of a flag, soft and fluttering as it settled around her. It no longer dulled her vision, or stole her breath, but it was still there. She supposed it always would be, but maybe she could live with it the way a person learns to live with sidetracked expectations.

  “It hurt me, the way he wouldn’t talk about it.” This was the first time she’d ever admitted that to anybody, but she wasn’t surprised that it had been to Heath. There was something reassuring about him that inspired confidences.

  Heath watched her closely. “It’s normal. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t love you any less; it meant that he loved you enough to want to protect you.”

  She looked down, feeling her eyes well up. It was the first time she’d ever looked at it that way, and she felt some of her grief give way to relief. It freed a part of her inside, allowing her to let some of it go. “Thank you,” she said.

  Heath moved to the other side of the desk and opened up the top drawer. “My dad pulled this out for you to look at.”

  Glad for the change of subject, Emmy joined Heath and peered down at the two handwritten letters. The handwriting was male, but completely different from the writing in the books. Her gaze traveled down to the signature at the bottom of the page. Robert.

  She faced Heath. “Who was Robert?”

  “My grandfather. He and Maggie were married in June 1943.” His eyes were soft as he regarded her, like he understood her sudden vulnerability, as if the shedding of grief left a person raw. “Does this help you with anything?”

  “Sort of. I know that Robert’s not the writer of the margin notes. The handwriting is completely different.”

  Heath opened the drawer again and pulled out a stack of letters tied in a faded red ribbon. “This is where Dad found the letters from my grandfather—with all of these. They’re letters between my grandparents written during the war.”

  Emmy’s eyes widened. “Maggie? You have Maggie’s letters?”

  “Apparently. These have been in a box since Hugo, and my dad forgot they were here until he went looking for a writing sample from his dad. He’s glad he did. Feels like it’s an important part of our history that shouldn’t be kept hidden in a box.”

  “But you’re not a history fan.”

  “Not personal history, no. I’ve never seen much point in reliving the past, as you know.”

  “So what’s changed?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the pictures on the walls in my house—how I didn’t know who those people were. And Lulu . . .”

  “What about Lulu?”

  “Well, she’s not here yet, which is strange. She’s usually the first one at any gathering, helping out behind the scenes, staying on the periphery to watch people. Something has happened, and it has to do with those damned books you found.” His eyes darkened as he looked at her. “She’s seventy-seven years old. How does a person get to be so damned old and still
be afraid that the past is going to catch up to her?”

  Emmy studied him closely, wondering if he was still talking about Lulu. Glancing down at the letters, she noticed the woman’s handwriting, recognizing it from the dozens of times she’d already seen it. “Not that I needed any further confirmation, but it’s the same, Heath.

  Maggie’s handwriting is the same I’ve been reading in the book margins and on the photographs in your house.”

  His jaw hardened. “I’m not surprised. There’re some interesting tidbits in the letters. My father and I read them for the first time last night.”

  She looked at her watch. “It’s still early. Would it be all right if I read them now?”

  Heath indicated an old leather couch pressed up against the wall under the flag. “Go ahead. We figured you’d want to.”

  She settled down on one side of the couch while Heath sat next to her, his arms folded as Emmy began to read.

  The letters started in August of 1943, apparently after Robert’s deployment overseas. It was hard to tell exactly where because it was never mentioned, most likely for fear of censorship, but they talked about his being far from home and wanting to eat a hot dog again.

  She looked up. “When did you say they were married?”

  “June 1943. Why?”

  Emmy shrugged. “Because these don’t seem like the letters from a newlywed, that’s all. I remember Ben’s letters to me. They were full of mundane stuff, too, but there were . . .” She paused, remembering how she used to sleep with Ben’s letters pressed against her chest, and how the paper wilted, as if mourning his absence. Emmy continued. “But there were the emotional aspects, too. There’s none of that stuff here.”

  “It was a different time. Maybe men were pressured to be more stoic.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. History is full of letters from soldiers writing home. Have you ever heard about the Sullivan Ballou letter from Ken Burns’ Civil War series? It makes you weep, it’s so beautiful. He wrote, ‘My love for you is deathless.’ ” She looked down at the letter in her hand. “I think it makes sense that men facing death have a better insight into their hearts.”

  “Sometimes.” Heath looked at her, an understanding passing between them, like two soldiers on the same battlefield. “So what happened to Sullivan Ballou?”

  “He died a week later. I always thought how grateful his wife must have been to have that letter from him. But after Ben . . . I don’t know.” Emmy shook her head. “Maybe it would have been easier for her if she hadn’t known how much he loved her. So she wouldn’t know how much she had lost.” The words seemed hollow to her, not quite ringing true anymore.

  The leather of the couch creaked as Heath leaned forward. “I’m thinking Ben was a lucky man to know he was loved by you. And that he died knowing that.”

  Emmy didn’t say anything for a long moment, the handwriting in front of her swimming through blurred vision. Like when she was called brave, Heath’s words had cracked open something inside the dark part of her grief, like a curtain being raised halfway to let in the light.

  “How do you know so much?” Emmy kept her gaze focused on the letter.

  “Look who raised me. Besides my mother and father, who are pretty amazing, I had Maggie and Lulu. Pretty strong women all around.”

  Emmy nodded, still unable to look at him. She continued to read the letters between Maggie and Robert, all signed with love, but the triviality of the contents belying the word. There was certainly affection, but nothing that would indicate the hell of two lovers being separated by a war.

  When she was done, she handed the letters back to Heath. “Thank you for sharing these with me.”

  He looked at her oddly. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  She was silent for a moment. “I don’t think you’re really going to want to hear what I have to say.”

  Crossing his arms across his chest, he said, “Why don’t you start, and I’ll tell you if I need you to stop?”

  “All right.” She leaned back. “The big question is to whom Maggie was writing the notes in the book margins since it wasn’t her husband. And Lulu tells me it wasn’t Jim, either—although she could have been lying. But Jim died in nineteen forty-one, and some of the books have a nineteen forty-two copyright date, so that wouldn’t work. The only other man is Peter, and I’m pretty sure the handwriting doesn’t match. Unless, of course, he deliberately disguised his handwriting to be different from his signature in the books to Maggie and Lulu. But why do that if he was already taking such pains to hide the notes?”

  Heath’s jaw tightened and Emmy was reminded again of his reluctance to deal with the past or the future. But it seemed to her that his insistence on living in the present was the same as putting blinders on a horse: you missed a lot of what was going on in the world around you. If it hadn’t been for the notes in the books, she’d still be sitting in the back of her mother’s store, unaware of the change of seasons or the way the sun seemed to melt like butter as it settled over the marsh at dusk. Or that ospreys mated for life and that alligators didn’t swim in the ocean.

  Heath stood and moved to the window to look out on the street below. “So what are you going to do now?”

  “I’m not sure. But there’s something else. It’s a letter from Cat, Maggie’s sister. It was hidden inside a book in the box you found in the attic at Folly’s Finds.”

  He faced her, his eyes uncertain, like those of a man about to step onto a tightrope wire suspended high between two buildings. “Who’s it addressed to?”

  “It doesn’t say. But I read it to my mother, and we both seemed to think the same thing.”

  “Is it something that could hurt Lulu?”

  “It might be. Although it also might be something she already knows about.”

  “Then I’m ready to stop there. I think we’ve dug up enough of the past for one night.”

  “Fine.” Emmy stood, too, feeling somehow disappointed that Heath could see her path clearly but be so blind about his own. “Thanks for letting me see the letters. They’ve raised as many questions as they’ve answered, but thanks.”

  Heath straightened. “There’s one obvious thing you haven’t mentioned, and I’m only going to bring it up because it will probably occur to you in the middle of the night and wake you up. I figure I might as well spare you now.”

  Emmy raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

  “The dates of my father’s birth, and Maggie’s wedding to Robert. Apparently, they were married when my father was six months old.”

  Emmy thought for a moment. “You’re right. I probably would have figured that out sooner or later, but thanks. Just another puzzle piece to throw on the table. I just have no idea where it fits.”

  They began walking toward the door. “Do you think your father knows?”

  “He never mentioned it, but I have to assume that he probably figured it out at some point.”

  Emmy turned to face him. “You know, if it’s true, then that could be why Lulu’s been so secretive about all of this. Out-of-wedlock babies were scandalous back in the forties.”

  Heath’s eyes were serious. “And have nothing to do with us now, and could only upset an old lady.”

  Emmy was about to tell him that they both knew that Lulu wasn’t a shrinking violet who shunned scandal—especially one that had happened more than sixty years ago—when the door flew open. Abigail stood in the doorway, her face pale and her chest rising and falling rapidly.

  “They found my car—it’s over at the old property on Second Street.” She pressed both hands across her chest. “They found Lulu there, too. She might have had a heart attack and is being rushed to Roper Hospital downtown.”

  “Oh, no.” Emmy hugged Abigail. “Is she going to be all right?”

  “I don’t know. She’s very lucky. A woman walking her dog saw her fall over and was able to call for help on her cell. The ambulance was there in about five minutes, and they were able to st
art treatment.” She swallowed. “Thank God that woman was there.”

  “Let’s go—I’ll drive.” Heath began shepherding the women through the door. “We’ll take the van so Dad can come, too.”

  “What was she doing there?” Emmy asked, trying to sound calm.

  “We don’t know. She had a spade with her, like she was going to dig something up.” Abigail choked back a sob and Emmy put her arm around her.

  “It’ll be okay. We’ll all get through this together.” She squeezed Abigail’s shoulders, surprised at how much she meant the words.

  Then they walked through the quiet group of partygoers and followed Heath out the front door. Emmy stopped for a moment, breathing in the cool fall air, which still smelled of salt and the browning marsh, and wondered what Lulu could have been digging up, and if her past had finally caught up to her.

  CHAPTER 25

  FOLLY BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA

  May 1943

  Maggie stood barefoot in the summer grass, her feet and nightgown damp from the misting rain. She waited a moment before venturing too far into the yard, waiting to hear any movement or voices. But the warm night slept, the hum and croak of unseen things muted by the mist.

  Slowly, she walked toward the bottle tree, where she unhooked the cobalt blue bottle from the lowest limb and slid the note into the neck. This had become routine, but no less frightening each time she placed a note inside a bottle. She and Peter had agreed on the meeting location in their previous meeting, and she’d left a book at the store for Lulu to give him when he’d returned home that afternoon from another business trip. All he needed was the time, and her note in the bottle would tell him. She’d long since stopped thinking about the guilt, remembering instead what Lulu had told her about Cat and Jim, and how she needed Peter the way that the tides needed the moon.

  Maggie stepped back, listening again and watching as a swift dark shadow flew overhead, a night heron in search of supper. She made her way back to the house and quietly entered the kitchen through the back door. She locked the door, cringing at how loud the snap of the lock latching into place sounded in the quiet house.