The Cottage on Rose Lane

by Hope Ramsay

  She picked up the book and thumbed through it. It had diagrams of sailboats with all the rigging labeled. It also had an in-depth explanation of points of sail. And so much more. She sank into one of the big easy chairs, the mohair upholstery abrading the back of her legs.

  Had her father read this book? Was this how he’d learned to sail? Or had someone taught him? The questions abounded. Always more questions than answers.

  It had always been that way. But this time, instead of imagining a father, she was hunting down the real man. Collecting clues so she could understand him.

  She opened the book to a diagram of a sailboat with every rope labeled with its proper name. She could do this. She could show up at Jude’s door smarter than she’d been yesterday.

  She settled in to read and study and lost track of time.

  At four thirty on Thursday afternoon, Jude parked his pickup in the lot adjacent to Grace Methodist Church. The lot was already half full, suggesting that this evening’s public hearing would be well attended.

  So well attended that the town council had borrowed space from Magnolia Harbor’s largest church, located on Lilac Lane, three blocks from the harbor. Like so much of the white folks’ historic architecture, Grace Methodist was a Greek revival building with four columns holding up its front portico. Its facade was stucco with six-over-six double-hung windows and shiny black shutters. It proudly bore the National Register of Historic Places medallion. The very same medallion Jude had been trying to get for Old Granny’s house.

  But South Carolina insisted that his great-grandmother’s freedman’s cottage had been altered too much over the last hundred and fifty years to be worthy of the nomination. Or maybe folks still viewed the old tin-roofed houses as nothing more than shacks out in the woods.

  Jude checked his tie for the umpteenth time as he crossed the parking lot. His blazer felt like a straitjacket, and his collar itched. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn a coat and tie. Was it Annie’s wedding or Uncle Josh’s funeral?

  Every time he had to wear a tie, he thanked the Lord that he didn’t have to commute to work and sit at a desk under fluorescent lights. Barrier Island Charters, where he’d worked at one job or another for most of his life, might make only a modest living for him and his daddy, but they got to go fishing all summer long. So he had nothing really to complain about.

  He headed up the church’s front steps. Butterflies flitted around his gut as he strolled into the sanctuary, which had been turned into a temporary hearing room with a folding table up near the altar. The pews were already filling up with people, a few of them carrying homemade signs with slogans on them that said, GULLAH HISTORY MATTERS and SAVE GULLAH/GEECHEE CULTURE. He recognized friends. Some of them sat on his side, and many, including his own father, sat across the aisle with the pro-growth faction.

  Daddy wasn’t the only brown-faced person sitting on the pro-growth side of the aisle. And there were probably more white folks sitting on the side that wanted to preserve history. So this might be a hot-button issue for Magnolia Harbor, but it wasn’t the usual kind that automatically divided people between black and white.

  Gullah folk sat on Jude’s side of the room. But there were plenty of African Americans who weren’t Gullah. His own father might have had a Gullah grandmother, but Daddy had never learned the language and had never been proud of his heritage. Daddy and Momma, before she took off, had forbidden their sons from learning the Gullah language because they thought it would make their sons sound ignorant. Because the language had been stereotyped by white folks for generations.

  Micah, the good child, had followed orders. Colton, the wild child, had no interest in heritage. But Jude, the abandoned one, had sought refuge with Old Granny. And Old Granny had taught him so he could carry the knowledge into a new generation.

  He hoped Old Granny was sitting up in heaven nodding her head as he walked down the aisle toward the pew at the front of the room reserved for the scheduled witnesses. Dr. Greg Rushford, a short man with a shock of white hair and steel-rimmed glasses, was putting several photographs of Old Granny’s house and Aunt Charlotte’s house up on easels. Greg would do most of the talking tonight.

  Jude got halfway down the aisle when he caught sight of Jenna, sitting on the end right behind the reserved section. Her honey hair gleamed even without sunshine to light it up, and his reaction to those golden threads was visceral and utterly unwanted.

  What the hell was she doing here? She was a tourist, right?

  Maybe not. Tourists didn’t come to town council meetings.

  His feet came to a sudden stop just as she turned her head to look over her shoulder. As their gazes met and held, her lips curved up on one side just a little bit. “Oh, you’re here,” she said, as if she’d been waiting for him.

  He took a few more steps and looked down at her. “I am. But why are you?”

  She shrugged, and red crawled up her pale cheeks. “Um, well…for one reason, I was looking for you.”

  “Me?”

  She nodded. “I wanted to schedule another sailing lesson. I went down to your office today, but the door was locked.”

  “Well, the thing is, Barrier Island Charters doesn’t really keep regular office hours. If you want to book a charter, you can do it online or by phone.”

  “I kind of figured that out. And I did go online, but there’s no option for sailing lessons.”

  “How did you know I would be here?”

  Her cheeks darkened further. “Well, everyone in town is talking about this. So…” Her voice faded out, and Jude got the distinct impression that she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. Why would a tourist come to a public hearing on a zoning issue? How did she know he’d be here?

  He was about to quiz her further when Dr. Rushford called his name. “I have to go,” he said abruptly.

  “Good luck,” she said, her brown eyes lighting up.

  “Uh, yeah, thanks.”

  “And after, I’d like to schedule another lesson.”

  “Um, okay. Sure.” He turned away, confused and distracted.

  “Who’s that?” Dr. Rushford asked as Jude approached the front of the room.

  “A tourist,” he said. “Someone who wants sailing lessons.”

  “And she came here to get them?” Rushford’s bushy eyebrows lowered.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s weird. Everything about her is weird.”

  Rushford took him by the arm and turned his back on Jenna and the rest of the crowd. “Listen, Jude, you need to be careful. I just heard through the grapevine that Santee Resort Group is ready to jump on that land north of town. It wouldn’t be unusual for them to send people to this meeting, or even to send an advanced scouting team.”

  “You think she’s working for Santee Resorts?”

  “I don’t know. All I can say is that I know every single person in this room except her. How did you meet her?”

  “A couple of days ago, she stopped me on the boardwalk and asked for sailing lessons.”

  “She specifically sought you out?”

  He nodded.

  “Be careful. She could have been sent specifically to research you. Or to cozy up to members of your family.”

  That left a queasy feeling in his middle. If he owned Old Granny’s land outright, it would have been easy to protect it, assuming he could cover rising property taxes. But even though he was living in Old Granny’s house, he didn’t own the land outright. The land had been in the family for generations and informally passed down for more than a hundred years without any sort of will or probate. As a result, Jude owned only a share of the land. Other shareholders included his brothers, his father, his cousin Annie, his aunts Charlotte and Daisy, and Old Uncle Jeeter.

  Buying out all those family members was beyond Jude’s means. And the worst part of it was that the law allowed any shareholder to sell the land. So if Colton or Daddy wanted to sell out, they could do it.

  Santee Resort used this informal sys
tem of “heirs property” ownership to its advantage. They gobbled up land for their golf courses and gated communities by picking off single members of complex family-ownership stakes. And the more development that took place, the more families found themselves facing property tax bills they couldn’t afford.

  It was a conundrum that could be solved only by designating these lands as a historic preservation district, which would limit development, preserve the existing historic structures, and keep Santee Resorts and their like away.

  “You think they sent this woman to convince me to sell out?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m leading this charge.”

  “Maybe they sent her to find out which members of your family are the most likely to sell out.”

  Jude turned around to stare at the woman in the second row. Jenna didn’t belong here. And worse than that, now that he thought about it, the woman had approached him by name. She hadn’t taken no for an answer, and even more important, she’d agreed to his outrageous price for sailing lessons without batting an eye.

  “Should I send her packing?” he asked.

  Dr. Rushford shook his head. “It might be more useful to befriend her.”

  “Befriend her?”

  “Yeah. And maybe you can make a personal pitch about what we’re trying to preserve here.” Greg slapped his back. “If they sent her, it means they’re worried about you.”

  “You think?”

  “I know.”

  Jenna hoped tonight’s hearing wouldn’t be as unproductive as the time she’d spent at the Georgetown County Library this afternoon. She’d found exactly two newspaper accounts of her father’s accident, but they hadn’t said much. Just that Jamie Bauman, son of the sunglass magnate, had drowned in the bay while sailing on a calm day. His boat had been found capsized near the place where the Black, Pee Dee, and Waccamaw Rivers entered into the bay. Jamie’s body had been found about a mile downstream from the boat. The coroner had ruled the death an accidental drowning.

  Now she sat in one of the hard-oak pews at the Methodist Church, studying every single man over the age of sixty. Which one was her uncle Harry? She wouldn’t know until he took his seat behind the long folding table at the front of the church, where someone had put a cardboard tent sign marking his spot.

  And then Jude had come in, staring at her as if she’d dropped in from Mars or something. She’d opened her mouth and said something stupid because just his presence electrified her insides and switched her brain off.

  She could hardly remember their conversation now. Only that she’d blushed her way through it and left him curious about why she was here. She’d made a big mistake. She shouldn’t have come early or sat up front. She should have hidden herself in the back of the room or something.

  Jude St. Pierre was now super-suspicious of her motives. And she wasn’t making her situation any better by staring at him. But he was hard not to look at, dressed like a corporate executive in that suit and tie.

  Luckily, someone asked attendees to take their seats. Her skin prickled hot and then cold as Harry Bauman sat in the chair behind his name placard. He had thick white hair, cut short over the ears and parted on the side. His thick mustache covered his upper lip and gave him the look of a stereotypical British colonel. His face looked sunburned and leathery with a wild tracery of lines, as if he’d lived his life out in the hot sun. He wore a seersucker suit and a tie with a nautical theme, and he peered out at the assemblage from behind a pair of trifocals with square black frames.

  He didn’t resemble Grandfather at all, although he was her grandfather’s brother. There was nothing particularly stern about Harry’s face. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but he had a distinctly avuncular look. But then, looks could be deceiving.

  She settled in, curious to hear what he might say and what it might reveal about him. But she was soon disappointed, because Harry said not one word. He was one of five town council members, and the other four had plenty to say. It didn’t take long to realize that Uncle Harry was probably the deciding vote on the question of designating a section of land called “Gullah Town” as a historic preservation area, thereby limiting development.

  A professor of art and architecture from the College of Charleston spent forty-five minutes talking about the historical and architectural significance of the buildings located in this area. The photographs he showed were of small cabins, many of them in disrepair, but all of them built in the years right after the Civil War by formerly enslaved people who had worked on the rice plantations along the Black River. The history was fascinating, but Jenna wasn’t all that sure any of those small, humble buildings were worthy of being listed as historic sites.

  But then Jude stood up and started to talk about his Old Granny, the daughter of a root doctor who had become a recognized artist because of the sweetgrass baskets she made and sold at the market in Charleston. He pointed to the picture of his Old Granny’s house and the remnants of blue paint. He talked about how Old Granny wouldn’t dream of living in a house without heaven blue shutters because blue kept the haunts away. He talked about the stories she told of growing rice and vegetables and fishing.

  And then he started speaking the Gullah language. It had a lilting African rhythm, and she was astonished that she couldn’t understand a word of it.

  “We bin yah. Ona kum yah,” he said, and half a dozen folks on his side of the aisle vocalized their approval.

  He stopped and continued in English. “Those of you who can still understand Gullah know what I just said. I’ll bet there aren’t more than ten of you in this room who can still speak it. The language is dying the way Native American languages died. Because we have all been taught to speak English, and we’ve been told that our own native language, the language our ancestors developed as enslaved people, is no good, that it’s broken English. Do you know how offensive that is to many of us?” He shook his head.

  “The least we can do is save the houses. If we can raise the money to restore them, we could create a site for historic tourism. Building another golf course isn’t the only way to improve our economy.”

  Passion rang from his voice, and a shiver worked its way down Jenna’s spine. This. This is what she wanted in her life. Not specifically to save a few old buildings but to know that kind of passion for something.

  She envied Jude, even as she fell a little bit in love with him. He was an amazing storyteller. When he spoke about his Old Granny, everyone in the room sat still and listened. He had something important to say. And she hoped her uncle would support his petition.

  A period for public comment came after Jude’s presentation. A dozen people stood up and sounded off in two-minute speeches. Most of the people opposed Jude’s proposal.

  The majority seemed to think that the houses on Jonquil Island were of lesser historic significance than other freedmen cottages being protected on other sea islands. They trotted out the fact that the State of South Carolina had refused to nominate several of the houses for the National Register of Historic Places. And they pointed out that the buildings in question were, for the most part, beyond salvation.

  Somehow, knowing that Jude St. Pierre was tilting at windmills made him even more attractive. And when the hearing adjourned, she elbowed her way through the crowd surrounding Jude and the professor. When she finally came face-to-face with him, her face heated once again. He was so damn handsome in that suit. And there was so much more to him than the swashbuckling sailor.

  “I was moved by what you had to say,” she said.

  His mouth firmed a little, and she got the feeling she’d stepped into a hole. Had she been condescending? Had she committed some racial faux pas? She didn’t think so, so she blundered on. “Your great-grandmother sounded like an amazing woman.”

  “She was.” It was the sort of curt answer that was designed to put her off.

  “Did I do something to annoy you?” she asked.

  He shook his head. �
�What do you want?”

  She stepped back. “Um, well, I’d like to go sailing again.” She paused and dug into her oversized leather satchel and pulled out the copy of Royce’s sailing handbook. “And look what I found in the library. I’ve spent hours studying it. I’m determined to learn the name of every rope on the boat, so the next time we capsize, I’ll be ready.”

  His stony expression softened a little. “Well, you can start by not calling any of them ropes. They are lines, sheets, or shrouds.”

  Her smile widened. “See? I just learned something new. So, when can I schedule my next lesson?”

  He broke eye contact, and for a moment she had the panicky feeling that he was going to once again send her to the sailing school on the mainland. But then he let go of a long sigh. “Tomorrow. We don’t have a Friday charter this week, so I’ve got time. Come by the office in the morning. There’s supposed to be weather moving in tomorrow.”

  She nodded, but before she could say another word, Harry turned up at Jude’s elbow. Her uncle grabbed Jude’s arm and said something to him that she couldn’t hear.

  Jude turned back toward her. “I have to go. I’ll see you at the office. Tomorrow morning. Let’s say ten o’clock.”

  And then he turned his back on her to speak with Harry. Oh, if only she could hear what they were talking about, but she couldn’t muscle in on the conversation. She’d been dismissed.

  But now she had another reason for getting to know Jude St. Pierre. Clearly he and Harry knew each other. Very well, she’d guess, by the way Harry absently patted Jude’s back as they spoke.

  That touch was more than the usual business touch. There was emotion in it. And she wanted to know exactly how Harry and Jude were connected.

  Chapter Five

  Thursday had been one of those horrible, no-good, terrible days for Ashley Scott.

  It began when Colton St. Pierre stopped in to check her roof, which had sprung a leak during the last rainstorm. He went up a ladder, spent ten minutes poking around, and came down with an expression on his face that told her everything she needed to know. It would cost a small fortune to fix her roof. And she barely had enough money to get by on a day-to-day basis.