by Karen White
Reginald continued. “I’m visiting Myrtle Beach for a few days with my brother. We’re here because we were told that the most beautiful women in the world come to Myrtle Beach, and I can see the rumors are true.” His accent was warm and familiar, letting them know he was from the same part of the world they were.
Bitty frowned up at him, as if she might already be guessing his next words. And she’d probably be right. But Ceecee had already made up her mind. She liked this Reginald Madsen, with his outspoken ambition and imperfect hair, and she was already getting ready to stand at his open invitation to dance when he turned to Margaret.
“Yellow is my favorite color, so I’m thinking it’s some sort of sign that you’re wearing that dress tonight.” He held out his hand to her. “May I have the honor of a dance?”
Margaret smiled prettily. “I would love to. Thank you.” She placed her hand in his. With a quick glance and smile at Ceecee and Bitty, she left their table for the dance floor.
Bitty put her elbows on the table and leaned toward Ceecee. “I’m glad that’s over. Now maybe someone will notice us.”
Ceecee wanted to say they probably wouldn’t, but Bitty would call her out for the lie. It wasn’t that she and Bitty were unattractive. It was just that standing next to Margaret was like comparing daisies to a rose. Not that there was anything wrong with daisies, as Bitty always reminded her. It was just that most people preferred roses.
Ceecee was about to suggest they take a short stroll on the beach, when she felt a presence at her side.
“I was hoping that was you.”
She looked up to see a familiar face—the young man she’d met at the Esso. He was dressed in a dinner jacket and tie, and his dark hair was combed back. But she recognized his blue-green eyes, the way they turned down slightly at the corners as if they were used to smiling.
“When my little brother, Reggie, approached your table, I was afraid he was going to ask you for a dance before I could find the courage.” He smiled tentatively. “I’m Boyd, remember? Boyd Madsen. We met at the gas station. But you didn’t tell me your name.”
“It’s Sessalee Purnell,” Bitty said from across the table. She held out her hand to shake just like her parents had taught her to do, even though she was a woman. “I’m Bitty Williams, and if you’re looking for a dance, I know Sessalee would love to dance with you.”
He threw back his head and laughed. It was such a nice sound that Ceecee forgot her embarrassment and managed to smile. Boyd held out his hand to her, and she took it. His fingers closed over hers as he led her to the dance floor. When he drew her into his arms for a waltz, she remembered the ribbon she’d placed in the tree and what she’d written on it, and for the first time in her life, Ceecee Purnell began to believe in dreams and possibilities.
nine
Larkin
2010
After successfully avoiding a conversation with my father at the hospital and dropping off Bitty and Ceecee at home, I headed south on Highway 17. I’d told Ceecee only that I needed to run a few errands and make a call to work to extend my leave. I hadn’t mentioned that one of my errands was to visit Carrowmore.
Despite Ceecee’s badgering questions, neither Mama’s doctors nor the brain trauma specialist had been able to guarantee a complete recovery or give us a hint as to when they expected Ivy to wake up. The only thing they could tell us was that some of the brain swelling had come down, which was a good sign. Just not good enough for Ceecee, who’d spent half the night browsing the Internet, searching for related cases. She stopped only when I began to cry, the seriousness of the situation finally sinking in.
I’d spent so many years pretending that my previous life in Georgetown had been permanently relegated to my memory. Actually being here, and being involved with my family and my mother’s accident, had seemed like a dream. Until now, with the ugly reality of my mother’s condition staring me in the face.
Bitty had taken me by the shoulders and led me down the hallway, frowning at Ceecee as she did. “Don’t pay her no mind. She’s doing the one thing she knows how to do best, and that’s fierce mothering.” Her eyes turned sad for a moment. “She’s just not always prepared for when it backfires.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, and I was too desperate to get out of the hospital and breathe air that wasn’t laced with antiseptic and bleach to slow down and listen. Thankfully, the ride to Ceecee’s house was short. There wasn’t time for any long conversations, or any questions as to why I hadn’t considered my mother’s possible death before today.
It seemed the old me hadn’t completely packed up and left after all. All of my thoughts so far had been about how the accident affected me and the life I had now. It was the same Larkin who’d never asked how her grandmother had died so young. It was as illuminating as it was humiliating, and I needed to be alone, to consider the possibility that I was irredeemable.
I drove past the eyesore steel mill, which had closed the year before, and then past the International Paper plant. I left the windows down, missing the old smell of my childhood, the plant’s stench of rotten eggs that had somehow—miraculously, some said—been almost completely eradicated in recent years. Mabry, Bennett, and I used to make a show of holding our breath as we crossed the bridges driving into town, competing to see who could last the longest. It had been a rite of passage, the odor and the breath holding. Knowing it was gone left a hollow feeling in my chest.
An old pickup truck, its paint faded to a powder blue, moved in front of me. I spotted the bumper sticker right away—it was the brightest and newest part of the truck. Friends don’t let friends buy imported shrimp. Ceecee had told me during one of my Christmas visits that the local shrimping industry was getting so bad that sometimes shrimpers simply abandoned their boats in the harbor. They couldn’t see any other option. It made me sad in the same way the abandoned steel mill and the lack of the paper-mill smell saddened me. My childhood had been vanishing bit by bit while I’d been living in New York, trying to pretend it had never existed. Maybe that was what the old saying—that a person can never really go home again—was all about. You couldn’t go home because even though home might still be there in brick and mortar, everything else would be unrecognizable.
I found the turnoff to Carrowmore without really looking, bumped over the same road, turning left at the fork. The late-afternoon sun played hide-and-seek with the branches of the overgrown trees, while an orchestra of unseen insects strummed their wings in an undulating rhythm that mimicked the waves of the ocean.
I parked my car at the back of the house, near the ruined garden, wishing I knew what it had once looked like. What the house had looked like. Even in its charred state, the mansion was elegant and grand, an old woman whose beauty shone out past the wrinkles and age spots. Except, of course, the damage to the house at Carrowmore was more than superficial, and no amount of cream or potion could hide that.
Stepping out of the car, I smelled the river and the marsh grasses that filled the space where tidal river and land met. It was the steadfast scent of the Lowcountry, of my childhood. It was the one thing that hadn’t changed, and I clung to it, breathing deep and remembering Mabry, Bennett, and myself kayaking and swimming in the river, and jumping off the dock behind my parents’ house.
But I stopped my memories there, before they moved forward in time to a place I never wanted to remember.
Watching where I stepped and slapping at mosquitoes, I approached the oak tree near the riverbank. Purple martin gourds dangled sporadically, forming a pattern recognized only by whoever had placed them there. Something about them wasn’t right, I thought; some odd piece of trivia had come to me the night before as I was drifting off to sleep. I stared at them for a long time, wanting to remember what it was, but I couldn’t.
A snowy white egret perched on one skinny leg in the tall sawgrass on the edge of the river, each of us keeping a war
y eye on the other. Not wanting to startle the bird, I walked slowly and carefully toward the tree until I stood in front of the hollowed opening in its trunk. I saw now how much it looked like a cavernous mouth. I couldn’t help but wonder if the opening was trying to hold something in or spit something out.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I leaned forward and stuck my hand inside, my fingers rooting around for anything that felt like fabric. Although I’d been raised fishing on the river with my granddaddy and my daddy, and I was adept at putting all sorts of bait on a hook, I didn’t relish the thought of reaching into the unknown and feeling something soft wiggling beneath my fingers. Or getting bitten.
Right away I felt what could only have been a ribbon or piece of cloth, smooth and even with a ridged edge. I moved my fingers and determined there was more than one, both of them crisp and fresh, as if they hadn’t been there very long. I grabbed them at the same time I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle, music from the stereo piping softly from an open window. I jerked up, either my movement or the sound of the pickup truck coming to a stop near my parked car causing the egret to spread its wings and fly away, coasting low over the water.
Not really knowing why, I shoved the fabric into the front pocket of my jeans, and turned to see Bennett emerging from the truck. I didn’t move as he approached, hoping maybe he hadn’t noticed me or my car. Which was stupid, really, considering I was standing in the open and he’d parked right behind me. But the old habit of assuming everything was going to go my way was hard to break.
He stopped about five feet away from me, his face expressionless. “Hello, Larkin.”
“‘Iris.’ By the Goo Goo Dolls.” I jerked my chin toward his now-silent radio, and he laughed.
“Still the same Larkin,” he said.
“No, actually. Some things are just harder to get rid of than others.” I frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I waited at Mabry’s house last night for you to stop by. Nothing. Today, you didn’t answer any of my texts, so I figured I’d come and find you. I stopped by Ceecee’s house, and she told me you’d practically squealed the tires leaving, you were in such a hurry. So I figured you’d come here.”
That was the thing with people who’d known you your whole life. There was no keeping secrets. I sighed. “Did it occur to you that I’d want to be alone?”
“Of course. But you keep saying you’re going to leave as soon as your mother wakes up, so I figured I’d have to take the chance to talk with you while I could.”
I started walking back to my car, as eager to end this conversation as I was to find out what I’d shoved into my pocket. “Talk fast, Bennett. I’m sure Ceecee will have supper waiting on the table for me.”
“I wanted to talk to you about what your daddy and I were doing the day of the accident.”
I made the mistake of looking into his face. It wasn’t that I’d never noticed him before, never noticed how his eyes were the color of the ocean or how square his jaw was, how nice he looked when he smiled. I would have had to be blind not to. But he and Mabry had been my best friends, as physically invisible to me as if we’d been siblings. And then we hadn’t been friends at all.
Looking into his face now, I could see that Bennett looked different, in the same way Jackson Porter had. Gone were all traces of soft boyhood, replaced with the hard planes and solid stature of maturity. It suited him. Not that I would ever tell him that. He’d never let me forget it if I did.
I always thought you were beautiful. The words he’d said at the hospital came back to me, making me flush. I glanced away. “I’m not sure I care enough to wait, so speak quickly.”
I opened my car door, grateful for the annoying tone that reminded the driver the door was open. He held his hands out, palms up, as if to apologize for the abruptness of what he was about to say. “A few months ago, developers started sniffing around Carrowmore, trying to determine who owned it and how interested in selling the owners might be. Your dad approached me to see what I thought.” He squinted up at the back of the dilapidated old mansion. “Just thought you should know.” He turned and began walking back toward his car.
I slammed my car door. “Wait! You can’t just leave without telling me more!”
He paused, his hand on the door handle. “I don’t want to keep you from your supper.”
I tugged on his arm, feeling like a child, but desperate to get him to tell me more. “Why would Daddy want to talk with you about it?”
His eyebrows knitted together over his nose. “Have you followed anything that’s happened here since you left?”
For the first time in nine years, I felt embarrassed about my abrupt departure and the complete severing of all my ties. My actions had been justified—I was still sure of that. But all the time I’d been away, I’d assumed that everything had remained the same, that people and beliefs hadn’t changed. Which was stupid, because I hadn’t stayed the same. I felt a little of my old resolve not to look back shift and redistribute itself, like sand in an outgoing tide. That was another thing I’d never admit to Bennett.
“No,” I said, focusing my gaze on the old tree by the river and thinking of the ribbons I still had bundled in my pocket.
He paused for a minute, as if expecting me to tell him I was joking. After a brief shake of his head, he said, “I own a small firm in Columbia that focuses on repurposing older commercial and residential buildings for current use. A couple of other engineers and I lay out all the new mechanics in ways that won’t destroy the integrity of an older building, and we work with architects with preservation backgrounds to design and oversee the projects. That’s why your dad came to me. He told me about the land development company that’s been asking about Carrowmore—the same group that built the high-end cluster home community and golf course over by Pawleys Island.”
“Sounds lovely,” I said, once again eager to leave. “Seeing as how I have barely any memories to connect me to this place, give them my number. I promise to pick up. Maybe I can convince Mama it’s a good time to sell.”
“Seriously, Larkin? I know the house looks bad, but it’s not a lost cause. It’s been owned by your family since the seventeen hundreds, and the land, right on the river—I can’t imagine them razing all of these old-growth trees and the house and putting cluster homes on it. It’s . . . obscene. That’s why your father wanted to talk to me. He wanted to know if there might be other options. Like, I don’t know, maybe rebuilding it.”
“But why would we want to rebuild it?” We could both hear the frustration in my voice. “My parents are comfortable in their house, and I don’t live here anymore, remember? And it’s not like we have enough money for this kind of restoration.”
He fell silent, studying two martin houses hanging from the limbs of a nearby sweet gum tree. “But Ceecee does have the money. She controls the trust. For now, anyway.”
“The trust? What is that supposed to mean?”
He narrowed his eyes, as if unsure that I really didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. “The house, the land all the way down to the river, and the entire assets from the Carrowmore estate are held in a trust with Ceecee listed as trustee. Apparently, right before her accident, your mother visited a lawyer to contest Ceecee’s trusteeship of Carrowmore—even though she was the one who initially set up the trust, right after you were born. She apparently changed her mind, because she was asking the lawyer to transfer it to you now instead of waiting for your thirtieth birthday. That’s a condition of the trust. According to the lawyer, Ivy thought you had more right to oversee Carrowmore’s future since you’re a Darlington descendent.”
I could have listed a dozen things I’d expected him to say. That wasn’t one of them. “This is all meant to be mine in three years? Shouldn’t it go to my mother first?”
He shrugged. “It would seem so, but I don’t know the full story,
so I don’t want to speculate.”
I realized I was shaking my head, and made myself stop. “But why would Mama do that now? And does Ceecee know?”
“Your daddy didn’t say. Just said Ivy didn’t want Ceecee to be making any decisions about Carrowmore. He did tell Ceecee—he thought she needed to know. I don’t think Ivy wanted either one of them to know, though. Your daddy found out about your mother’s visit to the lawyer accidentally. He answered your mama’s phone—it was the day of the accident, and she’d left it behind—and it was the lawyer asking for more details about the trust. Your daddy’s distraught enough right now that I didn’t want to bring it up with him, which is why I’ve been trying to talk with you.”
I stared back at him, wavering between guilt for not answering my texts and worry regarding my mother’s motivations. I shook my head. “I don’t know what to say, or think. This is all so . . . unexpected.”
“I’m sure it is. Like I said, your daddy didn’t explain. I’m guessing—and this is only speculation since I haven’t spoken with your mother directly—that she might have been trying to make it more difficult for the developers. Since you’re in New York and don’t pick up your phone and all.” His eyes remained cool and assessing, although I detected a hint of recrimination in his voice.
I continued to look at him, as if he might suddenly blurt out all the answers I was looking for. “I don’t know what to tell you, Bennett. I don’t know what I feel about this house, other than I don’t want it. I didn’t even know it existed before yesterday, much less that it’s been held in trust for me until I’m thirty. For the time being, its fate is in Ceecee’s hands, regardless of whether that’s the way my mother wants it to be. I say let’s wait until she wakes up and ask her.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
His words lashed out at me like a whip. “She will. Of course she will.” I wasn’t a doctor and had no understanding of what would be required for Mama to be okay again. Waking up was the scenario I’d decided upon, and I was moving ahead accordingly, just as I’d always done. Except for one glaring exception, my method had always worked.
