Carolina Mist

by Mariah Stewart

  “I think she’ll be fine,” Abby assured him.

  “It really means so much to Naomi that Miz Matthews feel all right about us having her house,” the husky blond man explained.

  “Colin, there is no one Belle would feel more right about than you and Naomi. And it’s your house now, not Belle’s,” Abby reminded him as she followed him into the kitchen.

  “Well, Naomi was worried that Miz Matthews wouldn’t like what we’ve done, or that she’d be upset about being here.”

  “She seems to be just fine. And maybe it’s good that Alex’s here with her, this first time she’s come back.”

  Abby peered into the dining room, where Naomi was showing off some pottery pieces she had made. Alex stood with his back to the door, but the mirrored sideboard reflected his concern as he studied his grandmother’s face. Abby, in turn, studied his.

  He is still the only man who makes my heart beat faster and makes my hands shake. Abby shook her head in grudging admission of her closest secret. All these years later, he's still the only one.

  But no one needs to know that. She bit her lip and turned her face away from his reflection. He may spend an occasional weekend in Primrose, but he’ll always be going back to his job and his real life and Melissa. And I cannot let myself forget that.

  “Abby.” Meredy tugged at Abby’s hand. “Want to see the present me and Sam made for Daddy’s birthday?”

  “I certainly do.” Abby smiled, pushing aside the sharp twinge that shot through her when Alex looked into the mirror and caught her gaze.

  If I didn’t know better—she winced as she turned from him and followed Meredy into the den—I’d swear that man could read my mind.

  “See?” Sam pulled a papier-mâché badge from its wrappings. “It’s ’cause my daddy’s a policeman.”

  “Sammy!” Meredy snatched the present from her younger brother’s hands. “Daddy’s supposed to unwrap it, not you!”

  Sam’s wail of contrition brought his parents, followed by Alex and Belle, to investigate. Colin soothed Sam while Naomi placated Meredy by offering to hastily rewrap the gift in new paper. Alex guided Belle into a chair, then sat on a stool at her feet, her tiny hands held gently within his own. Abby could not hear what he was saying from across the room, but whatever it was, judging from the look of tenderness that crossed his grandmother’s face, the words were precisely the ones she needed to hear. Belle beamed and nodded enthusiastically. Abby smiled to herself. For Belle, coming here tonight had been the equivalent of facing her own personal dragon. Judging by her face, Belle had won the fight.

  The birthday cake, an elaborate affair that looked for all the world like a 1966 Corvette, Colin’s dream car, was brought with celebratory fanfare into the dining room. The birthday song was sung, the candles blown out, and the cake cut and distributed to the small group. Abby poured a cup of coffee for herself at the sideboard and trailed Naomi into the den, where Colin sat unwrapping the present his wife and daughter had, only minutes earlier, rewrapped. The adults oohed and ahed over the gift so lovingly crafted by the two youngsters, who beamed their pleasure.

  “See, Miz Matthews?” Meredy proudly showed Belle. “We painted it gold so it would look like Daddy’s real badge.”

  “And it does indeed look just like your daddy’s real badge,” Belle clucked. “Why, I can barely tell them apart myself.”

  Abby sat down on the edge of the sofa just as Belle said, “And Colin, Alex and I have a gift for you, too.”

  “Now, Miz Matthews,” Colin began a protest.

  “You hear me out, now, Colin.” Belle straightened her back and pulled her chin up almost imperceptibly. “I’m very pleased to be here. I must admit that I was nervous about coming. After all, I lived in this house for more years than anyone else in this room has lived on this earth. I raised my daughter here, buried my husband from that very room.” She nodded in the direction of the front parlor. “But it’s your home now, Colin. Yours and Naomi’s.”

  “Miz Matthews, you’re just gettin’ yourself all upset, now.” Naomi handed Belle a tissue with which she dabbed at wet eyes.

  “It’s all right to be upset, Naomi,” Belle told her firmly. “It helps you to know you’re still alive. Now, where was I? Oh, yes, well, Alexander and I got to talking just now, and we both agree that the old hall piece—the one you’ve been looking to replace, Naomi—should come back to this house, where it belongs. And first thing tomorrow morning, Alexander is going out to the carriage house to find it. He’s certain he moved it over there when I moved in with Leila.”

  “Miz Matthews, you would be good enough to sell that piece to us?” Naomi’s eyes widened. “Why, that’s a family piece. Alex, are you certain that you won’t want it someday?”

  “Absolutely certain.” He nodded. “It belongs here. It will never belong anywhere else, Naomi.”

  “It was Alexander’s idea, Naomi.” Belle patted the young woman on the back as Naomi bent to hug her with thanks. “But it’s a gift, dear, to you and Colin, for all you’ve done for me over the past year.”

  "Miz Matthews, that’s most generous,” Colin told her, “most generous indeed. But we can’t possibly accept such a gift. It’s too valuable.”

  “Now, Colin, you don’t want to insult my grandmother by refusing her present.” Alex stood up and folded his arms across his chest. “Won’t it be grand to see it there again in the front hall?”

  He clapped Colin on the back, and they gravitated toward the front door, followed by Belle and Naomi. The foursome stood in silence, each imagining how grand it would be.

  Abby stood just outside the doorway, watching as the two families almost seemed to momentarily merge, as the family home of one became in truth the family home of the other. The proffered heirloom would seal the bond and serve to link the two families. Abby, feeling suddenly the outsider, made a quiet retreat to the dining room.

  The sense of isolation hung over her for the rest of the evening and followed her to bed. She found herself in her own kitchen at two a.m., her sleep disturbed by some old house noise or other. She poured a small glass of milk, snapped off the light, and went into the front parlor, where she cozied herself onto the loveseat and wrapped herself in Belle’s fuzzy afghan.

  Pulling her feet up under her, she shuddered in the cold darkness and shrank back into the cushions. The feeling of isolation she had felt earlier returned to invade her. For so long, she had been accustomed to her role as a loner and had grown comfortable with the solitary nature of her life. Over the past few months, the solitude had been breached, as first Belle, then Naomi, had moved into her life. And now there was Alex.

  She sighed very deeply, acknowledging that things were much more complicated than they had been just six short months ago. Back in Philadelphia, there had been no friend who mattered. In fact, she had never really had a girlfriend with whom she shared secrets and clothes and dreams, but she recalled how in junior high and high school, she had wistfully envied those girls who had. It was nice to have Naomi for a friend. She was fun and clever and capable and caring and warm, everything a friend should be. And Belle, feisty though she could be at times, was almost like the grandmother Abby had hardly known.

  Abby found herself thinking how much she would miss them both when she left Primrose. Before too long, she was sniffling. She fumbled in the box next to the table for a tissue and blew her nose. She wiped her eyes and drew the warm blanket more tightly around her shoulders, crossing it over her chest to create a kind of cocoon in which she could ponder the pros and cons of letting people into your life.

  A creak on the floorboards in the front hallway told her that Alex, too, was unable to sleep. Abby sank her small self as deeply into the cushions as possible and pulled the blanket over her head, hoping to remain undetected. The footfalls paused briefly outside the music room, before passing through to the opposite side of the house. Perhaps Alex was looking for something to read in Thomas’s study.

  As long as it ke
eps him from poking in here, she thought. I would not care to discuss why my eyes are red and my face is blotchy. So if I am really quiet and keep very still, he’ll never know I’m here. And that’s just fine with me. She began to drift off to sleep. Just perfectly fine…

  “Ah, so this is where you’ve been hiding,” the voice from beyond the cocoon chuckled. “Very good, Meri Puppins.” With the tips of the fingers of one hand, Abby drew aside the flap of the afghan which was still semiwrapped around her face like a chador. Alex stood, hands on hips, in the center of the room, watching as Meri P. tried to jump onto the loveseat with Abby.

  “You can hide from me,” Alex told her solemnly, “and you can hide from Gran, Abigail, but you cannot hide from your dog.”

  “She’s not my dog.” Abby unsuccessfully smothered a yawn. “What time is it?”

  “Almost seven-thirty.” Alex sat down on the edge of the chair opposite her.

  “Oh, my gosh,” Abby gasped. “Meri has to go out.”

  “Relax. She’s been out. I just came in to see if you’d like to have your coffee in here.”

  Abby sniffed the air. Sure enough, the scent of brewing coffee drifted from the kitchen.

  “That would be a treat.” She attempted a smile.

  “I aim to please, ma’am. One sweetener—artificial, of course—and some cream, right?”

  “Right.” She nodded and sat up, dropping her shroud to try to straighten the tangle of auburn curls that spilled out of control around her face.

  Like a phantom, Alex had moved almost effortlessly to where she sat and, reaching out one hand, had taken a strand of hair between his fingers.

  “Like silk,” he mused as he caressed the tangles. “Strawberry silk. Remember when I used to call you Red?”

  “Remember when I called you Candy?” She smiled in reply.

  “So long ago.” He seemed to loom closer. “Where did the years go, Abby? Where did we go?”

  “We grew up. We went about the business of our own lives.”

  “Funny, isn’t it?” he asked earnestly. “After so long a time, here we are again, just as if nothing has changed at all.”

  “But everything has changed, Alex,” she reminded him. “Nothing has stayed the same. Appearances aside, Primrose is different, the people are different. We’re different, you and I.”

  “Are we? I don’t feel different when I’m here,” he told her. “When I’m here, I feel like… like myself again. I don’t know if I can explain it, but I like the way it feels.” He nodded thoughtfully, then grinned. “And I like the way you look, all wrapped up there in that blanket. Snug as a bug.”

  He leaned toward her slightly, and for a very long moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. He was, she was certain, debating just that. And at precisely the second he decided that he would, at the exact second that Abby knew she wanted him to, Belle’s voice drifted from the top of the stairs, calling to her grandson.

  “One minute, Gran,” he called back.

  The same hand that moments earlier had entangled in Abby’s locks cupped her face, his thumb gently tracing the outline of her chin. Their eyes locked, and Abby almost thought that if she closed her eyes, she would, in fact, be sixteen again, sitting on this same loveseat, about to receive her very first kiss from the very same boy. He smiled, and she knew that the same scene was playing out in his memory, too.

  “Seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?” he asked.

  “It was a lifetime ago,” she told him.

  Belle called to Alex again, banishing the moment and bringing them back to the present. Abby looked toward the front hallway to break the spell, knowing that one of them had to be the first to look away. Alex rose and left the room with obvious reluctance.

  Abby watched as his long denimed legs carried him to the doorway.

  That was close, she told herself. Too close.

  “Gran is ready for breakfast,” he announced as he stepped back into the room.

  “Okay.” Abby nodded and started up from the loveseat, wondering how to gracefully extract herself from the afghan without falling on her face or worse, exposing her worn flannel nightgown to his scrutiny.

  “My turn this morning,” he told her. Was he fighting a grin as he watched her wrap the blanket around her small body like a sarong? “What’s your favorite breakfast?”

  “Oh, eggs Benedict. Freshly squeezed orange juice. And, of course, perfect coffee.” She tossed her order out lightly as she swept passed him, slinging the end of the blanket jauntily over one shoulder.

  “As you wish, madam.” He bowed low as she left the room. “Say, in twenty minutes?”

  “Twenty minutes?” Her eyes widened. “You can do all that in twenty minutes?”

  “No sweat.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the door.

  “You’re on, bucko.” She poked him in the ribs as she sauntered regally into the hallway.

  She pitched the blanket in the direction of her bed, stripped off the flannel nightgown (what the well-dressed sex symbol of the nineties will wear, she noted ruefully), and turned the hot water on in the shower. She washed her hair with absentminded efficiency but left the shower without rinsing off the soap.

  “He has you rattled,” she accused the face in the bathroom mirror. “Twenty-four hours under the same roof, and you think you’re a teenager again.”

  She returned to the shower and rinsed the soap from her hair, then towel-dried it before pulling on jeans and a clean sweatshirt.

  “You,” she whispered aloud as she pointed sternly at her reflection when she returned to the bathroom to hang up the towel, “are not sixteen. You are playing with fire of the worst kind. He and Melissa are… whatever it is that they are. The last thing you need right now is one more thing to complicate your life.”

  She shivered, recalling the touch of his fingers on her face, the way his eyes burned into hers with that same soft fire that had lit her dreams for so many years. She raised her fingertips to her lips, and for a moment she could feel it, just as she remembered it, that same sweetness of kissing him. That same rush. That same longing.

  Ah, but that was forever ago, she reminded herself. That Alex Kane and that Abby McKenna didn’t exist anymore.

  More’s the pity. She shook her head as she took the steps two at a time. She forced a smile onto her face as she pushed open the kitchen door.

  He doesn't have to know, she told herself as she met his eyes from across the room and her heart resumed its errant banging against her chest.

  He won’t know, she promised herself as she accepted the coffee from his hands and allowed him to usher her to the morning room where her eggs Benedict—perfectly prepared—and freshly squeezed orange juice awaited her.

  21

  “Walk down to the river with me,” Alex said as Abby started for the stairwell and the room that awaited her attention on the second floor.

  “I really have…” She began a weak protest.

  “I know, a lot to do,” he teased. “Just half an hour, at the most, and then I promise to stay out of your hair.”

  Abby looked into the morning room, where Belle was happily situated in her viewing chair with a second cup of tea, the remote control, and Meri Puppins.

  “We’re going out back for a few minutes,” Abby told her.

  Belle wiggled the fingers of her right hand in a sort of semiwave to indicate she had heard.

  “The African Queen,” Belle said brightly, her eyes never leaving the television screen. The early Saturday morning classic film had become the highlight of her week.

  “Really?” Abby paused in the doorway. “That’s a favorite of mine.”

  “One of the all-time best.” Belle nodded. “I still cannot believe I can sit here in this chair and bring Kate Hepburn right into the morning room with me. Leila would have loved it.”

  Abby smiled as she left the room. Belle said exactly the same thing every Saturday morning. Last week, it had been Myrna Loy; the
week before, Ginger Rogers. Abby was pleased to have brought such wonders into Belle’s life. And yes, most certainly, Aunt Leila would have loved it.

  Joining Alex on the back porch, Abby inhaled deeply, her nostrils flaring to drink their fill of the heavy scent of pine washed down with early-morning dew and mist.

  “It always smells so good here first thing in the morning.” She sighed. “Some mornings, I just want to come outside and inhale, as if I can’t get enough of it.”

  “Isn’t it funny how there are some things you just never forget?” Alex asked as they walked into the yard. “The smell of pine always makes me think of Primrose. Every time I get a whiff of it, even from those little cardboard trees you hang in your car to freshen the air, it brings me right back to this spot.”

  Alex walked to where he had, years ago, carved their initials into the trunk of the pine and reached a long arm upward to trace the letters with his fingers.

  “They’re still there,” he said, as if surprised. “Look, Ab.”

  “I saw.” Abby walked past without breaking stride or pausing to wait for him to complete his inspection.

  He caught up with her as she approached the old carriage house.

  “I’ll have to get Colin over this afternoon to help me get that piece of furniture out of there”—he motioned to the outbuilding as they passed it—“and over to his house.”

  “That was really nice of you to offer that old hall piece to Naomi and Colin.”

  “It belongs in that house,” Alex told her. “Gran said that Grampa’s father had that piece designed for that spot in that house.” He gestured toward the street and the old Matthews house on the opposite side of Cove Road. “And besides, when you consider all that Colin and Naomi have done for Gran, I’m more than pleased to see it going back where it was meant to be.”

  The whine of the outboard on the back of a small boat broke the early-morning silence and drew their attention to the river, where a small craft fled toward the sound out beyond the wooded point a quarter-mile down the river on their right. The last of the boat’s frothy white wake rode toward them on small, undulating waves as they stepped onto the old dock. Silently, they stood at one end, surveying what the years had done to a once-favorite spot.