Barrie rubbed Mark’s watch and told herself to be patient. “So was the letter in the box?”
“Yes. I opened it. Steamed it open. I figured I could glue it again if I needed to, but I thought it would help me decide whether or not I should give it to Pru. I’m still not sure. Maybe I’ll leave it up to you.” She reached over and pulled open a narrow drawer in the coffee table. “Here,” she said.
Barrie sat with the envelope in her hand—a plain white envelope with Pru’s name written in Lula’s handwriting. Definitely Lula’s handwriting, the letters flamboyant and flowing. Yet there was no sign of the shaky effort that marked everything Lula did after the fire. Barrie’s own hands shook.
“You don’t have to open it now,” Eight told her gently.
“No. Not at all. Take it with you.” Julia sounded relieved. She stood up and smoothed the tennis skirt over tanned legs that were just starting to show her age.
Barrie barely managed a choked thank-you as Julia saw them out. Descending the steps to the sidewalk, she clutched the envelope tightly in her fist. Eight walked with his hands in his pockets, glancing at her now and then.
“That was a crappy thing for her to do,” he said finally.
“Steaming it open or leaving it for me to decide?”
“Steaming it open isn’t much different from eavesdropping. But you’re not sure if you want to read it now.”
“It’s not a question of want. I need to. Ought to.” Barrie turned back toward the marina, which suddenly seemed impossibly far away. “I just don’t know Pru well enough to make that kind of decision for her.”
“Come on then.” Eight caught her hand and led her toward the thin strip of sand in front of Julia’s house. Winding between the low wooden fences that kept the vegetation from getting trampled, they walked until they reached a jetty.
One hand in his and the other still fisted around the letter, Barrie clambered across the rocks until they were almost at the end. She plopped herself down on a wide rock, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged while she shielded the envelope from the wind sweeping off the water. When she pulled it out, the paper waivered in her hands like Lula’s ghost.
Dearest Pru—
Can you forgive me for leaving without you? I wasn’t thinking clearly, thinking at all, and by the time I climbed down from the balcony, it was too late.
Wade and I are in Oklahoma waiting for you. Why Oklahoma? I don’t know. It’s far enough from Wyatt and Daddy. Too far. It’s making me sick to be away! I’ve tried and tried to call, hoping I’d get you or Mama, but Daddy always picks up. I bought a cell phone this morning, though. Can you believe it? 918-555-2207. I’ll sleep with it beside me. Call and I’ll explain everything. In the meantime, whatever you do, stay clear of Wyatt Colesworth!!!! And don’t make Daddy mad!!!! Call soon and don’t let him catch you!
It was signed with Lula’s round-looped signature. Barrie turned the paper over, hoping there would be something more. An explanation. A reason. There was nothing.
“What does it say? Anything helpful?”
She handed Eight the letter. Judging by his scowl, it didn’t make any more sense to him than it did to her.
He folded it, put it back inside the envelope, and returned it to her. “Are you going to give it to Pru?”
Barrie had no idea.
Hours later when she knelt near Pru in the attic at Watson’s Landing, Barrie still hadn’t made up her mind. They had been sorting and photographing junk: museum-quality junk, plain old eBay junk, garbage junk. And each piece was a leftover from someone’s life. She and Pru worked companionably enough sifting through it, but Barrie’s thoughts refused to arrange themselves into any kind of order.
If she gave Pru the letter, Pru would finally know Lula hadn’t meant to abandon her. At least not at the beginning. But later? Lula’d had almost two decades to contact Pru. Surely she could have gotten hold of her, if she’d been trying. Wouldn’t giving Pru the letter only bring back all those years of pain? Disappointment always hurt worse after a little bit of hope.
“Sad, isn’t it?” Pru looked up from the clothes she was refolding. “All these remnants discarded or left behind when people died.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.” Barrie folded the quilt she had just photographed and laid it on top of the others in the cedar-lined trunk. Her fingers trailed across the intricate needlework that someone, many someones, had labored over, sewing unwanted scraps of shirts and dresses into a work of art.
But whose work of art?
“It’s like that old question about the tree falling in the woods,” Barrie said. “If you don’t leave any achievements behind, did you really live? Does it count if you create something beautiful but no one knows it’s yours?”
She spoke without thinking, but Pru’s indrawn hiss of breath reminded her that Pru, like Lula, had existed more than lived. Imprisoned. Chained. Figurative or not, Mrs. Price’s words were accurate. Pru’s life had been stolen from her.
Was it possible to hate someone you had never met? If so, Barrie hated Emmett.
“I wonder if it’s too late to do something with my life. Maybe I’m too tired to try.”
“You have accomplished things. You took care of your mother and your father. You started the tearoom. You’ve kept Watson’s Landing going. It’s still here because of you, Aunt Pru.”
“All these years,” Pru said. “I’ve been waiting to start living.” She looked around at the stacks of paintings leaning against the walls, at the rows of chairs and tables, the dust-swathed towers of trunks. “It’s better now with you here, but . . .”
“But what?”
The effort behind Pru’s smile was obvious. “When Lula’s lawyer called to tell me she had died and your godfather was dying too, all I could think was how you must feel. That of course you had to come here. Of course I’d take care of you. I made myself call Seven, and he arranged everything. But the thought of you overwhelmed me. Getting your room ready was about the only constructive thing I managed to do myself. Then suddenly it was the day you were supposed to arrive, and I was in the car, only I didn’t know how to get to the airport. I found a map in the glove box, but then it dawned on me that I hadn’t been to Charleston since before Lula had left. I hadn’t been off Watson Island. Not once in eighteen years. I couldn’t believe I’d let things get that bad.
“I started shaking. The more I thought about leaving, the more I shook. I couldn’t breathe. There were spots in front of my eyes, and I thought I was going to pass out if I didn’t get some fresh air. So I staggered to the steps . . . Then I couldn’t get back up. I lost track of the time—”
“I understand, Aunt Pru. It’s all right,” Barrie said, but the words couldn’t begin to convey how much she understood. She wished she were better at expressing how she felt.
“I was going to be an architect,” Pru said. “Did Lula tell you? No, of course not. Why would she? I’d almost forgotten it myself. I did have plans, though. I was going to go to college and graduate school. Then I was going to come back, and Seven and I, we—well, never mind. Maybe not all lost dreams are worth regretting. I hadn’t even thought about any of that in years until I was on the step. I couldn’t tell which made me more furious, the fact that I was too scared to leave the island, or the realization that all the time I’d been locked up at Watson’s Landing waiting to start a life, Lula had been out in the world living one without me.”
“If you hated it here, couldn’t you have made yourself leave?” Barrie whispered, suddenly afraid.
“It’s not so much that I hated it.” Pru stared down at the shirt she had been folding. “But Daddy wasn’t about to lose me, too, not after Lula left. He drove me to school, and picked me up when it was over. I never got the chance to go anywhere else. College applications came and went, and I filled them out and he, we, never sent them.
“At one point I thought I would at least work at the bank like Lula, but then Mama got sicker, and Daddy wouldn’t
have anyone in, so I had to take care of her. Before she passed, Daddy was already crippled. When he died three years ago, I went on doing what I’d always done. Tending to the house took up most of my time, and I started the tearoom—mostly for Mary’s sake, since Daddy had let her go. So you see, I never had much of a chance to leave the island, and I didn’t need to go. Whatever I needed, I could get it here or order it in.
“Looking back now, I realize I’ve spent two decades on the same few square miles of dirt. Maybe Watsons are meant to stay. Daddy never left much either. Lula was the only one who got away.”
“And Luke.”
“And Luke. Neither of them came back.”
Barrie bit her lip and shifted her weight backward. “Did Lula have a fight with your father the night she left?”
“What?” Pru stared sightlessly across at the gabled attic window for several beats. “Yes . . . how could I have forgotten that?”
“Forgotten what?” Barrie prompted.
“Lula was locked in her room, I think I told you that. I’d been out with—”
“Seven,” Barrie said, half-smiling.
Pru blushed a little. “All right, yes. I wasn’t supposed to be seeing him, but I’d told Daddy I was with a girl in town. When I got home, I hurried upstairs to tell Lula about it and the knob wouldn’t turn when I tried her door. I could hear her inside. I asked her what was going on, but before she could answer, Daddy stormed out of his room and sent me to bed for coming in past my curfew. I was still half-dancing on the moon from being with Seven, so I let it go. But I hadn’t been late, and Daddy’d already been all riled up.”
“Then you barely saw Seven again.”
Pru’s whole body folded in on itself, deflating as if all the strength Barrie had seen in her was suddenly gone again. “Mama was so heartbroken after Lula left she took to her bed and stayed there until she died. By that time Seven had long since married Eight’s mama. He got tired of waiting for me, I guess. Not that Daddy would ever have let us be together, the way he felt about the Beauforts after Twila and Luke ran off.”
Barrie went and hugged Pru, but she had no idea what to say. How could she explain that her heart ached at the loss of Pru’s dreams, at the stolen pieces of Pru’s life? How could she tell Pru she understood the kind of fear that seized every muscle and made the world so big that it was easier not to leave your small corner of it. Fear could become an ocean that swallowed you whole.
Barrie knew how panic felt. Anything new, any place unfamiliar or crowded still seemed overwhelming, because she’d barely left the house most of her life. But she’d had Mark, who from the moment he’d taken her home from the hospital had been everything from her own nurse and godfather to Lula’s caretaker and personal assistant. For Barrie’s sake he had walked the fine edge between ensuring she had whatever she needed and keeping Lula happy enough not to kick him out. If Mark hadn’t sided with her, insisted that she needed more freedom this past year, if he hadn’t dragged her to restaurants and sights around San Francisco . . . Barrie couldn’t imagine what the past few days would have been like without that preparation. The airport, the plane ride, the wraiths of panic she had felt, her breath coming in shallow pants, all the people closing in around her.
Pru must have felt all that sitting on the steps. Panic coming in waves and waves.
“I’m not sure I can leave Watson’s Landing,” Pru said. “Maybe it’s force of habit, or Daddy reaching out from the grave, or the migraines. . . . Maybe the why doesn’t even matter. But I’m stuck here, and that’s no kind of life for a girl your age.”
“I’m fine. We’re fine,” Barrie said.
She laid her head against Pru’s shoulder, surprised again at how insubstantial her aunt felt, as if Pru, too, could slip away any moment. She should encourage Pru to chase her dreams, should let her know it wasn’t too late to do whatever she had hoped to accomplish. But it hit Barrie that she didn’t want anything to be different from how it was right now. If only she and Pru and Eight could all stay here, exactly the way they were, she wouldn’t have to lose anyone else. But that was the kicker of having goals and dreams—achieving them meant something had to change.
“Maybe newness is like a muscle that needs to be built,” she said. “We worry and worry anytime we’re about to go somewhere new, do something different. It all seems impossible until it’s over, but then it turns out not to have been so hard, and facing the next challenge becomes a little easier. Maybe that’s the solution, Aunt Pru. We should get you off the island so you have that experience behind you. So you can see that you’re stronger than your fear. We could go to Charleston, or at least drive across the bridge.”
She smiled at Pru encouragingly as she spoke, but her own heart beat faster, as if she were absorbing part of Pru’s panic herself at the thought of leaving. Maybe that was what panic attacks were, caged hearts fluttering their wings, trying to fly but unable to go anywhere.
Pru looked out the window across the river. She slowly shook her head.
“All right.” Barrie sat back on her heels. “I won’t push you to do anything you don’t want to do, I promise. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m sorry.”
“You have to stop apologizing, sugar. Especially when you’re right.” Leaning in, Pru kissed Barrie’s forehead. “Turns out Lula and I were a pair all these years after all. Funny, isn’t it? Lula was holed up in San Francisco, and I was holed up at Watson’s Landing. Luke was the only Watson who managed to actually escape.”
She gestured toward the trunk she’d been sorting, full of men’s shirts, sweaters, slacks, and navy uniforms. Tucked along the side of the trunk, Barrie spotted the spine of a book embossed with silver lettering: Beauregard High School 1969. A yearbook?
“May I?” Already reaching for it, she glanced at Pru for permission, then opened it gingerly and flipped to the index in the back.
Watson, Emmett, pgs. 3, 16, 21
Watson, Luke, pgs. 3, 16, 18, 19, 26, 39, 41, 47, 51
It had been a small school, so picking the Watsons out of the first photograph was no trouble. They were clearly brothers, but already Emmett showed hints of the iron-grim man whose portrait hung in the library. He stared into the camera with his chin tilted, as if daring it to take his measure and find him wanting. Luke laughed in every photo. He’d played football, basketball, and baseball. He’d been president of the senior class and the student council. Emmett had been vice president of the junior class. Barrie flipped through all the photos and backtracked to a candid shot of the brothers and Twila Beaufort. Luke and Emmett were talking to each other. Emmett had his arm around Twila, but it was Luke whom Twila watched.
“She wrote to Luke years later when the navy sent him to Vietnam.” Pru touched Twila’s face with the tip of her finger. “It’s a beautiful story, really. Or horrible, depending on how you look at it, because Twila was engaged to Daddy. She wrote every day, and Luke wrote back. They fell in love, and when he came home for your great-grandfather’s funeral, he and Twila ran off to Canada together. I guess he couldn’t bear to go back to the war, and she couldn’t bear to stay after she broke off the engagement. Daddy never did get over it. Twila was always there between him and Mama as if she had never left.”
Barrie couldn’t even imagine how awful that must have been, being with someone who loved someone else. “What was your mother like?”
“Pale.” Pru took the yearbook and flipped through until she found a photo. “Not like this,” she said, frowning at the picture. “Of course she was older, but she was sadder, too. She was always sad. I suspect it was hard to live with all of Daddy’s could-have-beens.”
“Would you rather know what you’d missed?” Barrie tried to think how to phrase the question. “I mean, if you were your mother, would you have wanted to know that Emmett loved Twila? Or would you have rather wondered why . . .”
“Why he didn’t love me?” Pru finished for her.
Telltale warmth crept into Barrie’s cheeks. “
Yes.”
“I think she knew all along. Everyone did.”
“Hypothetically, then. Would you want an answer even if it was going to hurt you to know it?”
Pru set the yearbook aside in the “keep” pile and closed the trunk. “I’m not sure how I would have answered that this morning, but someone with a lot of insight reminded me that it’s the not knowing that makes it impossible to move on from where you are.”
Barrie hoped those weren’t just empty words, but now at least she had the answer she’d been needing. She pulled Lula’s letter from her pocket and handed it to her aunt.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Pru went parchment pale as she read the letter. She reread it several times, then folded it slowly and put it back into its envelope. “Where did you find this?”
“Julia had it. She tried to get it to you, but she couldn’t get past Emmett.” Barrie watched Pru warily. “Can I do anything for you, Aunt Pru?”
“It’s after seven o’clock.” Pru rose to her feet. “I know you’re eating with Eight, but do you want a snack? It’s Mary’s night to stay late, so she can whip up something before you go get ready.”
“I’ll wait to eat, but I don’t have to go at all. If you want me to stay—”
“No.” The word was clipped, and after a moment Pru softened it with a tug of her lips. “I’m all right. Honestly. I just need a cup of tea and a little time.” She crossed to the attic stairs, leaving Barrie to follow more slowly.
It was seven fifteen when Barrie reached the second floor. Eight was picking her up in less than an hour, and she was caked in grime. She hadn’t even talked to Mark yet, and right then she needed to hear the familiar sound of his voice even more than she needed a shower.
Downstairs in the library, either Pru or Mary—Pru, most likely—had been busy, scrubbing the whole room clean. She had removed the heavy velvet curtains from the windows, tied new floral chintz slipcovers over the two dusty armchairs, and left a stack of paperback books on the round table near the fireplace. Most telling, though, she had placed a seascape above the mantel where Emmett’s portrait had hung. The room hadn’t been so much cleaned as exorcised.
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