by Deeanne Gist
“Let’s do it.”
Lord, let her be lucid.
Rylee tapped on the door, then slipped inside.
Lit by lamplight, the room seemed especially cozy. Nonie sat up in bed, the covers arranged just so, the serenest of smiles on her face. Everything perfect. Even the gauze wrap on her hand looked fresh and neat. She raised the good one to beckon them forward.
“Come closer and let me see you.”
Logan crouched at the bedside, letting her take his hand. On the nightstand, a stack of photo albums had been specially arranged, showing just how much their visit was anticipated.
“Nonie, this is Logan,” Rylee said, her voice trembling. “Logan, this is my grandmother, Flora Monroe. She . . . raised me.”
Her hand rested in his, cool and weightless, translucent skin stretched tight over bones of birdlike delicacy. A glance at her other hand, already in bandages, and he applied only the slightest hint of pressure as he squeezed.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
She held him with surprising vigor, using the grip to pull herself closer. Her pink-rimmed eyes inventoried the details of his face, as if she were searching for genetic artifacts from people she might once have known.
“Who’re your people, young man?” The timbre in the old lady’s voice put him in mind of lace doilies, dust, and chintz. But her eyes were piercing. As if she could see straight through to his soul.
“My people?” The question threw him. Like the voice, it seemed to come out of the distant past. “My last name is Woods, ma’am.”
Rylee floated to the opposite side of the bed, her fingertips trailing along the bedclothes. The lamp gave her face a golden hue. She looked across at him with pride.
“Remember I told you, Nonie? Logan works for the newspaper. He’s a writer.” Her voice rose at the word, as if she’d been reading a children’s story aloud and just reached the part about his being a prince.
Writer. The title embarrassed him a little. He didn’t feel like a writer. Sure, he filled columns with news copy, but he wouldn’t feel like a writer until his book was on the shelves. And it never would be if he didn’t get a jump on the Robin Hood story.
But he was distracted. By Rylee. Whom he barely even knew. Nate Campbell had brought that fact into sharp focus for him. He suppressed a sigh.
“A writer?” Still clutching his hand, the old lady eyed him with confusion. “And just what is it you write?”
“Nonie.” Rylee sank to the edge of the bed, concern in her voice, and pressed the back of her fingers against the old woman’s temple as if she suspected fever. “I told you. He writes for the newspaper.”
Nonie drew her hand back. Logan was relieved to no longer be responsible for it.
“Oh, of course,” she laughed. “How silly of me. For some reason, I got it in my head he was a baseball player.”
“In my spare time,” Logan said. “Not that there’s much of it these days.”
As the grandmother’s attention turned from him to Rylee, he settled back into a nearby chair. In the doorway of Rylee’s apartment, with their bodies close, everything Nate had said seemed to disappear. But the questions were still there, skulking in the shadows of his mind.
“Someone was asking about you earlier,” Nonie said to Rylee.
“About me?” She stole a glance his way, smiling. “Who was it? Are you gonna make me guess?”
“No, you don’t have to guess.” Nonie’s voice trailed off. “I’m trying to remember.”
“Was it Nurse Melanie?”
Nonie’s hand cut the air. “Wait. I’m trying to think.”
Rylee quieted.
“Oh, I know.” The old lady’s eyes lit up. “It was that man with all the car dealerships. What’s he called again?”
“Mr. Lusky,” Rylee said. “What did he say?”
“Lusky.” Her mouth screwed up, like the name tasted funny.
“He was saying you don’t take care of that car of yours, and I’d better have a talk with you.”
“Easy for him to say! He has a whole service department at his beck and call. I’ve got nobody but myself.”
“Hey,” Logan said, seeing his chance to get back into the conversation. “Who took care of that window for you?”
“That’s right!” Rylee beamed with excitement, grabbing the old lady’s hand. “Guess what happened to Daisy the other night?”
Her version of the story rushed through the potentially sordid parts—no mention of the creep sifting through her intimates for souvenirs, nothing to spark concern in a grandmother’s mind. And fixing the window, the way she described it, sounded one step down from turning water into wine. By the end, both women were gazing at Logan in awe.
“I’m a keeper,” he said.
Rylee tilted her head as if assessing the validity of his claim.
Then it was time for the photo albums. Nonie kept a tower of them next to the bed, and seemed intent on talking Logan through each one. At first he grew eager. A guided tour of Rylee’s past might clear up a few gaps. But one glimpse of the black-and-white photos dispelled any chances of that.
Men with slicked-back hair propped their feet on the running boards of old bootlegger cars, their women sporting boxy dresses and flapper bobs. The Monroe clan went way back, it seemed, and there was no skipping ahead to the current crop.
He saw grand old houses, verdant gardens, slender girls in wicker chairs under shady piazzas, sipping lemonade from little glasses. They looked like genteel Southern aristocrats, pillars of Charleston.
The Monroes had clearly had money. But the first time Logan had been to Rylee’s apartment, leaving her in that neighborhood after dark had seemed just short of negligence. Her father must have taken a small fortune with him when he disappeared.
Nonie tapped her finger on a photo of her own parents. They stood outside the same kind of narrow-front mansion the Davidsons lived in today.
“Where was this?” he asked, pointing to the house, afraid he already knew. Nate had told him about the Monroe house on East Battery.
She raised her eyebrows. “Home.”
“I mean, where in the city?”
He willed her to say the words.
Across the bed, Rylee leaned closer. “Let me see.” She took the album from her grandmother’s hands, holding it close to her face.
“It looks kind of familiar. But this wasn’t our house, Nonie.”
The old lady turned to Logan, confused. “We had to sell my house when I came here. It should have gone to Rylee, but . . . I wanted it to . . .” She blinked a few times, then looked around the room as if she was seeing it for the first time.
Rylee put an arm over her shoulders suddenly. “It’s all right, Nonie.”
“What?”
“It’s me. Rylee. We were just talking, remember? You were showing us your album.”
Trying to help, Logan reached for the photo book, which had fallen shut against the old lady’s blanketed legs. Rylee’s hand covered his.
“No,” she whispered. “It’ll upset her more.”
Reluctantly, he let go of the album. He wanted another look at that picture.
“Everything’s okay,” Rylee was saying, smoothing the old lady’s hair with her hand. “This is Logan, remember? We were just talking to him.”
The door opened and Nurse Melanie came through, heading straight for a bank of whirring monitors at the back of the room without asking any questions. It could have been a regularly scheduled check, except for the glance that passed between her and Rylee.
“Let me have a look,” the nurse said, easing Rylee away.
He joined her at the foot of the bed, where she immediately took his hand.
“Nonie’s getting worse,” she whispered.
“She seemed all right to me.”
She sighed. “It happens so fast. But this was one of her good times, and it really lasted. I’m so glad, too. I’d wanted you to get a chance to meet her. The real her.”
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“And I did.” He squeezed her hand.
They waited while the nurse asked a series of questions, the old lady ignoring most of them. Instead, she sank back against her pillows, inanimate except for the rise and fall of her breathing.
“I think she’s going to sleep now,” the nurse announced.
Logan peered past her, searching the area where Rylee had been standing a moment before to see whether there was a call button. The nurse had been summoned somehow. As soon as he’d started asking about the house, the place Nonie called home, Rylee had snatched the album away and called for help. Why? Was she trying to hide something?
They said their good-byes to Nonie’s reclining form. Her body was still there, but the room felt suddenly emptied of her presence. Logan was happy to escape into the hallway.
Rylee slipped back into the room. “Wait one second. I’ll be right out.”
A minute later, she reappeared, handing him the photo.
Relief flooded him. His doubts retreated even before it touched his fingertips. She’d not been hiding anything at all.
But no. It was a photo, but not the photo. He stared down at a gold-cast color snapshot, a man and woman posing together on a coppery lawn.
The man was lean, dressed in a striped pullover, shorts, and boat shoes. His companion wore a vintage minidress in some kind of brocade-like fabric, though it wouldn’t have been vintage when she wore it. Bronzed legs and round white-framed sunglasses, with tangles of brown hair radiating from her scalp. Her smile strangely familiar. He flipped the photo over. Jon and Stella, November 1976.
Logan looked closer, then glanced up at Rylee. “Your parents?”
She nodded, fingering a pearl pendant at her neck and bouncing slightly on her heels, almost as if she were awaiting his approval.
“She looks just like you.”
“I know.” She sighed with relief, then snatched the picture away to have a look for herself. “Isn’t it strange? I can hardly remember her, but one thing I do remember is how big she seemed, like a giant almost. But look at her. She was younger than I am now when this was taken.”
“You hadn’t even been born.”
“They had me late.”
Looking at Rylee, standing pigeon-toed in a nursing home hallway, clutching the photo as if it might start talking at any moment, he wanted to put his arms around her. She put on a show of self-reliance, but maybe that’s all it was. A skill adopted early to cope with the absence of her parents.
“You haven’t told me much about them,” he said.
She handed the picture back to him. “I was a little girl when she died. But I don’t remember any of that. Only what they told me after . . .”
“And your dad?”
She clasped her bare arms together, suddenly cold. “I was pretty young, so I don’t . . .” She swallowed. “It’s not easy to talk about.”
“That’s okay.” He gave her the photo.
She disappeared momentarily back into Nonie’s room.
Bad as he wanted them, he wasn’t going to push for the details. Not yet. When she stepped out, he slipped his arm around her and they headed to the exit.
Chapter Sixteen
The sun had gone down during their visit, and now a warm breeze whipped over the asphalt, flapping Logan’s jacket. He led her toward the car, checking his watch by the parking lot lights. “There’s a crab boil on the beach tonight.”
At the mention of food, she felt suddenly famished. “There is?”
“Some friends are putting it on,” he said, nodding her forward. “Unless you’d rather eat somewhere else?”
“No, I love the beach.”
He opened the door for her, then went around. After starting the engine and putting the BMW in gear, his hand trailed across the seat, finding hers, and they intertwined in the dark. A current traveled up her arm.
“Thanks for coming with me tonight,” she said. “Nonie doesn’t get any visitors other than me. I know it was hard to tell, but it really meant a lot.”
He ran his finger over her thumb ring. “I like her. She’s really sweet.”
They drove in silence, just the sound of the tires gliding over the road. Their hands parted as he turned on some music, a soft guitar ballad she’d heard before but couldn’t place, and then his hand found hers again.
They shared a smile.
“Almost there,” he said.
He parked above the beach. They left their shoes and his jacket in the car and advanced through the sand with bare feet. She could hear the water out in the darkness, but couldn’t see it yet. The fires on the beach served as beacons. The smell of boiling crab beckoned.
A dozen shadows lingered around a long table laden with crab and corn on the cob, potatoes, longneck beer bottles, and pitchers of sweet tea. After rolling up his sleeves, Logan picked up a hammer and went to work, making introductions over his shoulder—too many people for her to keep track of the names.
He pointed out his photographer friend, Wash, shimmying to music from the iPod player, a blonde in a filmy sundress bobbing in and out of his grasp.
“I’m starving,” Rylee said, digging some meat from a crab claw.
“Me too.”
They ate while the others swirled around them, everybody getting along with easy indifference, longtime acquaintances who saw each other often enough they didn’t need to catch up. She missed the inside jokes and felt the inquiring eyes checking out the newcomer.
“So,” Wash said, sidling up to the table. “You’re Rylee.”
She smiled. “And you’re Wash.”
“I’m glad y’all came by. I mean, after all, if you two become an item, think what a great story you can tell about how you met.”
Heat filled her cheeks. It was hard to imagine this charming, affable man had put such a scare into her by lurking in the shadows while Toro chased Logan up the monument.
The blonde wandered over, catching the tail end of the conversation. “Story? What story?”
“Diane, this is Rylee.”
Diane reached across the table. Rylee wiped her hand on the tablecloth before shaking.
“Rylee’s a dogwalker,” Wash said, a smile breaking out, “and Logan is famously afraid of dogs. He squared off with one when he was a kid and came up on the short end of the stick.”
“Match made in heaven.” Diane lifted her drink in tribute.
They whirled away, captured once more by the music. Some of the others rolled up their pants legs and ventured out into the dark water.
“You were attacked by a dog?” Rylee asked.
“It was a long time ago.” He stood. “Wanna dance?”
“I ate so much, I’m not sure I can even walk.”
“Sure you can. Or let’s test the water.”
“All right.”
They went to the water’s edge, the cool wet rush enveloping their ankles. Logan tried to coax her farther, but she pulled at his hand, tugging him back. He bent low, scooping his hand under the waves.
“Don’t do it!” She scrambled back.
A jet of water leapt up and she ran away, laughing. He splashed more at her, but she kept a safe distance. His jeans were wet to midcalf, his shirt billowing in the wind, blown tight around his muscled chest and flat stomach.
He came out of the water holding his dripping hands out in a conciliatory gesture. The firelight caught his eyes as he advanced. They shared a look, then their fingertips touched, his wet hands trailing up her forearm, cupping her elbows, drawing her gently forward. She, on tiptoes, closed her eyes just as their lips touched.
It couldn’t have lasted forever, but it felt that way. She imagined them reclining in the surf like in that old black-and-white movie, their limbs intertwined as waves crashed around them. She pressed her hand to his rough jawline, arching her back as he tightened his arms around her. He lifted her gently off the ground like she was weightless, floating.
Off in the distance, Wash howled in approval. The others gave t
hem a round of applause, interrupting the moment.
She pulled back in surprise, unaware the fire had illuminated them against the dark background of the night sky. Logan allowed her feet to touch down but didn’t release her.
His eyes searched hers, as if he’d just discovered something unexpected, as if he wasn’t sure what to do in the aftermath. “You’re beautiful.”
Wash called out, “Come on now. Keep it up and you’ll have to get a room!”
They broke off, now bashful, returning hand-in-hand to the ring of light around the fire. Wash came up to Logan, slapping him on the back. His companion Diane gave Rylee a friendly but almost envious look.
“All of a sudden,” Logan said, slipping his arm around her waist, “this party has gotten old.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
They said their good-nights, making their way back up the beach, a few of the others following suit. At the car, he paused to wring the water from his pants, producing a fresh towel from his gym bag so they could brush the sand from their feet. She was almost reluctant. She wanted to keep the sand as a souvenir.
In the car, he curved his hand round the back of her neck, threading his fingers into her hair and drawing her close for another kiss. It felt like forever again, and must have been, because the kiss only ended when Wash, fresh from the beach and unaccompanied by the blonde, tapped pointedly on the driver’s window.
“I thought you were leaving.”
“We are now,” Logan answered, turning on the ignition.
As they drove, he found her hand. She turned toward him, surprised to find him watching her.
“Logan.” His name felt different on her lips somehow. More . . . intimate. “Keep your eyes on the road.”
She studied the lines of his face. The slope of his nose, his chapped lips, his chin, the pulse in his neck. An undertow of longing pulled against her resolution. Feeling the weight of his hand in hers, she knew she needed to be honest with him.
She turned the radio down. “We’ve started something.”
His thumb traced her hand, exploring every dip, every swell. “Yes.”
“I . . . I wasn’t planning on it.”
He kept his eyes on the road. “Me neither.”
