Julep started the third verse but faltered as the buzz of a motorboat interrupted the flow of poetry. All four women looked from the horizon toward the noise.
No. Not him.
Charles McKenzie, riding in the small fishing boat that Luella recognized as belonging to the restaurant manager. Maybe she should try to hide behind the other three women. He hadn’t actually met any of the other Glynn Girls. She could lie low, and maybe he would just move along. She slunk down behind Dell, who was wearing the most voluminous dress.
The motor on his boat slowed to a mere putter as he drew closer. What must he be thinking about their odd getups?
“Ladies,”—he cleared his throat—“I’m truly sorry I have to ask, but what is going on here?”
Sue Beth stood and held up her candle-powered lantern. “We’re reciting an important poem. Today is the summer solstice.”
Luella couldn’t see Chuck, but she could see Sue Beth. Her friend flashed her bring-the-charm smile.
“Uh-huh.” Chuck didn’t sound charmed. “I noticed you cast your boat off from a private dock belonging to the restaurant.”
“We did, but we have permission. Just ask Bill. He’s known us for more than two decades.” Sue Beth’s voice remained upbeat.
“Unfortunately Bill isn’t working tonight.”
“We have a right to use a boat on the water,” Dell said.
“You do. That’s true. The only thing I can request is that you not use the restaurant dock. I’m a manager with the company that recently acquired the Tidal Creek Grill. We’re working on improving the dining experience, and this…spectacle is currently taking away from an important event at the restaurant this evening.”
“Oh, we’re so sorry!” Dell’s accent dripped off each syllable. “We’re not trying to cause anyone any trouble.”
“Uh…” Charles seemed to hesitate. “Luella?”
Fiddlesticks. She’d been spotted. She sat up straight and waved at him. “Hi there, Chuck.”
A look of understanding washed over his face. He had put together who they were. Fantastic.
The corner of his lip twitched as though it wanted to curve into a smile. “I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised to find you mixed up in this.” His left eyebrow lifted too. Was he amused?
Luella stood, and the boat rocked under her. Sue Beth gave a small eep before sitting back down a little too hard. Luella held her chin up. She wouldn’t let him thwart her or embarrass her again. “As a historian I appreciate period costumes and reading classic poetry, like Sidney Lanier’s ‘The Marshes of Glynn.’ ”
He studied her for a moment. “I was at the restaurant as you rowed away, and I overheard a customer ask if you were crazy and if you were part of the restaurant’s entertainment. There needs to be separation between your, uh, uniqueness and the restaurant. I have to go. Finish your poem. Enjoy your evening, but this will be your last time to use the restaurant’s dock for this kind of evening.” He gave her the trace of a smile. “I hate to be difficult like this.”
But you’re so skilled at it, Chuck.
“Thanks, sugar.” Dell waved, still seated in the boat. “We’ll be done soon.”
Sue Beth, who apparently had recovered from any embarrassment about her near fall, smiled, held up her hand, and wiggled her fingers goodbye.
Julep said nothing, nor did she look at Charles as he motored off toward the restaurant.
Luella sat down beside Dell. The boat was silent for a full minute, with only the evening insects piping up with their input. Luella looked at her friends, dressed in their period costumes, each face downcast. “Are we as crazy as it looks from his point of view?” Her voice rang out on the flat tidal creek.
“I’d never thought so before, but…” Sue Beth shrugged.
“But we made a huge feast to bribe the wrong people, and they weren’t even hungry,” Luella finished for her friend. “I went out with a man”—she gestured her thumb backward toward Charles—“and accidentally proposed trading a date for a favor. And we caught a poor girl in a trap, for Pete’s sake!”
She would’ve stopped the plot for the garden trap if she’d known about it. How involved had Dell and Sue Beth been in its creation? Regardless, all four of them were culpable for how their group had acted recently. Were they as out of touch with people who crossed their paths as it seemed of late?
Julep scowled. “I don’t want to hear any more about the garden trap. I’ve already gotten an earful about that from Gavin.” She turned off her lantern and picked up a paddle. “I think I’m done.”
Luella used the other paddle, and they made their way back to the dock in silence. The sweet sound of the katydids seemed wrong now.
Their boat drifted to a stop, bumping against the dock. Luella pulled the small vessel up to the dock so everyone could disembark.
Sue Beth gave Dell a hand up. “I can’t believe we won’t be able to use our spot on the marsh anymore.”
With everyone else out of the boat, Luella grabbed the bag containing the lanterns and stepped onto the dock. “Well, with any luck by next year a certain visiting property manager will be gone, and we can go back to doing things as usual.”
“No, that’s okay.” Julep held up a hand. “This yearly celebration of friendship used to mean more to me. I’m ready to stop.”
Luella, Dell, and Sue Beth watched as Julep walked away.
“Who’s surprised to hear that out of Sourpuss?” Sue Beth scowled. “Take care, girls. See you at the store tomorrow. We have Luella’s book signing to prepare for.” Sue Beth waved as she left too.
Dell nudged Luella with an elbow. “So…you went on a date with Charles?”
Ugh. “Regrettably.”
“Care to elaborate?”
Luella shifted the weight of the bag to the other arm. “I’d rather not. Somehow when I’m around Chuck, I act as though I have only one oar in the water.”
Dell nodded and rubbed her chin with her thumb. “It is terribly interesting to see you get all flustered over a man. Hmm.” She snapped her fingers. “I think it’ll finally happen after all these years. I call dibs on matron of honor.”
Married? They couldn’t stand each other. “Dell Calhoun, I’ve half a mind to shove you into this beautiful marsh we’ve been describing. You could get to know all the fish, terrapins, and herons right up close.”
Dell just cackled, walking toward the shore.
16
Gavin checked his iPhone screen yet again. No texts. No missed calls. He clutched the phone, his hand trembling. He fought the urge to fling the device against the bare wall. All that would do is incur more expenses he couldn’t afford. He slid the phone into his pocket.
After Mary fell asleep, the Glynn Girls stopped by with a few pieces of clothing—whatever they could find in her size before the store booted them out because it was closing time. He didn’t want to leave Mary or his shiplap, so he got his mamas to stay at the house while he went to the station to file a report on the stolen shiplap. But he’d heard nothing from the police.
A dust-buster vacuum whirred inside Sapphira’s art room. Mary had kept herself busy today cleaning and fixing meals. For lunch she’d fixed BLTs and homemade tomato soup from the groceries and garden vegetables he’d brought in.
He’d taken his breakfast and retreated up the spiral staircase to eat and work. It was nearly impossible to look her in the eye while he continued to take apart the house. But he hadn’t gotten off so easily for lunch. She’d put place settings on the island and the soup already in a bowl. He’d taken a seat and tried to make small talk about the weather and the vegetables from the garden. That was her favorite topic—fresh produce fed the soul. Whenever he asked questions that might give him a lead on where to look for her family, she told him her private life was none of his business.
Oh, how he w
ished that were true.
But whether they stuck to small talk or he tried to get answers, the air around them seemed to vibrate with awkwardness. Despite her self-control and her kindness to prepare food for him, she was clearly frustrated that he kept taking her house apart. As out of place as it seemed, he felt guilty about taking his house apart. Well, this old house was as good as his.
Now it was nearing dinnertime, and he knew no more on any topic—the whereabouts of his shiplap or who this woman was—than he’d known last night. He could take her to the police station, and they would provide a safe place for her somewhere until she remembered who she was or someone turned in a missing person’s report.
So why couldn’t he do that?
With a pry bar in one hand and a hammer in the other, he gently pulled another strip of shiplap away from the wall.
His phone buzzed. He hoped it was a neighbor calling or the buyer making arrangements for payment. He suspected that was wishful thinking. He eased the tools from the board and jammed them into his tool belt. He’d gone door-to-door asking if anyone saw a man removing shiplap from his garage. Not only had no one seen anything, but also when they checked their security footage that included some of the shared road, none of it showed the face or license plate of the man who’d taken the shiplap.
He pulled the phone out of his pocket. Jimmy. He slid a finger across the screen. “Hello?”
“Hey, man.”
Maybe, just maybe, his buddies at the station had been able to pull some strings and get a bit of information about the mystery woman.
“What’s up?” Did he sound calm? He felt like Saffy’s house looked—stripped bare and broken, with only thin tarp where the roof should be.
“I’ve made a number of calls to various authorities about your Mary. No one has filed a missing person’s report that matches her age and ethnicity. There’s been no report of someone with head injuries leaving a hospital without being in someone’s care.”
“No one?”
“Strange, isn’t it? Sorry for the bad news. I waited to call you until the evening because I really thought I’d find some information about her.”
Couldn’t just one thing go right? “Thanks for taking time to do that. Someone’s gotta be missing her. She keeps talking about her two brothers. You’d think they’d be panicked and have filed a missing person’s report. I ran searches as best I could online, even looked up ‘missing persons’ for every state, but I came up with nothing. The result might change if I had some sort of personal information to go on.”
“Maybe you could gently push her to talk to you more, and then we’d have more to work with.”
Because that went so well. “Yeah. Thanks again.” He ended the call, walked down the short hall, and knocked on the door to Sapphira’s studio.
The whirring sound stopped, and she opened the door.
“Just checking on you. How are you doing?”
Her brown eyes bore into his. “I’d be much better if you’d put my house back together. Of course that’s hard to do without the wood.”
Gavin nodded. “If it helps any, I’m trying to get the shiplap back.”
“Yeah, so you can sell it.”
How could she be so clearheaded about the things he didn’t want her to understand and so confused about the things that would get her out of his house and into caring hands?
She set the hand vacuum on a nearby shelf. “How is the roof repair going?”
Gavin didn’t answer. He hated lying, but what was he supposed to say?
She narrowed her eyes and pointed one finger at his chest. “Wait, did you take anything else apart?”
Guilt skittered across his skin as he glanced behind him at the new pile of shiplap he’d gleaned throughout the afternoon of waiting on calls.
She moved past him. “Ugh, seriously?” She flung a hand up. “You have to be the worst roofer ever. Who hired you? It sure as blue blazes wasn’t me. And my brothers wouldn’t even know where to start looking for a good repairman.” She paused. “On the other hand, since you aren’t good, maybe they did hire you.” She looked forlornly at the shiplap. “Are you as bad at being an EMT as you are at roofing?” She knelt beside the wood. “What have you done?” She gazed up at him, her eyes swimming in tears. “It’s our home.”
An ache made his heart drop.
She closed her eyes and drew a breath. When she opened them, her tears were gone. “I worked so hard to keep us together, living inside this old cabin that my brothers’ grandmother’s dad built.”
Would she share a last name? Although he had to admit that was a strange way to word things—her brothers’ grandmother’s dad? “So your great-grandfather, right?”
“Not mine, no.” She ran her fingers across the wood.
Her brothers’ great-grandfather wasn’t her great-grandfather? That meant they had to be stepbrothers or maybe half brothers or adopted. Perhaps if he asked the right question, she would give him something to go on. “Maybe your brothers did hire me. What are their names again?”
“I just don’t think they did. They leave those kinds of things to me.” She seemed to be counting each plank. “Did Hadley hire you?”
Finally a name. “Yeah, that’s who hired me.” He looked at his screen, pretending to search for her in his contacts. “What was her last name again?” He hoped his guess was correct that Hadley was a woman.
Concern and compassion radiated in Mary’s eyes. “Do you have memory issues? That could explain a lot.”
He should’ve taken a drama class in school, but, no, he’d played the saxophone in marching band for four years, and what good was that now? Absolutely none. “Memory issues are causing me a lot of trouble at the moment.” Not his memory issues, but that wasn’t the point. “So what is Hadley’s last name?”
“Hadley Granger Birch.”
He opened Facebook on his phone and started typing her name. He couldn’t believe it when only one name showed up in the queue. Was there only one Hadley Granger Birch on Facebook, or did others have their pages hidden? Or maybe she wasn’t on Facebook. He tapped on her name. Once he was on her page, he clicked on Message.
This is Gavin Burnside. I’m an EMT with Glynn County, Georgia, St. Simons Island. I have a young woman with me who gave me your name, but she seems to be having a few memory issues. If you may know her, please contact me.
He filled in his phone number and hit Send. He’d barely tucked his phone into his tool belt when it vibrated.
No way was this call from that Hadley person. If it was, she probably had the Facebook message app on her phone and notifications turned on. He removed the cell and looked at the screen. The number didn’t have a name, so it wasn’t from someone in his contacts. If this was Hadley, he needed to slip outside so he could speak freely. He started toward the door.
“Wait.” The young woman stood. “We need to talk.”
“Okay.” He held up one finger. “But I need to take this call first.”
“But I—”
Gavin stepped outside and swiped his finger across the screen. “Hello?” He closed the door behind him.
“This is Hadley Birch. Is Tara with you?”
“Probably. She’s a petite, athletic-built woman, mid- to late-twenties. Dark blond hair. Brown eyes.”
“Yes! That’s our Tara! Tara Abbott.”
The relief in her voice almost matched his. He knew someone somewhere had to be missing Mar—no, Tara.
“She doesn’t know her name?” Alarm had replaced the relief in her voice.
“It’s probable that she knows it, but she hasn’t shared any names of people in her life other than saying yours a few minutes ago.”
“I’m so glad you reached out.”
This woman sounded sincere and trustworthy, but Gavin wanted to verify a few things befo
re he went any further. “When was the last time you spoke to her?”
“We talked on Sunday, and we texted Monday morning. But we’ve been unable to reach her since then. I called the Lighthouse Inn, but they said she’d checked out Monday morning. Where is her cell phone?”
Gavin was completely satisfied with her answers. If he wanted to go one step further later on, he could call the Lighthouse Inn and verify Tara had stayed there that week, but that wasn’t necessary. “I think she lost it in Monday’s high tide.”
“Can you please stay with her until we can get there?”
I can’t get rid of her. “She thinks the house I’m deconstructing is hers, so staying with her won’t be a problem.”
“Why would she think that?”
“Something about the tarp on the roof, I think.”
“Oh, because her roof had a tarp over it.”
“And her brothers. Where are they?”
“What?” Hadley sounded horrified.
Gavin’s worst fears for the woman jackhammered his nerves. “She’s waiting on them to arrive. She said they should’ve been here days ago.”
“Oh, dear Father, no.” Hadley broke into sobs. “I never should’ve let her board that plane alone. What was I thinking? I’m sure it’s apparent to you that she recently sustained a traumatic head injury and had surgery. She insisted she needed time there, the place she was supposed to meet Sean and Darryl.”
“Ma’am, it’s okay. Everything will be fine.” His training took over, but he didn’t feel particularly calm. “Take a deep breath. Is someone there with you?”
“Yeah. My husband. Can you hang on?” All noise stopped. Hadley must have muted her phone. He peered through the glass doors and saw Tara. The name fit her somehow. If he remembered correctly from Saffy’s Irish folk stories, it was an old name that had a lot of meanings—tower, star, and the ruins of the Halls in Ireland.
As the Tide Comes In Page 15
