Her Sister's Shoes

by Ashley Farley

  Also by Ashley Farley

  Saving Ben

  For My Family

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Author’s Note:

  One

  Samantha

  Lovie and Oscar Sweeney had been providing vacationers to the South Carolina coast with fresh-from-the-ocean seafood since opening their doors in May of 1959—and little had changed since then. Not the quality of the service or the layout of the store. The same brass ship’s clock still hung on the wall above the door, ticking away the decades. The customers didn’t mind the outdated decor as long as the knowledgeable staff served superior product with a friendly smile. The creaking floorboards and dusty shelves welcomed them back year after year, just as the pungent odor of the marsh at low tide greeted them upon arrival in the small inlet town of Prospect.

  When it came time to do something about the termites eating away at the floor joists—and to replace the electrical system that was one spark away from a catastrophic fire and the refrigerated display cases that were held together with hope, prayer, and a wad of electrical tape—Samantha Sweeney, the middle daughter of Lovie and Oscar, decided their market was way overdue for an upgrade. Their local customers encouraged Sam to remodel in the same vintage that had brought them success for more than fifty years, but she ignored their advice. Following her gut instincts, Sam had opted for a radically different approach.

  After years of planning and saving, the renovations were nearing completion. With exposed ceiling pipes and pendant lighting, subway tile wainscoting and concrete floors, Sam had envisioned a minimalist style, the seafood being their main event. But as she surveyed the gleaming new showroom, she worried the results were more operating-room sterile than upscale industrial.

  Sam suspected her sisters shared her concerns.

  Faith turned in circles, contemplating the empty space. “Once the shelves are stocked and the refrigerated cases filled, the place will come to life.”

  “Why don’t we paint the walls?” Jackie whipped her color wheel out of her oversized black patent bag. Sam had hired her older sister, an interior decorator, to offer guidance on trim selections. Jackie thumbed through the color strips, eventually holding out the wheel for Sam to see. “Here we go. I’ve used this linen color many times before. It’s neutral, but at the same time soft and warm.”

  Sam barely glanced at the color. “But the painters have already finished. They’re out back cleaning up.”

  “I’ve never known a painter to turn down more work.” Jackie tucked the paint wheel under her arm, and, like a cheetah in search of her prey, she glided toward the kitchen in the back. With mahogany hair styled in a sleek bob, dressed in a tailored black sleeveless top and white pique cropped pants, Jackie embodied the picture of elegance.

  “Don’t tell her I said so,” Faith whispered to Sam, “but I think she might be right this time.”

  Sam smiled at her younger sister, who was every bit as pretty as Jackie but in a less sophisticated way.

  “She better be. We can’t afford another mistake with only two days left before the grand reopening.”

  Sam took a step back and closed her eyes, trying to imagine the showroom walls washed in linen. She pictured the wooden wine racks stocked with bottles and specialty dry goods arranged neatly on the metal shelves. She envisioned fresh produce overflowing from baskets on the carts in the front of the store, raw seafood on display in the refrigerated cases in the center of the room, and prepared meals filling the merchandisers along the sidewalls. She imagined customers moseying about, sipping wine from little plastic cups while the staff offered advice on the best practices for grilling tuna.

  Sam drew in a deep breath of confidence and exhaled any leftover feelings of doubt. She respected her sister’s tastes. If Jackie thought linen-colored walls were the finishing touch the room needed, then who was she to argue?

  Jackie returned with a self-satisfied smirk on her face. “The painters promised to have everything wrapped up by noon tomorrow. There’s hardly any wall space to paint, considering the pass-through to the kitchen in the back and all the windows out here.”

  Sam ran through her mental checklist. “Noon tomorrow means we’ll lose half a day of cleaning and stocking. We’ll have to work around the clock in order to open on time on Saturday.”

  “Why don’t you hire someone?” Jackie said with a flippant wave of her hand, as though a strong-bodied person might materialize from thin air.

  “What about the twins?” Sam asked. “They’re always looking for a way to earn extra spending money.”

  Jackie’s sixteen-year-old sons, Cooper and Sean, often showed up at the market, late in the afternoon, peddling their day’s catch—fish and shrimp and crabs, anything they could catch with a net, a trap, or a fishing rod. Sam paid them the same amount she would a wholesaler, even more when their product was fresher, which it usually was.

  “You’ll have to find someone else.” Jackie busied herself with gathering up tile and concrete samples that were scattered across the wine-tasting table. “The boys are busy getting ready to leave for camp on Saturday.”

  “Today is only Wednesday,” Sam said. “Since when does it take a teenager two days to pack?”

  “They’re not just packing, Samantha. They’ve made plans with friends.”

  “Ask them anyway. I’m sure they’ll want to help. They already talked to me about working at the market when they get home from camp.”

  “They’ll be busy with football practice when they get home from camp.” Jackie flung her bag over her shoulder. “This may come as a surprise to you, but I have higher aspirations for my boys than running a seafood market.”

  Even if that smelly seafood market provided you all the luxuries you felt entitled to when we were growing up, Sam thought. “I’m not talking about a full-time career, Jackie. The boys just want to earn some money while they have a little fun.”

  “They will have plenty of fun at camp, and they’ll get paid this year, as junior counselors.”

  “Why do you send them off to camp, anyway, when we live ten minutes from the beach?” Sam asked.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but having them tucked away in the mountains keeps them out of trouble.”

  “And out of your hair,” Sam mumbled.

  Jackie’s face turned red. “Don’t you have enough to worry about with your own son without worrying about mine?”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed and her back stiffened. She was preparing for battle with her older sister when Faith intervened. “Curtis can help. With stocking the showroom. He’s looking for work.”

  “I take that to mean the job at the brick plant didn’t work out,” Jackie said.

  Faith picked at a hangnail. “Turns out they hired too many peo
ple. Since Curtis was the last one hired, he was the first one they fired.”

  “He’ll find something else soon, I’m sure. In the meantime, I can definitely put him to work around here. At least for the next couple of days,” Sam said, thinking how Curtis’s physical strength made up for his lack of brainpower. “I’ll work out the details with him when I see him at the party tonight.”

  “Speaking of the party, I’ve gotta run.” Jackie positioned her oversized sunglasses on her face, the dark frames in contrast to her pale unblemished skin. “Can one of you pick up Mom?”

  “Since when does Mom need a driver?” Sam asked.

  “Since she’s been acting so forgetful lately,” Jackie said. “Surely you’ve noticed.”

  “Of course she’s forgetful,” Sam said. “She’s eighty-two years old.”

  Jackie slid her sunglasses down and peered at Sam over the top of her bug-eyed lenses. “She’s not just forgetful. She’s downright demented. I can hardly have a conversation with her anymore. She asks the same questions over and over again.” Jackie turned toward Faith. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  Faith shook her head, her eyes wide with concern. “I haven’t seen much of Mama since we started the renovations.”

  “Well …” Jackie repositioned her sunglasses on her nose. “I’ve invited some important people to my party. I don’t want Mom embarrassing herself.”

  Sam glanced at the ship’s clock above the door. “Okay, look. It’s already five o’clock. Clearly this is something we need to talk about later.”

  “I agree,” Jackie said. “Let’s just get through tonight first.”

  Sam turned to Faith. “I might be running a few minutes late by the time I pick Jamie up from physical therapy and help him get changed. If you can bring Mom to the party, I’ll take her home.”

  “I can do that,” Faith said.

  “Perfect.” Jackie leaned over and kissed Faith’s cheek, then Sam’s. “In case I forget to tell you both later, Happy Birthday.”

  Sam locked the front door and stepped back, admiring the new logo painted in seaweed green across both windows, the interlocking S’s announcing that Captain Sweeney’s Seafood Market was open for business.

  Sweeney’s was located at the T-intersection of Main Street and Creekside Drive. Sam’s parents had chosen well when they leased the corner property in 1959. Creekside had always been a thoroughfare to South Carolina’s most popular beaches, but Main Street had only recently become the home for many outdoor cafes and novelty boutiques.

  Sam heard someone calling her name from across Creekside Drive at the Inlet View Marina. She shielded her eyes against the late afternoon sun, and waved at Captain Mack Bowman, her father’s oldest and dearest friend. With gray frizzy hair and scruffy beard, cigar stub dangling from his lower lip, Captain Mack was an old salt of a man, his body scarred from his many adventures at sea.

  Mack cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted across the noisy street, “Will you be ready for a mess of fish tomorrow around this time?”

  “Bring ’em on,” she hollered back.

  He gave her a thumbs-up and she blew him a kiss in return.

  Sam watched his tall frame lumber back down to the dock where a long line of charter and commercial fishing boats were coming in from a long day of fishing in the Gulf Stream. Mack Bowman and Oscar Sweeney had spent most of their adult lives floating alongside one another in the ocean. Neither of their commercial fishing boats—The Miss May and My Three Gulls, named after the women in their lives—was ever seen coming in or going out of the inlet without the other on her stern.

  Oscar Sweeney was no more than eight when his family immigrated to the United States from Ireland. His father, Sam’s grandfather, worked as a lobsterman in a small New England seaside village. Away from the confines of the streets of Dublin, Oscar developed a passion for outdoor living, but his extreme hatred for the endless, bitterly cold Maine winters eventually drove him south. The day after his eighteenth birthday, with his life savings sewn securely in the lining of his coat, Oscar embarked on a journey. He hopped from one fishing vessel to another until he found himself in the small town of Prospect, deep in the heart of South Carolina’s Lowcountry. Three weeks later, he spotted Sam’s mother window-shopping the boutiques on Main Street and set out to make her his bride.

  Back in those days, young ladies from prominent families weren’t allowed to marry fishermen with orange hair and thick Irish brogues. But over time, Louvenia’s parents grew to appreciate Oscar’s gentlemanly nature and his deep belly laugh. They even took to calling her Lovie, Oscar’s nickname for his petite china doll.

  Determined to see his son-in-law a success, Lovie’s father lent Oscar the money he needed to start his own business, a retail shop or perhaps a small cafe. Instead, Oscar partnered up with Captain Mack, the born-and-raised South Carolinian he’d met while working a shrimping boat, and together they bought The Dreamer, the fifty-foot commercial boat they fished together for the next ten years.

  Desperate to pay her parents back, Lovie set up shop under an umbrella in the parking lot of the Inlet View Marina. By the end of the second summer, the money she’d earned selling fresh fish and homemade baked goods to the vacationers who traveled through town every Saturday was enough to sign a lease on the empty building across the street. When her lease ran out five years later, she convinced the building’s owner to sell her the property. By scrimping and saving and operating the business on a tight budget, she was able to pay off the bank loan in less than ten years.

  A cool breeze tickled Sam’s skin, raising the hairs on her arm. She untied the sweater from around her waist, slipped it on, and headed for the parking lot. She hopped in her red Jeep Wrangler, buckled her seat belt, and turned up the volume on the classic rock station. She was waiting for a break in the traffic to make a right-hand turn onto Creekside Drive when a silver Audi convertible, with vanity plates DR HART, blew by her headed in the opposite direction. She recognized the handsome driver as her brother-in-law, the illustrious cardiologist, but the female passenger in the pink scarf with the hot-pink lips was definitely not her sister. Not only was it logistically impossible, considering Jackie had left the market only ten minutes ago, but her sister would never be caught dead in any shade of pink.

  The traffic cleared, miraculously, like the parting of the Red Sea, and Sam whipped into the lane behind the Audi, following them through town at a discreet distance. She wracked her brain as to why her brother-in-law was driving around town with a beautiful woman riding shotgun. The woman was wearing a sundress and not a uniform, which ruled out the likelihood that he was giving one of his nurses a ride home. Maybe she was a patient, although that seemed unlikely since the glamour girl superglued to Bill’s right arm was no damsel in distress. She was too old to be a student intern and too young to be one of those volunteers from the women’s auxiliary at church who looked for local professionals to donate their services to the needy.

  Jackie had never given Sam any reason to believe her marriage was anything less than perfect. Then again, Sam and Jackie didn’t confide in each other the way most sisters did. From Sam’s perspective, they appeared the perfect couple—Bill the doting husband and Jackie the devoted wife.

  Three or four miles on the outskirts of town, Bill made a sudden, sharp right turn into Water’s Edge, a new community of three- and four-story houses built on pilings on tiny parcels of land. After several blocks, he pulled into a driveway and screeched to a halt with the familiarity of a well-traveled path.

  Sam eased up to the curb alongside the house next door, hopped out of the Wrangler, and crept up to the giant magnolia tree that separated the properties. She peered through the branches and watched her brother-in-law help his passenger from the car. To Sam’s dismay, Bill kissed the woman passionately, in the middle of the driveway for the entire world to see. The woman then pulled away and led him by the hand around the back of the house.

  Sam ma
de her way over to Bill’s convertible. When she noticed the keys in the ignition, she entertained the idea of driving off in his car. She would love to see his face when he discovered his most prized possession missing. She imagined him pacing up and down the driveway, ranting and raving to the police when he called to report it stolen.

  Sam collapsed against the hood of the car. She didn’t see Bill as the cheating type. She’d never felt especially close to him, and, aside from family occasions, their paths had rarely crossed socially. Not that Sam even had much of a social life. But Bill had always been supportive of her son. He took Jamie hunting and fishing on a regular basis and he came to as many of his sporting events as he could manage with his busy schedule. He was the best kind of father to Cooper and Sean, and they worshipped him in return. A divorce would devastate them.

  Sam stared at her watch, counting the minutes as they ticked away toward party time. The idea of barging in on the couple in bed, with Bill’s mistress pulling the sheets up to cover her naked body, held no appeal for Sam. But she couldn’t leave until she had a chance to confront the cheating bastard.

  Five minutes later, Bill emerged from the house alone. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Sam leaning against his car.

  “She doesn’t look sick, so I’m guessing she’s not your patient. Should I assume she’s one of your nurses? She appeared skilled in giving you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

  Bill smiled at Sam, the warm smile she imagined he used when delivering bad news to his patients. “She’s actually the widow of one of my patients.”

  Sam stared at him, mouth agape.

  “Is there any chance I can convince you to keep this between the two of us?” he asked, his tone hopeful.

  Sam pushed herself off the car and stood face to face with him. “You’re kidding, right?”

  He held her gaze. “Actually, I’m not.”

  “If you wanted to keep your little love affair a secret, why were you flaunting your glamour girl through the middle of town like a beauty queen in the Fourth of July parade?”