The Bridge Between

by Lindsey Brackett

  “Exactly why I’m here.”

  Lou’s cheeks lifted like the notion made her want to smile. But the look faded quickly. “Where are the boys?”

  He took the bowl and slid it onto a shelf she’d cleared. “Tennessee and Ben whisked them away for a ride on Lenny’s shrimp boat.” He passed a glance over her plaid button-down and old jeans. For too long she’d kept herself swathed in khakis and cardigan sets. “They told me about the menu.”

  She pursed her lips. “I never indulge them like this.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You thought it.”

  He pulled his lower lip beneath his teeth—and Lou pointed her finger. “That’s your tell, David. Never play poker.”

  After all these years and all the angry words they’d flung at each other, she still knew him. Better than he knew himself sometimes.

  Turning her back, she reached for an apron draped over a kitchen chair. “I’m quite capable of cooking three meals. It’s all about the timing.”

  “I know that.” David shrugged off his coat.

  “I don’t need help, but …” Lou cinched the apron at her waist, fumbling a bit with the strings. “Since you’re here, I appreciate the extra hands.”

  Whistling, he went to the sink and washed his hands. Poured a cup of coffee and made himself at home.

  Lou grabbed a package of Italian sausage from the fridge. J.D., who appreciated simplicity, had requested spaghetti. The tortillas on the counter must be for Mac’s extra-spicy enchiladas. That chicken he’d put in the fridge would be fried, with mashed potatoes and green beans on the side, because Cole loved tradition. Lou’s fault for naming that boy after her father.

  He figured she’d be moving through her list, one thing at a time. How she’d keep from becoming overwhelmed—

  She dropped the sausage on the counter and gripped it, knuckles whitening.

  “What?” For a half-second he thought she was having a panic attack, and it had been years since he’d seen that.

  “I forgot a cake.” She straightened, raking her hair behind her ears. He could practically see her mind whirring through possibilities. “Maybe I can call cousin Rose and see if she can make one real quick?” David nodded as she rambled. “Or does the Piggly Wiggly bakery do cakes? They don’t, do they?”

  He shook his head. The Pig was too small for a bakery.

  She threw her hands in the air. “One of us will have to drive to Charleston and find a Publix, I guess.” Breathing heavily—he might have been right about the panic—Lou dumped the sausage in a pan to brown.

  He reached around her and snagged a spatula. “I got this.”

  “No, you don’t.” She snatched the utensil. “You’ve got to get a cake.”

  “So you need my help after all?”

  “David …”

  “What if I told you I knew where you could get a cake, and all it requires is a simple phone call and maybe set an extra place at dinner?”

  She didn’t bother to look at him as she stirred the meat. “Who?”

  “Grace makes cakes on the side for The Hideaway sometimes.”

  Her shoulders jerked. “How do you know that?”

  “She told me.”

  Lou stabbed the simmering meat.

  “So, anyway …” He closed his hand over hers. “Before you take your frustration out on dinner, maybe you should try asking your neighbor—and friend—for a favor.” He worked the spatula from her grasp.

  This time she wheeled a glare he knew well. “If y’all are such good friends, why don’t you?”

  Grinning at her, because he really couldn’t resist antagonizing the moments Lou wasn’t perfect, he said, “Because I’m not the one who forgot.”

  ~~~

  Grace knocked on the screen, chocolate cake in one hand, stomach knotted.

  David swung the door open. “Thanks for saving the day.” Behind him, Lou drizzled butter over mashed potatoes. If she didn’t know the history, Grace might’ve sworn she’d walked into a Norman Rockwell painting.

  “Based on how good this house smells, I’d say no one would’ve missed this.” She passed over her Tupperware container without passing over the threshold. “You’ve outdone yourself, Lou. That chicken looks good as your mama’s.”

  Lou took the cake from David. “Thank you.”

  “No problem. My pleasure.” Between them, politeness was chilly as the January air, but Lou had sounded sincere.

  “Hey, Mom.” Tennessee came in the kitchen and lifted the platter of chicken. “I hope you brought that cake for me because those crazy hooligans don’t need any more sugar.”

  “Perhaps someone shouldn’t have let them drink a six-pack of Mountain Dew on the boat.” Cora Anne trailed him. “Is that one of Grace’s chocolate cakes?”

  “Yes, she was kind enough to help me out today. No time to make a cake with these three dinners.” Lou met Grace’s gaze then, as if entreating her to play along.

  Grace blinked, recognizing the chink in this woman’s armor. Lou couldn’t abide failure—even over something as minor as forgetting a birthday cake.

  “I’ll set an extra place, then. You’ll stay, right? Half the fun of feeding people is watching them enjoy it, right, Mama?” Cora Anne breezed out of the kitchen without giving her mother—or Grace—time to respond.

  David cleared his throat, and Lou cast him a desperate glance. Grace bit back a chuckle. Cora Anne had learned quite a bit during this past summer about how to handle tension—and her mother.

  “Grace.” David pushed the screen wider. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  “Well, I did always like Annie’s fried chicken.”

  The compliment nudged a smile out of Lou. “Supper’s the least we can do for your help.”

  As Grace hung up her coat, David leaned over to whisper in his ex-wife’s ear. Whatever he said made a blush sweep her cheeks. Tears pricked the corner of Grace’s eyes. How she missed having someone to share little moments with.

  “David, take that cake and put it on the sideboard. Set out Mama’s china dessert plates, too, please.” Lou gave him a shove—almost playful.

  “We can’t just use paper Happy Birthday plates?”

  “David, Mrs. Annie would never have approved.” She spoke before she thought.

  Lou stepped back. “Of course. Grace would know.” The jesting had gone from her tone.

  Grace escaped, following David to the dining room where she set out the delicate plates from their customary place in the left cabinet of the sideboard.

  He arched a brow. “You know this house well.”

  She shrugged. “Might be the problem.” Nearly everything she knew about cooking and entertaining, she owed to Lou’s mother.

  At dinner, she sat between Tennessee and Cole, who gave her a rundown of their fishing trip in between three pieces of chicken and mounds of vegetables.

  “I bet you never had a birthday dinner as good as this one,” Mac challenged Tennessee. To Grace, he added, “He told us you don’t like to cook.”

  She laughed. “I like to cook. Just seems tedious when it’s only the two of us, and most of the time, it’s only me.”

  “Back home—” Cole darted a glance at his mom. “Back in Marietta, if Mom was too tired, we’d get KFC. But she told us not to tell Nan because she’d think it sacrifice.”

  “Sacrilegious.” Lou and Grace spoke at the same time and then stared at one another a moment too long across the table.

  Grace dropped her eyes to her plate. “You know, y’all were really blessed to have a grandmother like Mrs. Annie. Tennessee’s grandmother is not nearly as …”

  “Easygoing,” Tennessee supplied.

  “Exactly.”

  “Why?” How Cole managed to speak around that bite Grace didn’t know.

  “Well, for starters, at Mrs. Charlotte Ravenel Cooper Watson’s you’d be dismissed from the table for talking with your mouth full.” Lou leveled a look at her son.

/>   “You know, I think it’s high time you took me to meet this infamous grandmother of yours.” Cora Anne tipped her glass at Tennessee. “Before I get too scared.”

  “Aw, she’s not that bad. Just stiff.”

  “Charlotte is simply old Charleston society at its prime. She doesn’t embrace change very well.” Grace patted her son’s arm. “But she’s definitely developed a fondness for this one, so I’m sure she’ll extend that to you, especially given the family history.” At least, she hoped Charlotte would extend to Cora Anne the acceptance she’d always kept from Grace.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.” Lou’s tone hardened, and David laid his hand over hers. She pulled away, lifting her tea glass with a sniff. Grace frowned. Charlotte hadn’t cared for Louisa either?

  “What history?” Cora Anne furrowed her brow and looked between the adults. Tennessee shook his head.

  Lou’s face tightened, and Grace sighed. They might as well know. It wasn’t a secret. “Charlotte and Annie were best friends but Annie’s first engagement was to Charlotte’s brother—”

  “And she broke it to marry my grandfather.” Cora Anne sat back. “She told Hannah and me a story once, about her and Granddaddy’s first kiss and how she couldn’t share it with her best friend.”

  “That would have been Charlotte, yes. And the woman’s blood must really run blue, because she’s cold and unyielding as ice.” Lou’s statement struck Grace as ironic, and based on the way David coughed, she probably wasn’t the only one.

  “Well, maybe,” and she aimed her words at her son and the girl he loved. This might be the triplets’ birthday, but Cora Anne and Tennessee were the reason they could all come together. “It’s time for a thaw.”

  Chapter 11

  As the service at the historic Presbyterian Church began, Lou and the boys slipped into the pew that would always be her parents’. Across the aisle, Grace caught her eye. Last night, when the dishes had piled in the sink and the boys challenged Cora Anne and Tennessee to Monopoly, Grace had apologized for mentioning Charlotte.

  Lou shook her head over the running water and pretended it didn’t matter. But it did. Even as she’d encouraged her daughter to seize her own happiness, she’d pushed away the thought she would be back in Charlotte Watson’s jurisdiction.

  The January service was sparse, as were most things on the island this time of year, but Lou saw Liam Whiting cross the lot after it was over. Probably spending the weekend at his cabin on the creek.

  At home, the boys dove into leftovers, but she went upstairs to the writing desk in her bedroom. The walls were stacked with boxes. Clothes and books she had nowhere to put until she came to terms with removing some of her parents’ goods. The desk, however, was impeccably organized. She had no trouble finding the course catalog Liam had given her, right beneath her doctorate application for Clemson University.

  The environmental science classes intrigued. Reading these course descriptions was like hearing her daddy talk about their creek and land, how he hoped it would be sustainable for generations. But she didn’t need another master’s degree. She already had one and intended to build upon it for her new career. Putting the catalog aside, she looked at her application.

  “Hey, Mom.” J.D. stood in the doorway. “Can we finish the cake, too?”

  “If you spend the next three hours outside burning it off.” Lou started a list. Clemson would require letters of recommendation, and her best bets were those who’d worked chemistry labs with her during her teaching career.

  “Are you mad?”

  She raised her head and took in that boy-turning-man she was trying to raise to be … who? Her father? His father? Himself?

  “Why would I be mad?”

  “Cole says all that stuff about Tennessee’s grandma, the mean one, that she didn’t like you or Nan and something about how you and Tennessee’s dad dated, like, a million years ago—”

  Now she laughed. A deep chuckle that came from her belly. Not for the first time, she thanked the Lord for giving her these boys who kept her life from any measure of seriousness.

  “It’s all water flowing out of the creek now.” She pulled out one of her daddy’s old sayings as she crossed to him and ruffled his hair. He ducked away, of course. Thirteen was too old for that affection. “But it does make me sad to remember.”

  He wrinkled his brow like he couldn’t understand, and Lou figured that was true. After all, in looking at him, with her mother’s blue eyes and David’s sunny smile, how could she be sad about a history that never needed to play out?

  ~~~

  The phone rang twice before he answered. Lou almost hung up, sure he was out. David always made friends more easily than she—and he enjoyed parties and gatherings and impromptu pick-up games. They’d argued more than once about his open-door policy versus her desire for planning ahead.

  “Hello?” Weariness tinged his voice.

  Lou bit her lip. “Hey, sorry. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “No, not at all.” His old inflection—which he was good at faking—came back. “I’ve just been grading these essays. High school diatribes on the causes of World War I will put any old man to sleep.”

  He used to read her those essays aloud, punctuated by funny voices and exaggerated mispronunciations of his students’ weak spelling. But only in jest, and then he would turn serious and find the one strong point he could praise. David, always seeing the good.

  “Lou, you okay?”

  She blew at a strand of hair that always stuck to her cheek these days. “Yes, I’m fine. I called to say—” Now her throat went dry as Sea Island cotton. This shouldn’t be so hard. She swallowed. “Thank you.”

  “Well, you’re welcome, though I’m not sure for what.”

  “Thank you for helping me yesterday.” Now she could exhale again.

  “Thanks for letting me … I enjoyed it.” She heard wistfulness—and the once before haunting them both.

  “Guess I owe you a favor now.” Keep it business. The raising of kids together. That’s what they still had.

  “Well, I can think of a few things.”

  “Really?” He hadn’t asked her for anything, except the shared custody, since the day she’d told him to please leave. She’d really said please. Only later did that strike her as ironic.

  “Sure. For instance, I’ve been thinking about lasagna since New Year’s and Stouffers just doesn’t taste the same.”

  “Oh …” She twisted the phone cord around her wrist and settled against the down pillows on her bed. “I could make you some. I’ve got leftover sauce from J.D.’s spaghetti.”

  “But then I’d be dependent on you anytime the craving strikes.”

  Her stomach quivered. A crazy idea, of course. They hadn’t depended on one another in years.

  “Anyway,” David continued. “What about you teach me the trick? Think I can finally learn to cook?”

  Yesterday while helping, he’d found an excuse to touch her, a hand at her back or lingering on her shoulder. He’d never been that interested in cooking before. “I have been told I’m a pretty good teacher.”

  “True, and I don’t think we should waste that sauce. Want me to swing by tomorrow after school? I can bring the boys, so you don’t have to make the trip.”

  There and back and there and back again—her life had become a taxi service with the boys in school and no other concrete commitments. David’s offer was welcome. She might consider his original suggestion they always go and come with him. Would free her up to work on the house—and her applications.

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.” Maybe they could make this work, though Clemson—with its three-hour commute—would make her the weekend parent, a role he’d always played.

  “All you ever have to do is ask, Lou. See how well it’s worked for me?”

  Except … her hand trailed over the paperwork spread across the bed. One time she had asked … and he’d said no.

  Chapter 12

&nbs
p; Edisto Island, April 1976

  She brought David home over spring break.

  “Guess that fling with Patrick Watson really is just water gone to the sea,” her daddy said, as they sat outside one morning. “Heard he’s working construction over at the new Fairfield Resort.”

  Lou concentrated on a knot in the shrimp net she wanted to untangle. David had never caught shrimp before. “That’s good for him. Hope he’s well.”

  “Funny.” Her father took the net from her and in one swift move freed the knots. “He always tells me the same for you.”

  “Did you enjoy talking to David last night?”

  Daddy had taken him out on the porch and kept him there until the shadows were long across the pastures. Mama made her stay in the kitchen and help Jimmy with his math homework. But she’d heard them laugh a time or two, and David hadn’t seemed any worse for wear.

  “I reckon I like him all right.” Daddy handed the net back. “Boy doesn’t know his way around a farm or a tidal creek, though.”

  “Everyone doesn’t have to.”

  He shrugged. “No, so long as he knows how to take care of you, don’t guess it matters.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I can take care of myself, Daddy.”

  “You keep believing that, baby girl. But one of these days, you’ll find out it’s not true.”

  Her father’s ideas were as outdated as these shrimp nets. Lou stood on the steps and dusted dried mud off her jeans. “I’ll teach him to shrimp at least. So when we come here you’ll have something to do with him besides play chess.”

  Daddy kicked back in the rocker. “He beat me.”

  Lou grinned. “I know.”

  “Promise me something, baby girl.” He tipped forward again, tone serious. Lou sat back down. She knew this face. “If things don’t work out, you’ll come home.”

  “Daddy …”

  “You’ll come home and give my ideas a try, all right? That’s all I’m asking. You’ll know when it’s time.”