“Passionate and thoughtful.” He let the corner of his mouth quirk into a half-smile when she dropped her head to his chest, actually laughing.
“I think you mean stubborn and controlling.” She lifted her chin, the brief moment of mirth dying with the intensity of her gaze.
Covering her hands with his, he nodded. “I know you can be all those things, Lou. But so can I, and here’s the truth—if I’m going to have a family then I want the one I’ve already made. We both made mistakes, and I think…” He cast his eyes away from hers and toward that ocean churning with the rising tide. “We’re finally in a place we can admit them to each other.”
She tugged on her bottom lip. “You’ve barely been here three months. We’re not ready.”
“I am.”
Her eyes, deep blue wells of misting anguish, probed his. “I’m not sure I know how to love like that anymore, David. If we try and it doesn’t work—”
“It will work.” He snapped out the words, as if saying them with finality made them true.
She loosed her hands, stepped back. “You said that the first time we went to counseling. And every other time when we tried.”
Because he never gave up. Quitting had never been in his vocabulary, until he met Lou, who when things became too much to handle, retreated into her shell. Skittering away from reality. He’d pushed her out so many times.
With a sigh, she seemed to fold in on herself. “You’re always so sure. You can’t understand why I need time to think things over. To maybe try something new.”
Or someone new. He heard the unspoken message. “Liam Whiting.”
“I don’t know.” Shoving her hands in her pockets, she turned away. “But I think I owe it to myself—and to you—to find out before I make another commitment that leaves me wondering.”
And there they were. Full circle. Right back at Edisto where it all began and all fell apart. Maybe he was being too romantic believing this was the place that would put them back together.
He cut his eyes away from her, over the dunes, focusing on a row of houses Patrick Watson had helped build.
Lou ducked her head against the wind and added, “Besides, I thought maybe you might be getting to know Grace.”
She said it so like a child making an excuse, that he couldn’t help the laughter bubbling up inside him. He tossed back his head, chuckling long and loud.
“What’s so funny?” She scuffed her shoes in the soft sand.
“You are.” He laced his fingers behind his head. “You realize we’re about to be family with Grace, so given our current history, I can’t think of anything that would seem much more incestuous.”
“Please. I’ve seen you watching her.” Her eyes narrowed, and a tremor crept into her words.
David rocked back on his heels, shoving his hands into his pockets, willing his smile not to betray what he saw.
Jealousy he could work with.
“We’re just friends, Lou. But if you’re going to spend all your extra time with Dr. Whiting, I guess I could spend some of mine with our daughter’s widowed mother-in-law.”
“I didn’t say I’d be spending all my time with Liam.”
“Good. Because we’re supposed to be finding a dog for our kids. And you’re supposed to be teaching me to cook.”
He reached for her, and when she leaned away, he didn’t press. But to his surprise, she took his hand as they turned to walk back.
“When did you become so patient?”
He chuckled again, softer this time, and pecked her cheek gently, lingering only a fraction longer than friends did. “When I married you.”
Chapter 35
Edisto Beach, July 1988
“He’s awfully sweet with her.”
Grace looked from Louisa Halloway, to their children, at the edge of Edisto’s island point. Tennessee knelt in the surf with Cora Anne, showing her how to scoop and blow the bubbles. Their family had been out enjoying the sunset when Patrick spotted Lou and David on the deck of Still Waters and waved.
Grace would have walked on by.
“He’s kind,” she told this other woman, who rarely gave her the time of day when their families were together. Grace suspected—and Annie confirmed—Lou’s jealousy. But it wasn’t for Patrick, as some might suspect. Lou loved her husband. Grace could see it in the way she leaned into him as they strolled, her shoulders always angled toward his.
Lou resented Grace’s place with her mother. Annie had taught her to cook, to set a table with a five-place setting, to sew Tennessee’s Halloween costume of a Ninja Turtle. Grace needed Annie’s guidance.
Though she wanted a friend.
Like Lou. A woman her own age walking the everyday burden and blessing of motherhood and marriage.
“How old is Tennessee now?” David asked Pat. The two men stood in water up to their ankles, arms crossed. Pat, still in his work clothes, pants cuffed to his knees. David in a polo shirt and khaki shorts. The differences obvious.
The similarities startling.
“He’s ten,” Patrick answered. “Playing quarterback on his rec football team this year.”
Just like that, they were off. Lost in conversation of college team predictions and best plays. Lou walked a few yards further down the beach. Grace followed.
“Do you worry he’ll get hurt?”
She swung her head between Lou and her husband. “Patrick?”
“No, Tennessee. He’s your only one and Mama told me—” Lou bit her lip. “You can’t have any more.”
That truth she accepted long ago. Together Tennessee and Patrick filled her so completely, only a bittersweet ache was left. “I could worry about a lot of things, but I choose not to.”
Lou clasped her arms across her chest. “David wants us to have another baby.”
Grace caught the unspoken current. “But you don’t want to.”
“Do you think I’m selfish?” Lou’s hair blew around her face, a dark cloud of mystery and aloofness. Perhaps behind it lay the real woman, the one who feared and ran.
Her question carried so many layers, Grace struggled to form a response. She prayed, daily, for a friend.
But maybe, she could start by being one.
“We’re all selfish. At least a little.” She offered a bit of her own truth. “I won’t let my own mother come visit. She’s not healthy, and I won’t let her hurt him like she did me.”
“That’s not selfish.”
“Every time y’all are here, my son asks me why he doesn’t have grandparents.”
“Your mother is ill. The Watsons are just—”
“Selfish.” Grace supplied. “Patrick included. I’ve begged him to heal the past.”
They paused at a wooden bench, and Lou sat, digging her toes into the soft sand. The lazy orange sun dipped lower on the horizon, backlighting her with its glow. “I don’t think I can handle any more. My friends with more children … they don’t understand.”
But Grace did. She tired so often of mothers comparing who had the harder life especially since they all assumed hers had to be the simplest.
“I’ve gone back to school for my specialist. The curriculum director asked me to chair the science department for the county. But I’m the only one who cooks and cleans, who takes her to the library and piano lessons.” Lou hung her head. “David’s a good father, but he’s so busy already. If he gets the varsity head coach position next year—” her shoulder lifted—“he’ll be gone even more. And she’s five. Kindergarten, finally.”
Grace laughed. “Kindergarten was my savior. I thought he’d break all the furniture we owned before we ever made it.” She sobered. “Lou, you’re one of the smartest women I know. If you and David decide to have another baby, you’ll be able to handle it.” She glanced back at their children, who now held hands, jumping the waves. “And if not, at least for the summer, ours have each other.”
Chapter 36
Only a week after the disastrous brunch in Charleston, Tennesse
e and Cora Anne invited everyone to lunch at The Hideaway.
Grace preferred to let Charlotte simmer a few more days, but she knew her son wanted his grandmother’s blessing, and she loved him for it. His father may have been stubbornly prideful, but Tennessee shed those attributes the way he sanded drywall. Smoothing out the rough spots.
If Grace wanted to work through her own issues with her mother-in-law, a little smoothing would do her good as well.
However, as she’d told Lou, they needed reinforcements—in the form of Hannah and Carolina.
Lou agreed. “Difficult family weddings are my sister’s specialty.”
Charlotte brought a demeanor cool as a window unit in a beachfront house in July. Frozen over, but easily thawed when served strawberry pie and vanilla ice cream which Tennessee had specially requested. He knew his grandmother better than she thought.
After dessert, Charlotte dabbed her lips with the corner of her napkin. “Carolina, your business has quite a good reputation. If you’re willing to work with my standards, I’m willing to compromise with these young people.”
Carolina took a small notebook from her purse. “Hannah and I discussed the event. Evening garden party, string quartet, formal place settings … seems there was a hang-up on the dinner?” She and her daughter exchanged looks.
Hannah sat straighter. “We propose a buffet because Cora Anne and Tennessee want the evening to be less formal. However, the tables will be assigned numbers and we’ll orchestrate the serving so no one is waiting.”
Charlotte nodded. “As long as my guests don’t feel they’ve come to one of those places where you stand in line to order, that’ll be fine.”
Grace stifled a smile. This woman had never stepped foot in a fast food restaurant in her life.
“Now, as for the dessert …” Carolina consulted her notes again.
“Grace is an excellent baker.” Lou smiled at her across the table and Grace wondered what, exactly, Ben had put in the strawberry pie. “Perhaps, though I know it would be a lot of work, she could make some of the desserts and we offer a variety, as you suggested, Charlotte.”
“I appreciate that, Lou, but I’m sure Carolina can recommend someone with more expertise.” She darted a glance at her mother-in-law, who tapped a manicured nail against her chin.
“The children have repeatedly mentioned wanting all the wedding events to suit their character.” Charlotte nodded. “If you would like to contribute, Grace, this is certainly the chance. At the wedding, of course, we will only have the best.”
Grace bit her cheek. She couldn’t decide if she had been praised—or insulted.
“Make that pound cake, like you brought over on Saturday,” David suggested as he eased his arm along the back of Lou’s chair, not quite touching her shoulder. “It was good.”
Now Grace rolled her eyes. “It was bribery. Pound cake is simple.”
“Sometimes—” Charlotte folded her hands, closing the conversation—“simple is best.”
After lunch, Tennessee took Charlotte on a tour of his recent projects. Grace, needing to be useful, stayed behind to help roll flatware into linen napkins.
Lou joined her. “What was the bribery for?” She asked the question as if she didn’t care about the answer, but Grace saw how the corners of Lou’s mouth pinched.
“I need David to watch Hank while Tennessee and I go visit my mother next week.”
Lou stopped rolling. “She’s still alive?”
Grace shrugged. “Her mind is gone. But Tennessee wants to tell her about Cora Anne.” Far as she was concerned, the early-onset Alzheimer’s had taken her mother long ago. Her father, too. When he’d left, she’d carried on as best a fifteen-year-old could.
“I guess David is taking him?”
The subject change released the constriction in Grace’s chest. “He seemed a little worried because Hank is so big and the townhouse is so small, but I figured, he can’t be worse than the triplets, right?”
Lou arched a brow. “I don’t know about that.” Rolling another set, she added, “But maybe he could stay at the farm instead. It’s my weekend with the boys.”
Ben must have spiked the pie. Lou accommodating her? “Up to you and David, but I’m sure he’d prefer the yard.”
“All settled then.” Lou tossed the last napkin into a basket. “I’ll tell David. No worries. I can handle it.”
Lou needed to prove something, no doubt. Grace lifted the full basket and transferred it to the hostess station.
She knew a thing or two herself about that.
Chapter 37
In her small bedroom, Lou lifted her wedding band from the bottom of her jewelry box. She’d meant to give a lifetime to David. She’d believed they wanted the same thing.
Until the time came they didn’t.
She rubbed her thumb across the ring’s worn gold. It slipped easily over her knuckle. She twisted it there, feeling its weight, flexing her hand to see if the heaviness of their last tumultuous decade together still bound itself into that simple gold band.
“Mama?” Cora Anne’s voice, breathless, floated up that stairs. “You up there?”
Lou twisted the ring. “I am.”
Her daughter, cheeks flushed with wind and youth, appeared in the doorway, arms laden with plastic dress bags, hangers clinking. “Do you know the boys want to take Hank out on the boat?”
She turned her back, tugging the ring. It wouldn’t move past her joint. But it had gone on so easily. “It’s low tide, they won’t get far.”
“They’re already covered in mud.”
“What the water hose is for.” There. The ring popped off and she bobbled it for a moment before dropping it back in the box.
“What are you doing?”
“Just straightening up.” She turned, offered an innocent smile, hoping her daughter wouldn’t probe.
Cora Anne merely eyed her, one brow raised, another question curling her lip. “You and Daddy seem to be getting along pretty well lately.”
“Mature adults often do.” Lou tossed a hand toward the menagerie in Cora Anne’s arms. “What’s all this?”
“Well …” Her daughter shrugged. “You’re not going to like it, but please remember, life is sometimes about compromise.”
An endearment Cora Anne had gotten from her father. But compromise often meant one person got what they wanted and the other learned to muddle through. Lou crossed her arms.
Cora Anne heaved the pile onto Lou’s neatly made bed. The rickety frame wobbled under the weight of Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus. “Charlotte sent over these dresses for us to try for the party and said if we don’t like any of them, she’ll take us downtown to her favorite boutique.”
Dread curled in Lou’s stomach. “Did you pick something?”
“No, I was waiting for you.”
Never had Cora Anne waited on her before she made a decision. Lou seized her tight. “I love you.”
Her daughter looped her arms around Lou’s waist, hanging on. “I love you too.”
When she’d been a child, so many times on the sidelines as David coached, her arms would wrap Lou this same way. She’d haul her up, so Cora Anne could get a better view of her father. Sometimes, the only view she’d have all week.
Lou had been freer with love you then. She squeezed one more time. She should be again.
Laughing, Cora Anne released her. “But you still have to wear a formal dress to the party.”
“No crinoline.”
“Really?” Cora Anne plucked a dress from the pile and swirled its skirt. “I think it’s kind of fun.”
“You sure didn’t when I sent you to Cotillion.”
Her daughter pulled the dress from its protective covering and swayed with it in front of the full-length mirror. “I appreciate nice things a little more now.”
“Well, I can appreciate finery without looking like a cotton ball on a toothpick.”
“Oh, Mama ...” They laughed together, and even Lou had t
o admit as she zipped her daughter into a dress the color of her summer ocean eyes, sometimes crinolines were worth the trouble.
“You look like your grandmother.” She rested her hands on Cora Anne’s bare shoulders. Her mother had preened Lou in this very room, zipping her into a dress of sea foam green with tiny tucks and flounces. Readying for a garden party in Charleston. Another life.
“Really?” Cor twirled a bit, ducking her chin over her shoulder, making faces in the mirror. “It’s so girly.”
“But perfect.”
“Let’s see what she sent for you.”
They pawed through the bags, and Lou tried on three dresses of appropriate pastels and mother-of-the-bride tea length.
Cora Anne sighed. “I mean, they’re all fine, but they’re nothing special.” Her eyes suddenly lit up. “I know.” She practically skipped from the room, returning with a ball gown draped over her arm. “Try this.”
“This was Mama’s.” Lou took the dress that smelled of mothballs and remembered her mother lifting the skirt as she stepped lightly down the stairs. Her father had whistled, and Carolina and she had giggled while Jimmy made gagging noises. “I remember her wearing it but not where they were going.”
“Who cares? I know she looked beautiful, and so will you.”
Lou stepped into the dress, sure it wouldn’t fit, but it slid over her hips and settled on her shoulders, zipping easily. Behind her, Cora Anne tied the satin waistband into a jaunty bow. The bell skirt, a soft luminous grey, swung just above the floor. The studded bodice shimmered and changed colors in the light, hues like a peacock opening its plume.
Decades old, but still made for her.
“Oh, Mama … definitely this one.” Cora Anne breathed the words with reverence. Lou pushed her hair behind her ears with the wondering thought of what David might think.
Or Liam. Better to think about Liam whom she’d already invited. Less baggage on a night destined to already be overrun with memories.
“You need a bracelet. Something simple.”
Cora Anne opened Lou’s jewelry box. Her fingers stilled. Lou moved her gaze back to the mirror, back to the woman who looked back at her, almost young again.
The Bridge Between Page 14
