The Time Between

by Karen White

  I frowned. “Yes, you did. And I told you not to bother. I do not need anybody else in this house making noise. I have Mrs. Adler and my nurses, and the way they poke and prod at me with all of those needles, I am surprised I do not look like Swiss cheese. If I have any more ‘help’ like that, I will be dead in a month.”

  Finn winced almost imperceptibly, and I knew we were both remembering that day when he had found me on the floor by Bernadett’s bed, courting death like an old lover. “I am fine,” I added more gently.

  “But I’m not,” he said. “I can’t be with you all the time, and I think you might get lonely here by yourself with just nursing care. Eleanor can read to you, or talk, or discuss books or movies. And when you’re feeling up to it, she can take you to church or out to see friends.”

  I stilled, wondering how he could think that I could return to my old life, as if all that had happened had been a made-up story like the old movies Bernadett and I would sometimes watch. And then I remembered. He doesn’t know. My secret was mine alone now, like a piece of ripe fruit perfect on the outside, its rotten core visible only after one had bitten into it.

  I turned my face away, afraid that he could read my thoughts.

  “She plays the piano, Aunt Helena. As well as Aunt Bernadett, I think. When you’re feeling better, you can ask her to play for you.”

  The girl tensed, and I turned to study her again, her coltish body seeming to cleave to the shadows. She had one of those delicate, lovely faces that one sometimes overlooked in the presence of blatant beauty, a tulip in a garden of red roses. And it was almost painfully clear that she had no idea of her own beauty.

  “She does not look like a musician,” I said, watching the girl closely.

  Her chin rose slowly, her fine eyes taking their measure of me. “Neither do you.”

  Finn looked at her in surprise, while I forced my mouth to remain in a frown. “Who is your favorite composer?”

  Keeping her eyes on mine, she said, “We can talk about that once you’ve eaten something. I believe Nurse Kester said she’d left your lunch in the fridge. Would you like me to get it?”

  I shook my head. “No, let Finn do it. You may stay.”

  Finn glanced at the girl and she nodded. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  We watched him leave, and then I closed my eyes. “I do not want you here. It would be better if you told Finn that you do not want this job anymore. Tell him I am too much trouble, too feisty for you. That I am not worth your time.”

  She was so quiet, I wondered if she had left. But then she spoke. “I can’t do that. I’m sorry.”

  I do not know what made me angrier—her refusal or her apology. How could she be sorry? I was the one who was sorry—sorry that I had not been allowed to die with Bernadett and silence the sorrowful songs that haunted me still. My voice trembled. “Have you ever known grieving that ends only when your own heart stops beating?”

  I wanted to look away, my own pain mirrored in her darkening eyes. “Yes,” she said, so quietly that I did not hear her. But I felt the word as if I had been struck, the waves of pain slow and undulating. Ah. I closed my eyes in understanding, knowing now why Finn had brought her. I just had no idea how to tell him that he was wrong, that a broken heart stayed broken even in the company of another.

  “I’ll be back on Saturday,” she said, her chin lifting slightly before she turned and headed toward the door. She paused on the threshold, then spoke without turning around. “My favorite composer was Chopin, but his music reminds me too much of my father.” She stepped aside to allow Finn and Nurse Kester to enter with a food tray. Facing Finn, she said, “I’ll meet you in the foyer when you’re ready to leave.”

  We watched her go, listening to her unhurried tread on the wood floors of the hallway, and I imagined Bernadett’s ghost nearby, applauding.

  Eleanor

  As a child growing up on Edisto, I spent as much time with Lucy’s family as with my own, loving how they kept a spot open for me at their Sunday supper table, and grasped my hands during the blessing as if my pale skin wasn’t any different from their own.

  It was to their house I’d run after my father’s boat was found, where I’d gone to be gathered tightly into the large bosom of Dah Georgie, Lucy’s grandmother. I had stayed with them until my mother came to get me, saying she needed help planning the funeral. I had never gone back to their small house near Store Creek, wanting my memories of it to fade so it wouldn’t hurt so much.

  But I could still hear their voices. The Gullah language, a mixture of West African dialects and English, had always seemed like music, a symphony of words, the lilting cadences and rounded vowels the notes. Sometimes if I pressed her really hard, Lucy would speak in Gullah, but only if we were alone where nobody else could hear. I once asked her why she was so reluctant, and she told me it was because Gullah is the language you cry in.

  I remembered that as Finn and I drove away from Luna Point, with its dark rooms and the lonely old woman. Her accent wasn’t as strong as it had once been, as if the ocean’s waves had weathered the harsh consonants like a battered shore. But I wondered if she thought in Hungarian, and if it was the language she still cried in.

  “So, what do you think?” Finn asked, his eyes nearly translucent in the glare from the sun.

  “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” I kept my eyes focused on the road ahead, feeling his steady gray gaze on me.

  “I still want to hire you, if that’s what you’re asking. I just want to make sure you’re still interested. I know Aunt Helena didn’t make the best first impression.”

  I nodded, making the turn onto Highway 174, passing the landmarks of my childhood, prominent on the landscape like bookmarks in my memory. “I have a sister, too. And I understand her pain.” I paused, remembering something Helena had said. “But I think there’s something more than grieving for her sister. Like she doesn’t want to be here anymore. Do you know what I mean?”

  Without looking at me, he said, “Yes.”

  I waited for him to say more, but we rode in silence, the air heavy with the scent of salt water and marsh. “Show me your house,” he said suddenly. “Where you used to live as a girl.”

  I braked in surprise, throwing us both forward. Pressing my foot on the accelerator again, I asked, “Why?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Never mind.” He rubbed his hand over his jaw, as if suddenly uncertain, and I was once again struck by how different he was here than at the office. There, dressed in dark suits and a serious demeanor, he was confident and unapproachable. Except now I’d seen his eyes when he spoke of his daughter and had seen his boyhood room with the model rockets and paper airplanes. I was beginning to learn that there was much more to Finn Beaufain than the person he usually allowed most people to see.

  “I’ll show you. It’s not there anymore—it got hit by lightning in the late nineties and burned to the ground. It was on Russell Creek, near the Brick House ruins. We rented the house from the family that still owns the ruins. I used to think it was the most wonderful place in the world and I’d never see anything more beautiful.” I was silent for a moment, thinking about the years following my father’s death, and of the house in North Charleston that was filled with silent accusations and stale penance and where music never played. “I still do,” I added, surprised I’d spoken aloud.

  We drove in silence down Highway 174 to Brick House Road. Just before the gates with the NO TRESPASSING sign, I turned left on a dirt road. We traveled a short distance until I saw Russell Creek and stopped the car, letting the engine idle. “Have you ever been here before?” I asked, nodding toward the distant skeleton of the old mansion, its missing roof and windows like the mouths of baby birds in a nest waiting to be fed.

  “A few times,” he said, and then was silent for a while, so I thought he was done speaking on the subject. He unbuckled hi
s seat belt, and then, staring straight ahead, he said, “I brought my ex-wife to Edisto right after we were engaged, to meet my aunts. I hadn’t been back since I’d finished high school, and I’d never been allowed to explore the island, so I thought it would be fun to discover it with Harper. It’s funny, really; I’d only ever known such a small corner of Edisto, but I’d loved it. It’s what I always thought of as home when I was away at school.” He paused and looked at me. “I wanted her to love it, too.”

  “And did she?”

  His mouth twisted. “No.” He shrugged. “She’s from Boston, so I probably shouldn’t have brought her in the summer. She couldn’t stand the heat or the bugs or the smell of the marsh. Or how casual and shabby everything is allowed to get here. We were supposed to stay a week and we ended up leaving after two nights.”

  I felt personally affronted at her dismissal of my beloved island, knowing where the flaw lay. A distant memory of my father and me brushed through me, and I turned to Finn. “Did you take her to see the sunset? When my father was home and the weather fine, we would watch it together. I don’t think there’s anything else on earth more beautiful than an Edisto sunset.”

  “I did. Aunt Bernadett gave us one of her sweetgrass baskets with a bottle of wine and two glasses and sent us out to go watch. But the mosquitoes wouldn’t leave Harper alone and we were back inside before the sun had even begun its descent.”

  The image of his ex-wife being bullied by mosquitoes made me want to laugh, and I had to bite my lip and look away.

  “Are you laughing?”

  I shook my head, although by now I couldn’t hold it in, and an unladylike snort came out of my mouth. I looked up at him, mortified. But he was smiling and I felt myself relaxing again.

  “It was a good bottle of wine, even though I ended up drinking it by myself.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Me, too.” He opened his car door and stood while I turned off the ignition.

  The sun was directly overhead, the heat pricking my skin. But a breeze stirred the tall grasses like the breath from a ghost, and I felt light-headed for a moment, remembering my father in this place. With the house gone, it was almost as if he’d never existed at all.

  We walked toward the creek, the ruins of the old house behind us. The chorus of insects rose and whirred, the staccato sound of the cicadas keeping tempo for the rest of the band. For a long time after moving from the island, I’d had a hard time going to sleep with the silence, missing the night music of the marsh.

  “It’s beautiful here,” he said, turning his face into the breeze. “I wonder sometimes how different things would be now if I’d grown up here instead of in Charleston.” His hair at his temples and at the back of his neck had darkened with sweat, and again I had to work hard to reconcile this man with the cool and crisp Mr. Beaufain. It was as if two souls lived within his skin, separate but not. But maybe everybody was like that, all of us living the lives we had to while dreaming of the lives we wanted.

  “What a great spot for watching the stars at night.”

  I cupped my hand over my forehead to shade my eyes as I looked up at him. “And at your aunt’s house, too, I would guess.”

  He nodded. “I used to have a telescope in my bedroom at their house, but I brought it with me to college. Then things got in the way and I didn’t have time anymore to study the sky. I don’t really remember what happened to it.”

  I wanted to be an astronaut.

  His words came back to me and I found I couldn’t look at him, afraid that I might see the disappointment in his face, afraid I’d see my own reflection.

  A blue heron flew overhead, its wings seeming to mock us humans, with our clumsy feet, who had to rely on planes to make us airborne. I wondered if watching the shorebirds was what had once made a little boy stare up at the sky and dream of reaching the moon.

  “Why did you want to come here?” I asked.

  His eyes were sharp and clear as he assessed me, and I had the feeling that he’d been waiting for my question. “Aunt Bernadett once brought me here—we snuck out while Aunt Helena was at one of her meetings for the historical preservation society. She brought me here because she wanted me to see the ruins. And because the last time she’d been there, she’d heard something that she’d wanted to share with me.”

  He paused. “We were standing right about here when I heard piano music coming from the house that used to stand there.” He indicated the empty space where my family home had been. “It was a cool evening and the windows were open. We stayed here for about an hour, listening to the music and staring up at the sky as the stars appeared one by one. It’s one of the only childhood memories I have where I remember being completely happy.”

  My throat felt tight, like I’d swallowed a ball of cotton. “And you wanted to know if it could have been me playing that night.”

  His BlackBerry buzzed and he pulled it from his pocket to answer and have a brief conversation before ending the call. Without looking at me, he said, “We’ve got to go. I have an issue at work that can’t wait until Monday.”

  He began walking toward the car, his long strides making it hard for me to catch up. “Did you ever come back? Before that time with Harper.”

  “A couple of times. It was hard to get away without Aunt Helena noticing. But I never heard the piano again.”

  I felt the odd compulsion to apologize to him for not being there to play when he needed to hear me. Instead I reached into my purse and pulled out the car keys. “Would you like to drive?”

  He looked almost relieved, and I recalled how his hands had clutched at the armrest on the way over. He took the keys and smiled gratefully. “Thank you.”

  He held the passenger door open for me and I slid in. We rode in silence for most of the way home as I tried to remember a night when I’d felt the presence of somebody outside my window, and thought of a little boy staring up at the night sky and dreaming of one day touching the stars.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lucy slid her Buick into a spot at the curb on Gibbes Street in front of Finn’s house, then looked at me with raised eyebrows. “You sure you don’t want me to come in with you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Lucy. Everything about this new position is completely legit—I’ve even met the elderly great-aunt. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  She stuck out her chin. “Um-hmm. Well, when he starts asking you to call him by his first name, you just let me know. ’Cause that’s when you really need to start worrying.”

  I concentrated on gathering my purse from the floor so she couldn’t see my face. “Give me a call if you want me to drive you to work for a change. I’ll have the Volvo for at least the rest of summer—until the nanny gets back.”

  Lucy looked with disdain at the white Volvo SUV with the Ashley Hall sticker on the window. She snorted. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that car. I prefer a vehicle with a lot more personality.”

  I leaned into the open door. “It’s got air-conditioning.”

  She looked at me without blinking. “I’ll let you know.”

  I shut the door and waved as she pulled away. “See you at work tomorrow. If not, you can call the police.”

  She was still shaking her head as she drove out of sight, the sound from the broken muffler unfamiliar in this neighborhood.

  I stood outside the black painted wrought-iron gate, the scent of something sweet and green heavy in the air. As with most all Charleston homes south of Broad Street, the front and side gardens were filled with flowers, a busy array of colors and scents that always found ways to surprise the senses. They made no sound, yet I’d always thought that if I hadn’t been a musician, I would have been a gardener. But I’d had no desire to be either for a very long time.

  I pushed open the gate and stood on the brick-paved walk that led up to the raised house, a split staircas
e rising to the main entrance on the first floor. I had never been interested in studying or knowing much about architecture, but from staring up at the house from the walk, I could tell it was very big and very old. It faced the street, and although it didn’t have a piazza, there was a small half-circle porch at the front door held up by two columns. The door was painted black, with a leaded glass transom over it, and a brass carriage light hung by a chain from the ceiling.

  The house was painted yellow, the inside ceiling of the porch painted haint blue, just like Dah Georgie’s house. But that’s where the resemblance ended. This house was pristine, perfect from the fresh paint to the orderly flowers lined up in the garden like marching soldiers in their bright finery. It was a beautiful house, but it didn’t feel like a home. I couldn’t imagine large numbers of family members gathered for Sunday dinners any more than I could see Finn sitting with his daughter on the empty joggling board set up in the side garden.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I reached up and pushed the doorbell, then waited. And waited. I looked at my watch, making sure I had the right time. Finn had asked me to meet him at his house at five thirty. He would have driven me himself, but he’d been called away from the office. I’d been glad to meet him here, not wanting to have to explain to my coworkers why I was driving home with Mr. Beaufain.

  There were no warning footsteps, just the sound of the latch being sprung from the other side of the door, followed by it opening slowly. I looked down and saw a young girl, older than in the photo on Finn’s desk, with white-blond hair cut in a short pixie style and held back with a pale pink fabric headband. Her eyes were large and round and much too big for the tiny face that peered up at me. They were dark gray, like her father’s, and had the same steady intensity as his. But seeing those eyes in a young face was unexpected, like finding a pearl inside an oyster’s shell.