On Folly Beach

by Karen White

  Peter shook his head and looked at his feet. “Don’t, Margaret, please. You must listen to me. There’s something you need to know— something much bigger than all of us. It won’t excuse my behavior, but it might help you understand why. Please listen. I love you. You must believe me.”

  Maggie put her hands over her ears. “No more—do you hear me? I won’t listen to you any longer. What’s done is done. You’ve ruined everything, and I need to put the pieces of my family back together somehow.”

  Lulu remembered to duck behind a chair before Maggie ran through the door, slamming it hard behind her. As Lulu listened to Maggie’s bare feet run up the wooden stairs, she peered through the window again, stifling a scream when her eyes met Peter’s through the glass. He motioned for her to come outside, and she did, her heart slamming against her chest from surprise but not from fear. She’d heard his conversation with Cat and knew a lot more than he probably wanted her to, and as she’d learned from her books, it would keep her safe.

  When she reached him, he sat down and ripped off a piece of notebook paper from the small pad he always carried in his inside coat pocket, and began writing something on it. She waited a few minutes until he stopped, then watched as he rolled up the paper like a cigarette and handed it to her.

  His eyes met hers, and for a little moment, she felt sorry for him. She knew he loved Maggie as much as Maggie loved him, and Lulu began to feel as if she was seeing Jimmy Fontaine’s body in the sand again, and she wished she could go back and stop herself from looking, because there are some things that will stick with you forever, whether you want them to or not.

  She stuck out her palm and he placed the rolled-up note in her hand.

  “Margaret told me that you put notes to your friend in your bottle tree. Could you put my note in one of the bottles? It’s very important. Do you understand—very important.” He stared at her hard, making her shift her feet.

  “It’s for Maggie but she’s not ready to read it right now, or I’d ask you to give it to her. It’s important nobody else sees it, so I don’t want you hiding it in a drawer or anything. The tree is safer because everyone will assume it’s yours.”

  She nodded, which was the response he seemed to be looking for.

  “Tomorrow, let her know that it’s there, all right? Do you understand?”

  Lulu did understand, much more than he would ever know. She nodded her head again and closed her fingers into a fist around the note.

  Peter stood and ruffled her hair. “I knew I could count on you. You’re a smart girl, Lulu. Maggie’s lucky to have you.”

  He picked up his hat from where he’d dropped it on the porch floor, and then he headed back down the steps. He turned around when he reached the bottom. “It’s very important, all right? No one must read it but Margaret.”

  “I understand,” Lulu said.

  She waited until he’d driven away before she quietly let herself into the house and crept back into the hiding place between the window and the chair. Without thinking too hard about it, she unrolled the note and began to read.

  My darling Margaret,

  I need to talk to you, to explain everything. What I’ve done is despicable. But I need to tell you why—not to justify anything, but to keep you safe. Just give me this one last chance—that’s all I ask. I want to take you far away from here, someplace you and I can start anew and leave this all behind us.

  I promise that if you walk away after I’ve told you everything, I will never bother you again. And if you don’t come at all, then I’ll have my answer. I’ll do what you ask, and marry Cat and be a father to the child, and I’ll find a way to protect you from afar. But if you ever loved me as I still love you, you’ll come. Meet me Wednesday night at our special place near the lighthouse at eleven o’clock. I’ll be waiting.

  Lulu read the note twice before rolling it up the way Peter had done. She stood, feeling like she was paralyzed, listening to the ticking of the clock on the kitchen wall. She couldn’t let Maggie leave. She and Lulu belonged on Folly Beach. They always had and always would. And she definitely couldn’t let Maggie go with Peter. Something inside of Maggie would die if she learned the truth about him, and just thinking that made Lulu feel stronger than she’d ever thought she could be.

  Pushing back that voice in her head that always seemed to talk to her when she was doing something she knew she shouldn’t be, she crept up the stairs and into her old room. The window blackout shades were still down, and she opened them to allow the light inside.

  Then she knelt in front of her chifforobe and pulled out her treasure box, then set it on the floor and carefully opened the lid. Inside, the lace hair ribbon Peter had given her lay on top, and she felt a tiny stab of guilt at what she was about to do.

  Sticking her finger inside, she moved back her special treasures to make room for the note and laid it inside next to the sand-dollar earrings and tortoiseshell barrette. She stared at it for a long time before finally covering it with the ribbon and quickly replacing the lid on the box. Then she slid it back into the bottom of the chifforobe and left.

  She crossed the hallway and pushed open the door to the room she shared with Maggie. Her sister lay on the bed, her back to the door, but Lulu could tell by the way her shoulders shook that she wasn’t asleep. Walking forward, she stepped in sand, then saw that Maggie hadn’t wiped off her feet before climbing onto the bed. It was that one thing that convinced Lulu that she’d done the right thing. Lulu had come to understand since her mother’s death that there was only so much truth and disappointment a person could take in life, and one more secret would be too much.

  Without saying anything, Lulu slipped into the bed on her side and lay down, staring up at the ceiling and listening to her sister cry. Then she turned on her side and put her arm around Maggie just like Maggie had done for her when their mother died. She wasn’t sure how long they both lay there, but by the time Maggie sat up, the sun had shifted in the sky and neither one of them had any tears left.

  CHAPTER 18

  FOLLY BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA

  September 2009

  This time when Emmy woke, the footsteps sounded so real that for a moment she wasn’t sure she was dreaming. Throwing herself from the bed, she stumbled into the living room and looked around, half expecting to see Ben. Instead she heard the footsteps again, but they were coming up the steps outside toward the front door. In confusion, she raced to the front door and pulled it open, only to find a surprised Heath on the other side.

  “Good morning,” he said cheerfully. He wore an old gray T-shirt with cutoff sleeves and running shorts with the logo for the University of South Carolina emblazoned on the front corner. His knee was wrapped in a blue cloth brace and he had on serious running shoes. He looked at her closely as if wondering if she’d given herself the bed-head look on purpose.

  She blinked at him a few times, still not fully awake. “Why are you here?”

  His eyes flickered over Ben’s shirt. “I hope you’re not planning on wearing that to run in. It’s so long, your feet could get tangled in the hem and you’d trip and fall.”

  His words jumbled past her brain, then reversed quickly before pausing on the word “run.” “Run?”

  “Yes—didn’t my mother tell you I’d be here this morning?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, dropping her hand from the door.

  “Do you want me to wait out here while you change, or can I come in?”

  “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

  He lifted his right ankle to his right hand and began to stretch his quad. “Yep. I’ll give you five minutes before I’m coming in to get you. And don’t forget a hat and sunscreen.”

  Still too groggy to wonder why she was doing this, Emmy quickly threw on a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, slathered on sunscreen, then grabbed a water bottle from the fridge before reporting to the front door, where Heath waited patiently. Belatedly, she went back to her bedroom, grabbed the v
isor she’d recently bought, and returned to Heath, breathing heavily from the exertion. He looked down at her shoes and frowned.

  “I guess those will do for today since I’m only going to take you on a fast walk to get you started. But unless you want shin splints, you’re going to have to get something else.”

  “That’s assuming I survive the morning,” said Emmy as she walked past him onto the porch. “Remind me why I’m doing this?”

  “Because you’ve never done it before because you either never thought about it or maybe because your husband liked you pale and thin. Whatever. It’s good for you.”

  She glared up at him. “You know nothing about my husband.”

  “That’s right. But I know a little more about you, and you seem a little hesitant about doing new things or changing things up. I’m not being critical or anything. I just see you all pale and weak-like, and you’ve been living on the beach for some time now, and I have a sneaking suspicion you’ve only been on the beach once, and that was with me. Am I right?”

  She stared at him for a moment longer, unable to tell him that he was wrong about her. About Ben. “Let’s just go and get this over with, okay?”

  Heath closed the door, and Emmy locked it behind them. His dog, Frank, sat patiently waiting for them, his red bandanna bright against his black fur. As they walked down the steps Emmy asked, “Why call a dog Frank? Why not Spot or Rover?”

  Heath smirked. “He’s named after my idol, Frank Lloyd Wright. I figured if my mother could name me after Heathcliff, I could name my dog after Frank.”

  They crossed East Ashley to the beach access with the clearly marked dog-leash sign, and emerged onto a nearly deserted beach at low tide. A lone beachgoer with a metal detector walked slowly at the water’s edge, his detector hovering close to the sand.

  “You mentioned before that your dad is a history buff who likes hunting for buried treasure.” She indicated the man on the beach. “Is that what your dad does?”

  Heath nodded. “Yep—but not at the beach because of his wheelchair. He likes going to battlefields and deserted plantations—that kind of thing. He’s never found anything valuable—belt buckles and old shoes mostly—but he really loves it. He’d love to take his metal detector to Morris Island—that’s where more than twenty thousand Yankee troops were camped during the War of Northern Aggression—known to the rest of the country as the Civil War.”

  She glanced up at him and laughed at his mock seriousness.

  “Unfortunately, most of it’s underwater now.” He reached down and snapped an expandable leash onto Frank’s collar. “It’s good to have a passion in life and keep at it. Unless it becomes an obsession.” He glanced sidelong at her and she knew he was referring to the books that now littered every surface in her living room.

  “We can beachcomb on the way back if you like,” Heath said, picking up the pace. “Now, the object here is to take it slowly at first and then increase your speed so that you’re giving your heart a reason to be up this early.” He grinned. “But not too fast so that you can’t talk, which is why I’m going to keep the conversation going so I can judge how you’re doing.”

  “I was very happy in my warm bed, sound asleep. This just seems cruel.”

  “Yeah, well, I wanted to show you the other end of the island and this seemed to be as good a reason as any. Besides, you should take care of yourself. I’m a total believer in the mind-body thing. If you keep your body strong physically, it will help you mentally deal with everything else.”

  She sent him a sidelong glance, noticing how long his hair was, and that when it was wet, it probably reached his shoulders. It suited him, somehow, and it didn’t bother her as much as when she’d first met him.

  Focusing on the sand in front of her, she said, “Like losing a husband. Believe me, if I’d thought it was this easy, I’d have been running marathons long before this.”

  He continued to stare straight ahead. “I didn’t say it was easy. I just said it would help. Maybe even more than escaping into the mysterious past of two lovers. Or spending every evening alone.”

  Emmy was breathing heavily now, but she wasn’t sure if it was from exertion. “What makes you think that I wasn’t that way before?”

  “Maybe you were. I don’t know. But you moved to Folly from Indiana, so that tells me that somewhere there’s some wanderlust in you, some desire to see what’s out there. Maybe it’s time for you to become somebody different from who you were before.”

  She stopped, putting her hands on her knees so she could breathe better. “I will always be Ben’s wife. I don’t want that to change.”

  He stopped, too, but didn’t say anything as if waiting for her to figure things out on her own. She wondered if that was how he designed buildings and neighborhoods, just stared at a blank page until the paper showed him the answers.

  Heath began walking again. “Come on. You don’t want to slow your heart rate yet.” He turned to make sure she was following. “By the way, Liz wanted me to tell you that the babies’ baptism will be on October twenty-fifth, and we’re having a little party at my mom’s to fuss over them. Lizzie was hoping you could come. They’re pretty cute, and that means a lot coming from a guy. And since you’re a girl, I’m sure you love babies.”

  Emmy thought for a moment, examining what the best way to answer would be, because the first thought that came to her was that babies meant loss and regret, learned both from her mother, and Em-my’s own loss of missed chances. Instead, she said, “I haven’t had any real experience with them, except from being around my friends who have them.”

  “Is that why you never had children?”

  She squinted in the bright sunlight. “Ben and I wanted them, but decided to wait until he returned home for good.”

  “And you regret that?”

  She turned to him, wondering how he managed to get her angry so often and why she still remained in his company. “Of course, I do. I would have had something that was a part of him to hold on to forever. Someone to share my life with. Maybe losing Ben wouldn’t have been so hard if we’d had a baby.”

  They walked for a while in silence before Heath spoke again. “That’s a little selfish, though, don’t you think? That one small child would have to have some pretty big shoulders to carry all of your losses and expectations.”

  For a brief moment Emmy thought he was talking about her mother and how Emmy had never quite understood her own role of comforter and survivor. She stopped again, breathing so hard that she couldn’t speak, much less shout at him.

  As if he knew he’d said the wrong thing, Heath said, “I’m sorry. I guess that didn’t come out the way it was supposed to. What I meant to say was that instead of regretting what might have been, you might consider that because you didn’t have children you were free to cut anchor and move on.”

  She stared at him, trying to find her breath but glad, too, because no matter how hurtful and unfeeling his words were to her, she couldn’t help but see the glimmer of truth behind them. Straightening, she took a deep breath. “This is that whole glass-half-full thing with you, isn’t it?”

  He’d stopped, too, but his breathing sounded regular, irritating her further. “Maybe. I just don’t see the point of looking back when there’s nothing you can do to change it.”

  She began walking away from him, his words stinging.

  He quickly caught up to her. “I didn’t mean that as a personal attack, so you can stop walking with such a stiff back—you’ll hurt yourself.”

  Emmy stopped and glared at him. “Then what exactly did you mean?”

  He stopped, too, and faced her. “I guess to sum it all up, I’ve been trying to tell you that I admire you. It was a brave thing to leave all your memories of your husband and your life together, your home, and your family and come to a place you’ve never been.”

  Brave. That word again. She felt such a resistance to it, as if it were the blades of the scissors cutting her life in two, separa
ting it into “before” and “after” when she had no other desire than to remain whole.

  She watched Frank straining at the end of his leash, eager to chase a seagull who’d found something to eat in a bed of seaweed. “Come on,” Heath said, beginning to walk again. “Let’s keep your heart rate up.”

  She followed silently behind him until he slowed down enough for her to catch up but wisely remained quiet. As they approached the pier behind the Holiday Inn, which bisected the beach into east and west, Heath asked, “Have you found anything interesting in the books since I last saw you?”

  “Just the usual—a disjointed dialog between a man and a woman desperate to be with each other. There’s nothing graphic—but sometimes I feel like I’m invading their privacy. Still . . .” She stopped.

  “Still . . . what?”

  She shrugged. “I get these feelings sometimes—like when I met Liz and told her that everything would be fine with her delivery. I’m not psychic. Just every once in a while, I find that I know something that I shouldn’t. Like when Ben died. I knew it before they showed up the next day to tell me. But when I read those messages, it’s like they’re there watching me read. Waiting for me to figure it out.”

  He looked at her with a raised eyebrow, but left it at that. Finally he said, “I also wanted to ask you something. While I was helping you expand the children’s reading corner, you kept mentioning that you needed more storage. Did you know that there’s an attic storage area over Folly’s Finds?”

  “Attic storage? No. I had no idea. And I haven’t seen any access to it, either.”

  “Yeah, well, apparently the contractor who renovated the store after Hugo sealed it up with drywall and forgot about it.” He grimaced. “The good news is that the contractor’s error is one of the inspirations I had to become a builder and architect, figuring I could do things better. The bad news is that I would have to saw through your ceiling if you want access to the attic and more storage space.”