Lowcountry Mysteries (Boxed Set #1)

by Lyla Payne

Instead of stopping, listening and accepting and dealing with the things neither one of us ever wanted to say or hear, I leave the foyer for the crowd, now a solace. Even though there’s no escape. I’ve been back in Heron Creek less than twenty-four hours, but I’m starting to believe that that line about not being able to go home again is an absolute truth.

  Dinner goes about as well as expected, which is to say that the Freedmans do most of the talking. Gramps hears about twenty-five percent of the conversation at best and spends more time nodding with a goofy smile than adding anything. Melanie tries, regaling our hosts with a few tales of our more daring childhood exploits, but it’s clear that Will has as little interest in reminiscing as I do, and she gives up before dessert. Grant helps, adding a word here and there, and making zooming noises with his green beans, but there’s a palpable sense of relief when the dishes are cleared.

  “Well, I hate to be the party pooper, but I’m still pretty tired after driving yesterday. I think Gramps and I had better call it a night.”

  Gramps looks peaked and says his good-byes and thank-yous without further prodding. Dinner was good, and it’s obvious the Freedmans retired after a lucrative working life, because Meredith is a pro at hosting. Everything, down to the last freshly pressed linen napkin, had been perfect. Like having dinner inside an issue of Southern Living.

  They’ve been good to Gramps, though, befriending him and checking in, having him around to dinner. It’s obvious that even though busybody Stella Walters was ready to ship him off to a home, he hasn’t been alone. Will and Grant stop by, the Freedmans look in on him, and Melanie mentioned something about the town’s new mayor being a big Braves fan and watching games with Gramps, too.

  “Everything was wonderful, Meredith. Thank you.” My robot voice is starting to freak me out.

  “Of course, dear. Oh! And I almost forgot but Roger’s brother is the chairman on the library’s board of trustees and he was able to get you an interview, like your grandfather asked.”

  I shoot Gramps a look, but he’s shuffling toward the front door, pretending not to hear.

  It’s strange, but I don’t have it in me to ask what on God’s earth she’s talking about, even though I do not want a job. Not yet. I’ll get it out of Gramps later and let him know that I plan to spend at least a couple months’ worth of savings hanging around the house before facing the big, ugly world again.

  Gramps is halfway down the street by the time I escape the well-meaning clutches of the Freedmans. When Melanie calls out for me to wait, I wish for a second I could pretend not to hear things I’d rather not address, too.

  Instead, I stop at the end of the driveway. My fingers curl into fists, my fingernails pressing little half-moons into my palms while she strides toward me. I never used to be this way—doing anything to avoid spending time with people, scared of standing tall. It sucks. David did this to me, made me feel like an idiot at even the prospect of explaining how exactly I could drop everything and move halfway across the country with no job. Confronting the reason there’s a winking diamond on Mel’s finger but a shadow of a tan line on mine.

  He changed me, but if I’m being honest, I’m mostly angry that I let him.

  “Hey, sorry. I know you’re ready to go.” Behind her, Will carries Grant out to the car, leaning in to put him in a car seat. It’s weird, because in my mind, they both still live less than a five-minute walk away.

  Which is dumb. Of course they live somewhere else. In their house. Together.

  “What’s up?” I force out, mostly to stop from folding in on myself and imploding.

  “I just…I know it’s none of my business, but have you talked to Amelia lately?” She bites her lip, glancing over her shoulder as though Mrs. Walters can hear us from here. Maybe it’s habit, but her paranoia infects me.

  “No. Not since before she married Jake.” I pause, not wanting to ask. Having to ask. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know. Come on, Mel. I’m tired.”

  “The last time I went down to Charleston, I called to ask if we could have lunch or just visit. Catch up, you know?” Another glance, over my shoulder this time. “She said yes, but then later Jake called back and said Millie couldn’t make it. And one of my sorority sisters from state knows his family and said there were accusations against him in college. Violent stuff, swept under the rug. With all the miscarriages, I kind of…I’m worried about her.”

  All of this is news to me, and yet it’s not a surprise. I’ve never seen any indication of Jake being violent but know for a fact that he’s lower than the cow shit we used to scrape off our bare feet after cutting through the Jefferson’s’ farmland to get to the creek.

  Worry for my cousin squeezes me tight, digs sharp claws into my heart and lungs and everything else I need in order to live, no matter how hard my brain protests that she’s made it clear she doesn’t need me. Millie didn’t even show up for Grams’s funeral last winter, for God’s sake.

  “I don’t have any illusions that Millie’s married to a great guy or anything, but you know her as well as I do. I can’t believe she’d sit back and take something like that without saying a word.” The words seem right when they form in my mind, but by the time they fall off my tongue they sound less than convinced.

  Maybe it’s just that the past few hours have forced me to face the fact that nothing is what I thought, or expected, or assumed during the twelve summers I spent in this town. There’s nothing about life now that I saw coming. What makes me think I ever knew my cousin at all?

  “Well, she never seemed like the kind of girl who would have her husband call and break a date with a friend, but I didn’t imagine it.” Her lip is red where her teeth worry at it. Without warning, Mel’s hand snakes out and wraps around my forearm. Her dark eyes fall to my naked left ring finger, but she makes no comment.

  The gossip is going to be all over town before the end of the week. That I’m back, with no ring, no fiancée, and a drinking problem. “No, I’m not engaged anymore. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She pauses, avoiding my face. Maybe it hurts her, too, to realize that there was a time when I wouldn’t have wanted to talk to anyone else. “It’s good you’re here, Gracie. Gramps needs you.”

  That’s all she says, and we both walk away. The parting words are innocuous enough, but there’s more left unspoken. I heard it all the same. It’s okay that I’m here because Gramps needs me. But falling back into old relationships, particularly with her husband, isn’t going to be part of that equation.

  Fine. I didn’t come back here for Will, no matter what Mel thinks. I came back here to spend time with Gramps, and to hide. Having no friends, and no expectations, suits me just fine.

  Chapter Three

  It’s been two weeks, and even if I had gotten around to making a to-do list, very few things would be checked off. The car is emptied, but the majority of my things remain in giant yellow trash bags in the corner of my room. They look like lumpy, fat cartoon chickens roosting. Luckily for me, Gramps can’t make it up the stairs and Laura the housekeeper hasn’t ratted me out.

  Yet.

  If she finds my growing collection of empty liquor bottles squirreled away inside nests of sweaters that no longer seem practical, that could change. There’s not a doubt in my mind that she reports to Aunt Karen, and between that and whatever Mrs. Walters has already told her, I’m sure my aunt and uncle have had some colorful discussions regarding my choices.

  I’m not an alcoholic or anything; I’ve only been toying with the idea of developing a drinking problem. I don’t want to come out to the family and the town until I’m sure that’s the direction I want to go. It’s nice to fall asleep without hours of tossing and turning, and the vodka erases the endless loop of obsessing over all of the ways I surely drove David away. That’s all.

  “Gramps! You want a zucchini muffin?” I shout from the doorway to the kitchen, hating that this is how we have to communicate but lov
ing spending my days with someone who makes me feel as though I’m not a loser.

  Not that he never has anything to say about my sloth, but Gramps has a way.

  “Did you make them?”

  “No, Laura.”

  “Then yes.”

  “Nice, Gramps. Real nice. Maybe I’ll learn how to cook, since I have all this free time on my hands.”

  I toss two of the muffins in the microwave; when they’re warm I slice them in half and butter them before joining him in the living room. We ate dinner several hours ago and now the Lawrence Welk Show is on, which I swear is only beamed into the houses of people over the age of eighty, because I never saw it on the Guide in my apartment, ever.

  “That interview is tomorrow, Gracie-baby. Make sure you get there on time.”

  “So, ten minutes early?”

  He nods, chewing on his muffin in a thoughtful manner. “On time is late, that’s right.”

  Protests burble up, insist on having a voice, even though getting out of the house can’t be the worst thing in the world. I can’t wallow in my shame and misery forever. But, mature or not, having the interview and interaction forced on me digs in my heels. “I’m overqualified for that job, you know. I’m an archivist, not a librarian.”

  “Not a job for a librarian,” he grunts in response, not looking toward me. “Assistant-type thing. Cleaning, reshelving, maybe reading to the kiddies a couple times a week.”

  That makes me smile. It reminds me of when he and I used to press our noses against each other until our eyes watered, waiting for the other person to pull away first. He’s used to winning, but I’m not a little kid anymore.

  But for some reason, this news makes me feel better as well as worse. Maybe because it won’t be like pretending things are hunky-dory. It’s pretty much announcing my surrender to the world, like when men wear sweatpants in public.

  It feels right.

  “What time?”

  “Nine-thirty. You remember where it is?”

  “Yeah, Gramps. There’s one stoplight in this town, and I’ve been over every inch of Heron Creek in my bare feet. I think I’ll be fine.”

  “Can never tell with you these days, Gracie-baby. You sleep more than a drugged bear in the dead of winter, and don’t think I can’t smell you feeling sorry for yourself all the way down here.” Now he does catch my gaze, his pale blue gaze sympathetic but stern. “Time to saddle up and ride again.”

  “I’m not going to take that metaphor and run with it, but I get your point. I’ll go to the interview.”

  “Don’t go acting like this new you and make everyone there run in the opposite direction.”

  It’s weird waking up to the sound of an alarm. Gramps and I have a schedule, one where he’s responsible for his own coffee and breakfast, since there’s no way 6:00 a.m. and I are ever going to be acquainted. I stumble downstairs and make a fresh pot around eleven, just in time to make lunch.

  Today, though, the hot spray from the shower hits me before eight. It leaves me as grumpy as a bathed cat, and I don’t look much different than one, either. I glimpse another moving shadow as I shiver my way out of the tub and grab a towel, but I ignore it. It’s happening more often than I care to acknowledge, probably due to the increase in mornings shrouded in hangover fuzz.

  I dig through my bags of clothes, emerging with a knee-length knit dress in a subdued shade of purple that won’t look too terrible once a cardigan covers my bare shoulders. It’s wrinkled, but so is everything I own, and the thought of taking the time to iron it actually cracks me up. It takes me less than twenty minutes to swipe on some foundation, blush, and mascara, then eyeliner as an afterthought—it does its part to make my eyes appear more open than closed. I get bored with drying my hair halfway through and twist it into a French braid that lands between my shoulder blades, then grab a cardigan and call it good.

  You can hardly see my depression without looking closely. It’s there in the smudges under my eyes that press through the light foundation and in the red lines spinning webs through the whites of my eyes. Even so, as long as I mind my tongue, it shouldn’t matter. No one knows me well enough to tell the difference. Not anymore.

  There’s hot coffee in the kitchen, which I dump into a travel mug along with a healthy load of creamer before wandering into the living room to say hi and good-bye to Gramps.

  “You look nice, darling girl.” His mouth is full of raisin bran that must have been soaking in milk for at least half an hour. It might as well be raisin oatmeal at this point.

  “I do not.”

  “Well, that’s maybe true, but you look a hell of a lot better than you have since you dragged your ass in here two weeks ago, that’s for sure.”

  “It’s nice to see your charm hasn’t abandoned you.” I give him a smile, feeling better than I have since I got here, too. Maybe there is something to that fake-it-until-you-make-it nonsense. “I’m going.”

  “Good girl. You’re going to kill ‘em with that gorgeous brain.”

  I lean down to kiss his cheek, a spot that had once been ruddy and warm but now crinkles under my lips like a worn sheet of paper. The manifestation of his aging makes me want to scream and cling, shout to God that I’m not ready to lose him, too, to be alone, not yet. It’s coming though. Since our dinner with the Freedmans’, the truth behind Will’s concern has glared, bright and loud. Things aren’t good, and even though he mostly still acts like himself, there’s not much time left. Not enough, anyway.

  Maybe there’s never enough time.

  “Okay, well, I’ll see you in few. I might even bring you back some lunch.”

  He waves a hand. “Don’t go wastin’ your money feeding me. I’m gonna be dead soon, and you’ll never get it back. Bad investment.”

  I refuse to dignify that with a response. Either I use my money to buy us food or spend the next few months or a year slowly drinking it away, but at the moment there’s enough for both.

  The morning is warm but not overly hot or muggy, which is something for South Carolina in early June. It’s almost enough to tempt me to walk into town, except for the fact that I don’t have an excess of time before my interview. The warm air feels good in my lungs, against my skin. Like it wants to promise that even out here, things are going to be, well…if not good, maybe not bad.

  I swing open the door to my car and slide in, holding my breath to ward off the smell of stale nachos, a scent of unknown origin but one that refuses to be expelled from the old Honda. When I give up and breathe, the horrible smell I’m expecting isn’t there.

  But there is an odor, the same one that lingers around the edges of my room on occasion but hasn’t been strong enough to place. Until now.

  Briny. That’s the word that pops into my mind. It’s like the scent of rotting wood and wet, salty ropes aboard a ship, tangling in the wind. Like a face full of a barnacled hull, or last week’s catch sunning on the deck.

  “What in the actual…”

  My eyes catch another pair in the rearview mirror. She’s pale, her skin hosting a greenish tinge. My mind registers that and a mane of matted red hair as my flight instinct propels me out of the car. My throat aches, suggesting I may have screamed even though it’s not coming back to me, and the path to safety reaches up and snarls my feet. The bricks bite into my knees and hands, leaving stinging patches and bits of clay and dirt behind as I find my footing and race for the front door.

  I push it open so hard I trip again, over the threshold this time, and land on my butt on the foyer rug, kicking the door closed with my shoe. There aren’t any rushing footsteps over the sound of my jagged breathing and no pale fist slams into the polished wood. My heart hammers against my ribs so hard they feel as though they’re about to splinter. The more focus I place on trying to breathe the more impossible it becomes, my lungs and heart and everything else I need tripping over one another trying to save my stupid life.

  “Gracie? I thought you left.” Gramps looms over me, his knuckles
white on his walker.

  “I can’t…I saw…” It’s too hard, the talking. My lungs won’t fill up, they’re holding onto the gulp of brine and terror from the car—apparently the last time I breathed fully.

  “Spit it out, doll. You’re scaring me, and you know this ol’ ticker’s half plastic the way it is.”

  His heart, a knee. The man’s practically bionic. He sat Amelia and me down with popcorn when were ten, promising a great movie, and instead popped in his knee replacement operation. Even though we didn’t choke down much of the popcorn, neither of us gave him the satisfaction of wimping out.

  Oxygen wriggles back into my lungs a few drops at a time. With it comes the question of what exactly I had seen. The smell in the car was more powerful than the one wafting through my bedroom on the night breeze, but it was the same. Could the figure in the backseat be my moving shadows?

  “There was a lady in my car. In the backseat.”

  “A lady? What lady?”

  The wall feels cool against my back, and I soak up its strength as I inspect the scrapes on my palms. My heart settles into some semblance of a steady beat, and my hands stop shaking. “I don’t know, but she scared the shit out of me. It was like some kind of horror movie.”

  He doesn’t answer, just studies me with an inscrutable expression. I can’t tell if he believes me or if he thinks I hit the sauce before my interview, but now that it’s been a few minutes, the scenario seems less than likely. It’s time to consider my own lack of sanity as an option, as opposed to a simple depression or bad dreams. Tricks of the eye. I think I’m seeing a real ghost.

  “Never mind. I’m probably just nervous or something, saw a shadow.”

  I didn’t imagine that smell. Couldn’t have. No one could conjure something so rank from thin air.

  “Well, you want me to walk you out this time?”

  The thought of saying yes heats my face and makes me angry—I’m a grown woman, at least as far as years on this earth—but the indignant refusal won’t come. “Maybe just watch from the porch?”