by Karen White
“Ceecee . . . ,” he began, then stopped.
“Why do you care, Bennett? You don’t have any skin in this game.”
His face remained expressionless, but a shadow moved behind his eyes. “What do you know about the fire?”
“Besides that my grandmother died here? It happened the day after Hurricane Hazel in 1954. That’s all I know, and I just learned that yesterday. I really don’t know what’s worse—the horrible way that my grandmother died, or the fact that nobody ever thought to tell me.”
I could see the war going on behind his eyes, his weighing whether to tell me something. He’d always been easy to read, probably because I’d had years of practice. Finally, he said, “My granddaddy was the fire chief back then. Remember him?”
I nodded, vaguely remembering a gray-haired man who’d looked like a much older version of Bennett. His wife had died years before, and he lived alone in a fishing cabin on the Pee Dee River. He always had a stash of Hershey’s chocolate bars in his freezer. It was sad, I thought, that that was the one memory I had of him.
“He was on duty that night. Back in the day, most people didn’t evacuate for a hurricane. They just rode it out and dealt with the damage afterward, which is why all first responders were on call. A policeman saw the fire and radioed it in. By then the phone lines were gone and the electricity was out, so it was a miracle that a police cruiser was in the right place at the right time.”
He stopped then, and his eyes narrowed. That worried me. It meant he was about to tell me something I probably didn’t want to hear. “Larkin, Ceecee was in the house, too. She’s the one who pulled your mother out and saved her from the fire. But she couldn’t save Margaret.”
I reached behind me for my car door to lean against. I wasn’t completely sure I could remain standing on my own. “She saved my mother from the fire?”
Bennett walked toward me, and when I waved him away, he ignored me and put his hands on my shoulders to steady me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I insisted, even though I wasn’t. It took all of my willpower not to grab my phone to call Ceecee and ask her to explain.
“I can’t believe nobody told you the story. If not your family, then surely it must have come up in conversation at some point.”
I almost laughed. “Everybody probably assumed I already knew and didn’t want to talk about it. It’s pretty awful.” A moment of silence, and then I asked, “Did my mother know?”
“I have no idea. You need to ask her when she wakes up.”
I looked up sharply, wondering if he was humoring my optimism about my mother’s recovery. “Or I could speak with Ceecee today and ask her why the hell all of this has been kept from me.” I indicated the empty shell of the old house, a foreboding hulk against the dimming light.
“Talk to Ceecee,” he repeated gently. “I’m sure she can explain.”
“Oh, I will.” I slid into the passenger seat and began to hunt for the keys I’d tossed into my purse.
Bennett leaned into the car. “Gabriel said he saw you last night—and that Jackson Porter was there, too.”
I lowered my face even though it blocked the light, making it harder to find the keys in the black interior of the purse. “Was he?”
Bennett pulled back, and I knew I couldn’t look at him and allow him to read my face. I’d found the keys and clutched them in my palm, feeling them dig into my skin.
“He’s still single, you know. He and Melissa were married for about five minutes before they split up. Now he has a string of girlfriends. Runs his father’s insurance business. Just thought you’d want to know.”
I forgot that I was trying not to look at him. “Why are you telling me this?”
He studied my face closely, reading every secret. “Guess I’m just trying to bring you up to speed with what’s been going on since you left.”
“Thanks, but I don’t see the urgency. I’ll let you know what Mama says about the property once she wakes up. It’s been like this for more than sixty years. It can wait a little longer.”
“True,” Bennett said. “Just remember, once a historic property like this is gone, it’s gone forever. There’s no bringing it back.”
“I’ll let you know,” I said, putting on my seat belt.
“I’ll follow you out.” Bennett indicated the path around the house. “Don’t want you getting stuck.”
I swallowed my disappointment. I’d wanted him to leave so I could read the ribbons in my pocket, but he was right. It would have to wait. “Thanks,” I said before jabbing the key into the ignition as he closed my door.
The sun had started its descent, turning Carrowmore into a hulking shadow. I began moving forward, slowly, waiting for Bennett to pull up behind me. I was aware of his truck’s headlights in my rearview mirror, and found an odd comfort in knowing he was there.
But as soon as we reached the asphalt of Highway 17, I floored it, leaving Bennett behind. I knew he could have overtaken my car if he’d wanted to, just as I knew he was aware of how much I needed to be alone to think.
I pulled into Ceecee’s driveway and turned on the dome light inside the car so I could see. Leaning back for better access to my pocket—and completely unrepentant about my recent penchant for skinny jeans—I pulled out two ribbons, still white and crisp.
I could count on one hand the number of times my mother had ever written a letter to me, yet I knew this handwriting was hers. I stretched out the first ribbon across my lap, flattening it to read it better. I stared at the thick letters, written with what appeared to be a black Magic Marker. I miss you. I wish I’d been given the chance to know you.
My heart thumped inside my chest. It reminded me of watching a horror movie with Mabry and Bennett after lying about our ages to get in, the scene where a young girl is about to enter a darkened room without turning on the light.
Almost as if a director were sitting in the backseat, telling me what to do, I stretched the second ribbon on top of the first. It wasn’t penned in black marker, and the handwriting seemed different, although that could have been because it was written using another writing instrument. It was hard to see in the fading daylight, but the color of these letters appeared to be crimson.
I blinked several times, just to make sure I was reading it correctly.
Forgive me.
I closed my eyes, feeling as if I were reading someone else’s diary. Then I opened them again, unable to stop myself. Gingerly, I rubbed my fingernail against one of the letters, flicking it back and forth to try to determine what it had been written with. Small flakes scattered on the light denim of my jeans. Definitely not marker, then. Something else. Maybe a gel pen or one of those glitter glue pens Mabry and I had been crazy about in middle school.
The porch lights blinked on, and Ceecee opened the front door, her worried expression telling me that she’d been aware of my sitting in the car without coming in. Without knowing why, I tucked the ribbons back into my pocket and exited the car, closing the door behind me with a sharp snap.
ten
Ivy
2010
I see Ceecee talking to me as I lie on the hospital bed. The fat skein of yellow yarn rests next to my leg; her knitting needles stab into a small square of whatever it is she’s making. She’s talking to me and I can hear her, but I can’t see her lips moving.
I’m floating up near the ceiling, looking down at my body. It doesn’t even look like me.
I’m seeing the top of Ceecee’s head and a spot of thinning hair. She’d just die if she knew anyone had seen that.
A memory pricks at me, a memory of something that happened before I fell. Something that made me angry at Ceecee. Not the familiar push-pull of my anger over our differences in raising Larkin, or over her opinion that I should grow up and move on from my grief over Ellis. Something else. That one slippery
worm of memory keeps wiggling past me. It’s like the password I need to be released, but I can’t for the life of me think what it could be.
I drift higher and higher toward the ceiling every day, but I never leave this room. I’ve tried. But something is tethering me to this life, to the lives of those who come and visit, who hold my hand and tell me they’re praying for me. I think it’s the secrets keeping me here. I feel them like a spider’s web, sticky and impossible to escape. Maybe this is the purgatory my Catholic friends have told me about, that place between life and death where we have to atone for our sins. Or maybe it’s just a chance to come to a place of higher understanding. Of forgiveness.
I keep hearing the engine of Ellis’s Mustang, so I look for him, too. But he and Mama are hiding around the corner, waiting for something. I just can’t figure out what.
I wish I knew how to let go. And if someone will come and show me the way. Nobody who’s already dead has come to wait at the foot of my bed or guide me to the light like I’ve seen in the movies and read in Reader’s Digest. I’m disappointed, because I want to see my mama. I don’t remember what she looked like, except everybody tells me she was beautiful. Ceecee said that Larkin looks just like her. All of my mother’s photo albums burned in the fire, so I never had the chance to look at my daughter and say, “Yes, she has Mama’s nose, don’t you think?” or “Mama had the same smile.” I know Ceecee has photos of the three of them together—Margaret, Ceecee, and Bitty—but when I’ve asked, she’s always told me that some things are too painful to remember and that’s why she keeps those photographs in the attic. One day, she promised, she’ll bring them down, and we can look at them together. We never have.
Mack and Larkin each come every day and sit with me. Mack doesn’t stay long, mostly fidgeting and telling me how sorry he is for any pain he might have caused me, promising to make it up to me when I wake up. I want to wake up just so I can tell him that I don’t blame him, that I finally understand what happens when two people love each other in unequal measure. In my defense, I warned him before we were married, but he said he could love enough for both of us. It was my fault for believing him, and his fault for believing it, too.
Whatever our mistakes, creating Larkin wasn’t one of them. I float around the room when she visits so I can get a good look at her, admiring her perfection. I’d always known she was beautiful, even during her awkward years, when the only people who thought her pretty besides me were Ceecee and Larkin herself. But now I understand that Larkin believed it only because Ceecee told her, just like how Ceecee hardly ever let me walk on my own until I was almost three because she couldn’t bear to see me hurt myself. Same thing, really. Except a person never truly learns how to move past disappointment and pain without going through it at least once. Despite everything, I’m glad Larkin has Ceecee now. For all Ceecee’s faults, being short on love is not one of them.
Larkin’s changed so much. I see her once a year, at Christmas, and we like to pretend that’s enough. And we pretend that I don’t know my part in her disappointment that solidified her reasons for leaving and staying away.
My biggest regret is that I’ve never told her how proud I am of her, how brave she is. There were things she didn’t like about herself, so she up and left and changed everything. I’m glad she failed in her lifelong wish to be just like me. I’ve never been that brave. Never been the kind of mama she needed. We both looked to Ceecee when maybe we should have been looking to each other.
But like Ceecee has tried to tell me a million times, there are no do-overs in life. Would I have wished to never meet Ellis? My life would have been so much easier if I hadn’t seen him that first time, speeding down Front Street in that Mustang of his with the top down. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and I knew right then and there that we were meant for each other. Ceecee told me to wait to get married, to be sure. Not about how much I loved him, but how much I could bear to lose. She said it’s the sadness that either breaks a person or makes them stronger. I didn’t listen. Maybe I should have. I just can’t stop wondering how she could have known that.
The heart is a funny thing. It will love where it wants, and there’s not a thing you can do about it unless you’re strong. Like Larkin. She just doesn’t know it yet. I learned the hard way that you can’t spend your whole life facing the wrong way. You’ll never see what’s ahead of you if all you ever see are the ghosts of your past.
I want to wake up so I can tell her that, so I can spare her the pain of figuring it out herself, but I’m starting to think that I don’t have a choice in the matter.
The corners of the room are fading, like my world is getting smaller. I feel tired even though I think I’ve just been sleeping and imagining that I’m flying around the ceiling. I wish I knew what was happening to me, and how long I’m supposed to be here. What I’m supposed to do or learn to move on. I feel the tugs of all those secrets nipping at me like little fish, and I’m thinking about what I’d found out before I fell through the floor at Carrowmore. Why I was angry with Ceecee. But like the corners of the room, it’s out of focus, and as I settle back on the bed, I hear Ceecee speaking, and she’s telling me about her, and Mama, and Bitty, and I’m trying to pay attention because I know there’s something there that I’m supposed to know. Something important. So I slip back into my body, and I begin to listen.
* * *
• • •
Ceecee
1951
Margaret’s shoes were a half size too small, so Ceecee’s feet should have been hurting after the third dance with Boyd. But they weren’t. They were dancing on clouds, her whole body cushioned with the warmth of his body so close, and the touch of his hand in hers. By the time he asked if she needed some air, she’d memorized the color of his eyes and the shape of his ears. And the vertical creases along his cheeks when he smiled. She took Boyd’s hand and allowed him to lead her away from the other dancers, to the steps leading down to the beach, trying not to think what her mother would say if she knew.
They paused on the top step just long enough for Boyd to help her out of Margaret’s shoes before descending into the sand, the gritty coolness beneath her stockinged feet, something she’d never feel again without remembering that night. The round moon sat in the sky pregnant with ivory light, appearing close enough to touch, close enough for her to pinch off a piece and put it in her purse as a memento.
He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, and she carried Margaret’s shoes in her other hand as they strolled along the moonlit beach, and she wanted to keep walking, touching him and listening to his voice for the rest of the night if not forever. He told her about his family back in Charleston, and how he spent a lot of time with his uncle and cousins in Anderson, South Carolina, on their farm, where he’d learned to deliver baby calves and had first decided to be a doctor. His father was a lawyer, and he was glad Reggie had decided he wanted to be a lawyer so Boyd was free to pursue his dream.
“Reggie decided he wanted to be a lawyer when he was about ten when he found out that so many presidents of the United States were lawyers before they went into politics. His greatest disappointment was that he was too young to fight in the war. Apparently, military experience looks good on a presidential résumé, too.”
“Well,” Ceecee said, “there’s the conflict in Korea now if he’s still interested.”
Boyd was silent for a moment, the sound of their footsteps in the sand adding beats to the music behind them. “Yes, well, our parents have done their best to dissuade him. It just about killed our mother to watch me go fight. Her hair turned gray almost overnight. I can’t imagine what watching her baby go to war would do to her.”
“So, did they convince him?” Ceecee asked.
“I’m not sure. The call to serve our country is in his blood. We’ve a long line of ancestors who put on a uniform and fought for their country. Reggie would be the first son not to.” He l
eaned down toward Ceecee. “And you?” he asked. “Besides your parents and your two brothers, who else is waiting for you back in Georgetown?”
She thought about Will Harris with his overly shellacked hair and his dirty collars and her mother’s insistence that Ceecee be nice to him. “No one. My two best friends—that’s who I’m staying with—are both going to college in the fall. I suppose I’ll be spending a lot of time helping my mama at home, and I sing in my daddy’s church choir and play the organ sometimes.”
“Sounds nice,” he said, and she couldn’t detect any sarcasm. She gave credit to his mama and daddy, who must have raised him right. “Tell me about Georgetown—is it a nice place to live and grow up?”
Ceecee shrugged. “I guess so. I’ve never known any other place. It’s really beautiful—and historic, too. Did you know that the Marquis of Lafayette landed in Georgetown the first time he visited America during the Revolution?”
He smiled, his white teeth glowing in the moonlight. “I did not know that.”
“It’s true. And we’ve got rivers as far as the eye can see—we’re surrounded by rivers, creeks, and marshes, so everybody has a boat and knows how to swim and fish.” She looked up at him through her eyelashes like Margaret had shown her, hoping he could see in the moonlight. “I know Charleston’s not far from the coast, but if you haven’t spent a lot of time on the water, it wouldn’t take you long to learn how to do all that. People are friendly there and would show you.” She’d wanted to say that she would show him, but she’d already been forward enough. “The harbor’s so pretty—like a postcard—and we’ve got lots of old houses and abandoned rice fields right behind town that you can kayak through and see some of the old dikes.” She peered shyly up at him. “You should come visit sometime.”