LF47 - Love Finds You in Folly Beach, South Carolina

by Loree Lough

  “Don’t worry,” she said, grabbing the box, “my lips are sealed.”

  “I’m betting that by month’s end, you’re gonna have a ring of your own.”

  Holly gasped. “A—a…what?”

  “Can’t think of a better way for him to convince you to stay,” Hank said as the doors slid shut. “Can you?”

  * * * * *

  Parker spent the night tossing and turning and pacing the down-stairs. He stood on the deck looking out to sea, trying to put together the conversation that had to take place between him and Maude—soon. The golden line signaling sunup had just started to glow on the horizon when he remembered Holly telling him that she’d always been an early riser but it wasn’t until coming to Folly Beach that sunrise became her favorite time of day. “I make a point now,” she’d said, “to get up. Rain or shine, I want to be there, watching the new day dawn.”

  He grabbed the portable phone from the kitchen and dialed her number. “Hey,” he said when she picked up, “are you out on the deck, watching the new day dawn?”

  “Wow, what a memory,” she said, the sound of her laughter making his heart race.

  “I’m picking Maude up today, so I was wondering if you’d mind keeping an eye on Ben. Over here. Just until I get her settled in.”

  “I’d love to.”

  He heard the hesitation in her voice, and he knew what it meant. “You’re probably wondering why I don’t bring Ben to the cottage, so I can introduce him to his grandmother.”

  “I’ll admit, that did cross my mind.”

  “I haven’t told her about Ben yet. Well, not the part about the final adoption, anyway.”

  “But she knew why you went to Germany, right?”

  “Yeah, but I haven’t seen much of her since we got back.” That sounded weird, even to himself, considering they’d come home more than a week ago. “I figure once she’s back on familiar turf, I’ll take Williams’s advice and hit her with one thing at a time.”

  “Starting with Daniel and his family.”

  “Exactly. So maybe you could join Ben and me for breakfast, and afterward, I’ll head for the rehab center. No rush. Long as I get her out of there by noon, they won’t charge her for an additional day.”

  “No rush on your end, either. Getting back to your place, I mean. I’ll take Ben for a nice long walk, maybe introduce him to the volunteers. He’d probably love pitching in to clear the beach for the turtles. Maybe I’ll even pack us a lunch and we can eat it on—”

  “I’m not planning on being over there anywhere near that long, so pack an extra sandwich. I’ll find you, and we can eat together.”

  “So Ben’s still asleep?”

  “Yeah. He seems to be getting onto a pretty regular schedule.”

  “That’ll be helpful once school starts.”

  Small talk. He hated it. Always had, always would. But since he had no idea how to broach the subject of how to break it to Maude that he’d met Daniel and the whole Brant clan, he didn’t have much choice but to participate.

  “So, okay, enough chitchat. You didn’t just call to ask me to babysit, did you?”

  If he married her, would she have more access to his thoughts, or less? Grinning, Parker said, “I just figured that since I’m socially inept, maybe you’d have some advice. You know, for how I might jump into the subject without causing another heart attack.”

  Holly laughed. “She isn’t going to have another heart attack. Dr. Williams said so, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then relax.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Actually, it was.” She gave another giggle, and then she cleared her throat. “But seriously? My advice is, thank her for telling you the truth. She’ll be shocked, because I’m sure it’s the last thing she expects to hear. And that’s when you can admit that if she hadn’t spilled the beans, you never would have met Daniel. Or his mother and wife and kids.”

  Leave it to Holly to help him see that things really could be just that uncomplicated. “So what’s your preference? Pancakes and sausage gravy, or bacon and eggs?”

  “You’re the chef. I’ll leave that choice up to you.”

  “French toast it is, then.”

  “I’m touched—and tickled pink that you remembered!”

  Without even thinking, he blurted out, “If I had half a brain, I’d marry you, before some other guy figures out how easy you are to please.”

  Holly didn’t respond right away, and when she did, it was with, “Then I guess you should thank God.”

  “For what?”

  “For giving you half a brain. See you in a half hour.”

  Thankfully, the phone’s steady “Hang up the phone, stupid!” buzz sounded in his ear, or he might still have been staring at that same spot on the wall when she arrived.

  * * * * *

  “So when are we going to talk about it, son?”

  “I haven’t even pulled out of the parking lot yet. It can wait until I get you home.”

  “Will Holly be there?”

  “No, she, ah, she had a few things to do. Down on the beach. With the turtle-project volunteers.”

  “The way she took to this place, you’d think that girl was born and raised here. Why, did you notice how she’s picking up a bit of a Southern accent?”

  Yes, Parker had noticed that.

  “Did she tell you she stopped by yesterday with a big box?”

  “What for?”

  “To carry home all the plants and balloons people sent. Obviously, she overestimated the number of friends I have.” She sighed. “All I’ve gotten are the things you brought six weeks ago and the book and spider plant from Opal. Thank God for her visits or I’d have had no company at all. Well, except for you and Henry. And Holly, of course.”

  Parker cringed inwardly. Every time he’d passed the hospital gift shop, he’d told himself to go in and grab another bouquet of flowers or a box of candy. Something to brighten her room and say what he’d been too angry to say: “Get well, because I love you.”

  “Thank God for Hank, eh?”

  “Yes. Thank God.”

  He would have sworn she’d sighed like a love-struck school-girl. “At least you have one thoughtful man in your life.”

  No response, unless he counted that second giddy sigh.

  “He isn’t my boyfriend.”

  “You can say that until you’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the fact that he’s crazy about you.” Not that I’ll ever understand it, the way you run him around…

  “He’s my fiancé.”

  Parker braked for the red light and looked over at her. “Your what?”

  “Yesterday. He asked me yesterday.”

  “And you said yes.”

  The light turned green, and he thanked God for peripheral vision. Without it, who knows how long he might have sat there gap-mouthed and gawking.

  “And I said yes.”

  Well, wonders never ceased. Parker didn’t know what he’d do when next he saw Hank, congratulate him…or console him. “Did you two set a date?”

  “Not yet. I want to make sure things are okay between us first.”

  Good grief. She reminded him of a sappy teenage girl sometimes. “Why’d you say yes if things aren’t okay between you?”

  “Not between Henry and me. Between you and me.”

  “We’re okay.”

  “Parker…”

  “What can I say? You’re my mother. Nothing will ever change that.”

  “ ‘You can say that until you’re blue in the face,’ ” she quoted, “but it won’t change the fact that I hurt you.”

  You hurt Daniel too, he said. And without even intending to, she’d hurt his dad’s entire family. And Hank, Holly, and Ben too. “Look, we’ll be at the cottage in a minute. Holly made a surprise for you. Once you’ve seen it and gushed appropriately, then we can hammer at this some more.” He glanced at her. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”


  “Aren’t you curious to know what Holly did?”

  “Oh, knowing her, she baked me a cheesecake. Or made a pan of lasagna. She has a way of finding out what a person’s favorite things are, all without ever giving a hint that’s what she’s doing.”

  He hadn’t thought to ask if Holly had prepared a meal or a dessert. He wouldn’t put it past her. But Parker didn’t think anything edible could compare with all the work she’d put in to moving Maude’s room to the first floor of the cottage.

  “I’ll bet whatever it is, it’s delicious,” Maude said. “She’s amazing, that Holly.”

  Yeah. She was amazing, all right. “I don’t know as I’d call it delicious, exactly, but then, you women have a strange way of describing things sometimes.”

  When Maude finally saw the room, it took ten minutes for her crying jag to end. And when it did, she was in such an upbeat mood that Parker hated to darken it by dredging up the past.

  Maude took care of that for him, and for the next half hour, she talked and cried and cried and talked, vowing to spend the rest of her days making things up to him. Parker remembered Holly’s advice and realized he couldn’t have asked for a better opening.

  And so he took it. He told Maude about his first meeting with Dan and how, right from the get-go, he’d accepted Parker as his own and then introduced him to the rest of the Brants. Maude took it well. Far better than he could have imagined, so Parker went for broke and told her about Ben too.

  “So I’m a grandmother?”

  Her voice rang with awe and gratitude, and for a minute there, Parker worried that the waterworks might start up again. Instead, she said the word a half dozen times. “What fits me better—Gran? Grams? Gramma?”

  “You could always let Ben choose.”

  “When do I get to meet him?”

  “Right now, if you like. He’s on the beach with Holly, working with the turtle volunteers. She packed a lunch, but I can whip up an extra sandwich.”

  Maude loved the idea and said so.

  It seemed they’d buried the hatchet…except for one irksome detail. “Can I ask you one question, before putting this ugly business behind us?” At least if he had anything to say about it. He took her silence to mean that it was all right to ask the question. “What’s my last name?”

  She looked startled. Sounded surprised too, when she said, “Why it’s Brant, of course.”

  “But if you and Dan never married—”

  “I don’t know what the laws are about such things these days, but back then, all I had to do was spell my name for a nice lady with a clipboard and tell her who your father was. That’s all she wanted, so I didn’t see much point in answering questions she hadn’t asked.”

  He felt a huge weight begin to lift from his heart. “So the name on my birth certificate—and my driver’s license and passport— it’s legal.”

  “Completely.”

  It never occurred to him before to ask why she’d chosen his first name. “So why Parker, of all the names in the baby book?”

  A strange, whimsical smile lit her face. “There I was, young and naive and…I mean, really, if I had any brains at all, would I have let myself get into a fix like that?” She waved the question away. “I’d lived with my grandparents for years by then, but they were barely making ends meet themselves. So I knew I’d have to get a second job, maybe a third. But I was about as dumb as a box of rocks, and that scared me.”

  Her voice trailed off, and tears shimmered in her eyes as she said, “Then, about a month before you were born, Gran and Gramps died in that awful pileup on Route 30, and I felt like a babe in the woods, lost and alone, wondering how I’d keep a roof over your head and food in your belly. And then you were born and looked up at me with those big brown eyes, and I felt like I’d found my way out of those scary woods. You saved me. So I named you Parker, because it means Keeper of the Woods.”

  She smiled across the table at him, erasing any doubt Parker might have had about her love for him. “I know I shouldn’t have kept the truth from you. I was just so ashamed, bringing you into the world that way. I promised myself to tell you when you were old enough. And that day, when you were about eight, and you marched up to me and announced that you weren’t a baby…” A sob choked off her words.

  He remembered that day only too well. She’d never given him a straight answer where his father was concerned, and in his little-boy head, he figured that was because she thought he couldn’t handle knowing that his father had died. He’d been ripe for the picking when he saw the news broadcast honoring an Air Force pilot, who was killed when the fighter jet he’d been testing ran into a flock of geese. His wife and daughter had looked straight into the camera and said that yes, they’d miss him, but they were proud to know he’d given his life for his country. He’d gone straight to Maude with the story, and when he followed it with, “I’m not a baby. You can tell me the truth,” she’d shut herself up in her room. Hours later she came out, red-eyed and sniffling, and he took it to mean that Daniel really had died a similar death. He’d never forget that she’d let him go a lifetime, telling schoolmates and army buddies that his father had died a hero. Would never forget the succession of lies—the ones she’d told outright and those of omission—but if he ever hoped to take a deep breath again, Parker had to put it behind him.

  And the only way to do that was to forgive her.

  He got to his feet and walked around to her side of the table. “Call Hank,” he said, kissing her cheek, “and set the date. You and I are okay.”

  Would he ever trust her again?

  Possibly. But that didn’t matter. What mattered were the two people in the house down the beach, where colorful flowers now bloomed and Old Glory snapped from its new home on the front porch.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sunday dinner at his grandmother’s house was like nothing Parker had ever experienced. He’d seen more food in one place at one time…but only at restaurant buffets. From one end of the long table to the other, big bowls of steaming side dishes surrounded a platter of juicy roast beef. Isabel insisted that Parker sit on one side of her, with Ben on the other, and despite their protests at displacing his dad and Parker’s eldest brother, that’s precisely where they ended up.

  “Better enjoy it while you can,” joked Bob Jr. “I’m not normally this generous.”

  Every Brand seemed genuinely interested in tightening Parker’s ties to the family. They took turns asking questions about his military service, his charter-boat business, his house on the Folly Beach coast. They wanted to know about Ben’s trip to Germany and how he liked his new room. They asked if he enjoyed working with the turtle and lighthouse projects…and how he felt about the marine biologist from Baltimore who was helping Parker write a book about it all. Ben summed it up in one sentence: “The only way I could be happier here in America with my new father is if Holly could become my new mother.”

  Good-natured taunts and dares rose up from just about everyone at Isabel’s table. Bets were made on when Parker would voice the question, and each was countered with the hope that Holly would say yes when he did.

  All that took place in this wonderful and welcoming family atmosphere, yet no one seemed the least bit interested in Maude. Parker chalked that up to good manners and respect for his stepmother. As the child who’d been the result of the brief, long-ago relationship, his very existence would tie Dan to the past—and to Maude—forever. Ann and Dan had built a beautiful life, and their reward had been three kids and three grandchildren. In a few months, when his sister’s baby girl was born, the total number of lives impacted by Maude’s lies would number thirteen. Remarkably, not one held Parker accountable for her harmful secrets and deceptions.

  Already, he felt that he fit right in, and surrounded by such loving acceptance made him feel sorry for Maude, who had never known anything like this, not before her parents died, and not after she was sent to live with her grandparents. All things considered, she’d done pr
etty well by him, and for some reason, that realization sparked an idea: with Holly as his life partner, they could build something like this and give Maude and Ben—and Hank—the gift of belonging to a big, happy family too.

  The concept began to take shape as the Brants laughed and talked over coffee and his sister’s famous cheesecake, and it became even clearer as the men and boys boarded the Sea Stallion for an afternoon sail off Charleston’s coast. He’d never seen Ben happier or more animated. He’d thank his dad and brothers for that later. For now, Parker simply enjoyed watching the boy behave like a child who knows he’s loved and free—and safe—ought to.

  He overheard Ben telling Dan about the little message boat that had washed ashore during Hurricane Hugo. “I would like to write on it too,” Ben said, nodding enthusiastically. “I would use the reddest red and the bluest blue paint.”

  “Is that so?” Dan said, slinging an arm over the boy’s slender shoulders. “And what would you paint?”

  Ben demonstrated his painting technique, hands and arms gesturing enthusiastically. “‘Ben Brant is a proud American!’ ”

  Parker had felt “my heart is bursting with pride” emotions every time he saluted Old Glory or watched fellow soldiers standing at attention as medals were pinned to their chests. But until now, he’d never experienced it for completely personal reasons, and it made him gladder than ever that he hadn’t given up on his promise to bring Ben home. His “build a family” idea took on an additional facet as he pictured the boat.

  “Make sure to protect your toes when you do it,” Parker’s youngest brother advised, “because I hear that old tub has been decorated so much that thick layers of paint fall off in big chunks.”

  Ben stared at his sneakered feet. “Okay, Joe,” he said, grinning when he looked up, “I will watch out for my toes.”

  Only one thing could have made these moments more special: Holly, standing beside him. Because Ben needed her almost as much as Parker did.