Carolina Mist

by Mariah Stewart

  Abby’s job—her career—had been all she had, all she had wanted or needed. It had been her passport to independence, to security, to a future where she would never have to worry that what she had worked for could ever be taken from her.

  Working hard in college to shine as a bright light to corporate recruiters had gotten her through four tough years at the University of Pennsylvania. The entry-level job at White-Edwards, a small investment consulting firm, had been the best of the many offers she received. All the information she had gathered from her research indicated that the company was an up-and-comer, a company that rewarded hard work with promotions and good salary increases. Abby had been happy there, happy to work long hours for the satisfaction of knowing that her efforts were, in fact, noticed and applauded. Her goals had been so carefully defined. What, she wondered numbly, had gone wrong?

  Abby poured a cold drink and told herself she should eat something. She had four spoonfuls of yogurt before admitting she had no appetite. A shower would feel good, though, she thought, maybe wash away some of the despair along with the stickiness of the city she’d brought inside with her. She ran the water and stripped off her clothes, pausing to inspect herself in the mirror above the narrow sink.

  To say that she was small was an understatement. Having never grown past five feet, two inches, Abby always held herself as straight as possible, hoping to maximize what little height she had. She had read once that dressing monochromatically would make one look taller and thinner. Thin had never been an issue. Tall had, and so her business suits had always been of one solid line of color.

  A mass of light auburn curls tumbled around a tiny face. The palest smattering of freckles danced like the footprints of fairies across the bridge of her nose. Vanity had led her to cover them with makeup. How many top executives have freckles? she had thought with disgust. Her naturally arched brows rose above her pale amber eyes like parentheses. She might have just stepped out of the Irish mist. Someone had said that to her once, she recalled as she stepped into the steaming water. Who…?

  Oh. Alex. Alex Kane. He had said that, that last summer. Must be ten years now, she mused. At least ten.

  Her hair had been more red when she was younger, and that’s what he had called her when they were children: Red. And she had retaliated by calling him Candy. Candy Kane.

  She stepped from the shower and wrapped a towel around her head before reaching for her terry-cloth robe. The hot water had helped to clear her head. She had allowed herself enough time to mourn for what could have been at White-Edwards. She would focus on what had to be done, update her resume, pull out the Sunday paper, and make a list of headhunters. She was down but not out. There was no more time for self-pity. White-Edwards could keep its outplacement service. Abigail McKenna wouldn’t need it, thank you very much. She’d have a new job in no time. She was certain of it.

  With the return of the first fragments of her former confidence, her innate sense of determination urged her on. Abby snapped off the bathroom light and headed for the PC in the corner of the living room.

  It had not taken long for Abby to recognize that there was a major difference between job hunting in the nineties and job hunting in the eighties. Good jobs with great futures had been plentiful when she left college. Today’s market was overflowing with candidates just like her—top skills, great experience, superb references—and all of them competing with her for the same few positions. Middle management, the land of opportunity of the eighties, was a wasteland in the nineties.

  Oh, she had heard about it, read about it. But all those articles pertained to someone else. Some other companies had phased out certain positions. Some other fields had dried up. It had never been germane to her. Until the headhunter she interviewed with on her first day out showed her a stack of resumes the size of a phone book.

  “All just like you, Ms. McKenna. All highly qualified, highly desirable prospects. I have exactly three positions at your level—none of them in investment counseling, I might add—and seventy-three resumes.” The employment counselor sat back in her chair and sighed. “Look, I’d love to be able to help you. I’d kill to be able to place every one of these people.” She nodded toward the resumes she had plunked down on her desk. “But the positions simply aren’t there. There are entry-level jobs—not many, but a few—paying a fraction of what you’re making now. Are you interested in any of them?”

  Abby leaned forward and scanned the short list of positions, noted the salaries, and shook her head. She’d not even make her rent.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Look, I’ll keep your resume on file. If anything comes up, I’ll be sure to call…”

  Abby walked back to her apartment in a fog of disbelief and disappointment. She’d call another employment agency in the morning. Surely there’d be something.

  But there was not, not the next day, or the next week, or the one after that.

  She started buying out-of-town newspapers, calling employment services in Baltimore, Trenton, Lancaster, D.C., even Pittsburgh. Nothing was promising enough to spend the money for travel.

  By the end of September, she was beginning to panic. Faced with a stack of bills, her rent due, and no prospects, she pulled out her savings account, her checking account, the list of her meager investments. She had received eight weeks of severance pay, which she had just about depleted, and there would be unemployment, she knew, but that wouldn’t even cover the rent on her apartment. At this rate, she could last three months, four maybe, if she stopped eating, used no electricity, and had her phone removed. She had thought there would be plenty of time to save for her future. Unfortunately, the future had arrived much sooner than she’d anticipated, and she was totally unprepared for it.

  Abby sighed and looked around at her apartment. Why had she moved into such an expensive building? It had been so perfect, she had thought at the time, close to her office, known for its security, and, besides, it had lots of space, high ceilings, and lots of windows. It had been an indulgence, and she had known it even as she signed the lease. Well, the lease would be up at the end of next month, and she wouldn’t be renewing. She was too depressed at that moment to think about where she’d be moving to.

  Slumped in the middle of the living-room floor, she stared glumly at the piles of bills on one side, her bank statements on the other. On the table beside her were two notices of attempts to deliver a certified letter. Had one of her debts gone into collection? She wasn’t sure and had no desire to find out. Maybe next week she could deal with it, but not now. She’d just have to keep ducking the mailman.

  Her stomach reminded her that it was almost noon, and she had yet to eat. On bare feet, she padded into the kitchen. No milk. No eggs. She checked her wallet and, after finding a few bills, pulled on her old running shoes and headed for the corner grocery.

  The excursion was brief, Abby grabbing the two items she’d come for and making only the most perfunctory conversation with the old man behind the counter who greeted her so cheerfully. One of the few things that can make you feel even worse when you feel this bad, she grumbled to herself as she headed back up the street, is to be confronted by a truly perky person.

  She was fumbling in her pocket for her key when she bumped into him on the top step. Smiling—“Gotcha!”— the mailman handed her the letter and a pen, pointing to the line on the little green card where she was to sign.

  Could this day get much worse?

  Tossing the unopened letter onto the small kitchen table, she boiled water to make egg salad and poured a glass of milk. A short row of neglected African violets, their velvet leaves dangling over the sides of their pots as if gasping, lined the end of the table nearest the window and seemed to beg for her attention.

  “I don’t know why I bother,” she sighed, “since not one of you has ever shown me so much as one blossom.”

  She poured a half-glass of water into the dry dirt, oblivious to the fact that she’d created a near tidal wave i
nside the small plastic pots. The excess poured over the tops of the saucers and slid across the table. She grabbed a paper towel and chased the stream, but not before the letter had been saturated. She spread the envelope out flat on the counter and blotted at the runny ink. For the first time, she noticed the return address:

  Horace D. Tillman, Esquire

  1263 Harper Avenue

  Primrose, N.C.

  It was the name of the town, not that of the sender, that caught her eye. Primrose, North Carolina, was the home of her Great-aunt Leila.

  “Oh, no.” The very softest protest slipped from her lips.

  Had the envelope borne a thick border of black, it would have been no more apparent what news lay wrapped within the soggy folds of paper. She shook the remaining drops of water from the envelope and went into the living room. Deeply saddened, Abby sank into a chair.

  With trembling hands, she carefully opened it. Aunt Leila would be, what, ninety or so? And it’s been so long since I visited, Abby thought, guiltily recalling how many times over the past several years she had opted to forgo vacation time to complete a project at work.

  I always meant to go back. Abby shook her head, already comprehending that it was too late. I always intended to take a few weeks off and spend the time with her. Why didn’t I go last summer? Or the summer before?

  Dear Ms. McKenna:

  It is my sad duty to notify you of the passing of your great-aunt, Leila Abigail Dunham Cassidy, on September 1 of this year. Please accept my deepest condolences on your loss.

  I have enclosed a copy of the late Mrs. Cassidy's will, which, as you can see, is self-explanatory. For the sake of brevity, I will summarize by advising that your great-aunt has elected to make you the sole beneficiary of her estate…

  The sole beneficiary of her estate.

  Abby’s heart began to thump wildly. Tears of sorrow mixed with tears of gratitude as she read and read yet again the one-page letter, trying to absorb the news and its implications.

  Aunt Leila was gone.

  And she had left everything to Abby.

  The memory of her great-aunt and the days they’d spent together suddenly filled her mind. A sister of Abby’s maternal grandmother, Aunt Leila had opened her home to Abby every summer from the time she’d been five until she was in high school. Abby’s parents would drop her off in June, then sweep off to some romantic place together, coming back for their only child in August. Aunt Leila had shared more than just her home with the lonely girl. She had given Abby roots and a sense of family history, as well as a glimpse into another world, a world where ladies dressed in white linen gathered on broad porches in summer and perched on white wicker chairs for Sunday tea.

  Abby leaned deeper into the cushion, lost in those memories. Summers in Primrose had been everything to her as a child. Aunt Leila’s house had been like a treasure-filled castle to Abby, every piece of furniture a glimpse into her family’s past, every portrait on the wall an ancestor whose story she had heard over and over until they had seemed more real to Abby than her friends back in Chicago.

  Every summer had been a magical venture into a time of forgotten gentility and graciousness. Aunt Leila was a true Victorian lady all her life, a woman who treated all with the same courteousness and amity, a woman who never passed a day without observing afternoon tea, a woman who spoke softly and thoughtfully, a woman of intelligence and charm and wit. Coming to Primrose from Chicago every year had been like entering a time warp, going from the bustle of modern life into a gentler era simply by passing through the front door of the big, rambling house on Cove Road.

  Abby’s visits had been joyful and filled with wonder, as childhood summers should be. There were dirt roads to travel and dunes to explore, adventures of pirate legends to reenact, and, on rainy days, the lure of the attic with all its treasures packed in trunks or the old carriage house, where the smell of the horses still faintly lingered. There was Sunday tea on the wide front porch, with other ladies of Aunt Leila’s circle.

  And always—always—there had been Alex Kane.

  The grandson of Leila’s dearest friend, Alex, too, had been sent east from California every summer to stay in the big house that faced Leila’s from directly across the street. His sister, Krista, two years older than Alex, three years older than Abby, would lounge in the hammock in the backyard of their grandmother’s house reading teeny-bopper magazines and drinking diet soda, all the while sniffing disdainfully at the childish pursuits of Abby and Alex, who were inseparable from the last week of June until the second week of August, every year for twelve years.

  No. Abby corrected herself. Eleven years. That last summer, Alex had not come.

  He had had to take a job that summer, his grandmother had told her, a construction job that would help pay his college tuition the following September, money being tight now that his parents were divorcing. Abby knew instinctively that summers would never be the same again and that a chapter of her life had closed forever.

  Abby idly fanned herself with the letter, wondering what had become of Alex and Krista and—what was his grandmother’s name? Oh, of course. Belle. Annabelle Lee Matthews. She had been a tiny, spry elf of a woman, whose very eyes spoke of mischief. How peculiar that she and Aunt Leila, who was the epitome of quiet grace, should have been the very closest of friends.

  No more peculiar, she mused, than for Aunt Leila to have chosen as her beloved the adventuresome Thomas Cassidy, a man who had scoured the continents seeking lost treasures long before Steven Spielberg had dreamed up Indiana Jones.

  Abby reached to a nearby table and retrieved a box of tissues as she shed fat, hot tears—tears for her lost summers, tears for Aunt Leila, tears for the long-ago days of her childhood, and yet still more tears for her long-lost love.

  When she’d wept herself dry, she pulled the will from the envelope and read through the pages of legalese until she found her name.

  To my grand-niece and namesake, Leila Abigail McKenna, I bequeath all of my personal and real property, to include the estate of my late husband, Thomas Andrew Cassidy…

  All of my personal and real property.

  That would mean the house and its contents. Abby tapped the nails of two fingers on the arm of the chair, contemplating the unexpected news. The house—the castle of her childhood—was now hers. Why, the furniture alone must be worth a…

  A fortune.

  “Oh, thank you, Aunt Leila,” she half shouted, half sobbed. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou… you’ve saved my life!”

  Horace D. Tillman had been the perfect Southern gentleman when Abby called to acknowledge receipt of the letter. Suitably sympathetic and kindly recalling Aunt Leila before getting down to the business at hand, he had assured her that she was, indeed, Leila’s sole beneficiary. He apologized for the delay in notifying her, but there had been some difficulty in determining her whereabouts. He had finally traced her through her Montana relatives.

  She would, of course, she assured Mr. Tillman, come to Primrose as soon as humanly possible. Early November would be just fine. Abby was all but dancing when she hung up the phone. Considering her circumstances, she would walk to Primrose if necessary.

  Abby scanned the living room, taking stock of her surroundings with a critical eye. The furniture she bought two years ago had been expensive. How much would it be worth now? she wondered, an idea forming rapidly.

  Suppose I sell it—give my landlord his thirty-day notice. My lease is up at the end of October anyway. I could go to North Carolina, sell the house, and, from there, I could go anywhere.

  Abby brusquely pushed aside the sharp pang that accompanied the thought of selling the house. She would deal with the emotional aspects of that when the time came. Right now, she had to accept the bequest as the gift Aunt Leila had meant it to be. Surely, Aunt Leila would have known that a corporate type like Abby would not have moved to a sleepy little town like Primrose. Surely, she would have known that the estate would be sold…

 
I’ll think about that later.

  Abruptly, Abby rose and began to pace.

  I would need a car. How can I buy a car? From the sale of my furniture. I can buy a used car—something small and inexpensive.

  She grabbed the newspaper lying, still folded from that morning, on the table. She scanned the ads. There were lots of small, inexpensive cars to be had.

  She walked to her desk, pulled the small red phone book from the top drawer, and looked up the number of her landlord to tell him the check he’d receive on Thursday would be her last.

  She folded the will and tried to return it to its envelope, but something inside seemed to bar its way. Sticking her hand inside, her fingers found yet another envelope, a small square of thin yellow paper on which her name had been scripted in precise and flowing letters. Aunt Leila’s own hand. She carefully removed the small wax seal and read the message that had been left only for her.

  My dearest Abigail,

  I am hopeful that at some time between my writing this note and your reading it, we might have one last Sunday afternoon to spend over tea. Though your childhood may seem a lifetime away to you, it was, for me, but yesterday that the little girl with the big round eyes and the wayward curls descended upon Primrose to share the days of summer. Ah, child, you've no idea how I looked forward to June, and your arrival at my door… the anticipation of having this house filled with your youthful laughter once again. The glow of those remembered joys would carry me, year after year, through the chill of winter.