“Why, no, I don’t recall…” Soft tinges of pink spread slowly across Belle’s cheeks as she realized she had been caught.
“Belle Matthews, you should thank your lucky stars that your memory is as good as it is,” Abby reproved the older woman.
“Whatever do you mean, Abigail?” Belle sniffed indignantly, rapidly recovering, Abby noted with a tiny smile, from her momentary embarrassment.
“You know perfectly well what I mean. Your mind is as sharp as a tack, and you should be grateful, instead of slipping into your dotty old lady routine whenever it suits you.”
“I am a dotty old lady.” Belle’s chin notched a tad higher. “I’ll be ninety years old in August. I’m entitled…”
“Belle, I am closer to being dotty than you are.” Abby leaned down to gaze into Belle’s clear blue eyes. “I would appreciate getting my phone messages. However, in the event that your mind is faltering, as you sometimes claim it to be, I’ll leave a pen and pad of paper by the phone, so you can write down who called and their number. And in the meantime, I’m going up to take a shower.”
“Abigail…” Belle hesitated, as if debating with herself, then simply added, “Have a nice dinner.”
“Why, thank you, Belle. I’m sure I will.” Abby smiled and, realizing she was now down to half an hour before Drew returned for her, sprinted up the steps.
“Oh, dear.” Belle exhaled soundly. “This isn’t at all what we’d planned. Mercy me, Leila, things would appear to be drifting a bit off course…”
It took Abby the full thirty minutes and a few more to get the paint off her skin and out of her hair, but she managed to be dressed and ready to go at six-thirty, when she heard Drew’s car pull up and park on the quiet street. She ran down the steps, kissed Belle good-bye, laughing as Belle’s eyebrows raised when she surveyed the short skirt Abby had chosen to wear, and met Drew on the porch just as he was about to ring the doorbell.
“Wow, don’t you look great!” he exclaimed as she stepped out onto the porch.
“Amazing what a little soap and water will do, isn’t it?” She laughed as she locked the front door behind her.
Drew fell in step with her on the sidewalk. “Abby, I never realized you had legs. You shouldn’t keep them hidden in those baggy jeans all the time.”
Abby laughed, blushing in spite of herself, trying to recall the last time anyone had complimented her on her appearance. Alex, it occurred to her, had called her beautiful not so very long ago, but, of course, that had been part of his chastisement regarding Drew, so she was certain it didn’t count. Still, he had said “beautiful”…
“…and the view is beautiful,” Drew was saying.
“What?”
“I said, I stopped at the Point—that’s the name of the restaurant—and reserved a table with a beautiful view of the Sound,” Drew repeated.
“Oh. It sounds wonderful.”
They rode in the silence that accompanies new relationships until the car turned onto Point Road, which followed the curve of the water’s edge from the outskirts of Primrose to the place where the river met the Albemarle Sound. The boaters, drawn by the clear skies and warm breezes of an early spring day, sailed or sped past them on their left, their lights blinking like so many fireflies over the darkening carpet of water upon which they floated.
Before long, Abby and Drew were being led to their table overlooking the cove, from which they admired many of the same boats, some of which were tying up at the dock provided outside the restaurant and unloading their small crews to dine at the casual tables under the pavilion next to the dock. The outside area was defined by strings of multicolored lights that led from the waterfront to the tables, much the way balloons would decorate a children’s party. The tables themselves wore jaunty red cloths in keeping with the informality of the outdoor dining room. Abby noticed that many of the boaters seemed to know one another, and a large group had gathered around the outside bar, where they ordered drinks in tall plastic tumblers, munched salsa and tortilla chips, and swayed in time with the reggae band that was just warming up.
Inside, in the more formal dining room, Drew and Abby scanned the menu, eyeing the many seafood specialties. At the recommendation of the friendly waitress, they ordered soft-shell crabs (“Just in about two hours ago,” she assured them) and sat watching as the last elongated fingers of the sun’s glow painted the orange of the horizon with thick purple swirls.
“What a treat this is,” Abby said brightly as their food was served by the perky waitress. “To have a night out. Eating lovely food and wearing something other than my painting clothes.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.” Drew smiled.
“I am,” she told him, and meant it. It did feel good to put on pretty clothes and go someplace in the company of a good-looking, pleasant man who was obviously happy to share her company.
“Well, I was hoping to have some time to just sit and talk with you, Abby,” he said. “I wanted to get to know you better.”
“Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” Abby poked at her salad with her fork in search of the mushrooms she suspected lurked beneath the curly lettuce.
“Well, I don’t know that that’s a very interesting story.” He looked slightly uncomfortable and shifted in his seat.
“Where did you grow up?”
“I grew up in New Jersey. Center of the state. Plainsboro,” he told her. “It used to be all farms, for as far as you could see, when I was a boy. Now it’s all housing developments and office complexes and shopping malls.”
“That’s progress for you.”
“Much more progress in that area, and they’ll have to think up a new state nickname,” he told her, “because it won’t be the Garden State anymore.”
“Did you go to school in the area?” Abby asked, as much out of curiosity as to keep the conversation moving.
“For a while.” He paused briefly, his eyes flickering as if distracted by something on the opposite side of the room. “Before my mother remarried and moved to Boston.”
“Did you move with her?”
“No. Her new husband had no interest in raising someone else’s son. I went into foster care. The first of several go-arounds with the social service system.” He tried to smile, but his mouth seemed to tighten into a straight line.
“That must have made a difficult first few years for you. Especially since you were an only child. Having a brother or sister might have made it easier.” She looked across the table, and he wore the look of one who was about to speak. When he did not, she asked, “Were you going to say something?”
“Ah… no. I mean, yes… here’s the waitress with our dinners.”
Abby leaned back in her chair, wondering what he was really going to say.
“In any event”—she shrugged it off and continued on her own line of thought—“I often wish that I had had someone—a sister, a brother. I think it would have helped me so much to have had someone when my parents died.”
“It is tough to be alone when your world is falling apart.” He nodded grimly.
“How old were you when you lost your father?” Abby asked.
“Three. That was when we came to Primrose. After my father died. I guess my mother felt there was nowhere else for her to turn. She said that my father used to talk about how his grandfather was a wealthy man who lived in a big house near the water. I guess she figured she’d try to track him down and see what she could get out of him.”
He paused for a moment as if collecting his thoughts. “I remember walking in through that grand front door. The house looked like a palace to me. My mother sat me down on a wooden seat with mirrors all around it. We didn’t stay real long…” He appeared to struggle with some thought or other he wasn’t sure he could share. Whatever it was, it flickered across his face and disappeared as quickly as it had come.
“Not too long after that, my mother remarried for the first time. That didn’t work out so well, so she divorced him an
d married someone else. My momma was a bit of a rolling stone,” he said pointedly, as if apologizing for his background. “She seemed to specialize in fast-talking men and haphazard parenting.”
“It must have been hard for you to deal with so many changes at so young an age,” she said thoughtfully.
“It would have been easier if she had been a little more stable, and a little less indifferent.” Drew’s voice bore a thinly disguised trace of sadness. “My mother was the sort who bored very easily. Mostly, she was bored with me. One minute I’d be talking to her, telling her about something that happened at school that day, she’d even look like she was listening. Then she’d turn me off like she’d just turned off the TV. She’d pick up the phone and make a call or just walk out of the room, leave me in the middle of a sentence to find something more interesting to do. So one minute. I’d think I had her attention, then the next, I’d know it was all an act, that she was only pretending to listen because she thought she had to. Growing up, I never had her attention for one entire conversation, not one time in my life. The rest of it I could deal with—the moving around, her changing her men the way some women change their shoes, even being shipped in and out of foster homes. But I never got used to her indifference toward me.”
“But she must have loved you, Drew. Otherwise, she’d have given you up for adoption, or tried to pass you off to a relative.” Abby tried to rationalize. How could any woman not love her child, regardless of what else was going on in her life?
“I think that’s why she brought me to Primrose after my father died.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think she tried to dump me on my grandfather, but obviously, he didn’t want me, either. Maybe he just didn’t feel up to raising a child. Or maybe his wife didn’t want to be reminded that he’d had an affair which had resulted in a child…”
“Drew, I cannot believe that Leila would have turned you away. I simply do not accept that.” Abby put her fork down quietly. “If you had showed up at her door, she would have taken you in.”
“You think she would have taken in her husband’s illegitimate grandson?”
“Yes. And from what I know of Thomas, I can’t understand why he would not have welcomed you with open arms.”
“Well, all I know is what my mother told me.”
“Which was?”
“That she was given money to leave and not to come back. And, frankly, that probably satisfied my mother at the time.”
“It just sounds so incongruous with everything else I knew of them.” Abby shook her head. “But what about your mother’s family?”
“I never met any of them, either. I think she was originally from Omaha, someplace like that… in any event, it never mattered.”
“I think it mattered very much.” She could have bitten her tongue. “I’m sorry, Drew…”
“Don’t be. It’s the truth, of course. It did matter very much. And I guess that’s why now it means so much to me to be able to see Thomas’s things… to read his books, to sit where he sat and read the words he wrote. It’s the only tangible evidence that I had a family. That I came from someplace. Whether he wanted to share that place with me or not.”
She watched his face as he turned his gaze to the water and stared out at the boat whose sails were being readied for a trip back across the Sound. With Drew, it seemed to Abby, there was always something underneath the surface, just waiting to be revealed. She wondered if the words that seemed always to stick in his throat would ever be spoken.
Abby’s gaze drifted down to the deck area, which had been brightly illuminated with lanterns around the perimeter, and noticed a woman standing at the top of the steps, staring up to where they sat.
“Drew.” Abby touched his arm to get his attention. “I think that woman is trying to get your attention.”
“What woman?” He frowned.
“There… at the end of the deck. She’s wearing a red-and-white shirt and red pants… the blonde.” Abby all but pointed the woman out with a finger, but Drew still seemed confused. “Drew… the blonde in the red-and-white shirt. She’s the only person dressed in red and white on the deck. Dark glasses. Straw hat…”
“Well, she’s gone now.” He shrugged. “I can’t imagine who I’d know down here, though.”
Abby looked down toward where the woman had stood. “She certainly looked like she knew you.”
“Well, they say that everyone looks like someone.” He tossed it off as if it was of no consequence.
“I don’t know that I’d be so quick to pass her by,” Abby teased. “She looked very pretty, from what I could see.”
He shrugged off the blonde and returned his attention to his meal.
The drive back to Primrose was quiet. Drew turned on the radio and found only static. Abby offered to find music for him, being more familiar with the local stations.
“Rock or country?” she asked.
“Ummm… country’s fine.”
She turned the dial to her favorite country station. Chet Atkins was singing a thoughtful ballad and cleanly picking the steel strings of his guitar, his voice just smooth enough, just husky enough. Abby leaned her head back and hummed along.
“From everything that you’ve told me about your aunt, I wish they had taken me in. I think I would have liked growing up in Primrose,” he said wistfully.
“We would have had fun in the summers. The three of us.” Even as she spoke, Abby wondered how the presence of a third party—and another boy, at that—would have changed things. If Alex had had a choice between bike riding with her or with another boy, which would he have chosen?
“Three of us?”
“Alex spent the summers here, too. With Belle.”
“I see. So you two really go back a way, don’t you?”
“I guess I’ve known him for about twenty years.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Oh, he just had this look of… I guess possessiveness is as good a word as any, when I met him a few weeks ago. Maybe he was just being protective of an old friend.”
“I’m sure it was nothing more than that,” Abby said more stiffly than she had intended.
He pulled in front of her house and turned off the engine. It was still and quiet on Cove Road, and the only lights on were the ones in Naomi’s kitchen and the street lights at the very end of the road.
“This was the best birthday dinner I’ve had in many years,” he told her as he walked to the porch with his hand on her elbow.
“Is today your birthday?”
“Actually, it’s Wednesday, but I figured on this being my celebration.”
“If I’d known, I’d have baked you a birthday cake,” she told him.
“I can’t remember the last time someone did that for me,” he noted.
“Then you’ll have to come back and let me make dinner for you on Wednesday night, and you’ll have a proper birthday,” she insisted. “We’ll see if we can make up for the birthday parties you did not have here when you were little.”
“Abby, you don’t have to do that. I mean, I appreciate the thought, but…”
“No ‘buts.’ Is seven okay? And can you make it back? I mean, with your business schedule and all.”
“It’ll fit in just fine, Abby, but don’t you think maybe you should discuss this with Belle?”
“No, I do not. Belle will have to learn to live with it.”
“I just don’t want to be the source of tension between you,” he said as he took the key to the front door and stepped forward to slip it into the lock. “Look, Abby,” he whispered, and pointed to the stand of pines off to the left of the house. “There’s an owl… see it, there, toward the top branches?”
Abby walked to the edge of the porch and peered upward. “No, I don’t see it. Where are you looking?”
He came up behind her and turned her slightly in the direction of the street. “There… do you see it now?”
“No, I don’t see anything. Are you sure?”
“Sure. He’s right there… well, wait now, from this angle, I can’t tell for sure if that is an owl or the way the branches are sticking up.”
“I think you’re seeing things,” she teased.
“I could have sworn.” He shrugged, slid the key into the lock, and quietly swung the door open. “I guess I’ll see you on Wednesday. If you’re sure…”
“I am positive. Look at it this way,” she said as she stepped into the dimly lit hallway, “with any luck, I’ll be able to sell this house long before your birthday comes around again. This could very well be your last chance to celebrate a birthday in this house. I’d take it while I could, if I were you.”
“Okay.” He laughed. “I get the picture. And I’ll be here promptly at seven.”
“Great.” On impulse, Abby reached up and gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you then,” she called over her shoulder, and closed the front door, unaware that he remained standing on the front porch, watching her through the door’s glass panels as she walked to the back of the house.
And he, in turn, could not have known that just as he stood watching Abby, so he was being observed from somewhere in the shadows of the ancient shrubs that huddled close to the house and offered shelter to those who would prefer to remain unseen.
30
“I want you to know that I do not approve of this, Abigail,” Belle pronounced with all the haughtiness she could muster.
“Belle, I am sorry. But I am having a birthday dinner for Drew here on Wednesday night, and that is that.”
The sound of the ringing front doorbell ended the discussion, as far as Abby was concerned. Through the glass panels, Abby could see a tall, dark-haired woman standing at the top of the porch steps with her back to the house and her hands on her hips, as if taking in the scenery. Abby unlocked the door and swung it aside.
“Yes?” she asked. “May I help you?”
“Abby?” the visitor asked tentatively as she turned toward the opening door and removed her sunglasses.
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