“Oh, Brayden.”
Riley moved toward him, but he held up his hand. “Now my entire day is ruined. And it’s all your fault.”
Mack laughed. “Now this must be your son because only a mom can ruin a boy’s entire day,” he said.
Riley nodded. “Brayden Collins Sheffield.”
Mack walked toward him. “Hello, I’m Mack Logan, an old friend of your mom’s. There is no way she ruined your day.”
“Yeah, right. She didn’t wake me up in time and I missed the boat and now I can’t go fishing.”
Mack said something to Brayden, but Riley couldn’t hear the words. Was she in a dream in which Mack Logan stood talking to her son about boats, fishing and tides? Dizziness threatened. She took a long sip of coffee, and then a deep breath. She attempted to smooth the hair back from her face. They both turned to her.
“Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know, cutie.” She smiled at him.
“Ah, don’t call me that. Can I go fishing with this guy?” Brayden pointed at Mack.
Riley felt momentarily confused by the question. What world was this?
Mack made eye contact with her while still talking to Brayden. “I’ll take you fishing, to the same place I won every bet against your mother, but only after she shows me around my old house.”
“Your house?” Brayden asked.
“The Logan family lived here before Gamma bought the building and made it into the store,” Riley explained.
“You’re a Logan?” Brayden squinted at Mack.
Mack narrowed his eyes back at Brayden. “Depends what you’ve heard about us.”
Riley held her breath—what had Brayden absorbed through the years?
“Nothing, really. Just heard the name, that’s all.”
“Then you don’t know how I beat your mom at the fishing tournament, at the sailing race, at the badminton competition?”
“Like she’d be hard to beat.” Brayden rolled his eyes.
Mack laughed. “Actually, she was. And I’m exaggerating a bit. She’s just being polite not mentioning how many times she beat me.”
Brayden looked at his mother as if he didn’t know her. “You did?”
“Of course.”
Mack touched her elbow. “You too busy to show me around right now?”
She shook her head. “Just let me check on the book club and Ethel, and then I’m all yours.”
He laughed. “Yeah, right.”
The subtlety of the flirting words, the deeper laugh, combined to make her feel as though her feet had been put on the opposite legs, making her clumsy. “Have a muffin on me. The chocolate-chip ones are the best. I’ll be right back.” She turned to Brayden. “Where’s Aunt Maisy?”
“She said there was no way she was going through the day without a shower. She went back to Gamma’s and said to tell you she’ll be here as soon as she can.”
“Oh.” Riley forced a smile despite her irritation with Maisy for contributing to her crazy morning. “Let me check on the book club.” She walked toward the gathered Blonde Book Club, felt Mack’s gaze follow her. Her mind went to questions she rarely considered: were her jeans too tight? Her shirt wrinkled? Her hair knotted?
The book club members waved in unison, like homecoming queens in a parade, which all of them appeared to be. “You all okay?” Riley asked the group.
“Yeah,” Kiki Anderson answered. “We’re just waiting on our coffee and muffins.” She sounded like a whining child, and Riley forced herself to smile.
“I’ll have Anne send them right over, and then my sister Maisy will stop by. You’ll love her.”
Kiki clapped her hands together. “Oh, I know who she is. It’ll be fun to see her.”
“Yes,” Riley said. “Fun.”
A fervent desire for a long hot shower came over Riley. She rejoined Mack and Brayden, her heart lifting at the thought of Mack being here. Someone called her name: she turned to see Lodge come through the front door with his camera, satchel and a wide smile. He waved.
The morning was coming at her too fast; she couldn’t seem to keep up. Lodge arrived at her side, pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Morning, Riley.”
“Hey.”
“You forgot,” he said.
She grimaced. “A little. I’m having a weird day—going to the bondman’s office is never a good way to start.”
“What?”
“Forget it,” she said.
Lodge followed her glance to the café. “Am I imagining it or is that Mack Logan?”
“It’s him,” she said. “He just got into town.”
“Oh, this is great. I can take a picture of two owners together—it’ll make a great follow-up piece.”
Riley swiped at her hair. “No way. No pictures of me looking like this. Maisy will be here in a minute—take her photo this time.”
Lodge shook his head. “You never have understood how cute you are. You look fine, Riley. Maisy can’t compare.”
She turned away. “Yeah, right.”
“To me,” he said, and walked away as he said it so she wasn’t absolutely sure he had.
Lodge and Riley entered the café, where Brayden and Mack were sitting at a table sharing a large muffin. Mack recognized Lodge, and his face broke into a smile. He stood up and shook his hand. “Man, it’s good to see you.”
Lodge laughed. “Good to see you, too.” He turned to Brayden. “Hey, buddy, how’s it going?”
“Hey, Mr. Barton. I’m good. You?”
“Just fine.”
Brayden had chocolate in the corner of his mouth. “Mom, I’m going to check out the new magazines.” He waved toward the periodical section. “Tell me when Mr. Logan is ready, okay?”
“Sure thing,” Riley said.
Mack shook his head. “This is crazy, seeing all of you. So many great memories, huh? Those days were only thirteen years ago, but a lifetime, you know?”
“Yeah,” Lodge said. “Somehow time marches on. Jobs, families.”
“Do you have a family now?” Mack sat, motioned for Lodge to sit also.
Lodge shook his head, and set his camera on the table. “Lost my wife, Tibbie, to a rare blood disease years ago.”
Mack shook his head. “I am so sorry. Any kids?”
Lodge shook his head again, and an awkward silence followed until Mack cleared his throat and said, “I wish I hadn’t lost touch with everyone. I didn’t . . . mean to.”
“We never do,” Lodge said. “And hell, you haven’t missed much. You can probably catch up in about fifteen minutes.”
“Maybe.” He turned to Riley. “Are you . . . married?”
“No,” she said, shifted her feet. Finding nowhere to put her hands, she clasped them in her lap. “Never . . . have been.” Her skin flushed at relating facts she wasn’t accustomed to speaking aloud.
Lodge filled the awkward pause. “So, Mack, tell us about life on the other side of Palmetto Beach.”
“Life on the other side . . . hmm . . . it’s good. I have a degree in architecture, work for a firm in Manhattan. Still single, but my brother, Joe, is married now; they’re about to have their first kid.” Mack leaned back in his chair. “We definitely have changed, haven’t we? We aren’t those kids who spent summers on this beach learning to fish, sail, smoke cigarettes, fall in love and get our hearts broken by the local girls.”
Logan laughed. “Some of us still get our hearts broken by the local girls.”
“I can imagine,” Mack said.
“So, man, when was the last time we saw you?” Lodge asked.
“The bonfire the last night of summer,” Mack said without hesitation.
“Yeah, yeah, I remember now.” Lodge leaned back in his chair. “Crazy night. At least what I remember of it. That was right before we all left for college.”
Mack nodded. “Yep.” He glanced up at Riley. “You ready for that tour?”
Riley felt as though she’d been watching the scene from far away,
and now that her attention was needed, she landed with a thud in the middle of the room—large and awkward. “Great. Let’s go.”
Lodge stood, lifted his camera. “Photo first?”
Riley shook her head.
Mack threw his arm around her, pulled her close. She looked up at him to tell him to let go, and Lodge’s flash went off. Torn between wanting to stay, and wanting to throw Lodge’s camera into the trash, she became immobile.
Lodge set the camera on the café table. “I’ll wait until Maisy gets here, and take one more shot for the Sunday edition. You two go on. I’ll get a cup of coffee while I wait.”
“You sure?” Riley stepped out from under Mack’s arm.
“Positive. Go give your tour.”
Riley led Mack through the cottage rooms, one by one, explaining where they’d knocked down walls, what the rooms were used for. They stopped in the Kids’ Corner, where a group of children was sitting on beanbag chairs, entranced as Ethel read Treasure Island out loud.
Mack leaned close to Riley and whispered, “This is so sweet. My mom would love to see it. She adores knowing that her old cottage is a bookstore.”
Riley motioned for them to move away; they walked to the main section in the middle of the store. “I think your mom read about a hundred novels every summer. She could probably start a bookstore with all her old books.”
His face held a shadow of sorrow; she recognized it because she’d seen it before. “Is your mom okay?” She touched his arm, then quickly withdrew her hand.
“She’s fine.” He looked out the window. “It’s Dad who’s not doing well. He has lymphoma. We’re taking this trip to . . . get away, remember better days.”
“Oh.” Riley’s eyes filled. “I am so, so sorry.”
“It’s been hard. I’m taking a couple weeks off work.”
“Where exactly are you working?”
“I’ve been terrible about keeping in touch, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about you . . . and your family. I do.” He sat down in a club chair; Riley took a seat in the ladder-back chair next to him. “I design mostly commercial space for a small firm, Harbinger Associates.”
“So you put your drawing skill to use.”
“You remember?”
She smiled at him, shook her head. “Are you kidding? I remember everything about those summers.” Embarrassment at her sudden confession made her stand. “But for some reason I thought you wanted to design houses. Did I make that up?”
“No, you remember right. I somehow got . . . sidetracked. Dad is good friends with the president and well . . . here I am.”
“Yes, here you are. Come on, I’ll show you the upstairs. It’s not clean—we’ve had an insane morning—but I’ll show you around.”
Together they walked up the back stairs and entered the kitchen. She tried to see the house through Mack’s eye. The upstairs part of the house had once held all four bedrooms, yet Riley had transformed it into one tiny kitchen with a table and a sitting area open to it, and two good-sized bedrooms. She moved through the rooms, fluffing pillows, straightening baskets of books and Brayden’s schoolwork, his sports equipment. But the place still looked cluttered, worn. Yet she loved these rooms. They had held her and Brayden close.
Mack stood in the middle of the kitchen and took a deep breath. “This is amazing, Riley. My family loves books, and now our old cottage is a bookstore—and you live in it.” He looked at her. “This is why I love life. It does make for some surprising coincidences, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. Connections,” she said, “surprising connections.”
“That, too,” he said, and laughed.
Yes, they were connected, bound together by the past and the present. And for the first time in a long while Riley’s life seemed more interesting to her than the novel on her bedside table.
NINE
MAISY
Maisy’s clothes were strewn across her childhood bedroom. The room had changed very little since the day she left for California. The bulletin board held dried corsages; the pale pink walls whispered of adolescence; from the bottom right post of the bed hung one blue and one green pom-pom. Of course Mama had removed the R.E.M. band poster. Maisy walked over to the window and opened it in the hope that the breeze of an incoming storm would wash her mind clean.
It didn’t work.
She showered and dressed, regret slowing her movements—for new and old mistakes. She hadn’t been home twenty-four hours and she’d already screwed up. After dressing, she poked her head into Adalee’s room, where she was sound asleep in a curled-up position. Maisy woke Adalee, told her to get up, get dressed and go see Mama and pretend nothing had happened. Now. And she was expected at the bookstore in an hour.
When Maisy entered the drawing room moments later, Mama was sitting up in bed with a large piece of white graph paper on her lap, her breakfast tray on the side table. Uneaten eggs had congealed on the plate, a single bite of English muffin had been taken and a few strawberries were scattered across the family china. Maisy walked over and kissed her mama on the cheek. “Good morning, Mama.”
“Well, hello, sweet girl. Aren’t you running a little late?”
“Yes, I am. The time zone messed me up. Riley’s at the store. All is well.”
Mama pointed to the graph paper with codes and numbers that looked like a strategic military chart. “You see, you’re supposed to be at the book club meeting and Adalee is supposed to be here with me for the next hour, going over the . . .”
Maisy picked up the sheet of paper, and saw it was a grid schedule with the initials RS, MS and AS filling blocks of time. “Well, this is impressive.”
“Riley did it. I’m just revising it.”
Maisy looked around the room. “Where’s your nurse? You hardly ate any of your breakfast.”
“I told her to leave me alone, that I was sure my youngest daughter would be down any minute to eat with me.”
Maisy looked away from her mother’s penetrating blue eyes. Mama would know she was lying if she said everything was okay with Adalee—Mama always knew when her girls weren’t being truthful. “I’m sorry I missed breakfast; I’ve got to go help Riley.” Maisy shrugged. “But I’ll see you this afternoon, okay?”
Maisy kissed her mama goodbye and somehow made it out of the house without having to explain why Adalee was still in bed. Maisy parked in the rear of the bookstore lot and entered through the back door. Morning light fell through the windows onto the scarred hardwood floors. She did love this place.
Riley’s voice came from the other end of the store. The aroma of coffee and cinnamon wafted from the bakery. Women’s laughter filtered from the book club corner.
Maisy looked toward the side room where the door was shut: the former library in the Logan home—now a storage area. The wooden double doors were closed. A bright red ribbon was tied around the two glass doorknobs with a calligraphy sign saying “Do Not Enter.” If that sign had been there the night she’d come here with Tucker Morgan, would it have stopped her? Could anything have stopped her in those days when she seemed bent on self-destruction?
She moved toward the doors, ran her hand over the glass knobs, felt their ridges in her palm.
Familiar voices made chill bumps run down her arms. She spun around and saw them—Mack Logan and Riley. Maisy froze, her heart—already battered with memory—stopped, then started with a stutter. They were laughing; Mack’s arm was draped over Riley’s shoulders. A man she didn’t recognize stood in front of the group with a camera slung over his shoulder.
Ancient anger rose from a place Maisy had pretended didn’t exist. In slow steps she moved toward them.
Mack saw her first and smiled. That heartbreaking smile. The one she’d remembered exactly right. His hair fell across his forehead and she knew that underneath was a thin scar from a boat accident.
“Maisy.”
She went to him, threw her arms around him with an abandon she immediately regretted, yet could
n’t seem to stop. “Mack,” she said, then stepped back to look at him.
At last she recognized Lodge, hugged him, too. They stood in a semicircle, and Maisy said, “We look like we’re about to perform some primitive dance to the Driftwood gods.”
Lodge lifted his camera. “Hey, let me get a quick shot and then I’ll go finish this follow-up article. I think I have everything I need, right?” He glanced at Riley.
“The newsletter I gave you has the details,” she said.
Maisy watched her sister’s nervous movements, knowing them as well as she knew her own: the toss of the hair, the rub of the eyes and the shuffle of the feet.
Riley called Brayden over and they lined up in a row: Brayden, Maisy, Mack and Riley smiled for the camera.
Logan shook his head after he snapped a few more pictures. “Time warp,” he said.
Maisy laughed. “Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice.”
Brayden moved back to his seat at a nearby table, but he continued to observe them through squinted eyes. Riley went to him and Maisy wondered for the hundredth time which man had given this child his quiet spirit. Did whoever it was even know that Brayden existed? She glanced at Mack. She wouldn’t imagine it could be him—Riley had denied it vehemently ever since the day she came home from college.
“Maisy,” Riley said, “will you take the tray of coffee and muffins to the book club?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Maisy heard the bite of resentment underneath her own words.
Riley exhaled, that damn disapproving exhale. “Forget it. I’ll do it.”
Maisy held up her hand. “I said I’d do it. I woke Adalee and told her to be here in an hour.”
“Thank you,” Riley said. “Thank you so much.” Then her face went expressionless, flat. “Damn.”
“What?” Maisy followed her sister’s gaze.
“Poor Ethel is having to deal with Mrs. Winter again. She keeps buying hardcover novels and then returning them, pretending she’s never read them . . . and gets another.”
“Does she think this is a library?” Maisy took a step toward the front counter.
Riley put her hand on Maisy’s arm. “Don’t say anything. It’s just not worth it. Her son is a local police deputy and she’ll throw a monumental fit, and then we’ll get a call from the sheriff ’s office, and then he’ll come in here wanting to know why we’d embarrass his mother in that disgraceful way.”
Driftwood Summer Page 11