“Really?” Riley tried to see the woman he saw, yet she only envisioned a tired female running through the bookstore in a frantic need to save a business that had once saved her.
“Really.” He opened the Patio’s glass door, held his hand out for her to enter.
The tinkling of glass, quiet laughter and murmured voices filled the subdued restaurant, which was packed with what Mama called the “ladies who lunch” crowd.
Lodge looked over his shoulder. “Maybe we should have gone to Bud’s. I seem to be a little out of place here, the only man.”
A high school girl with terrible acne who had once worked at Driftwood Cottage came to the hostess podium. She ignored them for a full minute, pretending to study her seating chart before finally saying, “Oh, hello, Ms. Sheffield. Two for lunch?”
“Yes, please,” Riley said. “Hello, Cami.”
She felt herself blush as she remembered the sobbing scene in which she’d fired this girl for coming in stoned one afternoon.
“Follow me,” Cami murmured, turning her cool gaze away from Riley’s.
Lodge shrugged his shoulders and they followed the bobbing ponytail to a far back table next to the bathrooms. They sat, and when Cami walked away, they burst into laughter. “What did you do to that girl?” Lodge asked. “Ice is warmer than she is, and this might be the worst table in the restaurant.”
“How do you know she’s mad at me and not you?”
“She didn’t say, ‘Hello, Mr. Barton’ with barbs of hate attached.” He grinned and leaned toward Riley. “I would absolutely love to know what you could have done to piss someone off that badly.”
“I fired her.”
“Ah, got it.” He reached for a menu. “Oh, I almost forgot—I have pictures for you. The second one will go in tomorrow’s paper with the article about the events at the bookstore.” He leaned down, pulled two photos from his satchel, handed them across the table.
Riley looked down at the first black-and-white photo, showing her and Mack. She was looking up at him while he smiled at the camera. “Oh, I hope you don’t use this one. I look . . . terrible. I’d had a terrible morning, not even a shower.”
“No, you look adorable, and quite adoring also.”
“Thanks, Lodge, but please don’t put it in the paper. And I wasn’t adoring him. I was talking.”
“Of course.”
Riley looked at the second picture: her, Mack, Maisy and Brayden smiling at the camera. “If someone told me when I was a kid that one day I would be in this picture, with my son, I wouldn’t have believed them.”
“That’s why life is so . . . interesting,” Lodge said. “Now, how are things coming for the party?”
“There are so many answers to that one question, I don’t even know where to start. Can we talk about you for a little bit? I’m tired of me, my sisters, my family, and my bookstore. They’re exhausting.” Riley reached for the end of her hair to move it off her shoulder, and found only air.
Lodge’s warm smile made Riley want to curl up right there and take a nap. “Your hair is shorter,” he said, as if he knew what she’d meant to do with her hand.
“Yes, Maisy had someone give me a . . . makeover.”
“You didn’t need one. You were fine just the way you were, but you look great now, too.”
“Obviously she didn’t think so.” Riley smiled back at him. “But I am not complaining. I don’t care about her motivations. So how is the newspaper business?”
Over plates of shrimp scampi and glasses of white wine, Riley became lost in conversation with her old friend. She leaned forward on her elbows, breaking Ms. Dixie’s rule of etiquette. “Has it been . . . easier for you lately? I mean with Tibbie gone?”
“It’s been five years, Riley.”
“Wow. It doesn’t seem that long ago.”
“In another way it feels like a lifetime. Time is so . . . elastic. I mean, her last days seemed to pass too fast, and then the days after she was gone seemed to drag on forever.”
“I’m sorry. I never knew what to do or say after she died. I wanted to come see you, talk to you, but I felt so inadequate.”
“Everyone did. I did, too. I knew you cared. . . .”
“I hope so.”
“You stopped by a lot, remember? You brought me all those casseroles.” He laughed, looked away. “Everyone brought so much food.”
“I guess I could have brought some fishing bait or a Big Game Hunter video. Would that have been better?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Maybe. Maybe it would have been much better. I don’t know anymore, though.”
The lunch crowd had dissipated and Riley and Lodge lingered over their conversation. The waitress approached. “Anything else?”
“Yes.” Lodge looked up. “One more chardonnay for the lady, please.”
“No way,” Riley said. “I have to go back to work.”
“Yes, and one for me, too,” Lodge said to the waitress, who nodded and walked off.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Because,” he said, pulled her hand into his, “I want to have your full attention for at least another twenty minutes.”
Something in the way he said it, in the pressure of his fingers, in the quiet of a table in the back of a restaurant resonated in Riley like an echo from another time—a time of desire. She blamed the wine. She needed to blame the wine because she didn’t know what else to make of it. A response from her was needed; she knew that and yet she sat mute while Lodge Barton held her hand across the table.
He finally released her, and leaned back in his seat. She was unable for a long stretch of time to find chatty words of conversation. And this was the problem with want—with the desire for anything—it changed the way you acted. If he wanted her in the way she’d just felt, then there was a great irony in her life: all those years she’d wanted Mack and he had only desired friendship; and now here was a man who acted is if he wanted more and all she needed was a friend.
Her mind seized on a question, and she finally said, “Tell me about that case the paper is following on the mayor’s wife . . . and—I don’t know what the right word is. Fraternizing?”
The waitress came and placed glasses of chardonnay in front of them. Riley lifted the glass and sipped while Lodge told her the story about the wife who had been “allegedly” paying workmen at her house with “favors.”
Warmth spread through Riley as she laughed along with Lodge. “You just can’t make that stuff up,” she said.
“Nope,” he said. “Sometimes real life is better than any story.”
“Yes,” Riley said.
Lodge held her gaze across the table. “Funny,” he said. “When I’m with you, I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
For a single moment Riley clearly saw that there were other possibilities in her life, a potential she hadn’t noticed in her busy-ness and preoccupation. She took a moment before she said, “Thanks, Lodge. That’s really . . . sweet.”
He smiled, yet she felt his disappointment across the table; she couldn’t and didn’t return the words or sentiment. Something inside her rose and wanted to feel desire for this friend, to say the words he’d want to hear, but she couldn’t find them. “Well, I guess we have to head back to our jobs. I know I have to get back to the bookstore.”
“Of course you do. Big night tonight.”
“Yes, big night.” She smiled at Lodge, took his hand and squeezed it.
They stood and walked toward the front door, Lodge’s hand on the small of her back as Riley wondered what else she hadn’t noticed in her life, what else had slipped past her.
TWENTY-ONE
MAISY
Maisy and Adalee calculated that they had been awake for thirty hours. Their last can of Red Bull sat empty on top of a paint can. They lay down on the storage room floor, laughing so hard that Adalee began to cough. “I can’t take anymore. I have to go to bed. Now.”
“I’m right behind you.” Maisy
stood up, stretched. “But I have to see Riley’s face. Don’t you?”
Adalee stood up, glanced up at her watch. “She’ll be here any minute. Let’s get out there and then go to bed until Friday.”
Maisy tucked a strand of Adalee’s hair behind her ear. “That was the best night I’ve had since . . . Well, I’m not telling you since when.”
Adalee pouted. “You still think I’m a little girl and you can’t tell me stuff.”
“Not true.” Maisy hugged her sister. “I think you’re brilliant, talented, funny and gorgeous. I just don’t want you to know how terrible I really am. Why do you think I live so far away?”
“So you don’t have to see us,” Adalee said, turned away with a catch in her voice. “We’re not stupid.”
“Oh, Adalee, that is not true.” Maisy turned her sister around. “That is not true at all. It has nothing to do with that. I just had to get away, and then, blink, it was twelve years later.”
“Didn’t seem like a blink to me. It feels like you’ve been gone a million years.”
Maisy hugged her again. “I’m sorry. Let’s get out there and admire our work, and then crash.”
Adalee smiled, her face full again. “You have paint all over your cheek. It’s in your hair, too.”
“And you don’t look a mess?” Maisy put her arm around her sister and they left the storage room, the central clearinghouse for their grand scheme.
Her eyes closed, Adalee plopped down in a plush lounge chair now draped with a pale rose trellis pattern slipcover from Beach Chic. Maisy leaned against the front counter, once Formica, now crafted from two antique doors laid flat across the surface, the cut-glass doorknobs still intact. This was her idea and it had worked brilliantly.
Her eyelids felt as though they were scratching her eyes with each blink. She yawned, checked the clock above the Kids’ Corner. Three-oh-five. Riley would be here any minute.
Ethel stood in front of the store rearranging name tags for the evening. Then the door opened and Riley walked in. Sunlight followed her, and for a moment, Maisy forgot all about the total redo of the bookstore and only marveled at the redo of Riley Sheffield. Her hair fell in waves just past her shoulder, an Empire-cut sundress fell in pale blue folds and Riley’s smile saturated her entire face with beauty.
This was the sister Maisy had left all those years ago. The sister with the full laugh and the face of an angel who was unaware of her beauty. Gone was the sister who pulled her hair back into a baseball cap, her eyes narrowed in concern. Maisy waved across the store.
Riley walked three steps into the store before she stopped, placed a hand over her mouth and let out a gasp. “Oh.” She met Maisy’s eyes, and continued toward her. With each step Riley took, her gaze wandered to another part of the store. Maisy couldn’t read her reaction.
Riley reached Maisy, yet turned to the checkout counter, where the antique doors formed a new countertop. Riley ran her hand over the cut-glass doorknob, across the silken ancient wood. When she looked up at Maisy, she smiled, threw her arms around her. “What did you do? How did you get it done so fast? Where did you get the money?”
Maisy pointed to the sleeping Adalee. “It was all her idea. She has been working on it nonstop. Guess Mama should have grounded her years ago—maybe we would have known she was good at something besides partying. She made the design boards, picked all this stuff out at the Flea Market, and I ordered some slipcovers from my shop—I get a huge discount, so just consider it a gift from me.”
Riley walked around the store, touching the slipcovers, the painted cane chairs and side tables. The crystal chandelier had been cleaned and rehung over the Book Club Corner. Worn metal ceiling tiles now framed old book covers. Pictures of the Sheffield family during the childhood years had been set in peeling blue frames and set behind the checkout counter among the book club picks. The shelves holding the books had been replaced with new thick pine boards shiny with wax. Throughout the store soft cream linen hung in folds to the floor, separating spaces in the store without intruding.
“Those”—Maisy pointed to the blue frames—“are made of painted driftwood. Adalee found them in the bottom of a bin of discards.”
Riley made a sweet sound in the back of her throat. “Oh, I love them. And the painted cane chairs, scattered everywhere like confetti. They’re just adorable.” Celtic flute music came over the sound system. “You even changed my music.”
“It’s a new band—the Unknown Souls. You like it?”
“I don’t just like it.” Riley spread her hands wide. “I love all of it. Everything. I can’t believe how different and peaceful the place feels. How did you do all this in such a short time?”
“There’s more to do, but not now. Let’s just say I’m on my way to bed—upstairs. I won’t even make it home. And you, by the way, look gorgeous.”
“I know you did all that to keep me out of the store, but thank you. It was the nicest day I’ve had in a long time. I don’t know why you did all this. . . .” Riley looked away.
Maisy hugged her sister, and then laughed out loud. “You’ve been drinking,” she said.
Riley suppressed a smile. “If you call a glass . . . or two . . . drinking.”
“Oh, I do,” Maisy said, hugged her sister again, allowing this respite of anger to flow across the gap between them.
“Mom,” Brayden called and both Riley and Maisy turned. He ran toward them, waving his sunburned arms and laughing. “Guess what.”
“What?” Riley hugged him.
“I caught a cobia. Huge. The boat captain said it was the largest one caught all year. I have pictures.” Brayden pointed at Mack and Sheppard lagging behind him.
Mack reached them first. “The store looks . . . different,” he said, and smiled at Maisy.
She ran her hand through her paint-speckled hair, yet found nothing to say to the beautiful man standing before her like a fulfilled dream. Then he turned to Riley, and Maisy saw his face, his eyes light up in the way they had that summer thirteen years ago—before Maisy had made him look her way.
“Hey, Riley. Thanks for letting us take Brayden.”
Riley nodded. “Thanks for taking him. Sounds like he had a good time.”
Brayden interrupted. “What, are you kidding? I had the best time absolutely ever in my whole life. When I finish stupid school, I’m gonna be a deep-sea fishing captain.”
Riley laughed. “You giving up on becoming a marine biologist?”
Brayden looked to each adult. “Can you be a marine biologist and quit school?”
They all shook their heads in unison. “Then, nope. I’m gonna be a boat captain.” Brayden ran off toward the back of the house with a wave over his shoulder.
Mack grimaced. “Now I’ll get blamed for the middle-school dropout, won’t I?”
Riley laughed and even Maisy saw her beauty fill the room, lift all their spirits. Mack’s smile widened, and his eyes never left Riley as she walked toward the counter, pulled out her purse. “What do I owe you for the deep-sea fishing? I know those excursions are expensive.”
Maisy felt that weird, desperate need to have Mack move his eyes from Riley to her, and the words that came out were unintentional. “You don’t always owe everyone something. For God’s sake, Riley. Just let someone do something nice for you without making them feel guilty about it.”
Riley’s mouth opened, closed and then opened again. Mack filled the awkward moment with a laugh. “No need for payback. It was my treat. Really.”
“Thanks,” Riley said, looked down at the newly polished hardwood floors. “It means a lot to me that you took him. He would have been bored beyond tears today.”
“No boy in Palmetto Beach is ever bored in summer.” His gaze then turned to Maisy. “Did you do all this to the store?”
She nodded. “Me and Adalee.” She pointed to her sleeping sister in the lounge chair. “And I’m off to do the exact same thing she’s doing. You coming tonight?”
Mack no
dded, looked across the store. “Where did Dad go?”
“He’s in the biography section.” Riley pointed at Sheppard sitting in a large lounge chair leafing through a book.
Mack’s smile was sad, lifting only at the corners, not affecting his entire face. “That was . . . the living room. He sat there for days at a time reading. In that same spot.” Then Mack laughed. “But usually he had a cold beer at his side, and sand on the bottom of his feet.”
“Good days,” Riley said.
Mack nodded. “Yes.”
Maisy moved toward Adalee, lightly shook her. Adalee’s eyes flew open; she jumped from the chair, slipped on the floor and fell on her bottom. She looked up at Riley, Maisy and Mack. “Oh, did I fall asleep?”
“A little, yes.” Riley held her hand out to help Adalee off the floor.
She rubbed her eyes. “Oh, I wanted to see your face when you saw all this. Isn’t it . . . amazing?”
Riley hugged Adalee, held her. “It is a miracle. I love it so much I can’t find the words.”
“Wow, you look great.” Adalee pulled on the ends of Riley’s hair. “You seriously look like . . . who’s that actress whose mother is famous, too?”
“Kate Hudson,” Mack said without hesitation.
Riley threw back her head and laughed. “Okay, she is about five feet tall and weighs about eighty pounds and is seriously adorable. I don’t think that is who she means.”
“That’s exactly who I mean.” Adalee looked at Maisy. “Doesn’t she?”
Maisy looked at Riley and agreed, yet turned away before she answered.
A woman whom Maisy recognized approached the counter: Mrs. Winter, who always returned the hardcover books and pretended she hadn’t read them. Her posture was bent, her gaze flickered, never resting on anything for a moment. She placed a novel on the counter and spoke to Ethel, who was rearranging the countertop. “I need to return this novel.” She set another on the counter. “And buy this one.” She tapped the book she was returning: The Secret Life of Bees. “I had bought this one before I realized I wanted to wait for the movie.”
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