Beach House Memories

by Mary Alice Monroe

  “Course you didn’t,” Miranda said. “We were just flustered, is all. Emotions ran high. Isn’t that right, Flo?”

  Flo nodded. “Sorry I jumped on you like that. I was wound up like a clock, counting the minutes. I started worrying about you, too,” she added, laughing with embarrassment.

  Lovie stepped forward to hug her friend, then Miranda. “Good night. I’m going in.” She turned to Russell, aware that Flo and Miranda were hawking every move, every nuance. “Oh,” she said, suddenly remembering she’d driven. “You’ll need a ride.”

  “No problem. It’s not far. You stay here. You’ve got things to tend to. I’ll walk.”

  Lovie smiled gratefully. “If you’re sure. See you tomorrow,” she said without a hint of the intimacy they’d shared earlier. “Thanks again for dinner.”

  Russell nodded with equal indifference. He lifted a hand in silent farewell, then turned and walked quickly away.

  Lovie stepped into her quiet house, noticing that someone had turned on the lamps. She set her purse on the front table and went directly to Cara’s room. She found her lying on her back in bed, idly playing with the hair of an old doll she hadn’t touched in years. Cara looked up when Lovie entered the room, her dark eyes conflicted. Lovie could see she was both relieved to see her and afraid she was going to be in trouble.

  Lovie stopped at the foot of the bed, soaking in the sight of her. She crossed her arms and said in mock displeasure, “So, I heard you had quite an adventure tonight.”

  Cara pursed her lips and ran her fingers through her doll’s hair. “You heard.”

  “Of course I heard. You had the whole town up in arms.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said, but didn’t take her eyes from the doll. “I didn’t mean to. I reckon Emmi and I just got lost.” She raised her eyes, dark with worry. “It was all the roads they cut up in there. We kept following one, then the other. I couldn’t figure out which way was which!”

  Lovie saw the fear creep back into Cara’s eyes and remembered just how young her brave little girl was. She came to sit on the side of the bed and gently brushed back the long bangs from her forehead, damp with moisture. “That had to be scary.”

  Cara nodded, pouting. Then she suddenly looked up, and a spark of light flashed in them. “But Mama, I made it to the Point!”

  “So you made it!” Lovie exclaimed. “I thought you were lost before you got to the Point. Oh, Cara, you finally did it.”

  Cara’s dark eyes danced with excitement as she nodded. “And Emmi did, too. It’s just like I imagined it,” she raced on. “We found the old tree and the cross, and then we started digging. Mama, the metal box is in there! I couldn’t believe it was really true. We opened it and you’ll never guess what we found.”

  “The book.”

  “Yes!” she said with awe. “Just like you told us. And I saw your name!” she added in a rush. “And Aunt Flo’s!”

  A smile flittered across Lovie’s face. Seeing the thrill in her daughter’s eyes reminded her of that exact feeling in her own heart, so many years ago. “Did you sign it?”

  “You bet,” she said, wiping her nose. “And so did Emmi.”

  “And you buried it back in the sand?”

  “Of course,” Cara said, eyes wide. “I don’t want the ghost of Nicodemus after me.”

  Lovie chuckled. That part was new, and she wondered what imaginative child came up with that clever twist. “You said you got lost. How did you find your way home?”

  “The beach! I remembered you telling me that if I ever got lost, I just had to remember we lived on an island. That the beach would lead me home. And it’s true! Though,” she said, frowning, “it sure was a long walk.”

  Lovie laughed and kissed her daughter’s forehead, breathing in the scent of soap. Russell’s son flashed through her mind and she let her lips linger on her daughter’s face, wondering how she’d ever be able to continue on if anything happened to Cara. “Yes, it is.” She pulled back and looked in her daughter’s eyes. “But you know what? I’m proud of you.”

  “You are?” Cara asked, incredulous.

  “I am. You didn’t panic. You thought your situation through, and in the end you figured out what to do. Grace under pressure. Not every child can do that.”

  “Who’s Grace?”

  Lovie laughed again. “Never mind, my darling girl. Just remember two lessons learned today. The first is to trust your instincts. The second is to never go off without telling someone where you’re going.” A lesson I learned tonight as well, she thought.

  “Yes’m,” Cara replied, yawning.

  She could see her daughter’s anxiety ease from her face to be replaced by sleepiness. Lovie was humbled by the power a mother held over her young. “Good night, my darling,” Lovie said, and reached to turn off the light.

  “Don’t turn it off,” Cara said sleepily. “Please?”

  “Of course, if you want it on.”

  “Mama? Can you sit with me awhile?”

  Lovie’s heart lurched at the request, one she hadn’t heard in a long time. Cara was hell-bent on being a big girl. She didn’t like kisses and hugs and bedtime rituals. Lovie had missed them desperately. She lay on the bed beside Cara and breathed deep the scent of lavender on her skin. With her free hand she stroked the damp hair on Cara’s forehead and hummed a nameless tune, as she did when Cara was very young. Cara didn’t chase her off or tell her to stop treating her like a baby. She reached up to hold Lovie’s hand and bring it closer to her chest.

  “I love you, Mama.” Her voice was muffled and sleepy.

  Lovie held Cara tighter. Her gangly daughter felt smaller, more fragile. Still a little girl, despite her big-girl attitude.

  “I love you, too, my own sweet Caretta.”

  Lovie sat on the porch with her legs curled close to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. She rested her chin on her knees and looked out over the sea, listening to the sound of the surf as the comforting voice of a friend. She had always felt akin to the sea, as though she were a twin, sensitive to its moods. Tonight she could feel the turbulence of the surf inside her body.

  Then she heard a new sound, the gravel crunching under tires and an engine. She didn’t move, listening closely. She heard a car door slam, then a shuffling in the sand and gravel. She counted the footsteps with her breaths. She uncoiled her legs and rose to peer over the railing. Her breath caught in her throat.

  Russell stood at the bottom of the porch steps with his hands in his pants pockets and one foot on the stairs, looking up at her expectantly. “I wanted to come back, after things settled down, to see how Cara was. I thought it was better I left when I did, under the circumstances. But I was worried. Are you okay?”

  Lovie felt her heart expand. “I’m glad you came. I was thinking about you, too.”

  He began walking up the stairs toward her.

  “Wait,” she said abruptly, and hurried to the stairs. She looked over at Flo’s house to see lights still on. “I don’t want to wake anyone. Let’s take a walk. Wait here a minute. I’ll get my sandals.”

  She was still in her long skirt and he was still in his dinner clothes. She ran to her bedroom and grabbed a shawl from her closet, then to the screened porch and stepped into her sandals. Her heart was beating as fast as a small bird making good its escape. She was careful not to let the doors slam as she hurried across the porch and down the stairs to where Russell was waiting. He smiled again at seeing her and held out his hand.

  They spoke little as they walked in single file along the narrow path, Lovie in the lead. She knew where she would take him. Step after step in the cool sand, she followed the call of the surf, past rolling sand dunes to where the path opened up to the beach. As always, she felt the rush of air. It slid over her body like silk.

  “Come this way,” she said when he came up behind her. “I want to take you to my favorite dune.” She led him several feet along the dunes to its highest point, where the sand flattened t
o form a kind of perch. The beach was deserted, save for the ubiquitous peeps still skittering along the shore at this late hour. Russell came to stand at her side. She glanced at him and saw that he was looking out at the sea. She wondered where such a vista took a man like him who had seen many oceans.

  “This is my dune,” she told him, feeling possessive. “Ever since I was little, it’s where I come to think or to just stare out at my old friend. We’ve had many conversations, the sea and I. And over there.” She pointed behind them to the small plateau nestled behind the dune. It was a circular haven, surrounded by tall sea oats. “I used to pretend that was my castle. I’ve often slept there, under the stars.”

  “So this is another of your secret spots?” he asked her.

  She laughed lightly. “Yes. Everyone who grew up on the island has their share of secret spots. But I only share this one with special friends,” she said, gently teasing him.

  “I’m glad you consider me your friend,” he told her, and he sounded sincere.

  So much more than a friend, she thought, looking up at a sky that was alive with brilliant stars sparkling. She felt their shimmering light reflected inside her. “When I was little, there were so few houses here,” she said. “I rarely saw lights shining at night by Breach Inlet, except for the Prescott house, of course. The nights are always so black out here and the stars shine so bright.”

  “I love that about the islands,” he agreed. “The more remote, the more visible the stars.”

  “Let’s sit,” she said, and spread out her shawl. Lovie sat on the dune and felt him beside her, his shoulder against hers, his legs next to hers. He was so near she sensed every breath he took and tried to match hers to his. The ocean stretched its watery fingers higher up the shore, toward her.

  “How is Cara?” he asked.

  “Oh, she’s fine. She had a few lessons on growing up tonight, but I’m proud of her.” She turned and said with a secretive smile, “You’ll never guess where she went.”

  “The Point.”

  “You guessed,” she said with a chuckle.

  “It wasn’t hard. Not with her. So she joined the ranks with her mother, uncle, and brother and signed the book?”

  Lovie nodded. “It’s official.” She patted his arm. “And you, too. You signed the book.”

  “Yep,” he said proudly. “A high point in my career.”

  They sat looking out at the sea, lost in their own thoughts. After a while, Russell said, “Lovie, earlier this evening . . . I didn’t like the way our evening ended. It all felt so rushed. Flo was making accusations and I could feel my temper rise. I didn’t think putting in my two cents at that moment would help, so I left feeling like some teenager who brought his date home late.”

  “Flo . . . She wasn’t so bad.”

  “Are we talking about the same woman?” he said teasingly.

  “She means well. She’s my best friend, and she loves my kids like they’re her own. She was just wound up pretty tight when Cara was lost and she couldn’t reach me. When she saw me come home with you, well, she jumped to conclusions.”

  Russell leaned closer to her. “What conclusions were those?”

  Lovie smelled again the lingering aftershave and closed her eyes against the onslaught of sensations, squeezing the sand in her fingers. “Well . . . that you and I . . . are a couple,” she ventured.

  “Ah,” he said, letting his fingers brush lightly against hers. He leaned closer so that his breath stirred the air against the tender follicles of her ear. “And that would be a terrible thing?”

  She closed her eyes and her heart beat faster. Yes, she wanted to say. It would. I know what that implies—intimacy. An affair. That was unthinkable. Nothing she’d ever contemplated, at least not seriously. All her life she’d been careful to construct boundaries that she never crossed, never even approached.

  Until now. She couldn’t deny her feelings for Russell Bennett. She hadn’t felt such desire, had not trembled like this, for any man before. And she read that desire in his eyes as well. But to cross that line—to make love—there was no going back from that. She’d made love to only one man in her life, and that was her husband. She was not as experienced as Flo in these matters, or as cavalier. Making love was, to her, the ultimate act of intimacy. It wasn’t merely sex, but a giving of herself—heart, body, mind, and soul. Her body knew what it wanted—him! But her mind warred against it. All she was and ever had been, all she thought was right, told her to run away. Yet all she was at this moment, the woman who was alive and breathing now, cried for the feel of his lips on hers once again.

  Lovie felt her breath quicken and looked with despair out to the sea, for a clue, some answer. But tonight the ocean merely breathed in and out, brooding, as though it, too, were watching, waiting.

  “Olivia?”

  Reluctantly, she turned to face him again, drawn to the light in his eyes like any other moth to a flame driven by instinct. She recognized the same soul-stirring sensation she’d felt the first moment she’d looked into his eyes, and the unfathomable certainty that she was bound to him in a way she’d never been connected to any other man, not even her husband.

  He read her answer in her eyes and moved slowly toward her, letting his lips, his cheek, gently skim hers, inhaling her scent. Lovie felt each cell in her body respond to his slightest touch, sending her blood racing. When at last his lips found hers, he took his time, tentatively tasting her reaction. Lovie lifted her hand and let her trembling fingers trace his jawline and the stubble grazing her tender fingertips, then curl around his ears to the soft hairs behind them. Then she let them slide behind his neck, holding him there, drawing him closer.

  Their kiss surged and deepened, and she felt the pressure of his body against hers, holding her tighter. Pushing her slowly back against the cool sand, their weight crushed the small primroses beneath them. She closed her eyes as his full weight stretched out over her. They fit together perfectly, and as they clung together her woman’s body felt that at last it had found the man’s bones from which she’d been created, and she was overcome with desire to become one flesh.

  She opened her eyes then and, trembling, she slowly pulled her head back. For a moment, their breathing shared a small space. He raised himself slightly above her as he looked into her eyes, questioning. Lovie moved to rise, and immediately he shifted his weight, allowing her room. She climbed to her feet and he rose beside her, looking unwaveringly at her for her signal. Lovie reached down for her shawl with one hand and for his hand with the other. Turning her back to the ocean, she gently tugged Russell to follow her down to the small plateau in the dunes, to her secret spot where they could lie surrounded by tall sea oats, lost in the moon shadows, muffled by the pulsing beat of the sea.

  Sixteen

  Russell had been gone for three days at the University of Florida. He’d called Lovie the night before to tell her that he hoped to be back on the Isle of Palms sometime today and, if he was, he would meet her at their dune.

  Their dune . . . Just the sound of that one personal pronoun had the power to curl her toes. One small word that said so much.

  Lovie felt she’d been living in a dreamworld the past week. They’d met several times at the dune late at night, after they’d made their rounds on the beach checking for nests. As they walked, they talked about everything and nothing, the past and the present; they had no secrets between them. The only subject they did not broach was the future. It was as though they had an unspoken pact not to mention what would happen at the month’s end. Lovie knew that there could be no future for them. That this one summer was all she had, and it had to be enough to last a lifetime.

  “What’s got you so quiet this morning?” Flo asked her.

  They were walking the beach at 28th, checking a report on dozens of tiny turtle tracks coming from a nest. The island turtle nests were hatching frequently this late in the season, and Lovie was getting fewer reports of large female turtle tracks and more reports o
f tiny tracks—tracklings, Flo called the adorable, miniature turtle tracks left by the three-inch hatchlings as they emerged from the nest. As long as they headed to the sea, Lovie considered the emergence a success.

  “Just thinking,” Lovie replied, swinging the red bucket at her side. It clanged noisily.

  “Let me guess. About a certain biologist who’s been MIA the past few days?”

  Lovie’s lips twisted in mirth. “Maybe.”

  “Oh, get real, Lovie. I don’t know whether you’re just blind to your own feelings, or you’re blind to his. Or if you’re deliberately fooling yourself. But it’s written all over both of your faces.”

  “What’s written?” she asked with a sinking feeling.

  “You’re infatuated with him. In lust with him. God forbid, in love with him. You’re in one of those things with him!”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not?” Flo asked, more gently now. “If it’s the truth.”

  “People will gossip, that’s why not. So, no, I’m not in love with him, okay?”

  “You’ve always been a terrible liar,” Flo said.

  Lovie stopped and her shoulders drooped.

  “So which is it?” Flo asked, rounding to face her. “Are you in lust or what?”

  Lovie sighed and said with difficulty, “I think I’m falling in love with him.”

  Flo exhaled loudly. “Wow.”

  Lovie looked away. “Yeah. Wow.” They began walking again, ignoring the few early beachcombers—mothers with kids in tow carrying shovels and buckets, and the ubiquitous joggers—the smattering of surfers out in the ocean waiting for a wave, the black Lab and the mutt sniffing and barking at the remnants of a horseshoe crab by the shoreline.

  “It snuck up on me,” Lovie told Flo, feeling relieved to talk to someone about her feelings at last. “I didn’t wake up one day and think, I’m in love with him. Just the opposite. I fought it. At first I thought I was just attracted to him.”

  Flo snorted. “Who isn’t? He’s insanely good-looking.”