“No. Nothing.”
Her friend’s brittle laugh didn’t sound like nothing. Tadie blinked.
“He keeps saying he’s fine,” Hannah said, “but I can tell. I can see it. And he won’t slow down.”
“Maybe with Alex working, things will ease up.”
Hannah didn’t answer, but she did suck on one long nail.
The growing breeze and a beam reach had propelled them toward the Beaufort waterfront and the anchored boats. Tadie eased the tiller to port and released more line as they entered the creek.
Luna was a flat-bottomed sharpie, a lovely little boat that sailed easily over shoals with the simple lifting of her centerboard, but she became tippy if unbalanced when a gust hit. She loved to gad about on an easy reach, and now that they’d come within the protection of the headland, she zipped forward.
Tadie checked out the various cruising boats that filled in spaces between long-time residents hooked to mooring balls. “Look, will you? That one’s from Hong Kong.”
And there bobbed another, a lovely cutter-rigged boat with a dark green hull. She tried to read its stern before she had to focus all her attention on the boat traffic ahead. The Nancy-something, out of Delaware. Gorgeous lines, with brightwork that made Tadie’s fingers itch to touch the satiny varnish. So many of the big new boats were just plastic tubs, but this one had wooden caprails that someone maintained to perfection. Considering her own hard work on her much-smaller Luna, she knew there was love poured into that sailboat.
A little red-haired girl and a man—her daddy?—bobbed in a dinghy, looking as if they’d just come off that beauty. The man rowed them toward shore, while the child’s chatter drifted across the water, turning into laughter when a motorboat’s wake bucked their small boat, and the waves rolled under and headed toward Luna. The child waved at Luna’s crew.
“Hey!” Tadie called, returning the wave as she pointed Luna across the wake. “Welcome to Beaufort!”
Hannah was still watching the pair when Tadie turned her sharpie’s bow around and into the wind. The breeze spilled from the sails, and Luna glided gently up to her dock. Tadie grabbed a line she’d left looped on an outside piling, cleated it inboard, and tossed another line around the dock cleat.
Setting lines, cleaning up, and putting on sail covers took time, but eventually they were on the dock, carrying bags and cooler up to her house. “I’ve got sweet tea in the refrigerator. You want to sit out here or inside?” she asked Hannah.
“I can’t stay. I’ve got a zillion things to do, especially if that storm’s coming this way. We’re due at the Straits house.” With a sniff, Hannah began separating out her things. “Bethanne’s cooking. I’m not looking forward to it.”
Tadie couldn’t imagine sitting through a dinner with either of them, but the fact of Alex’s call festered like a red-ant sting. “If Alex calling me indicates some new and erratic behavior, do you think Matt ought to worry? I mean, can Matt trust him?”
Puckers appeared between Hannah’s brows. “I don’t see why not. Alex owns part of the business.”
“I thought you said he sold his shares to Matt.”
“Only half. That still leaves him with a quarter, so he’s bound to want the company to do well.”
Hating that she’d caused her friend more worry, Tadie hefted the small cooler into Hannah’s trunk. “Of course. I’m just thrown off by that call, you know?”
“I get it.”
“Let me know how the dinner goes.”
Hannah slid behind the wheel. “I’ll call.”
Tadie watched until the car had backed out of the drive before she climbed her front steps and hipped open the door. If only she could fix things—make Matt better, send Alex back to Hartford, and see Elvie Mae cancer free.
She kicked off her sailing shoes and tucked them in the closet next to a pair of waders, then wandered barefoot into the living room and yanked open the drapes. The rings clicked against the brass rod, waking Ebenezer. The large tabby blinked once, licked his nearest paw, and settled back into the down cushion he’d appropriated.
“Hello to you too.” Tadie scratched behind Eb’s ear, sighing when he ignored her. She should have listened to Hannah and brought home a dog.
Her bare feet dragged across the oriental carpet that protected the old waxed floor from scuffs. She preferred the coolness of the bare wood and welcomed it when the rug ended. Her fingers trailed along the edge of the mahogany hall table and across the raised door panel into her silent kitchen as Alex’s words hovered.
Closing her eyes, she whispered, “Breathe. You’re happy. You like your life.”
She did. She had her business and her house and her friends. Certainly, loneliness and grief had laid her low as deaths multiplied around her, but she’d recovered. She’d even grown stronger. Or was that merely another delusion?
Once, time had crept. When had it decided to rush headlong at endings? When she was twenty? When thirty loomed on the horizon and then blipped on by, right off the radar screen?
“You’re overreacting,” she told the empty room, because her cat obviously wasn’t interested. “It was only a phone call.”
Tadie opened the refrigerator and stared inside before closing it when she couldn’t remember what she’d wanted. She braced against the counter and stared unseeing out the back window.
The kettle. That was it. “Tea,” she said, as if the spoken word would anchor her.
She set the kettle on the stove. But tearing open a new box of Earl Grey and collecting a cup and spoon provided no distraction at all. Imagining murder did.
A little shiver slithered up her spine.
She’d use her mama’s silver carving knife, the one with the steel blade and the worked handle that lay in its felt-lined slot, honed and ready. All she had to do was lift it out, hunt up Alex, and plunge it deep into his throat. Blood would ooze. He’d raise a hand to beg forgiveness for stealing her youth and choke on the words. She’d toss her head and turn away.
Ha! Perhaps she should write murder mysteries instead of designing jewelry. Or take up wood carving so she’d have something physical on which to loose all this anger. Chips would fly, and she’d end up chiseling the wood down to toothpicks.
She blew a tickling hair off her nose. At her back, the kettle whistled. She poured boiling water into her mug and waited while the tea steeped.
If only she were happily married. A man on her arm—and in her bed—babies filling the rooms in this big empty house of hers. Then she could thumb her nose at the past. Instead, she languished here in her childhood home, morphing with each passing day into one of the town’s odd, decrepit singles—a maiden aunt to nobody.
She had wanted more. Especially with Alex. Oh my, could that man touch things in her. His kiss … But something, even with Alex, had always stopped her from going any further. Call her old-fashioned. Call her a fool.
Or, perhaps, the way things had turned out, call her smart. Only, now, here she was.
Why did he have to phone and get her stirred up again?
The tea bag landed silently in the trash, and the only sound was the slight clack of silver against ceramic as she mixed in a dollop of honey. Dinner didn’t sound appetizing, but she plucked two truffles from her horde of Godiva. Balancing the full saucer in one hand, she flipped light switches with the other as she made her way upstairs. A breeze wafted in her open windows, stirring the curtains and dispelling the afternoon heat.
While her huge tub filled with orange-scented bubbles, she sipped tea and bit into the chocolate. Its raspberry filling oozed over her fingertips. Licking it off, she sighed, savoring another bite, another sip, before loosing a small smile. Yes ma’am. Spinsters had to take their pleasure where they could, and, as far as this spinster was concerned, chocolate and bubble baths ranked right up there on the decadence scale.
She laid a hand towel next to the book she’d been reading and lowered herself into the water. And wasn’t this one of the blessings
of being single? Doing what she wanted, when she wanted, how she wanted, with no man telling her to fetch and carry?
And no man to touch her or to take away the loneliness.
Stop it. Now.
She’d made the choice to be here, hadn’t she? To say no to Alex and the others who had offered to take what she’d been reluctant to give. She needed to get over herself.
Easier said than done.
She tried to focus on the story in front of her. The book’s sleuth had become almost a friend, cheered on through mystery after mystery.
Her gaze lifted from the page. Somehow, the heroine’s London antics seemed trite. Tadie set the book aside and sank deeper until bubbles covered her breasts. Finally, prune-fingered, she climbed out and rubbed most of her body dry before slipping into the lightest of her sleep shirts. She retrieved her book and collapsed onto the cool sheets of her bed.
Maggie, the heroine, dashed madly through a foggy London. Tadie tried to follow her meanderings up one street and down another, but when the phone jangled in her ear, she reached for it before realizing she should have checked the caller ID.
“What?”
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Ah, Hannah.” It must be the story making her so jumpy, the story and her day. “I thought you were dining out.”
“Bethanne was delayed at the Dunes Club. I suggested we try for another night, but she just talked right over me. We’re to go at eight, which means she’ll serve at nine. Nine? Does she think this is the big city?”
“Poor Hannah. Have a snack.”
“I’ve fixed us both some scrambled eggs and toast so Matt could take his blood pressure medicine. Anyway, I called because of that little girl we saw, the one with the cute father. Leastwise, I assume it was her father.”
Tadie’s eyes closed as she slid into a reclining position. Cute father, cute daughter. Wasn’t that the truth? “Mmm, yes.”
“Woohoo! I knew it. I saw you looking.”
“Stop it. They have a gorgeous boat. It made me dream of the cruising life.” How could she not wish—just for a moment—that she had been aboard that lovely sailboat? She tried to stifle a sigh. “I imagine the mother was below taking a nap.”
“There’s no telling.” Teasing laughter lingered in Hannah’s voice. “He could be a single parent. Maybe divorced.”
“Not likely. I can’t imagine a man taking on the work of sailing and managing a child on a boat like that, not all by himself.”
“Maybe they were just out for a quick sail.”
“That’s not a quick-sailing boat.” Tadie longed to see the boat’s insides, the homey comforts that child’s mother would have insisted on before she’d go cruising.
“I’m thinking you ought to take Luna out again tomorrow.”
“You think?” Tadie wiggled farther down on the mattress, but something—a wrinkle, a pea—poked at her right buttock. She flipped to her left side and resettled the phone at her ear.
“I wouldn’t mind keeping you company on a sail-by. We could see who’s on board, you know, just to be friendly.”
“Hannah, stop. I’m not desperate enough to go chasing sailboats or sailors. Have fun at dinner.”
She disconnected, swung her legs off the bed, and padded over to the window. The sky’s purplish-grey cast a gloom on the creek. Squinting, she searched the shadows where Luna’s white-tipped mast bobbed against the darker water. Was that a heron on the dock with its neck retracted in a swooping curve? Headlights from a passing car raked the nearby marsh, rendering the rest invisible.
Katydids chirped as they’d done many evenings, back when she used to wait and dream. Alex’s image superimposed itself on the fleeting picture of a perfect boat. Blue eyes flashed from under too-long lashes. His easy smile had made her believe, if only in his presence, that they had a future, that she was beautiful. She’d fended him off in the back seat of his Chevy and behind the dunes, because some part of her had wondered and doubted. She’d had a mirror, hadn’t she?
And boys lied.
Chapter Two
The sun beat on the overhead bimini, and not a breath of air bent around the island to cool the Nancy Grace. Sweat trickled down Will Merritt’s neck, slithered between his shoulder blades, and glued him to his T-shirt. He lifted his cap to swipe at his brow, first with his right arm, then with his left, and went back to studying the street map of Beaufort. Yesterday afternoon they’d taken a cab several miles to the Food Lion. He supposed today they’d have to hit the chandleries the same way.
Jilly napped behind him in the bimini’s shade, her knees tucked up on the cockpit cushions, her red hair spilling from the rubber bands he’d used on her pigtails. Either he or the heat had worn her out this morning.
This time of year, with hurricane season upon them, they should be putting miles between them and here. Nothing he could do about it now, not with the engine alarm signaling trouble. His dipstick had come up clean, but he’d noticed reddish oil in the bilge. Red, as opposed to black, meant a transmission issue. Probably the oil cooler had blown a tube, letting the oil seep out into the cooling water, but he wouldn’t know for certain until he took things apart. He sighed. He could handle it, but he hated that it forced this detour.
“Punkin?” Will said, gently shaking his daughter’s thin shoulder.
She knuckled her eyes. “Time?”
“We need to go into town.”
Her small hands brushed at stray hairs as she slid from the cushion. “Can we get ice cream?”
“After shopping,” he said, patting his buttoned pocket. “I have a few items to buy before I tackle the repairs.”
“I’m ready. But first I need to use the head.”
He followed her below to make sure all hatches were closed. He’d learned the hard way that leaving one open was like putting out the welcome mat for rain, even on a cloudless day. Odd thing about clouds. They could materialize from nowhere—unless you happened to want their shade.
He bent to pick up one of the mola-covered pillows that had fallen under the table, probably knocked off when he’d been messing with the engine compartment doors. A quick stab of longing pierced him. He saw again the Panamanian market stall and Nancy’s fingers tracing bright panels of color. “Someday,” his brand-new wife had said, her beautiful eyes dancing as she leaned into him, “someday we’ll sail to the San Blas and buy directly from the Indians.” Later, she’d dreamt of this boat and their sailing life, the three of them roaming the world. Now there were only two.
“Don’t think about it,” he whispered, hefting his backpack over one shoulder.
Hadn’t that been his mantra since he’d lost her? Concentrate on the task at hand. Don’t think about the past—or the might-have-beens.
All he had to do was fix the leak and point the Nancy Grace north. One step at a time. He could do that. He and Jilly.
And there she was, the light of his world, shrugging into her life jacket. “Daddy, do you think we’ll see that lady again? The one in the pretty little boat?”
“It had good lines, didn’t it?” Will smiled, ignoring the sailor for the boat. “Seemed like a sweet goer.” The sight of a female sailor must have thrilled Jilly, whose own mother used to toss her hair in the wind and laugh. Nancy’s joy at being alive and on the water had affected everyone in her sphere. Lord, how he missed her.
“The lady said, ‘Welcome to Beaufort.’ And the other lady in the big hat waved at us. This must be a nice place.”
Will hoped so. Some places were, and some seemed to wish cruisers would keep on sailing to the next port.
He held the dinghy steady as Jilly backed down the boarding ladder. At the dinghy dock, she scrambled out onto the wooden planks and cleated the painter for him, then handed over her life vest. The boat wobbled as he put one foot on the boards. “Got it,” he said with a quick look at the dinghy to make sure all was secure, and a glance out to where the Nancy Grace bobbed gracefully at anchor.
“Come on, Da
ddy. She’s not going anywhere.”
Will laughed and tugged gently at a pigtail. Jilly freed her hair with an exaggerated sigh. “You always worry the anchor’s going to drag.”
“I shouldn’t, should I? Not with a first mate like you helping me set it.”
They strolled hand-in-hand down the main street, past the tour boats—one painted with a serious set of shark teeth—and on past the dockmaster’s office. A touristy sort of town, with small shops full of clothes, knick-knacks, and souvenirs, it had lots for Jilly to investigate.
“Whoa, Daddy, look at that. It must have sneaked in last night.” She danced up on her toes and pointed to a huge yacht with three decks, one with slanted, darkened windows.
“That’s some boat.” Big yachts meant big bucks. Marinas weren’t for the likes of him and Jilly, not if they wanted to keep the kitty full without him having to take too many consulting jobs. He had work offered to him, but it would mean staying someplace for a while and hooking back up to the world of airports and the Internet.
Heat bounced off the asphalt, so moisture-laden he didn’t even need to sweat to feel the drips form. Jilly’s idea started to sound good. Ice cream and some shade. He should have insisted she wear her boat cap and put on more sunscreen.
“Maybe we could fortify ourselves with something cold before we hit the chandleries. What do you say?”
“Yes, oh yes!” His daughter tugged him forward, up the wooden steps into the cool darkness of the ice cream shop. They ordered their usual—a mint chocolate chip, two scoops please, and a raspberry sherbet, one scoop.
“Look at that, Daddy. Can we go in there tomorrow?” Jilly pointed to a sign for the Rocking Chair Bookstore. “I bet it’s nice. I need more books.”
“We’ll put it on our list of things to do.”
Jilly’s greenish eyes sparkled as she licked and bit into a chocolate chip. “You know what we need?”
Will shook his head, waiting.
“A better freezer on the boat, so we could take ice cream with us.”
Becalmed: When a Southern woman with a broken heart finds herself falling for a widower with a broken boat, it's anything but smooth sailing. Page 2