As recently as a month ago, on a Saturday night like this, I’d have been out at the Jernigans’ house at Cuscawilla, one of the fancy golf resorts that ringed the lake. We probably would have had dinner at the clubhouse, then maybe taken a sunset “cocktail cruise” on A.J.’s daddy’s pontoon boat.
The Jernigans actually owned two houses out at the lake. The “cottage” was a brand-new four-thousand-square-foot, three-level mini mansion, complete with a landscaped lawn that sloped down to a seawall and a double-decker boathouse.
But the original family lake place was at the end of an unmarked gravel road. Back in the seventies Chub Jernigan had sold off a hefty chunk of played-out cotton fields to Georgia Power when they’d mapped out the lake, but he’d retained some of the new lakefront lots and built a humble little tin-roofed fishing cabin on one of them.
Not even three miles away from the cottage, the “shack,” as the family called it, had a screened porch instead of air conditioning, one bathroom, and a wooden dock that was on its last legs. It had been the place A.J.’s daddy, Big Drew, took the boys on camping and fishing trips, a family retreat back when roughing it was still the Jernigans’ idea of fun.
A.J. had taken me out to the shack a half-dozen times after we’d first started dating, while the Cuscawilla cottage was still under construction. We’d cooked dinner in the fireplace, skinny-dipped in the lake, and made love on the lumpy Hide-A-Bed on the back porch, but I don’t think A.J. or anybody else in the family had stepped foot in the place since the cottage had been completed.
Clouds of dust rose off the pockmarked gravel road as the Volvo bumped along through the old cotton fields that had been allowed to grow wild. A single brown horse grazed under the shade of an oak tree, and once a bright flash of blue and orange darted across the road—a bluebird. It had been another hot day, but the sun was getting lower in the sky now, and when I rolled the window down a little bit, I could smell the lake back behind a stand of trees that marked the entrance to the Jernigans’ property.
I had to slam on the brakes hard as I rounded a curve in the road, and my open bottle of hard lemonade went flying out of the cup holder, splashing liquid all over the dashboard. Crap! A shiny metal cattle gate blocked the road. I frowned as I stared at it. When had the Jernigans decided that their derelict old shack warranted locking up?
I got out of the car and walked over to the gate to get a better look. A small sign was posted on the right gatepost. PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING. POSITIVELY NO HUNTING.
There was a stout new padlock on the gate. I tugged at it, but it stayed locked.
This was beginning to piss me off. The Jernigans never used the shack anymore. Why should they suddenly start locking it up—and keeping me out? I was practically family. Or, I had been.
I fumed and paced back and forth in front of the gate. A casual impulse had brought me out here, but now, dammit, I wanted to take a dip in the lake, sit on the dock, drink my lemonade, and watch the sunset. I wanted to feel the sun on my back, to hear the birds calling in the treetops, to watch a fish chase a bug as it skittered over the surface of the water.
The gate and the sign, I decided, were the work of A.J.’s anal-retentive brother Kyle. Which made me even more determined to go through with my plan. I got in the Volvo and backed it up. A quarter mile up the Jernigans’ drive, the road forked off to the right, toward the old Bascomb place. This drive was even more rutted and overgrown than the Jernigans’.
Vince Bascomb had been one of Drew Jernigan’s partners in several business ventures, and at one time the two of them had owned all the land on this little cove of the lake. But Vince was in his late seventies now, and so crippled with arthritis that he rarely left his house in town. Vince and Lorraine Bascomb were divorced in the eighties, and Vince had remarried and divorced two more times that I knew of. I’d heard that wife number three had walked off with the remainder of Vince’s family money five years ago. Lorraine had lived quietly on the edge of town until her death last year. The Bascomb children lived out of state, and hadn’t been back to Madison since their mama’s death.
The Bascomb drive had no fence, no gate, no padlock. It adjoined the Jernigans’ property, but had no dock, because the Bascombs and Jernigans had gone in partners on the Jernigans’ dock.
I allowed myself a smug smile as I pulled the Volvo up beside the Bascomb cabin and got out.
The cabin itself was sad. The tin roof had rusted through, and one corner of the porch seemed to have collapsed on itself. Kudzu vines clambered up the walls and through the broken-out windows. Weeds choked the little yard, and a four-foot-tall oak sapling had taken root in an overturned red rowboat.
As soon as my foot touched the ground I began to regret my unusual lack of planning. White slacks, silk blouse, cute little sandals—to hike through this weed patch? Wild blackberry brambles were already snagging the fabric around my ankles. What was I thinking? I almost turned around and got back in the car. But then I got a mental picture of Kyle Jernigan, that buttoned-down little prick, posting the no trespassing sign on the new fence across the way.
Hell yes, I would trespass. I only wished I had a shotgun and the actual will to shoot at something, just so that I could break all of Kyle’s thou-shalt-nots. I opened the Volvo’s trunk and reached for my gym bag. I hadn’t actually been to the gym in at least six weeks, what with all the wedding preparations. The T-shirt was a little smelly, and the Lycra bike shorts wouldn’t have been my first choice for lake attire, but I was really happy to see my Nike cross-trainers. I glanced around quickly to make sure the place was really as deserted as it seemed, before stripping down and changing into my gym clothes.
I tucked the cardboard lemonade carton under my arm and started to pick my way through the knee-high underbrush, toward the lakefront. I gave the fallen-down Bascomb cabin a wide berth. To me, there was something disturbing about the gaping doors and windows and the crumbling back porch where a rusted green glider still faced the water. A life had been lived out here. Somebody had rowed around the lake in that once jaunty red boat. I could imagine Bascombs sitting on that porch, a radio playing, a screen door slamming, and the rhythmic back-and-forth squeak of the metal glider. And then one day, they’d just left. A life abandoned, just like that. I wondered why. Why does someone walk away from one life, and into another?
It was a good question, I decided. Maybe someday, if I got the chance, I would pose that very same question to Jeanine Murry Murdock.
In the meantime I decided to concentrate on watching where I was walking. Snakes were a very real possibility out here. And those vines I was stomping through could just as easily be poison ivy as kudzu.
When I got to the water’s edge I stopped and looked back at the Bascomb cabin. An involuntary shudder ran down my spine. I turned my back on it again, and picked my way through the underbrush toward what I knew was the edge of the Jernigans’ property line.
My mood improved when I caught sight of the dock a hundred yards away. A few boards were missing, but at least it hadn’t been allowed to fall completely apart. I caught a glimpse of the Jernigan shack through the trees, but I made a deliberate decision not to go any closer to it. I didn’t want to look at that back porch, and I really didn’t want to see that lumpy Hide-A-Bed. Although, come to think of it, Kyle had probably roped it off and posted it with a “No Trespassing, Absolutely No Fucking” sign.
The sun-blistered cedar planks of the dock buckled a little under my weight. I hesitated. Would the whole thing collapse? But then I moved forward. It hadn’t been all that long since I’d been to the gym. And anyway, I hadn’t really been able to eat much since the rehearsal dinner debacle. A lot of chocolate, yes, and a reasonable amount of wine, but very few actual meals.
Sunlight sparkled off the lake so brightly that I had to shade my eyes with my hand. It was at least fifteen degrees cooler out here than it had been in town. If I kept my back to the shore, all I could see was the green trees of the opposite side of the
Jernigans’ cove, blue skies, and the emerald waters of the lake itself. No one was in sight. No boats, no people.
Now I could feel the tension start to drain from my body as I reached the end of the dock. I put the lemonade carton down and did some stretches. I rolled my neck, then my left shoulder, then my right. I sat down on the dock and unscrewed the cap of a lemonade bottle.
My thoughts turned, inevitably, to my mother, and I felt a familiar, if unwelcome, sense of gloom settle over me. What, I wondered, if Austin was right? What if I really was incapable of having a lasting relationship, as long as I suppressed the unresolved issue of my own abandonment?
Dammit, Mama, I thought. Why couldn’t you just get a divorce and stick around? Why couldn’t you fix things up instead of walking out? I wondered again about the Bascomb place, and about lost causes and lost people. And then I shook it off. The gloom, the doom, and all the unanswered questions. So what if I never knew what had happened to my mother? Big effin’ deal. Life is short, I thought. Get over yourself.
That’s what I’ll do, I promised myself. Let Austin play Nancy Drew if he wanted. Let him track down Darvis Kane and his ex-wife and his kids. If that led us to my mother, good enough. If not, so be it. I was nothing like that broken-down, haunted house at the Bascomb place.
I was a strong, resilient, capable woman with a great career and a promising future ahead of her. A. J. Jernigan was not the only man in Georgia.
Affirmation, I thought. What you need is a little affirmation.
I held the bottle up in a silent toast to myself. Here’s to you, kid, I told myself. You are one lawless, trespassing, take-no-prisoners, spur-of-the-moment kind of babe.
I took a long drink of the lemonade and burped loudly. I giggled, liking the sound of it. I finished off the first bottle, then opened a second, finishing it just as quickly. I burped again, gaining momentum, hoping the sound of my lawless, spontaneous belch would echo and reverberate, and maybe, somehow, be heard at the Jernigan cottage three miles away at Cuscawilla. I gulped in a bunch of air, and burped it right back out again. Here’s to you, Kyle Jernigan, I belched. And you, Big Drew. I belched again. And you, GiGi. But somehow it didn’t seem enough to toast A.J. with a belch. Some other kind of gesture was needed. Something grander, yet trashier.
Half drunk with lemon-flavored malt liquor and the unaccustomed, yet heady feeling of spontaneity, I peeled off my T-shirt and shorts, and dressed only in my sparkling white Nike cross-trainers, I turned, and with a deliberate and dramatic flourish, bent down, touched my toes, and physically and metaphysically mooned my ex-fiance, Andrew Jackson Jernigan.
Talk about cathartic!
“That’s for you, A.J.” I hollered into the nothingness of the cove. I straightened up and took a bow. A slight breeze rippled across the cove. I was naked in the middle of nowhere. Well, almost naked. My skin prickled with the chill.
Without another thought, I sat down and unlaced my Nikes, and jumped into the lake. I let myself sink all the way to the muddy bottom before I powered back up to the water’s surface. The lake was deliciously cool. I floated on my back and gazed up at the clouds, which had gone peachy and pink. I swam a few strokes and floated some more.
I threw my head back and shook the water out of my hair. When I opened my eyes, I was facing the dock. And Will Mahoney.
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I took a deep breath of air and sank to the bottom of the lake. When I come up again, I promised myself, he’ll be gone. I considered trying to swim away, but where? The Jernigan dock was the only one on the cove. And my clothes were still up on the dock. I counted to twenty-five, and when it felt like my lungs would explode, I let myself bob back to the surface. But I kept my eyes closed.
“You can’t hold your breath any longer than that?” a voice asked.
I kept my eyes shut. “Go away.”
“I can still see you, you know,” Will said. “Even with your eyes closed, I can see you. That’s how it works.”
“Please go away.” I said it very nicely.
“Tell me something,” he said. “That thing you were doing out on the dock just now. Was that some kind of weird religious ritual?”
I opened one eye. He was sitting on the end of the dock, just a few feet away, dangling his toes in the water. I backpedaled away from him, wondering just how much he could see from there.
“I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you’ll go away right now and keep your mouth shut about what you just saw,” I said.
“You can keep your money,” Will said. “Nobody would believe what I just saw anyway.”
“And you’ll go away? Right now?” I opened the other eye.
He smiled. “Not just yet. I’m enjoying myself immensely. Great view out here.”
“You’re a pig,” I said.
“Probably. But a happy pig. Beautiful evening, huh? It cools right down out here on the water.”
It certainly did. My teeth were chattering and I was starting to shiver. And there were little fishies nibbling at my nether regions.
“Look. I’m really getting cold,” I said. “At least turn around so I can get out and get dressed.”
“Okay.” He turned his back to me. I swam over to the dock, climbed up the ladder and toweled myself off with my T-shirt before hastily climbing back into my clothes. The Lycra shorts were a bitch to pull on when you were still half wet.
I was tying my shoelaces when he turned around again.
“How did you get in here, anyway?” I demanded. “The gate was locked. And there’s a no trespassing sign.”
He fished in the pockets of his shorts and brought out a key.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Kyle Jernigan,” he said. “The family’s thinking about selling the place. And I’m thinking about buying.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “Kyle? Tell me he’s not out here too.”
“Nah,” Will said. “I came alone. I don’t think your buddy Kyle likes nature. So how did you get in here? I’m assuming you no longer have membership privileges.”
I was shivering badly now. My hair was soaking wet and my clothes were damp. “None of your business.” I started down the dock. I just wanted to get in my car and get out of here.
“You walked over from the place next door, right?” Will asked, catching up with me. “The Bascomb place. I hear it’s going on the market too.”
I whirled around to face him. “Why would you be interested in a couple of falling-down old houses out here? Don’t you have enough on your plate with Mulberry Hill and the bra plant?”
“I like it out here. It’s nice and peaceful. Unspoiled. Anyway, if I don’t buy it, somebody else will. The Jernigans and Bascombs have a total of sixteen lots on this cove. That’s enough for a subdivision. With sidewalks and streetlights and all the trappings of town.”
“And what would you do with it if you bought it?”
“Nothing. Maybe fix up the houses a little bit. Put up a boathouse. And the dock needs some work.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all,” he said. “Anyway, why should you care what I do with my money?”
“I don’t,” I said. “But I do care about this cove. It’s special. I wouldn’t want to see it ruined.”
“I won’t ruin it,” he said, his face serious now. “Hey, you really are shivering.”
“I’ll be okay once I get in the car,” I said, heading back toward the Bascomb place.
“I’ve got the key to the cabin too,” Will said. “Come on inside with me. I’ll get you a towel. And there are probably dry clothes in the closets too.”
“No,” I said quickly. “I’ll be fine.”
“You afraid A.J.’s hiding out in there? Gonna jump out of a closet or something? There’s nobody there, Keeley.”
“I’m not afraid of running into A.J.,” I snapped. But I really was cold and miserable. “I’ll just grab a towel and take off. I’ve got stuff to do back in town.”
I follo
wed Will back toward the shack, but stopped when he got to the steps to the back porch. I was in no mood to confront the Hide-A-Bed.
“Let’s go around front,” I said, catching him by the elbow. “There’s a cedar chest in the living room where GiGi used to keep clean towels and sheets.”
He raised one eyebrow, but did as I suggested. The key fit in the lock, but the doorway was shrouded with a curtain of cobwebs and dead bugs, which I batted away. The door swung open, and I stepped inside before Will could, determined to show him that the Jernigans’ house held no demons for me. At least not in this part of the house.
Nobody had been here in a long time. The living room air was stale, and there were more cobwebs and dead bugs. Sheets covered the furniture, and a fine film of dust covered the wooden floors.
“Not bad,” Will said, walking around the living room, raising the shades to let in some light.
The cedar chest was where it had always been, in front of the sofa. I opened it and found a stack of faded but clean beach towels. I took the top one and started drying my hair with it.
Will knelt down on the hearth and stuck his head into the fireplace. “Does this thing work?”
“It did,” I said. “We used to cook steaks in there. A.J.’s granddaddy Chub had the chimney built from granite quarried up in Tate. If you use the right kind of wood, that thing heats the whole room.”
“Sounds like you used to spend a good bit of time out here,” Will said, standing up and dusting his hands on the seat of his pants.
“Used to,” I said, emphasizing the past tense.
“So what were you doing out on the dock?” Will asked. “Seriously.”
“Just…thinking,” I said. “This is a good place to get away to. To be alone. Not many people know where the cove is. No boats come in, because it’s kind of shallow.”
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