When he pauses to take a sip of his non-sugar-free beverage— sweet iced tea—I realize this is an opportunity I can’t miss. Flipping my phone open, I pretend to read a message. I hope I sound truthful as I exclaim, “Minnie needs me!” I can’t say my mother’s in jail; she’d never forgive me if she found out.
Douglas says, “The leg healed and I was back scuba diving a month later in Florida. There’s barely a visible scar now.”
I gulp, hoping he isn’t about to raise his pant leg and show it to me. Gathering courage I repeat, “Minnie needs me.”
He has already started in on another saga about his friend from Jamaica. Suddenly, something clicks; his mouth stops moving. “Minnie?”
Finally, I have his attention. “Yes, she needs me right now.”
His face holds confusion.
Quickly, I add, “She has a five-year-old.” If that doesn’t work, I can tell him that her husband died and her mother, a stroke victim, sits all day in a wheelchair at Morning Glory Nursing Home. Those are the playing cards I keep in my hand to use when I decide we all need a little sympathy. Although the other night, Minnie didn’t think I should have used them just because the pizza deliveryman brought pineapple pizza instead of extra-cheese. We got two free cheese pizzas and a profound apology; I was grateful, and hungry.
Douglas doesn’t respond, so I say, “Zane is a lot to handle. I have to go now.” I stuff my cell phone back into my purse.
His face looks like a fallen branch after a thunderstorm—twisted, dark, and bent out of shape.
“I’m sorry.” I rise, my purse and the fisherman’s hat in one hand.
Three women seated at a table near us are fixated on me. I think I recognize one; she likes her hair frosted and is always telling Aunt Sheerly that her son is going to be the next president of the United States. Sheerly replies, “Is he single? Because my niece is a lovely girl. She plays the flute, you know.”
I lower my voice. “Really, I need to go.”
As I leave, winding my way through the tables and booths, Buck gives me a quizzical look across the bar. I almost want to let him know why I’m leaving early, but something tells me it’s best to head out the door and fill him in later.
3
I drive to the Bailey House. Just like the song about the horse knowing the way through the woods to Grandmother’s house, my truck is familiar with the route to this bed and breakfast by the Albemarle Sound.
The air tingles with the softness of spring, permeated with the scent of sea salt. I roll down my window, and coolness flutters against my bare arms. My fisherman’s hat mocks me as it bounces on the passenger’s seat. I see Aunt Sheerly’s face, her sly smile as she asks me how my date went. “Was he a nice man? He’s wealthy and available, you know.”
I already know that I will reply that yes, he seemed fine, but I don’t think it will work out. That’s what I said last month when she set me up with Cuddy Jones. His real name’s Christopher Cudland Jones the third, but like many kids, he received a nickname from his elementary school peers. Cuddy had a massive beard, and I never knew where his eyes were focused. At least tonight’s Douglas Cannon had warm eyes.
The next voice that comes to me belongs to my mother. “You not tell truth. You break Ten Commandments.” For someone so well schooled in the rights and wrongs laid out in the family Bible, I should be better at avoiding lies. “Minnie really could need me now,” I say aloud in my defense. “I’m not a big, bad liar. Just a little one.”
As I pull into the slender driveway of 3 Red Pelican Court, my headlights shine against the brick two-story Bailey House Bed and Breakfast. This home’s large front windows have been boarded, dark shutters pulled over them like sleepy eyelids. The front door, a deep scarlet color during my childhood, looks worn and dull now— neglected over time. I inspect the roof, the eaves, the two dormer windows that protrude from the upstairs bedroom known as the Earl Grey Room, the tilted balcony off the English Breakfast Room, the two dirty white columns by the front stoop, and the winding stone walkway leading up to the main door that always opened so comfortably for us.
This house has been a respite for me since my middle school days when Minnie and I first went there with Irvy, Minnie’s mom. After that initial visit, Minnie and I often stopped by the house after school. We’d follow the sidewalk down Juniper Lane, duck under the sloping branches of the mimosa tree, and then make a right onto Red Pelican Court, a short cul-de-sac. Once we were at the Bailey House, we’d hop up the seven brick steps to the front door. I knew to let Minnie be the first inside; even as a child she was opinionated, dramatic, a little bossy—and she liked to be first. But she was a loyal friend.
At a rectangular butcher-block table reserved for Minnie and me inside the Baileys’ forest green sunroom, Mrs. Bailey would greet us with her crooked smile and British accent. “Girls! How delightful to see you. So glad you came round to pay me a visit. Put your book satchels down and have a seat.”
Minnie and I smiled whenever she called our book bags satchels. We’d slip them against a corner of the dining room, out of the way of the guests who were seated in the parlor reading the daily paper. I always felt Mrs. Bailey had been waiting all day for this moment when we would walk in; she was just so pleased to serve us her renowned lemon cookies on floral-scented paper napkins. Glass tumblers of raspberry cream soda were also brought to us by the home’s loyal handyman, Ogden. I knew that if I said, “Thank you, this is very, very delicious,” with an emphasis on very, Mrs. Bailey would grin and then give a slight nod toward Ogden. Ogden would make his way into the kitchen slowly—he did have a bad leg—and when he entered the sunroom again, new bottles of soda would be in his hands. As he took off their caps and filled my glass, and then Minnie’s, Mrs. Bailey would place one more powdered-sugar-glazed cookie on my napkin. She wouldn’t give Minnie another treat until Minnie agreed that “Um . . . oh yeah, this is all good. Very good.”
Seated in my truck, I reminisce about the night Minnie and I were invited to sleep in the English Breakfast Room. That was the first night we decided that when the Baileys got too old to run the bed and breakfast, we’d take over. We made a pact to be like the Baileys and provide savory and healthy breakfasts, delicious desserts, and a listening ear for all weary travelers. Our plan was sealed when we heard a young tourist from Michigan tell us that she’d been spinning in circles for years, her heart and mind foggy with uncertainty. Thanks to five nights under the Baileys’ hospitality, she now knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. She would head back home to Ann Arbor, get her degree in oceanography, and wait to marry her boyfriend. She had taken care of her ailing mother for three years until her death, and now it was time to pursue her own dreams.
It’s easy to remember how I felt that night when I realized how helpful Mr. and Mrs. Bailey had been to that young woman. They were older than my parents, yet they bridged the generations by reaching out to any tourist who came across their home’s threshold. They made every guest feel like someone special. I was proud to know them.
“Minnie,” I’d said later as we sat on the glider under the pergola, swaying lazily beside the Siamese cats, Buoy and Gull, “we can carry on this house’s traditions.” My heart was calm and full at the same time—a feeling you get when you recognize that what you’re called to do is as clear as each star in the Big Dipper on a wintry night.
Suddenly, into my remembrances, lights flash twice.
4
The driver’s-side window of the blue car lowers as the vehicle pulls up behind my truck. I hear a male voice call out, “Don’t you know it’s dangerous to be out here all alone?”
Relief washes over me like a foamy wave on a sweltering day. I’m glad that it’s my uncle’s voice that breaks the silence of my own private sanctuary and not the words of the convict from the eleven o’clock news that Minnie’s been telling me about.
“Hi,” I say. I roll down my window, stick my head out, and give Uncle Ropey a smile.
&nb
sp; “You do know it’s not safe for you to be out here by yourself?” Ever since Aunt Sheerly’s salon was robbed, Uncle Ropey believes he needs to let us know that these parts aren’t as safe as they once were. Sheerly feels the same way; I know because she wrote a song about it. Some of the lyrics are: “They’re gonna get that bum. His time will come. The jail will hold him tight so that he will be out of sight.” The tune is catchy, and after hearing her sing it one Saturday at The Rose Lattice in Buxton, I found myself humming it at my desk at work.
I get out of my truck. “This place is always safe to me.” Then I look into his round, rosy face. “What are you doing here?” The Bailey House is on a cul-de-sac and not exactly a location you end up unless you’re lost or want to be here.
He avoids my question and leans out of his window as his gaze roams over the large home. “Needs some fixing up, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah,” I breathe, looking at the dandelions congregating under a faded birdhouse, yet also noting that the lawn has been recently mowed. “It’s just not what it used to be.” Swiftly, like a torchbearer in the Olympics, I head up the steps toward the front door. “Here, there were two potted plants.” With my hands, I motion to where they once stood. “On both sides of the door. In the spring and summer, they were flowering like geraniums or impatiens. In the winter, they were ivy topiaries.”
“Ivy topiaries,” he says with fingers cupping his chin. “Now that is something I know nothing about.”
Laughing, I add, “And you probably don’t care about them, either.” Mrs. Bailey sure did, though. I remember how she scolded one of her visiting grandsons when he knocked over the right topiary while throwing a football.
A ticking noise stops me from saying any more. There’s a click, and then the electric lantern hung on a black pole to the left of the stairs sprays out a beam of light.
“Must be on a timer,” observes my uncle.
I glance around to see if any other lights have come on and then walk down the steps. “Have you ever been to the garden back here?”
He shakes his head.
“It’s like being in a magical world,” I say, catering to his adventuresome spirit.
He turns off his car and together, under flowering crepe myrtles the color of ripe peaches, we walk to the rear of the house. I unlatch the garden gate, give the handle a tug, and Ropey follows me inside. We make our way over the stone path to the patio, past deteriorating flowerbeds overgrown with fat weeds. A solitary burgundy rose dangles from a thorny stem. Honeysuckle bushes spread out over the backside of the house like octopus tentacles. At the wooden pergola, covered in twisted wisteria vines, Ropey bends down to study a section of cracked stones in the patio. I walk over to the pond.
The crevices in the low retaining wall around it are caked green with algae. A spider crawls along the mermaid-shaped fountain that sits in the middle of the pond. When the fountain is turned on, water bubbles from the mythical creature’s navel, a sight Minnie and I grew to love. Now a feathery web stretches from the mermaid’s left hand to her right.
Standing in the diminishing light, I recall the last time I ventured to the Bailey House, in late winter when a layer of ice coated the pond. The wind blew fall’s leftover leaves around my shoes, and my nose and fingers grew numb from the cold. I asked God to let it happen. “I want this bed and breakfast,” I said, zipping up my fleece jacket to my neck. I could hear the lapping of the Sound’s water over the far fence. Lifting my face toward the stark branches of the lone oak, I took a cleansing breath. “This place just feels like it’s mine already.”
Uncle Ropey squeezes his body onto the two-person glider, the very glider Minnie and I sat on years ago after our afternoon snack of lemon cookies and soda. Now the wood is chipped and faded—the color of aged newspaper.
He starts to speak, but I interrupt. “Where’s the birdbath?”
Ropey’s head turns to scan the silent fountain and moss-covered patio. “Don’t see it at all.”
“There was a marble birdbath. I could have sworn it was here last time I visited.” I scope out a pair of stones on the retaining wall that look less green than the rest, and sit down to face my uncle. “The birdbath was a clamshell. Well, a large thing made to look like a scalloped shell. Minnie and I said the mermaid left the pond to sit in it and comb her hair while all the guests slept.”
Amused, Uncle Ropey pulls a cigar from his breast pocket. “I thought she would have had a rendezvous with the prince.”
Actually, we’d also thought of that. “She did, after brushing her hair.”
“Where have you been tonight?” he asks.
I’m annoyed that someone would steal a birdbath, but I try to focus on the here and now. “Bad date.”
“You look dressed up.”
For me, dressed up is whenever I wear makeup or jewelry, and my relatives know that is about the extent of getting me to look more presentable. Tonight I did apply mascara, eyeliner, and gold hoop earrings instead of my usual tiny studs, and even a bracelet I found at the back of my dresser in a gift box. I went way beyond my level of comfort and wore a skirt, albeit a denim one.
“So what was wrong with him?”
How to say it without sounding self-centered? “He . . . he never asked anything about me.”
My uncle’s eyes widen under his black-rimmed glasses. “Nothing?” He takes a drag from his cigar.
“Oh, I take that back. He did ask how I drink Diet Pepsi.”
“Did you tell him—with a straw?” My uncle’s eyes twinkle.
I find a small smile. “He didn’t really want to know the answer. He was too preoccupied with all his stories.”
“Guess his mama didn’t teach him no manners.”
I stretch my legs. I’ve always liked my long legs, an attribute I inherited from my dad, who is six-three. I note how tanned they look in the dusk. Then I think that it wasn’t a completely horrible date. It could have been worse. At least his name wasn’t Cuddy.
I snicker when I think of the tactic I used to get away.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was just realizing that I left him alone at the Grille. Your niece cut the date short.”
“Think he’s still sitting there? All lonely? Want me to go check?”
A tinge of guilt enters, and I try to shake it off. “He didn’t seem to care about getting to know me at all.”
“One of Sheerly’s finds?” He exhales as the scent of rich tobacco envelops the entire garden.
“Yeah, she keeps trying.”
“We all want you to find The One.”
I think it might be time to give up. I change the subject. “How about you? What are you up to?”
“Well . . .” Uncle Ropey takes his cigar from his mouth and lets out a yawn. “Bought a few yards of rope that I think will make some great works of art.” My uncle constructs crafts with that white rope used on sailboats, a hot-glue gun, and shells. Tourists pay outrageous prices for his creations at a little shop in Buxton near the lighthouse. He prices them and then the owner of the shop marks them up at least twenty-five percent, so one shelled-rope tied in a fancy knot and framed in a glass case can retail at twenty dollars. Due to this fondness for rope art, he long ago earned the nickname Ropey.
“When I get this place,” I say as I remember how it felt to sit in the glider with the sun beaming through the gaps of the thick wisteria, “I want to display your nautical pieces in every room.”
“Still have your heart set on owning this place?” He gestures toward the house.
“I do. I just can’t seem to figure out how to make it happen. I’ve called a few Realtors. No one tells me anything I can use.”
Suddenly, Ropey stands, adjusts his pant legs, and announces, “I need a donut.” Crushing the cigar stub with his shoe, he heads toward the gate. I wait as he makes his way around the house. I hear his car door open and close.
When he returns, he has a box of Krispy Kreme donuts. My uncle lived off these
donuts until Aunt Beatrice Lou made the doctor tell him to limit his intake to only one per day. She’d read too much about clogged arteries in medical journals at the library where she works. Some are addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, or diet pills; Uncle Ropey’s addiction comes in the form of glazed sugar.
The sky is streaked now with trellises of fading pink and lavender clouds. We eat donuts as we enjoy the view. I stand to peek over the wooden fence that circles the property and take in the quiet Sound, its edges thick with marsh grasses. When my uncle reaches for his third glazed treat, he makes me promise I won’t tell Beatrice Lou.
“I wouldn’t dare.” I note how romantic the sky looks, and as a robin settles on the top of the gate, I imagine what it would be like to sit here holding the hand of a man I’m in love with. This was the garden where Minnie and I talked of boys, and now, suddenly, I’m feeling old and lonely, like I should reside at the Morning Glory Nursing Home.
My uncle rubs his fingers together and then licks the tips. I bet he did that same action as a kid. Like Aunt Sheerly tells her patrons, “You can’t take the boy out of the man.” I ask him, “Any luck with the speedboat?”
The desire my uncle holds for a fast boat is not met with approval by his wife. Ever since Ropey’s back started bothering him—he seems to knock it out of whack every few months—he’s been told not to overdo it. Ropey doesn’t agree with that. He wants to ride like the wind over the Sound, pretend his mirror lies and feel twenty-five again. Beatrice Lou would rather have him walk along the beach at least a mile each day, eat sunflower seeds and granola, and trim down to two hundred pounds like he weighed when he was twenty-five.
My uncle uses his secretive voice to say, “That’s the reason I came down this way. Casey Luweigneson—he lives about a block away from here. He has an eighteen-footer for sale.”
Hatteras Girl (Heart of Carolina Book #3) Page 2