Hatteras Girl (Heart of Carolina Book #3)

by Wisler, Alice J.

  In her typical slow manner, Irvy says, “Did you know they got married on a pontoon boat?”

  The conversation continues about how nice it is that Jackie had a good date. I smile as my relatives talk about me as though I’m not there.

  “Did you know?” Irvy asks again. Her good hand jerks, as though wanting to bat at a mosquito that the rest of us can’t see.

  “Who are you talking about, Mama?” Minnie asks with a nervous smile.

  “They were married.” With effort, her head turns my way.

  I see her eyes, tiny darts.

  Irvy’s mouth moves and then, at last, “. . . on a pontoon boat.” Her hand resigns itself to rest against her lap.

  “Well,” says Tiny, breaking a silence that follows, “we’re all glad that Jackie has found a man she likes.” He resumes his place at the table and adds ketchup to his burger.

  Later I ask Minnie why her mother constantly says the line about the marriage on a pontoon boat. Minnie takes a bite of the chocolate pie Beatrice Lou brought. “I don’t know,” she says. “Someone she used to know, I guess. Her mind is going, Jackie. The doctor tells me that she’s acting more confused every day.”

  After Minnie feeds Irvy a slice of chocolate pie, we stand to clear the dishes. As I pass Irvy’s chair, she utters, “There is a farm in Cary.” Slowly, her fingers rest against my arm. I notice her carefully painted nails, the work of Minnie last week. Her bent index finger pokes into my skin. I watch her eyes, wondering what is going on behind them. Her tongue moves and hangs between opened lips. When she speaks, I have to lower my ear toward her mouth. “Will you remember there is a farm?”

  I don’t think that I’ve ever been to Cary, which I believe lies between Raleigh and Durham. But I tell her that I will remember it.

  She lets go of my arm, leans back in her chair, closes her eyes, and within moments, is asleep.

  19

  “Where are we going?” I ask as my hair whips into my face. We’re driving north on Route 12 in Davis’s car, passing Kill Devil Hills, then Southern Shores. When we get to Duck, I try once more. “The Currituck Lighthouse? Am I right?”

  Davis offers the same secretive smile he’s given me several times before. This time he touches my arm as we stop at a traffic light. I feel my pulse quicken. “Surprise,” he tells me. “Nearly there.”

  The evening sky splashes with tangerine clouds complemented by streaks of purple and white. Since Davis picked me up at the duplex forty minutes ago, I’ve questioned where we’re headed, but he’s kept his plans to himself, which makes my skin tingle with anticipation.

  When we roll into the town of Sanderling, he turns his car onto a side street and then curves around another shaded with cedars and a wispy pine. He parks by a secluded dock overlooking the Sound. He strokes my hand, and then grasps it, strong fingers entwined with mine. “This is it.”

  “Are we going to fish for our dinner?” I ask.

  “We could.” Getting out of the convertible, he reaches in the back and pulls out a wicker basket. “Or we could just eat from here.”

  The food is bountiful, making me wish I hadn’t eaten so much at Sheerly’s. I most certainly shouldn’t have had such a large piece of chocolate pie. Nevertheless, after we’ve admired the view of the water and marsh, I let him fill a paper plate with a roast beef sandwich. I see two slices of provolone cheese peeking over the edges of the rye bread. Davis opens a container of hummus and from a box, pours wheat crackers into a dish. He slices Gouda cheese and takes out a bunch of red grapes.

  We sit on the dock, our legs stretched out, our plates on our laps. Davis pours Evian into plastic glasses for us. Minnie and I used to joke that Evian was only for water snobs, but right now it seems like the perfect choice.

  The sun disappears into the western sky as crickets chirp their evening symphony. Bullfrogs join in just as the moon makes her appearance—as smooth as vanilla ice cream. We continue to eat and talk. I have so many questions about the Bailey House.

  “Are all the dishes still in the cupboards?”

  Davis’s laugh is warm. “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Because when I daydream, I’m serving breakfast on those plates with the gold trim and crimson swirls.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, and tea from those china cups with saucers. Royal Dalton, right?”

  With tender eyes, he draws me close, and I relax against his embrace. “The dishes are all there. My grandparents left everything.” His fingers stroke my hair. “You should wear your hair pulled back from your face,” he says.

  I eye him with uncertainty.

  “Yeah, it looks good like that.”

  I’ve never liked my hair in a ponytail because I think it makes my face look too round, but I just smile. “Are the linens there, too? How about all the furniture?”

  “All there.”

  “Do you know what happened to the birdbath?”

  His jaw tightens. “Let’s put the house aside for a while.”

  So we sit with our arms around each other until the moon rests straight above us. Then we eat strawberry chiffon custard from fluted plastic containers.

  I know I should be heading home. Waking up tomorrow at seven is going to be difficult. I bet it’s almost eleven and the drive back to my duplex is going to take almost an hour.

  Davis kisses my cheek.

  “I should be getting home,” I murmur.

  “Just a minute more,” he tells me as his fingers play against my back. This time he kisses my lips.

  At the Monday morning staff meeting, I make a strong pot of coffee, hoping it will wake me up. I pour a mug and breathe in the aroma of Kenyan beans. Selena insists we have only the brand called Blue Sparkle Mountain Top Coffee at the office. She claims she met an entrepreneur from Nairobi who told her this brand is the world’s best coffee. No one I know has ever heard of it.

  Today, Selena has brought in our accountant—a fuzzy-haired man with a belly like a drum—to tell us about the financial state of the magazine. I’m a bit worried, but Bert says that Selena has already informed him that Lighthouse Views is doing okay. Selena would bail if it were headed south.

  It’s hard to focus on magazine logistics when my mind keeps sailing back to last night with Davis. Now I look at my cell to see if Davis has sent me a text message. He left early this morning to meet a potential client on Ocracoke Island. This man wants to discuss a set of condos he’s managing to see if Davis wants to purchase them for renovation and further development. Davis isn’t sure it will be a good investment, but the man is eager to sell. When Davis dropped me off at my duplex last night, he said he’d be sure to call or text me today.

  Cell phones are happy instruments when they zing with new voice messages and text messages. But they can become an obsession when all you can think of is when they’ll ring.

  I sneak glances at mine while the accountant talks and Shakespeare dozes. I wish I could stretch out on the sofa and take a nap beside the terrier.

  When the staff meeting ends, Selena heads out with the accountant, stopping to pet Shakespeare and telling us to work hard.

  Cassidy opens a clear container and asks if anyone would like some pie. We are all interested until Bert asks, “What kind?”

  “It’s just called ‘reduced sugar.’ ”

  “Reduced sugar pie?” Bert looks like he might be sick. “No, thanks.”

  Cassidy gives me a questioning glance.

  “What is it made of ?” I ask.

  Cassidy looks at the fluffy white concoction in the container. “Not sure, but it’s on my diet.”

  “I don’t think it’s on mine,” I say with a grin.

  Bert raises his eyebrows. He grins back as I move to my desk.

  I start rearranging pens and pencils in my drawer and then flip open my phone. There is nothing but the wallpaper I’ve set on my phone’s screen—a photo I took last spring of a blue and yellow box kite that I flew. One thing on my to-do list is to
fly a kite at least once a year.

  When Selena returns, she hands me a list of business owners she wants me to interview for our September issue. She tells Cassidy to ask the hotel on Heron Street if they’d like to run an ad in our magazine.

  “We asked them last month, and they said no,” Cassidy reminds our boss.

  “Ask them again,” says Selena. “People can change their minds. Tell them we’ll give them a good deal.” She looks at me. “Aren’t you scheduled to do an interview in Avon today?”

  “Tomorrow. Vanessa changed the day.”

  Selena nods. “Just checking. You seem a bit dreamy and not your usual self.” We accuse Selena of being oblivious to our personal lives, but every so often she’ll surprise us by honing in on our moods, as if she does follow what we’re dealing with beyond the office.

  “Just tired,” I tell her, which is true. Of course, I suppose I have given in to some dreaminess, thanks to a certain Realtor.

  “Don’t get sick. Take vitamin C,” she suggests.

  What I would never admit to Selena is that I wouldn’t mind canceling the upcoming interview with Vanessa at Coastal Finds. Right now I don’t care that each item she sells is handmade by some of the best artists North Carolina has. But Selena believes that an interview with this lady is just what our magazine needs to boost our circulation and appear classy.

  I go over the questions I’m planning to ask Vanessa. When Selena leaves for the day, I wait until I hear her car back out of the parking lot, and then I head out the door. I can write much better outside of the office.

  I make it to the Grille in four minutes.

  After a dinner of chicken tenders with Zane, he and I sit on the sofa with Popacorn and watch Andy Griffith reruns. My phone is by my side because I know it will ring any minute now with a call or text.

  Minnie gets home, tired and complaining of a headache. She helps Zane get ready for bed, taking his dinosaur pajamas out of the dryer while he sings in the bathroom, and then goes to bed herself.

  I listen to sappy love songs from the nineties on the radio and after each one check to see if there is a message from Davis.

  By ten fifteen, I’ve decided that he hates me. I turn off my light and try to sleep.

  At eleven ten, my phone rings.

  20

  Sleepily, I reach for my phone, knock it off the bedside table, and as it clatters onto the floor, I scramble out of bed.

  “I’ve missed you.” Davis’s voice is deep and gentle, filling in all those potholes of worry that developed in my mind.

  “I missed you, too.”

  “Have you read any of the book?”

  On my bedside table is the book he lent me last night, a biography of Manex Jethro titled When a Musician Prevails. I touch the cover—a photo of the musician, a middle-aged man with a reddish beard and tiny eyes. “I read a little,” I say. The first few pages gave the details of Manex’s birth in Columbus and his meager childhood on a farm where they often had only plain oatmeal and fatback for meals.

  “He’s got a great story,” says Davis. “He made it big.”

  “His childhood was sad.”

  “So who is your hero?”

  You, I want to say, but that would sound silly. “Mrs. Bailey.”

  “Yeah, Grandma was a saint.”

  “She was. I love the way she welcomed everyone into her home. She cared about each guest.” I see her seated on the sofa in the parlor, listening to a wrinkled man in a cowboy hat share the details of his wife’s last days with a malignant tumor that no amount of chemo, radiation, or surgery could cure. Mrs. Bailey rubbed his back when he pulled his hat down to cover his face, sobbing into the creased leather. Later, she brewed him one of her finest orange pekoes. I want to tell Davis that I saw the compassion of Jesus in her.

  But before I can say anything else, he’s telling me to have sweet dreams.

  The next afternoon, I drive to Coastal Finds, Vanessa’s shop in Avon. As my truck rumbles the miles over Route 12 on this overcast day, I recall how Buck teased me when I told him I had an interview set up with Vanessa. “Now, don’t get carried away and let her talk you into too many of her overpriced pottery mugs,” he warned playfully. “If you need a loan, I’ll be glad to call the bank for you.”

  The outside of the shop is painted pink and lime green. The name of the shop is hand-painted on a piece of driftwood that hangs in the showcase window. Inside, the scent of peaches and cloves greets me, as well as Tina Turner. The singer’s strong voice pipes through the store’s speakers: “What’s love got to do with it?”

  As I walk around the store in search of Vanessa, I see a huge vase of red roses. They are displayed on a wide shelf near an arrangement of hand-blown glass bowls. Keeping my purse close to my side so that I don’t knock anything over, I count the blooms—twenty-four.

  At the counter, a young girl with a nametag that reads DONNA and Vanessa are talking about jewelry to a woman in a pair of cotton shorts, tank top, and yellow flip-flops with plastic sunflowers. The customer says she wants a silver bracelet studded with emeralds and rubies. Her grandmother apparently left her some money and she wants to use it to buy a bracelet.

  Vanessa opens the glass counter, and with a delicate motion, takes out a silver bracelet shining with blue and clear jewels. Vanessa is art in perfection. Every strand of her hair is glossy and in place. She’s wearing a two-piece suit, skirt and jacket with a cream silk shirt. The amount of money she spends on clothes could probably feed a small nation. And I can tell that exercising is something she likes to do. I’ve been told she schedules her life around sessions at the gym with her personal trainer, Fiat. Sheerly believes that Fiat is related to Arnold Schwarzenegger because he looks like Arnie did in the first Terminator movie.

  I greet Vanessa with a smile when the customer slips the bracelet around her wrist. “I’m Jackie.”

  Vanessa nods my way, but I can tell that she’s not finished with the customer yet. “That bracelet is one of a kind,” she tells the woman. “The four blue sapphires are encased in tiny diamonds. Yesterday a man was asking about it for his wife. He said he’d be back today with her.”

  The sales associate marvels at how beautiful the piece of jewelry is while Vanessa tells the customer that the sapphires are imported from Madagascar.

  “Really?” says the woman. “My grandmother went on a trip there one summer.”

  “You’ll never find anything this gorgeous at this price,” Vanessa tells her.

  I’m eyeing a shelf of pottery with price tags that run more than I make in two weeks when the customer agrees that the sapphires do sparkle beautifully. “I love the color blue,” she says. The customer lifts her arm, and we all watch as the diamonds glitter, the ones nearest the sapphires reflecting blue. “I’ll take this.”

  Vanessa smiles at me. I see triumph in her eyes. “Donna,” she says to her sales associate, “find a nice box for this bracelet. We are going to my office.” She motions for me to follow her, and I do. The air around her is sweet as her heels click against the wooden floor.

  I look at my sandals and wonder if I should have dressed up. I have one black dress in my closet.

  We enter Vanessa’s office at the end of a short hallway marked Employees Only. Warm sunlight dances into a room that is painted melon green with cream trim. Vanessa sits at an oak desk as shiny and waxy looking as her potted plants that line one wall.

  I start the interview by asking if she minds if I use my little Sony pocket tape recorder during our time.

  “Go right ahead.” Her lipstick is red, matching the collar of her jacket.

  I decide I’ll start by asking how long she’s owned the store. Then I ask what she likes best about dealing with the public. When she says her customers often compliment her on how clean and fresh the shop is, I think of the roses in the vase.

  “I noticed the roses you have.” I smile into her blue eyes. “They’re pretty.”

  Vanessa returns my smile. “I read yo
ur piece on Davis. I think that was a fairly good portrayal of him.”

  “You know him?”

  “Oh yes.” Her laughter is light, breezy, like a day in May. “He sent me the roses this morning. His note said he hopes they make the shop as beautiful as me.”

  My smile freezes on my face.

  She laughs. “He can’t seem to accept the fact that we aren’t dating anymore.”

  Somehow I find my voice. “Oh.” I pretend to make a notation in my notebook, my fingers feeling like Jell-O.

  “Now, don’t be publishing this.”

  “Oh no,” I say much too rapidly. “How . . . how long did you date?”

  “Off and on for a year. With Davis it’s always off and on.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. We try to break it off every so often, but then, well . . .” She pauses, smiles.

  I hear the sound of my pounding heart, which is almost as loud as the song now playing through the speakers. Kelly Clarkson belts, “The trouble with love is it’ll eat you up inside.”

  “What else do you need to ask me?” Vanessa asks crisply.

  I feel like I’ve been slapped. The sting of Vanessa’s revelation, mixed with Kelly singing about why we are so vulnerable hits me. I want to find the nearest exit, which I can see is directly to my left. I want to grab Zane’s toy trucks and race them all into each other just to hear the crash of metal.

  Instead, I continue with my questions, faking interest in her answers about what she likes to do for fun and what her favorite meal is. The scent of cloves seems too sweet for my mood.

  At last, the interview is over, and I walk on wobbly legs to my truck, waiting for me in the parking space like a refuge. I close the door, turn on the engine, crank up the air-conditioning, and breathe in and out.

  Two miles down the road, I have no idea where I’m headed. I pull into a small diner’s parking lot and kick my foot against the floorboard. I hit the dashboard with a tight fist as anger flares through my veins. There is nothing I can do when it comes to Vanessa’s good looks, her tiny, fit body, small feet, and, apparently, Davis’s interest in her.