by Mary Monroe
“What spooks you about being a mother?”
“I’m not spooked. I just don’t like being forced into a role I haven’t signed up for.” Her voice was harsh, deliberate, as though she was saying the words as much to convince herself as him. She turned her shoulder from him and pulled the sheet up higher over her chest, simmering. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
He shifted to sit up in the bed and placed his hand on her shoulder, drawing her back to face him. “Can I say one more thing?”
“Sure.”
“I think you’d make a wonderful mother someday.”
She turned to stare back at him, sensing more.
“Maybe even a fine wife.”
He’d said it with a smile, but she saw in his eyes that he was feeling vulnerable, venturing on shaky ground. The air grew thick with expectation. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
“Nope, not me,” she said, grabbing hold of the sheet and rising to sit.
He seemed thrown off guard. “Why not you?” he asked, reaching out again to draw her closer. She held herself rigid.
“The same reason for you. Folks like us are just not cut out for marriage. Or children. We’re loners, right?”
“I don’t know that I’ve actually sat down and decided not to get married or have kids. It just hasn’t happened yet. Maybe folks like us take a little longer to come around to it.”
She couldn’t deal with this now, couldn’t handle one more thing. She threw back the sheet, rose and began slipping into her underwear.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve got to get back. Toy wants to go out to the movies again.”
“I wanted—”
“I have to hurry.” She didn’t need to look at him to know he was watching her. Feeling self-conscious, she fumbled with her T-shirt, not caring that she’d put it on inside out.
“Wait, Cara. Don’t go yet. I want to talk to you. I’ll drive you back.”
“I don’t think I want to talk anymore tonight, Brett,” she said, stepping into her shorts, keeping her head down. “And I rode my bike.” She almost tripped over his sandals as she raced for the door. Turning her head before leaving the room, she saw Brett sitting in the middle of the bed. His powerful body was slanted, a sheet draped around his muscular thighs. But the expression on his face made her think an earthquake had just rocked the mountain.
When she returned home, Cara found her mother asleep and Toy in her room, studying. All appeared peaceful. Relishing the quiet, she went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, then brought it out to the leeward porch. She lit a scented candle—a rare treat—feeling the need for comfort tonight. She slumped into the rocking chair, tucking one leg beneath her. Then, for no reason she could name, she began to cry.
A few minutes later footsteps sounded on the porch steps. Cara stiffened in the chair, wiped her eyes and peered through the dim light toward the noise. “Hello?” A woman’s figure appeared, her white hair an aura in the candlelight.
“Hello there,” Flo called out softly. “I was walking and saw the light. Is this a good time?”
“Sure. Yes. Grab a chair.”
Florence dragged a chair near Cara. “So, how’s everything?”
“Fine, thanks.”
“Lovie?”
“She’s sleeping.”
Flo stopped rocking and looked directly at Cara. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Then, because it was Flo, she said, “Everything.” She started sniffling again and reached up to wipe her eyes, embarrassed for the tears. “I feel ridiculous.”
Flo reached into her pocket, pulled out a pack of tissues and handed one to her. “It’s an old habit from my days as a social worker. You always seem to need a tissue.”
“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just tired. It’s been a hard week.”
“Do you need help?”
“Thanks, really, but I can handle it.”
“Yes, I see how well you’re handling it.”
Cara blew her nose then shook her head. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me tonight. If I’m not weeping, I’m snapping at someone.”
“Oh-oh,” Flo said with humor. “Who’d you snap at?”
“Brett.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“I don’t understand it myself. We were talking about my mother and Toy and the next thing I knew we were talking about motherhood and marriage. I just panicked. I couldn’t deal with where his feelings were headed. It was too intense, too much. All I wanted to do was run away.”
“So you did.”
She nodded.
“That’s not so horrible.”
“You didn’t see his face. I hurt him, Flo.”
“Looks to me like you’re hurting, too. Do you want to end it with him?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Then tell him that. Don’t sit on this and let it fester. Call him. Talk to him. Tell him what’s going on. He can’t understand unless you open up to him.”
“I’m not good at those kind of conversations. What would I say?”
Flo smiled. “You can start with hello.”
The phone rang several times before he answered.
“Hello?”
“Brett, it’s me. Cara. Did I wake you?”
“No. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me, neither.” She gathered her words in her mind like cue cards. “I’ve been thinking about tonight. I didn’t thank you for listening to my rant. I guess I was wound up pretty tight.” She was relieved to hear him chuckle. “You’re the only one I can let go with and get all my frustration out,” she said, then laughed nervously. “Aren’t you the lucky one?”
“I’m glad you feel that way.”
“It’s probably a backhanded compliment, but I mean it as one. I feel safe with you, Brett. And I wanted to say thank you.”
“Okay.”
She waited for him to say more. When the pause lengthened, she asked tentatively, “Don’t you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Oh.” She felt a little deflated and was about to say goodbye when he spoke again.
“We all get tied up in knots once in a while. You know,” he said with invitation in his voice, “whenever that happens to me, I go fishing.”
When the hatchling reaches the ocean and gets its first taste of the sea, instinct kicks in. The crawling motion is replaced with power strokes by front flippers. The turtle will go nonstop for twenty-four hours in what’s called a “swimming frenzy” to reach the Gulf Stream.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Whenever turbulent weather starts churning out in the Atlantic during the months of September and October, residents of the southeast coast turn on the radios and TVs and keep watch.
Cara and Brett were driving home from their fishing expedition when they heard the bulletin. A tropical storm was forming off the coast of Africa and heading toward the Caribbean. This was the first hint of a hurricane she’d lived through in twenty years but the chill she felt running up her spine was all too familiar.
“Do you think it will form a hurricane?”
Brett didn’t appear the least bit alarmed. “Who knows?” he answered with an easy shrug. He glanced at her from the wheel, a question in his eyes. “Why? Are you worried?”
“No, no,” she lied.
“Right.”
“It’s just that with Mama sick and Toy due any day now, the timing couldn’t be worse.”
“Don’t worry. We get these reports all the time. It wouldn’t be the season without them. At this very moment, hundreds of people are running for the hurricane tracking charts they got from the grocery store with smiles of glee on their faces. The newscasters just love to get the people going. Fact is, most of the storms die far out in the ocean long before they even come near shore.”
Cara chewed her lip and searched his face. His features were serene; she decided to take his word for it. After all, he knew more ab
out nature than she did. She looked out the car window. The sky was brilliantly sunny with only a few wispy clouds. It didn’t look like a storm was coming.
“But it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get things ready anyway,” he said. “Lay in supplies. You should always enter the hurricane season prepared.”
“Great,” she said with a groan. “I’ll add it to my list.”
She glanced at the clock when they pulled in the driveway. It was a quarter to five. She was pretty grungy after an afternoon of fishing. Her hair was falling out of the elastic, her shorts were damp and the suntan oil had collected sand and dirt like a magnet. But she felt better than she had in days. They’d caught some nice trout and stopped off at the Red and White for a few groceries to make a feast. Her mouth watered at the prospect of grilled fish smothered with lemon juice.
“I’ll clean the fish if you’ll grill ’em up,” Brett said, offering the usual deal as he hoisted several bags full of groceries in his arms. Creek fishing was one of their favorite dates and she’d become an avid fisherman over the past months.
“Suits me fine,” she replied, grabbing the final two bags and balancing them on her knee as she closed the trunk. She followed Brett up the stairs to the house with a heavy tred. She couldn’t wait to get into the shower and wash off the smell of sea salt and fish. “I hope Toy has some of her famous coleslaw leftover. I’m so hungry I—”
She stopped short, almost crashing into Brett’s back. He was standing at the threshold with his arms full of groceries. Her mother stood across the room. One look at Lovie’s face told her something was wrong.
“Look who’s here,” Lovie said in her cheery hostess voice.
Cara stepped around Brett into the room, feeling as though she were stepping onto a stage. She heard a shuffling sound to her left and swung her head to look past Brett’s shoulders. In a single glance she caught sight of the last two men on earth she expected to see that afternoon: her brother, Palmer, and her former lover, Richard.
She almost dropped her groceries. The room suddenly seemed to shrink in size. She hadn’t thought of Richard in months. Her brain couldn’t make any sense of him being here—on the Isle of Palms—at her mother’s beach house, of all places. She was left speechless.
Always at ease in awkward situations, Richard stepped forward to relieve her of her bags. “Hello, darling. I’ll bet you’re surprised to see me.” He tugged at the bags. “You can let go,” he said, chuckling.
She relinquished the bags gratefully, because her knees were about to buckle at her first whiff of his expensive cologne.
“Surprised?” he asked.
“Surprised doesn’t begin to say it.”
She darted a glance at Brett. He was standing rock still, the muscles of his arms bulging under the weight of several bags and the cooler. She saw him at that moment as she knew Richard would, just some laid-back local in baggy cargo shorts, old brown sandals frayed at the heels and wind-whipped hair curling around a baseball cap.
She rallied as training clicked in. “Brett, this is my former colleague, Richard Selby. Richard, this is my good friend, Brett Beauchamps.”
Colleague? Friend? Who did she think she was kidding?
Richard cracked a smile. “Any friend of Cara’s is a friend of mine. I’d shake your hand but…” He shifted the bags in his arms.
Brett only jerked a nod of acknowledgement. Any harder, she thought, and he’d have broken his neck.
Cara was grateful they both had their arms filled and didn’t have to go through the charade of a handshake. All they had to endure was the pretense of politeness.
Which was, apparently, too much to ask of Richard, she thought, as his glance traveled insolently over Brett.
“Been fishin’ have you? I heard you good ol’ boys were good at that.”
Brett stared back at Richard. The blue of his eyes turned icy.
“Come along, boys,” Lovie said, stepping into the fray. “You can put those groceries down in the kitchen.”
There was a reluctant shuffling of feet as they followed her. In their wake, Cara shot a loaded glance at her brother. He was enjoying the scene immensely.
“Hey, don’t look at me like that,” Palmer said with a short laugh. “He came looking for you at my house. All the way from Chicago.”
“I see,” she hissed. “And you personally brought him out here?”
“It was the neighborly thing to do. Once he explained your relationship.”
She opened her mouth to ask exactly how Richard had defined that relationship when suddenly he was there. He looked as handsome and polished as ever in creased dove-gray trousers, linen navy jacket and a silk, open necked shirt. On his feet he wore tasseled shoes. Not one of his sleek dark hairs was out of place and, despite the heat, he looked as cool and fresh as though he’d just stepped from a shower. In contrast, she felt sure she smelled like a fishery.
“It’s great to see you again,” he said, stepping closer.
She drew her shoulders and took a step back. He understood the implication of the small movement and didn’t press any closer.
“Richard, what are you doing here?”
“I should think it’s obvious. I’ve come to see you.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
Richard looked over her shoulder at the group of people in the room listening to every word. When he faced her again, his eyes pulsed a private message of discomfort. They used to communicate with glances all the time during client meetings. They’d known each other’s thoughts and opinions so well that one look could speak volumes.
“It’s a little crowded in here. Can I take you to dinner?”
“I have dinner plans.”
“There’s a lot I need to talk to you about.” His eyes were pleading.
“Sorry.”
“Cara, I can only guess what you’re thinking.”
“If you knew what I was thinking, you wouldn’t have had the nerve to show up in my house.”
He grinned mischievously, without a trace of guilt. It threw her.
“Precisely. Which is why we need to talk. Alone.”
“Richard,” she said with frustration, hedging.
“And just to sweeten the lure,” he went on as though he hadn’t heard her, “let me tell you right now that, all personal feelings aside for the moment, I’ve come on business.”
Her interest suddenly perked up. She looked over to Brett. His brows were gathered and he was listening intently.
“I had dinner plans….”
“This is more important.”
“You two go on and settle your business,” Palmer said, stepping forward with congeniality. “I’ve been looking for a chance to visit with Mama.”
Cara looked at him with irritation. They both knew his coming here had nothing to do with visiting Mama.
“Hey Brett,” Palmer called out. “What you say we cook up whatever you got in that cooler?”
“Not this time, Palmer,” he said, moving toward the door. “I’ve got things to do. But you help yourself to the fish. Cara caught most of them anyway. Miss Lovie, it’s good to see you looking so well. Toy, always a pleasure.” As he passed Cara, his eyes searched hers before he put on his sunglasses.
After he left, she turned to Richard. “If you’ll wait till I get cleaned up, I’ll hurry.”
It was as though she’d returned to another life. The candlelight of the downtown restaurant glimmered seductively as she traced the thin crystal bowl of her wineglass with her fingertip. Around her she was aware of the gentle buzzing of conversations and the clinking of glasses. For the first time that summer she was wearing the slinky black dress that she’d packed in that hastily gathered assortment of silks she’d arrived with. Sizeable pearls around her neck and at her ears had been pulled out from the back of her drawer, as well as the Cartier watch that replaced the Timex she wore on the beach.
“You look marvelous,” Richard said, his eyes glowing with appreciation. “You’re so t
anned and fit. Are you playing golf?”
She laughed. “Hardly. I’m a Turtle Lady.”
He looked puzzled. “A what?”
She gave him the shorthand version, knowing he wouldn’t be the least interested in the loggerheads. “I walk on the beach a lot. And I’ve been gardening, fishing and boating.”
Now it was Richard’s turn to laugh. “You? I can’t believe it. You hate the outdoors.”
It irked to be described like that. It was no longer how she saw herself. “No, I don’t. The lifestyle here is quite different. You might like it.”
“What’s not to like? It’s a beautiful city, the weather’s great and there are world-class golf courses here. And the restaurants are superb. I read about this one in Gourmet magazine. Five stars.”
“Would you be surprised if I told you this was the first time I’ve eaten in the city since I arrived?”
“You’re kidding. Poor darling, you must be starving. You hate home cooking.”
Cara thought of all the fresh crabs and shrimp Brett had harvested and boiled or grilled for her, of impromptu picnics on the beach, of Toy’s experiments with healthy cooking and Mama’s family recipes and smiled, thinking she’d never eaten better in all her life.
“How’s your mother?”
“She’s dying, Richard. How do you think she is?”
His smile dropped and he drew back his shoulders. “I’m just trying to be friendly.”
“Don’t bother. Look, Richard, I can’t sit here and pretend we’re having a friendly dinner together. The last time I saw you, you kissed me goodbye and flew off to New York. I seem to remember that you were apologizing for having forgotten my birthday, but what you really forgot was the little detail about my getting canned the next day. Or was that your idea of a birthday surprise?” Her smile was so brittle she thought her face would crack.
“I did have to go to New York. And I couldn’t tell you about the layoffs that night. It would have been a breach of confidence.”