The High Tide Club

by Mary Kay Andrews

  Brooke felt herself shrink away from the gift shop entrance. She wanted to flee, to melt into the woodwork. As soon as Pete and his friend had passed, she tugged gently at her son’s hand. “Come on, buddy. Let’s go home.”

  “Nooooooo!” Henry wailed, throwing himself onto the floor. He grabbed the book and hugged it to his chest. “I want Caillou! I want it, I want it!” His face was scarlet with rage. She bent over and tried to pry the book away. “Noooooo!” he screamed, kicking his tiny feet at her ankles.

  Brooke saw Pete pause. He turned, said something to his female companion, and frowned, looking to see where the commotion was coming from. His eyes met hers. People surged around him, but Pete Haynes stopped dead in his tracks.

  54

  He strode toward the gift shop. Stopped, then wrapped Brooke in an awkward embrace. “I’m so glad you showed up,” he murmured in her ear. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

  “I wasn’t sure either,” Brooke said, her voice shaky. “It’s been so long. But I’m really glad you called.” She saw the woman who’d been walking with Pete, standing discreetly nearby, watching their reunion with undisguised interest.

  Sensing he’d lost his audience, Henry abandoned his tantrum, stood and raised his arms. “Mama. I pick you up.”

  Brooke took a step backward and scooped her son into her arms.

  “Who’s this?” Pete asked warily.

  “Pete, this is my son, Henry. Henry, can you say hello to Pete?”

  Henry turned away, burying his face in her shoulder.

  “Hi, Henry,” Pete said, lightly tapping the boy’s back. “How old are you?”

  Henry lifted his head and observed the stranger, his expression grave. He held out three chubby fingers. “I’m fwee.”

  “Obviously, we’ve got some catching up to do,” Pete said.

  “Who’s your friend?” Brooke asked, gesturing toward the girl who was now slouching against a nearby wall.

  “That’s Hope, a grad student I’ve been working with. Hey, Hope,” he called. “C’mere. There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

  “Hello,” the young woman said, offering a wide smile showing perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth. “You’ve got to be Brooke. Pete’s told me so much about you.”

  “Great to meet you, Hope,” Brooke said. “This is my son, Henry, who was doing his best howler monkey impression a minute ago.”

  “Oooh, Henry, is that Curious George on your shirt? I used to love him, and the man with the yellow hat.”

  Henry peeped shyly at the girl, nodded, then turned his head and hid again. Hope’s face registered a flicker of recognition as she looked from Henry to Pete.

  “Okay, well, uh, Pete, I’m going to hit the ladies’ room and then maybe find a magazine for the ride to Miami. I’ll let you two have some private time together,” Hope said.

  “Thanks. How about we meet outside at noon?”

  “I’ll see you there. Bye, Brooke. Bye, Henry.”

  * * *

  They found a corner booth at the bar. When the waitress arrived to take their order, Brooke gave her what she hoped was a winning smile. “Is it okay for me to have my little boy in here?”

  The waitress looked around at the lounge, which was half-empty at that hour. “Okay by me, but if one of my other customers complains, you’ll have to leave.”

  Pete ordered a beer, and although Brooke longed for something to quell her bad case of jitters, she ordered coffee for herself and orange juice for Henry.

  “You don’t want any food?” Pete asked, scanning the menu. “I’ve gotta eat something. I’ve been on planes for twenty-four hours, and all I’ve had was some mini-pretzels and a stale bagel.” He ordered crab cakes and french fries, and Brooke ordered a grilled cheese to split with Henry, who was already curled up on the booth with his head in her lap.

  They made polite, inane conversation about the weather in Alaska, southern Atlantic hurricanes, blue crabs versus snow crabs, and politics while waiting what seemed like an interminable amount of time for the food.

  She tried not to stare at Pete. His hair was longer than she’d ever seen it before, brushing his shoulders and falling across his eyes. He’d grown a thick beard too and had lost weight so that the planes and angles of his face stood in sharp relief. But his biceps bulged beneath the short sleeves of his dark gray T-shirt, and his belly was noticeably flat.

  Brooke was vaguely aware that Pete was talking about the GPS devices they’d implanted in the caribou to allow them to track migration patterns, but she was only half listening. Instead, she was mentally mapping the contours of his shoulders, the scar on his lower back where he’d impaled a fishhook in his own flesh as a kid, his chest and the way it had felt to lay her cheek against it that one fateful night more than three years ago.

  She longed to reach out, touch a finger to his lips. Shh, she wanted to say. No more talk of caribou or grizzly bears or how they collected blood samples to measure hormone levels in the female caribou. Later. All that can come later. Tell me about you, she wanted to say. Tell me it was lonely without me. Tell me you love me.

  He stopped talking once or twice. Sat back, sipped his beer, and seemed to be taking measure of her, puzzling something over in his mind. Had he guessed? Did he know?

  After the waitress brought their order, Pete dove into his crab cakes, and Brooke picked at her sandwich, tearing off bites and offering them to her drowsy son like a mama bird feeding her chick. She had no appetite, although she would have loved a glass of wine.

  Finally, Pete stopped eating. His face was unreadable. “So. Got any news you want to share with me? Your child is three, and that’s about how long it’s been since we last talked.”

  “Pete, I’m sorry,” Brooke started.

  “He’s the real reason you wouldn’t come to Alaska that Christmas? The reason you quit Skyping and then just quit answering my phone calls and emails altogether?”

  The lump in her throat felt like concrete. She nodded, miserable.

  “And his father? Anybody I know?”

  Brooke felt herself tense. How could Pete look at Henry and not recognize his own DNA? How could he gaze into the boy’s eyes and not see in them a mirror image of his own smoky blue eyes, fringed with lashes so thick and lush they seemed to weigh down his eyelids?

  “Are you married?” Pete asked incredulously. “When did that happen? Were you seeing this guy the whole time we were together? Damn it, Brooke, don’t just sit there, staring at me like that.”

  “I’m not married,” she managed. “He … Henry’s father isn’t in our lives. He hasn’t been in a long time.”

  Pete frowned. “The guy just left you? Pregnant with his kid? What kind of swine does something like that?”

  “It’s not his fault. I’m the one who let myself get pregnant. You know how I am. I decided I could do it all by myself. And I have. Mostly. I found a place to rent at St. Ann’s, hung up my shingle. I’m practicing law again.”

  He pushed his plate away. It was dotted with the breading from the crab cakes, and the streaks of ketchup from the french fries reminded her of blood, and the stabbing pains she felt in her chest as she so artlessly avoided telling Pete the truth about his son. Not lying. Just not being entirely honest.

  His voice was hoarse. “Any chance you and this guy will get back together? For Henry’s sake?”

  She saw Hope approaching. She’d applied fresh makeup and her braid was brushed out, with blond hair flowing loose over her shoulders. She wore black jeans and a spotless white T-shirt and looked as fresh and lovely as a wildflower. Brooke was painfully aware of her own appearance, the large damp spot over her left breast, her shirt and lap covered with bits of Henry’s sandwich. She was a hot, unwed mother of a mess.

  “It’s not looking good for me and Henry’s dad. Not right now anyway. What about you and her?” She jerked her head in the girl’s direction. Pete turned and flashed her a smile as she neared the table, then backed away, aware that s
he was interrupting something intense.

  “She’s a colleague,” he said firmly. “She’s been collecting data on caribou from another location on the tundra, and we’ve collaborated on this paper we’re presenting at the conference in Miami.”

  “And there’s nothing between you?” Brooke raised an eyebrow, hoping she sounded as though she didn’t care.

  “We’re colleagues. And friends. I thought, I mean, I hoped, maybe, there was still some chance of us, you know, you and me, reconnecting. I successfully defended my dissertation three months ago. When I get down to Miami, I’m meeting with the head of a nonprofit foundation that has funding to study the deer population on all the barrier islands—Talisa, Sapelo, Ossabaw, Cumberland. They’ve got deep pockets, and it’s a great opportunity for me.”

  “Pete! That’s wonderful,” Brooke impulsively reached out to grasp his hands in hers.

  “Hey, Pete,” Hope said, edging toward their table. “I hate to break this up, but Ralph just texted me. He’s parked in a no-parking zone at the curb, and he says if we don’t get our butts out there right now, we can find our own way to the conference.”

  “Coming.” He stood and threw money on the table. “This should cover the check.”

  Brooke made a move to stand, but she was trapped in the booth with Henry, sound asleep with his head in her lap.

  “Don’t wake him up,” Pete said. He leaned over and touched the top of Henry’s messy curls. “Cute kid.” Then he straightened. “This was probably a bad idea, huh?”

  “Not at all,” Brooke said. “It was great to see you. I just wish we’d had more time to talk. My mom was going to take Henry, but this morning she woke up with some kind of bug.” Her mouth was dry, and she didn’t know what to say.

  He hesitated. “I’m flying out of here next week. This time, the ball’s in your court, Brooke. If you call me, we’ll meet. If not, I’ll know it wasn’t meant to be.” He brushed his lips against her cheek, turned, and hurried out of the lounge, with Hope following.

  * * *

  “You didn’t tell him, did you?” Marie’s tone was more resigned than accusatory. They sat at the kitchen table. It was a dark Irish Georgian oak with carved ball and claw feet, and the chairs were of the same wood, but in a Chinese Chippendale style.

  Her mother squeezed lemon into a glass of iced tea and handed the glass to Brooke.

  “How are you feeling? You look a little better than you did this morning. Have you taken your temperature?” Brooke asked.

  “I’m okay. Now, did you or did you not tell Pete that he has a son?”

  “I wanted to,” Brooke said, sipping her drink. “But when he didn’t even notice how much Henry looks like him, I don’t know. Something inside me just shut down.”

  “Your backbone?”

  “How could he not recognize his own child?” Brooke cried. “Even that alleged colleague who was with him, the enchantingly lovely Hope, I know she saw the resemblance the minute she laid eyes on Henry.”

  Marie sipped her own tea. “Oh, Brooke, you know how clueless men are about stuff like that. When you were born, your father stood outside the nursery window at Candler Hospital proudly telling everybody within listening distance that a total stranger’s newborn was his beautiful new daughter. And get this—the child was a boy, and he weighed twelve pounds, eight ounces, which was exactly twice what you weighed.”

  “I’ve never heard that story before,” Brooke said. “Are you sure you didn’t just make it up?”

  Her mother slid her phone across the table. “Call and ask him if you don’t believe me.” She glanced fondly at her grandson, who at that moment was happily coloring at a child-sized table Marie had brought down from the attic for him. “Did Pete even get a really good look at him?”

  Brooke shrugged. “You know how shy Henry gets around strangers. He sort of buried his head against my shirt when Pete was talking to him. But he did tell Pete he was three, which, if the man had any brains in his head, should have told him that Henry was the fruit of his loom. He even had the nerve to ask me if I’d been seeing Henry’s father while we were together!”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him the father hadn’t been in our lives in a long time, which was the truth.”

  “I just don’t understand why you didn’t simply tell him the truth: that you got pregnant the last night you were together and then couldn’t quite get up the nerve to tell him about his child.”

  Brooke jiggled the ice cubes in her glass. “I wanted to. Truly, I did. But the food took so long to get there, and it was so weird and awkward between us, and then after the food did arrive and we finally got around to talking about us, that damn girl showed up to say that their ride was there and they needed to leave. I swear, she did it on purpose.”

  “Didn’t he tell you they were just colleagues? Nothing romantic?”

  “I guess. Maybe I’m just paranoid. Pete did tell me he’s coming back through town to fly back to Alaska after the conference ends next week. He said I should call him if I want to see him—and that this time the ball’s in my court.”

  “Fair enough,” Marie declared. “Next week, you call him. You get a sitter for Henry, and you arrange to meet Pete somewhere other than the airport, at a nice restaurant, and without his little friend Hope. And you sit down and put all your cards on the table.”

  “He’ll hate me,” Brooke said. “Or worse. What if he decides he doesn’t want to be with me but he wants me to share custody of Henry? What if he tries to take him away from me?”

  Marie rolled her eyes. “He has a right to be angry, but he’s not going to try to take your son. You’re being ridiculous, and you know it. Stop being so paranoid. I know you, Brooke. If you cared enough about this man to sleep with him, you know his character. Right?”

  “Maybe. But it’s been three years. Maybe he’s changed. He grew a big, awful Grizzly Adams beard that hides his beautiful face. And he’s been pumping iron too. He’s, like, beefcake now. Who knows what else is going on with him?”

  “You’re giving me a headache,” Marie said wearily. “I can’t talk any sense into you. Are you going to see Pete again or not?”

  “Truthfully, I don’t know. My life is complicated enough right now. And part of that’s your fault.”

  “Mine? What did I do?”

  “You’re the one who told me it was okay to date Gabe Wynant. So I’m doing it. He’s taking me to the dinner dance at the Cloister tomorrow night, and he wants me to spend the night at his place after.”

  “Oh, he does, does he?”

  “He swears he’ll be a gentleman,” Brooke said.

  “They always do,” Marie said primly. “Are you on any kind of birth control?”

  “That’s none of your business,” Brooke said. But she wasn’t. There hadn’t been any need in a long time. As far as she was concerned, the combination of a rambunctious three-year-old and an exhausted single mother was the most effective birth control on the market.

  Marie cocked her head and studied her daughter.

  “What? What’s that look?” Brooke demanded.

  “Nothing. Just thinking.”

  “I hate it when you do that. It’s like you’re psychoanalyzing me.”

  “Has it occurred to you that you’re at a fork in the road? The father of your child apparently wants to be in your life again. And in the meanwhile, Gabe Wynant has come a-courting. I know I encouraged you to see Gabe, but that was before all this business with Pete.”

  “Yes, Mom, it has occurred to me. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

  “I certainly hope so. Anyway, you never told me what you and the girls found out on your fact-finding mission yesterday. Do you really think there’s a chance C. D. is Josephine’s son?” Marie asked.

  Brooke shared the results of the previous day’s investigation, and Marie listened carefully. “Have you spoken to C. D. yet? If it’s true that his father might have been black, that’s going to come
as a huge shock to someone of his generation.”

  “I’ve left him messages, but nobody’s seen or talked to him. I’m starting to get a little worried about him, to tell you the truth,” Brooke said. “Lizzie was going to try to track him down today. I’ll call her on my way home to see what she knows.”

  “Keep me posted,” Marie said. “And be careful driving home. Call me Sunday and fill me in on all the gory details of your night with Gabe.”

  “A lady never kisses and tells,” Brooke said, grinning impishly.

  “Except to her mother,” Marie said.

  55

  When Shug dropped her off at the dock at Talisa, Felicia and Lizzie were waiting, with Lizzie behind the wheel of the pickup truck. Shug waved goodbye as he backed the boat away from the dock, headed back to the mainland to run errands for Louette.

  “I was kind of surprised to hear from you this morning,” Lizzie said as the two other women scooted in close to her in the front seat of the truck.

  “After you told me yesterday that C. D. seems to be missing in action, it made me a little nervous. I mean, right now, he’s Josephine’s heir apparent,” Brooke said.

  “Or at least, he’s our preferred heir apparent,” Felicia said. “Not that we have any say in the matter.”

  “Did you talk to Varina? Ask her about the possibility that a black man could have fathered Josephine’s child?”

  Felicia shook her head. “I can’t. She’s still pretty frail. And she’s so protective of Josephine’s reputation. Her main concern right now is when Josephine will be buried. She hates the idea of her body locked up in a freezer drawer at the morgue. Have you heard anything?”

  “We’re waiting on the sheriff to release the body,” Brooke said. “I’ll ask Gabe when I see him tonight. Maybe, now that he’s been named administrator, he can speed things up.”

  “You’re seeing Gabe tonight?” Lizzie asked, nudging Felicia.

  “You two are so juvenile,” Brooke said.

  “I told you so,” Felicia said, addressing Lizzie. “I definitely sensed some kind of a spark between those two.”