What, she wondered, would people say about her when her time came? It was a daunting thought.
Cara swallowed hard and lowered her head, humbled by this self-reckoning. Power isn’t telling someone what to do, she told herself. Strength isn’t having the upper hand. Nobility and grace are revealed in the manner in which love is given.
She took another sip of Heather’s magic potion, feeling the caffeine and whatever superfood ingredients were in it racing through her bloodstream. And, more, the kindness that Heather had shown in making it for her.
Damn, but it was good.
IT WAS A glorious morning on the islands. The rain and storm of the past several days had cleared, taking with them the pressing humidity and the pesky bugs. At least for a short while. Heather reveled in these post-storm mornings, when the air smelled as green and moist as God’s promise to Noah, when everything felt fresh and renewed.
Bo walked beside her on Sullivan’s Island for her dawn patrol. He had heard her talk so often about sighting a flock of shorebirds on the beach at dawn that he wanted to see it for himself. Bo had proved to be one of those rare individuals who were as comfortable with silence as with conversation. They held hands as they walked along the deserted beach, bumping hips, each awestruck by the majesty of the brilliant sunrise over the ocean. The world was aflame with pink and gold.
“I see this almost every day,” she said to Bo. She stopped and he stood beside her, slipping his arm around her waist as they stared out at a beauty that was indescribable and overwhelmed logic. “I never grow tired of it. I think everyone should take time, at least once a week, to catch a sunrise. Just to feel alive and that there’s hope.” She leaned into him. “I don’t know how to explain it. There’s something about that rosy light that silences the negative voices in my head and reaffirms that there is something good in me.”
He pressed her closer. “There’s so much good about you, Heather.”
She felt the blanket of security she always did when he said such things. Looking up, she met his gaze.
They turned and continued walking. Heather picked up an occasional seashell. Bo inspected each intriguingly shaped piece of driftwood, settling on one large chunk he declared held promise.
After tiptoeing around the house trying not to disturb Cara, Heather appreciated being back outside in the fresh air and searching for her birds. That’s how she was beginning to feel about the shorebirds that clustered along both sides of Breach Inlet—as her birds. That was silly, of course. The birds belonged to nobody, and also to everyone. If more people understood that, she thought, the shorebirds’ future would be protected.
Approaching beach entry point Station 22, Bo explained to her it was so named because it was a remnant from the time a trolley would drop visitors off at different stations. They found a large cluster of plovers and sandpipers—so many she couldn’t count them. Bo set up the tripod for her scope while she spread out a towel behind it. Bo stretched out his long legs beside her.
Heather got comfortable in front of the tripod and put her sketch pad in her lap. She looked out over the beach and the water, then tilted her head to let the early-morning sun warm her face. She sighed contentedly.
“The light here is so beautiful and so different from the light in Charlotte. It reminds me of the light in Florence.” She turned her head. “Have you ever been there?”
“To Florence? Sure, many times.”
“Really?”
He laughed. “Sure. It’s just an hour away.”
Heather did a double take. “What?”
Bo laughed his low laugh. “I know you meant Florence, Italy. Baby, I’ve never been to Europe. I don’t even get to Florence, South Carolina, that often. Truth is, I’ve never been outside the South. Someday I’d like to travel. But frankly, I don’t feel the urgency.” He looked out at the sea. “Not when I live here.”
She matched his outward gaze toward the Atlantic Ocean, calm today after the stormy weather. “It is beautiful here,” she agreed. “Light helps define a place. Here the light has color. It changes throughout the day and it’s unpredictable. I’d never grow tired of painting here.”
“Glad to hear that.”
She caught his meaning and dipped her head to look into her scope, not ready to think about what the future held for her—and for them—when summer ended, and with it her lease at Cara’s.
In this moment, she had work to do.
There had to be twenty-five sandpipers out there. They walked steadily on their little legs, picking at the sand. A few were squabbling, spreading their wings, beaks open. She selected one feisty sandpiper in particular and, putting pencil to paper, began to set up her sketch. She became aware that Bo was watching her. She turned her head, a question in her eyes.
Bo grinned, a little sheepishly. “Sorry. Does it bother you if I watch?”
“A little. I’m not used to it.”
“I’ll stop.”
“No, it’s okay,” she said quickly. “It’s silly of me.”
“How do you know where to begin?” he asked, looking at the blank paper.
“It depends on what kind of work I’m doing. When I’m out in the field using a tripod and a scope, first I just watch. I look at the angle of the body.” She began to sketch as she talked. “What are the bird’s posture, proportions, angles?” Her hand moved more quickly now over the paper. “The sandpiper has a plump body with balanced proportions. Now I’m getting a basic silhouette. Before getting to details, it’s more of a road map. I draw it as lightly as possible. See?” she said, showing him her sketch. “You can barely see it on the paper. Just a ghost of an image. Then I’ll take it back to the studio and add all the details. These little peeps have such personalities.”
“I can see the bird taking shape already.” Bo’s tone was one of admiration.
“I’ve got a long way to go. What about you?” Heather asked, eager to deflect the attention from herself and her process. “You found that piece of wood. How do you begin?”
“Well,” he said, scratching his jaw, “first I just look at the wood. I ponder it. Just that can take a long time. I don’t put a knife to the wood until I see where I’m headed. I can’t erase my mistakes. Whittling or sculpting is really a long series of decisions. When you make good ones, you have a product you like. When you make a bad one, you toss it and start again. And there are always lots of bad decisions. But the good ones are worth waiting for.”
Then they both set to work. They worked in a companionable silence, Heather absorbed in her sketches and Bo contemplating the piece of wood he’d picked up. Yet wordlessly, Heather felt their bond grow from this shared experience. She’d never imagined how such simple pleasures could bring so many fulfillments. After about an hour, she set her charcoal pencil down with a gusty sigh. “I’m spent,” she said. She glanced over at Bo’s piece of driftwood and gasped. “Whittling” didn’t do his work justice. Like magic, the lump of wood had somehow morphed into a dolphin.
“Oh, Bo!” she exclaimed. She’d had no idea he could create sculptures like that.
“It’s just a little something,” he said modestly.
“It’s beautiful.”
“I whittle wherever I am. If I have my pocketknife, I’m set.” He lifted the dolphin higher, twisting it to the left and right. “The tricky part is knowing when to stop.”
“You’ve inherited your uncle’s talent with woodworking, for sure.”
He raised a brow. “Do you think so?”
“Yes,” she said with conviction. Every time she was with him, he revealed some new facet of himself. He truly had the soul of an artist. He found beauty in everything. Even her. “Somehow you found this dolphin hiding in that piece of driftwood and freed her.”
He smiled and looked at her, unusually abashed for a man as confident as Bo. “Well, now . . .” He handed it to her. “It’s for you.”
“I’ll treasure it forever,” she said, letting her finger run along the rough wood from
the rostrum to the tail fluke.
The day could not have been more perfect—yet something was niggling at Heather that she couldn’t quite shake. “I was just thinking, we’ve had such a great morning . . . it’s sad that Cara keeps herself cooped up inside. Coming from me, that’s like the pot calling the kettle black. But perhaps because I’ve been a shut-in so long, I’m sensitive to it. She’s so different from how she was the first time I met her, at the beginning of the summer.”
“She’s still grieving.”
“I know. But even Flo thinks she should be getting out more. And she was a social worker before she retired. And . . .” Heather drew circles in the sand. “. . . I talked to my therapist about Cara.” Heather had maintained her weekly session with her therapist in Charlotte via phone over the summer.
“You did? What did she say?”
“We talked about the different phases of grief. After the first phase of mourning, one moves into a longer phase of intense psychological pain. Weeping. Guilt. Hopelessness, that sort of thing. When someone is grieving, it’s easy for them to let go of their health. The way Cara’s sleeping all the time, watching TV, not eating well, is not unusual.”
Heather couldn’t quite put her finger on why, but she felt a sense of responsibility and even protectiveness toward Cara. Maybe it was because Cara reminded Heather so much of herself after her mother’s death, or maybe it was just a woman witnessing another woman in excruciating pain. Whatever the reason, Heather wanted—no, needed—to help.
“So I’ve been thinking. We have to try to lure her outdoors.”
“Wait,” Bo said, holding up his palm. “An agoraphobe is going to lure Cara outdoors?”
“I know, right?” Heather said with a self-deprecating laugh. “That’s why I need your help.”
He raised a brow. “Oh?”
“I have a plan.”
“You can tell it to me over dinner,” he said, scrambling to his feet.
“Dinner?”
He held out his hand and with a firm tug pulled Heather up, then put his arms around her waist and gently pulled her closer. “Yes. Tonight I’m taking you somewhere special.”
Chapter Nineteen
THE EVENING ARRIVED slowly. For Heather, the day had felt as if she were driving through a long tunnel, sure that the end would never come. She’d dutifully sent off her first collection of sketches to her commissioning art director in the morning. Letting go of the carefully wrapped package had been an exhilarating moment of completion. She’d finished this portion of her deadline on schedule. She had stood at the counter and watched the clerk affix the tags and postage with pride and relief. Yet as soon as she’d stepped out of the shop door, she’d stood blinking in the heat of a July morning, steeped in quandary. What would she do now? She had to wait for the decision of the committee as to what shorebirds were approved before she moved forward. She’d become fixed in her routine, and abandoning her daily schedule was not something that worked well for someone like Heather.
So she’d spent the day doing everything she normally did, and during the block of time in the afternoon that she allotted for perfecting her sketches inside the house, she’d worked on some personal art instead, drawings of the expanse of beach and wide swath of blue sky visible from her sunroom. But throughout the day, in the back of Heather’s mind was her date with Bo.
She wasn’t nervous—they’d been together almost daily for weeks. He stopped by for coffee in the morning before heading off for a job, or they’d grab a bite at the Long Island Café on the island. Sometimes they’d just sit in the back deck rockers and listen to music while they read, talked, and looked out to sea. He was waiting for some signal from her before going further, she knew it. And tonight, when he was taking her out to celebrate the completion of her sketches, might just be the time to give him the green light.
Of course, she’d been battling her inner fears over the implications of tonight, which made the day seem even longer. The hours crawled, despite her carefully regimented schedule and blocked-off segments of time. As the afternoon grew late she soaked in a scented tub and let her tense muscles loosen. Closing her eyes, she brought to mind the feel of Bo’s lips on hers, saw in her mind the extraordinary color of his blue eyes, so clear it was akin to looking at the sky on a sunny day.
Then, suddenly, it was time to get ready. She saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
Feeling giddy with anticipation, Heather took her time getting dressed. For the first time she put on the new lacy underwear she’d ordered, then polished her nails and dabbed her favorite perfume behind her ears. She agonized over choosing the right outfit and finally selected her white sundress, because he’d commented once how much he liked it, and high strappy heels. She brushed her hair out methodically, stroking the mother-of-pearl–handled comb through her waves until they shone like burnished gold. She let it hang long and straight down her shoulders. Finally, she slipped on pearls for her neck and ears.
When she walked into the living room, she found Cara sitting on the sofa reading. Cara looked up and closed the book.
“You look lovely,” Cara said, her dark eyes lighting. “Bo’s a lucky man.”
Heather felt a great relief that Cara approved. She’d felt self-conscious stepping out for this date in front of a woman who had recently lost the love of her life. But Cara seemed truly excited for Heather, a spark entering her eyes that she hadn’t seen since Cara had moved back in.
“I wanted to let you know,” Cara said in a casual tone. “I’m spending the night at Emmi’s. We’re going to have a good old-fashioned girls’ night watching movies, eating popcorn, giggling.” Cara swirled her wine. “So I won’t be here when you get home.” She quickly took a sip of wine, her look inscrutable.
“Sounds like fun,” Heather said, looking away. Cara’s message was as subtle as a truck. She quickly changed the subject. “I couldn’t decide on shoes,” she said, lifting her leg to show off a very tall, very sexy heel. “Are these too high?”
“Depends. Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. It’s a surprise.”
Cara’s eyes flashed and her face shifted to an amused grin. “A surprise? Oh, Heather,” she said with humor in her voice. “When a lowcountry man tells you he’s taking you out on a surprise dinner date, you’d better wear flats. I remember the surprise dinner date that Brett took me on when we began dating. Let me just say he picked me up in a johnboat.”
Heather laughed. “I could see Bo doing that.”
Cara smiled again and her eyes reflected some personal memory. “And put mosquito spray everywhere!”
BO ARRIVED IN his truck a short while later, and as she opened the door Heather was intrigued to see he wore the classic dinner attire she’d come to associate with a lowcountry man—khaki pants and a blue blazer. He towered over her in her flats, and his astonishing, pale blue eyes seemed even livelier than normal.
“You’re beautiful,” he said simply, upon seeing her. “Are you ready?”
“Yes. Let me just grab my purse.”
She went to the front table as Cara meandered by, holding a glass of wine in one hand.
“You clean up well,” she said to Bo in a complimentary way.
He laughed lightly. “Special night.”
“So I understand.” She pointed her finger and said with mock gravity, “You treat our girl well.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Bye, Cara,” Heather said with a private warning glance. Secretly she was glad Cara was coming out of her shell and up to teasing.
“Don’t wait up,” Bo added. Cara let out a little laugh and raised her wineglass in acknowledgment.
Once they were in the car, Heather asked, “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
Bo backed out of the narrow gravel driveway and then, shifting gears, headed south toward Sullivan’s Island. “You’ll know soon enough.”
“Is it a popular restaurant?” she asked.
“
No, I wouldn’t say that.”
“Good,” she said with a sigh of relief. “Going to a packed restaurant with lots of people would make me so nervous I might not appreciate what I’m eating.” She glanced over at him. “And I want to enjoy every minute of our date.”
He swung his head to glance at her, smiling. “That’s the plan.”
They drove over the Hunley Bridge. The sky was beginning to shift colors as the sun lowered. Breach Inlet shimmered below them in translucent lavender. The radio station Bo had turned on was playing country music, which suited Heather’s mood, and, caught in the mood of mystery, neither of them spoke. They didn’t travel far. Bo didn’t turn to go over the bridge toward Charleston. Instead he turned right on Middle Street, staying on Sullivan’s Island. They inched down Middle Street where the restaurants were jam-packed with summer visitors, past the fire station and the park. Heather sat up in her seat as they left the small business district and turned toward the back of the island. Where was he taking her? she wondered.
He turned again, off the paved road onto a dirt road that ran along the back of the island. The houses here were large, discreet, and mostly hidden by shrubs and trees. He turned into the driveway of one of them, toward a white clapboard house half hidden by an enormous live oak tree, its heavy boughs seemingly cradling the old house. “Where are we?” she asked.
“Sea Breeze.” They rounded the circular driveway. Bo turned off the engine beside a small wooden garage, and the big truck shuddered to a stop. “My friend Taylor lives here with his wife and baby. They’re out of town and said we could use the dock in the back. I wanted tonight to be special, and this is the best damn dock on the island,” he added. He turned toward her, his eyes twinkling with the game. “That’s your first clue. Now, stay put for a few minutes. I have to get a few things done first. Okay?”
“Okay.” She watched him trot up the driveway and behind the house, her brain buzzing with questions. There was still light in the sky despite it being nearly eight o’clock. She let her gaze wander around the circular drive. The place had the handsome architecture and quiet dignity of old money, with a wide, welcoming front porch and curved front steps under gabled windows. To the right of the property stood a charming white cottage, the very picture of what a lowcountry cottage should look like. With the garage to the left of the home, Sea Breeze was more than a house. This was a compound.
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