Summer at Hideaway Key

by Barbara Davis

The thought of it makes my throat thicken. It’s a hard thing to sample paradise and know you must give it up, and yet I wouldn’t trade this bittersweet ache for a single shell in my jar.

  August 31, 1957

  Hideaway Key, Florida

  There are moments we can’t begin to dream of, twists of fate so wondrous and sweet they somehow make up for everything that has come before, all the grief and pain blotted out in an instant with the asking of a single question.

  I was out on the deck bidding farewell to the beach, my bags waiting by the front door to be taken to the car, when I felt Roland’s hands on my shoulders. I didn’t hear him step outside, and had to dash tears from my eyes. I’d been trying all week to be brave, to mask my sadness behind a carefree smile, to maintain some shred of dignity at the end of things, but the effort had worn me too thin.

  Suddenly, Roland’s touch was more than I could bear. I stepped away before he could turn me into the circle of his arms.

  Frowning, he reached for my hand on the railing, twining his fingers with mine. “You’ve been quiet these last few days, Lily-Mae. Is everything all right?”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice. Everything in my body longed to throw myself against him, to memorize just one last time the touch and taste and feel of him, to hold tight to those final few moments and seal them away in my memory, proof that, for a time at least, I was his. Then later, when better able to bear the loss, I would unwrap them, carefully and tenderly, like the precious things they were, and hold them up to the light.

  His fingers squeezed mine, a reminder that he was still waiting for an answer. I cleared my throat, tight with unshed tears. “It’s just that these last few weeks have been so perfect it’s hard to think about going back.” I glanced away, out over the sea, swallowing past the razors in my throat. “I don’t know how to thank you, Roland, for this summer. I’ll cherish it always.”

  His fingers went slack suddenly, slipping through mine as he stepped away. “It isn’t your thanks I was looking for, Lily-Mae. But then, that isn’t your fault; it’s mine. The instant I saw you I knew I was on dangerous ground. I knew better than to get involved with someone like you. You’re nothing like the women I know. You’re . . .” He paused, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. A tick appeared along his jaw. “Damn. I swore I wasn’t going to do this. Do you have any idea at what I’m trying to say, Lily-Mae?”

  Someone like me. The tears came in earnest as I absorbed the words, spilling over my lashes and onto my cheeks. “Yes,” I said softly. “We’re different people, with different lives. We’ve had fun, but now it’s over. I understand.”

  Roland’s head came around sharply, his eyes wide as they found mine. “That’s what you thought I was trying to say, that this summer has been some kind of fling, and now I’m done with you?” He pulled me to him, eyes suddenly soft as he ran a finger along the curve of my cheek. “You little fool. I was trying to say that I’ve fallen in love with you—that I want to marry you.”

  The mingled sounds of the sea and wind suddenly went quiet, as if the world itself had suddenly stopped turning. “Marry . . . me?”

  “Yes, Lily-Mae. I want to marry you. I think I have since the moment I first saw you in Celia Gardiner’s drawing room. I just never dreamed someone like you would ever look in my direction. Am I a fool to hope you might say yes?”

  Someone like me. The very words that made me cry only moments ago now made my heart want to soar—and yet I didn’t dare let it. I took a step back, hating the flash of pain in Roland’s eyes as I pulled away. “I love you, Roland, but we both know I don’t fit in your world. You’ve heard my story, how and where I grew up, what Zell did, and then his wife . . .” My voice began to fray. I glanced away. “You don’t need that in your life. You need a proper wife, one who can make you proud and give you a family, one who doesn’t panic every time she’s asked about her past. I can never be that wife. You may not think it now, but one day when the newness was gone, you’d wake up regretting you ever asked me. And I don’t think I could bear that.”

  Roland closed the distance between us in two quick steps, taking my hand when he reached me. “The only thing I’ll ever regret is hearing you say no.”

  I closed my eyes and pulled in a deep breath, trying not to think of Charles Addison and his tainted orphan. “How can I say anything else, Roland? You’re an important man, with important friends. You can be so much, do so much with your life. I’d only stand in your way. My past would—”

  “I don’t give a damn about your past, Lily-Mae. It’s your future I want. You’re the strongest, bravest woman I’ve ever met. That’s what I need in my life—that, and nothing else. I love you, Lily-Mae Boyle, and always will. A moment ago you said you loved me. Did you mean it?”

  I nodded, barely able to speak. “With all my heart.”

  “Then I’ll ask again—am I a fool for hoping you’ll say yes?”

  I couldn’t help it; I threw back my head and laughed. “You were a fool for not asking me sooner.”

  Even now, as I write this, I feel a fresh round of tears beginning to well, joy mingled with disbelief. Roland St. Claire has asked me to be his wife, and I have said yes.

  September 10, 1957

  Paris, France

  We were married on a Tuesday afternoon at a tiny chapel on the outskirts of Hideaway Key. I wore a simple sheath of cream-colored silk—not a wedding dress, but close enough—and a tiny hat with a beaded veil. My bouquet was a handful of roses purchased from the local florist, and hastily bound with creamy silk ribbon. And for a wedding present, Roland has bought me the cottage, so we can come back as often as we like, and relive our first blissful days together.

  It all happened so fast I barely had time to call Caroline with the news. She was stunned at first, but quickly warmed to the idea when she recognized Roland’s name. I pretended to ignore her snide remark about my knack for wrapping a man around my finger, but it stung a little that she couldn’t simply be happy for me. I had hoped spending the summer away would soften her feelings toward me, but apparently it hasn’t. Roland noticed my mood as I hung up the phone, and asked if everything was all right. I told him it was. He wouldn’t understand, as I did, that it was just Caroline being Caroline. Besides, I wasn’t letting anything spoil this time for us.

  And then, almost as quickly as the wedding was accomplished, we were on our way to Paris, where every day has been a fresh whirl of beautiful places, sumptuous food, and shopping trips that leave me dizzy as glass after glass of champagne is pressed into my hands, and high-cheeked models stroll about for my pleasure. Dresses, gowns, lingerie, hats, gloves, handbags, and jewelry. Nothing is too good or too expensive. I’ve worn nice things before, have reveled in the feel of good lace and fine linen, but never in a million years have I dreamed of owning such exquisite things myself. I confess, it makes me a little uncomfortable, like a child playing dress-up with her mother’s best things—things that are too good for her. It’s all so much—too much, really—but when I protest, Roland reminds me a man should be allowed to spoil his wife.

  And spoil me he does. We lunch in cafés with tables right out on the sidewalk, sipping café au lait and nibbling pastries filled with sweet almond paste. Evenings are spent at the opera, theater, or ballet, then followed by late suppers served under sterling. We sleep late each morning, waking slowly to make love while the Parisian sunshine streams in through the balcony windows.

  It’s all been lovely, so lovely that at times I have trouble believing any of it is real. It’s as if I have been set down in the middle of someone else’s dream, and will soon awaken in my narrow cot at Mt. Zion. Those are the times I find myself reaching out to touch Roland’s hand to be sure this is all real, that he’s real.

  TWENTY-NINE

  1995

  Hideaway Key, Florida

  Married.

  Lily closed the journal,
too stunned to move. It was too much to comprehend. But even more stunning than the actual marriage was the fact that her mother had kept it secret all these years. And so had her father. She did the math on her fingers, ticking off the months between Lily-Mae’s last journal entry and the date of her parents’ marriage in November of 1960—roughly three years.

  Lily-Mae had predicted that Roland would wake up one day regretting that he had ever asked her to marry him. Had her prophecy come to pass? Or had it all just happened too fast? A summer romance, a cottage by the sea, lazy days and passion-filled nights, but in the end they had been little more than strangers, two very different people brought together by circumstance and moonlight. Perhaps their differences had simply proven too much to overcome. It wasn’t hard to imagine. And yet Caroline, a product of the same world as Lily-Mae, had managed to hold on to Lily’s father for more than thirty years, and without any sign of the affection Roland and Lily-Mae had shared.

  Lily rose and went to the bureau, taking down Lily-Mae’s jar of shells and carrying it back to the bed. With special care, she spilled them onto the spread, lining them up in neat little rows, counting as she went. Forty-nine perfect shells for forty-nine perfect days. And more than thirty years later they were still here. Their marriage might not have lasted, but one thing seemed certain: Lily-Mae had never stopped loving Roland St. Claire.

  At long last, she was beginning to form a picture of Lily-Mae’s life, though it was still hazy in a lot of places, and not at all what she’d expected. Unfortunately, there were no more journals, which meant there was no way to fill in the blanks. And there were a lot of blanks that needed filling. Like how her parents ended up married. There had been no mention of how they’d gotten together. Had Caroline thrown herself at Roland as she had done with the odious Zell, desperate to possess something that belonged to Lily-Mae?

  Lily was still contemplating the possibility that her mother had purposely set out to destroy her sister’s marriage, when she heard Dean call her name.

  “Back here,” she called back to him. “In the bedroom.”

  He appeared seconds later, handsome in khakis and a crisp blue oxford. “What’s all this?” he asked, eyeing the bedspread littered with shells.

  “It’s forty-nine days.”

  “Sorry?”

  “They belonged to Lily-Mae,” she explained as she began gathering the shells and returning them to the jar. “I’ve been wondering about them since I got here. Now I know.”

  “And?”

  “She used them to mark the days. One for every walk they took together.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Lily-Mae and my father. They spent a summer here once—and then they got married.”

  “Married? Are you sure?”

  Lily nodded. “It’s all right there in her journals. The last entry is about their honeymoon. It was before he met my mother, and it didn’t last long if my math is right.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know. There aren’t any more journals. They divorced, presumably, and he married my mother.”

  “Wow.” Dean dropped down on the bed beside her, scooping up a stray shell and handing it to her. “Are you okay? I mean, it’s a weird thing to find out, isn’t it—your father being married to both your mother and your aunt?”

  “It’s very weird. But what’s even weirder is that no one ever told me. I’ve always known there was something, some secret having to do with Lily-Mae that my mother couldn’t bear for me to know, but I could never have guessed this.”

  “I don’t think anyone could. I take it you haven’t talked to your mother yet?”

  “Just the one time. When it comes to Lily-Mae, my mother has never been very cooperative, and it’s been worse since my father died. I’m betting she never counted on these journals turning up.”

  “I still don’t understand your mother making a big secret of it. Your father was married to her sister for a couple of years. What’s the big deal?”

  “You have to understand my mother, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. Even I don’t understand her. Maybe she didn’t want anyone to know she wasn’t my father’s first choice. Or maybe she didn’t want anyone to know she was the one who broke them up.”

  “You think there was a little extracurricular activity going on?”

  “I don’t know, but my father certainly didn’t waste any time between weddings. Three years after he asked Lily-Mae to marry him he was saying ‘I do’ to my mother.”

  “Ouch. That is pretty fast.”

  Lily rose from the bed to return the jar of shells to the bureau. “It’s only a hunch, and not a very nice one, but it does add up.”

  “Maybe, but it’s a pretty touchy subject to bring up with your mother. How do you think she’s going to handle it?”

  Lily pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, trying to quell the dull pain that had begun to throb there. “The same way she always does, by making me feel guilty for even asking. She’ll talk around it, or talk over it. Anything but answer my questions. We’ve been playing the same game for thirty years.”

  Dean stood and reached for both of her hands, twining his fingers through hers. “We talked about dinner earlier, maybe catching a movie. Do either of those still sound like a good idea? Or I could whip us up something over at my place, and then we can curl up on the couch and find an old movie. It doesn’t matter to me. I just think getting away from all this for a while might be a good thing.”

  Lily looked down at their hands, at Dean’s long tan fingers twined with her own, and was surprised by the flurry of emotions the sight conjured. Lifting her gaze to his, she smiled gratefully. “An old movie would be great.”

  They made omelets together—mushroom, ham, green pepper, and Swiss. Lily handled the chopping with reasonable efficiency, while Dean manned the pans with all the skill and technique of a breakfast chef. They were delicious, but tasted even better eaten on the couch with To Have and Have Not playing on the classic movie channel.

  Dean loaded the dishwasher, then poured them each a glass of merlot, settling in beside Lily to watch the rest of the movie. She wouldn’t have guessed it, but apparently, he was quite the classic movie buff, able to quote almost every line verbatim, including Bacall’s famous whistle scene, which he mimicked in fine comic fashion, after dragging his bangs down over one eye.

  “I think you missed your calling. You nailed her. Though I have to say, I never would have figured you for a classics man.”

  “I’m not sure how to take that.”

  “I just meant you seem more like a Die Hard or Lethal Weapon kind of guy.”

  “Again, I’m not sure how to take that.” A smile touched his lips briefly. “My mom and I used to watch the old black-and-whites. We’d do all the voices, accents, the whole nine yards. Her favorite was Gone with the Wind. She did a pretty mean Scarlett, but my Rhett needed a lot of work.” Again, the smile came and went. “After she left I kept watching. I’d leave the TV on all night. It made me feel like she was still around, like she’d just gone to the store and would be back any minute. Silly, huh?”

  Lily reached up to brush the bangs back out of his eyes, her fingers lingering in the soft waves of his hair. “No, not silly—sweet. It was a way to keep her with you.”

  “I knew she wasn’t coming back. I pretended for a while, for my dad, but I always knew.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t need to be. It was a long time ago.”

  Lily studied him through lowered lashes, impassive as he sipped his wine, though perhaps just a little too impassive. “You’re doing it again,” she said quietly. “Do you really think people stop loving just because someone’s not there anymore? Or because the years keep piling up?”

  Dean stared into his glass, slowly swirling the contents. “I think they can—if they let themselves.
You don’t?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Lily-Mae loved my father, but something happened to separate them. They’d been apart for nearly forty years, and yet those shells were still on her dresser when she died. She never stopped loving him. Was that because she didn’t let herself stop, or because that’s just how it works?”

  Dean shrugged. “Can’t help you there. In case you haven’t noticed, love isn’t exactly my area of expertise.”

  “Not mine, either.” Lily raised her glass with a sigh. “Here’s to hopeless cases.”

  Dean lifted his glass in return. “May we always stick together.”

  Lily smiled as they touched glasses, aware, as their eyes met and held, of a sudden warmth blooming just south of her ribs. On impulse, she leaned over and touched her lips to his.

  There was the sensation of melting as their mouths connected, a dreamy, languid surrender as his arms came around her and the kiss warmed, sweet, unhurried. And then, from some dim corner of her mind, there came a whisper, a female voice not her own, but familiar somehow. This is how it began for me, too. But it was too late to pull back, too late to retreat from the line they had crossed last night—and too late to safeguard against complications.

  THIRTY

  1995

  Hideaway Key, Florida

  Lily gnawed the end of her pencil as she eyed her latest sketch, a gauzy slip dress with a button-down front and slightly dropped waist. It was coming along, but there was something about the straps that was still wrong. She glanced at the stack of finished sketches on the sofa, twelve so far—wraparound skirts and dresses, casual suits, smart little capris in bright, summery prints. She still found it hard to believe how much work she had managed to produce in only two weeks.

  Maybe it was all the salt air, or the constant shushing of the sea, nature’s own white noise, that had helped her tap her creative juices. But the truth was probably much simpler—as simple as being happy. Since To Have and Have Not, she and Dean had spent every night together, eating breakfast on the deck every morning before going their separate ways for the day, then coming together as the sun went down, to prepare dinner and share their day.