“You don’t be worrying about what you can’t change, what’s past or what’s to come,” Ruby had said, and she was right, of course. Lis couldn’t go back in time, but if she could . . . well, what might she have done in the backseat of that car on prom night?
Lis grinned. She’d been such a Goody Two-shoes back then, chances were pretty darn good Alec would have wished he’d gone with Courtney after all.
She wondered what he’d been doing for the past seventeen years. She’d lost track of him after graduation, but she did remember he’d gotten a scholarship to . . . she tried to remember what she’d heard. University of Maryland, maybe? She wondered if he’d stayed for all four years. Obviously he was a carpenter now, and a skilled one at that, judging by what she’d seen of his work.
Shaking her head as if that would get him out of it, Lis stood and brushed off the back of her shorts, then looked down again at the ice cream stain on her shirt. She’d stopped at One Scoop or Two after she spoke with Alec, and was mesmerized by the many tempting flavors on the handwritten chalkboard that served as the shop’s menu. Blueberry Butter Brickle. Strawberry Mousse. Mint Chocolate Divinity. The choices had made her head spin. She’d finally decided on one scoop of the Strawberry Mousse in a cone, and she’d sat on one of the benches overlooking the marina while she ate it. It had been incredibly delicious, and she was just debating whether she should go for seconds, maybe try that wonderful-sounding Chocolate Concoction, when a woman appeared in front of her. The sun was at her back, and Lis had to raise a hand to shelter her eyes in order to see.
“Excuse me, but aren’t you Ruby Carter’s Lisbeth?” the woman asked.
Lis had been startled, but she’d nodded. “I am. I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“Oh, once upon a time, I believe you did.” The woman smiled good-naturedly, not at all offended at having been forgotten. “I’m—”
Lis snapped her fingers, remembering. “You’re Ford’s mother. Ford Sinclair. Mrs. Sinclair, it’s nice to see you again.”
“Lovely to see you, Lis. But you’re all grown up now, so call me Grace. Everyone does.” The woman’s smile grew broader. “I really wouldn’t have expected you to remember me, but how nice that you have. And you’re back to exhibit some of your paintings, all of which are wonderful.”
“Oh?” Lis was momentarily confused. “I didn’t know they’d arrived in St. Dennis already.”
“They were delivered yesterday afternoon. I just happened to be in the gallery when they arrived, and I begged a sneak peek. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, of course not.”
“I particularly liked the foggy day in the park.”
“Actually, that’s the name of the painting. A Foggy Day in Central Park.” Lis smiled. It was one of her favorites, too.
“Well, it’s a beauty. I told Ford—he was there helping Carly uncrate everything—”
“Carly? Oh, right. Carly Summit.” Though they had never met, Lis knew that the woman who ran the gallery in St. Dennis owned several galleries of her own in different cities, and knew her by her New York reputation. Their only contact had been Carly’s invitation to Lis to exhibit in St. Dennis, and Lis’s acceptance.
“Carly’s my daughter-in-law. She and Ford were married last year.”
“I didn’t know. Please give Ford my congratulations on his wedding.”
“I certainly shall. And you tell my friend Ruby that I’ll see her again next week, Tuesday or Wednesday, whichever she prefers. As always, I’m looking forward to it. We’re happy to come pick her up. Now, if you’re going back into Scoop for a second helping, I think I’ll go along with you and treat myself. It’s the first time I’ve been able to walk around on my own in a long time and I’m making up for lost time.”
Lis had noticed the woman walked with a cane. “An accident?”
“I fell down the main steps in the inn’s lobby.” She rolled her eyes. “Cannot even imagine what I must have looked like tumbling down. I heard it wasn’t pretty.”
“You fell down a flight of steps?” When the woman nodded, Lis said, “You’re probably lucky . . .” Lis paused.
“To be alive? Yes, so they tell me. I did have a few broken bones, though.”
“But you’re better now . . .”
“Oh, much better, dear, and so grateful to be out and about without someone looking over my shoulder. Now, let’s go inside and see what Steffie has that neither of us can resist . . .”
Later, while walking back to the island, it occurred to Lis that she didn’t recall mentioning to Mrs. Sinclair—Grace—that she was thinking about going back into Scoop for seconds. How, she wondered, had she known? And she’d referred to Ruby as her friend, and said she’d see her again next week, which implied that she’d seen her this week or possibly last week, but definitely recently. What was that all about? Lis couldn’t remember her great-grandmother being that friendly with anyone off-island.
Though Ruby had made that remark about going to St. Dennis to visit a friend. That must have been Grace Sinclair. Lis continued to ponder the situation all the way back to the island. Since she’d stopped driving years ago, Ruby hated to go anywhere in a car, always said she didn’t trust anyone behind the wheel except herself, so who was picking her up? First the redo of the store, now she’s going off-island and being friends with one of the more prominent members of the St. Dennis community. What the heck was going on with her great-grandmother? So many changes from the woman Lis had known all her life.
Well, Alec had said changes were coming. Was this what he meant? He’d certainly seemed to have spent plenty of time with Ruby over the past however long it had taken him to renovate the old place.
Lis was still thinking about what changes he might be foreseeing when the door behind her opened just a crack and Ruby stuck her head out.
“There’s tuna fish sandwiches in here for lunch, if you’re getting hungry,” she told Lis, “and iff’n you’re not too filled up with ice cream. I’m pretty sure there be more than one color on the front of that shirt.”
“Actually, I was just thinking about lunch. And trust those hawk eyes of yours. I did have two different flavors.”
“Nothing to be ashamed of. Done that myself a time or two since Steffie opened up that pretty little shop of hers.” Ruby opened the door a little wider. “Come on, then. Get a cool drink of something from the cooler and come sit with me over to my little table and we’ll watch the rest of the island go by.”
And it seemed the rest of the island did go by the store’s windows over the hour that Lis and Ruby shared lunch on the round table that had served Ruby for all the years since her wedding when she was just fifteen. Lis was surprised at the number of vehicles that went by: a white Cadillac, a Jeep, and two pickups passed within a fifteen-minute period. By island standards, that constituted a traffic jam. Ruby hardly seemed to notice. She’d picked up that morning’s paper, and from what Lis could see, was reading the movie reviews.
Before they ate, Lis had run up the steps and grabbed a small notebook from her nightstand and slipped it into her bag along with a soft pencil. She kept it next to her plate while they ate so she could begin a sketch of Ruby. Today she would concentrate on getting the shape, the contours, of Ruby’s face right. Later she would work on the features. It had been years since art school—the last time she’d attempted to translate someone’s face to paper—and she wasn’t sure she could do justice to the subject.
“What you be drawing there on that pad?” Ruby finally asked.
“Nothing.”
“That pencil be busy with a lot of nothing. Show me that nothing.”
Lis held up the sketch. Ruby stared at it for a long while.
“Lisbeth, you be drawing a picture of me, you best be forgetting about that mole over my left eye.” Ruby raised her fingers to her left eyebrow. “Shoulda’ had that thing ta
ken off a long time ago. Vexes me every time I look in the mirror . . .”
Lis made a mental note to nix the offending mole, and a satisfied Ruby went back to her newspaper.
After lunch, Lis called Carly Summit and left a message that she was on the island and would be happy to meet with her if she had any questions about the works that had already been delivered.
“Gonna be a big crowd at that gallery for you,” Ruby had told Lis. “I suspect lots of folks be wanting to see how my Kathleen’s girl grew up, see what she’s done.”
“Did Mom have any artistic talent?” Lis asked.
“Not she, not any of my other grandkids had more than a lick of sense about much of anything. No talents there far as I know. Nope.” Ruby shook her head. “Though I did hear tell that a sister of my mama’s—that be my aunt Josie, I have no recollection of her, she left the island before I was born—some say she was an artist of some sort. Lived over to Virginia somewhere. I heard my mama talking about it once or twice.”
“Did she paint?” Lis asked.
Ruby shrugged. “If I knew, I’ve forgotten. Like I said, I never met her.”
Ruby stood and worked out the kinks in her legs where arthritis had slowed her gait. When she picked up the two empty water bottles from the table, Lis saw that her fingers were twisted in a way she hadn’t noticed before.
“I’ll clean up here, Gigi,” Lis told her. “You go back to that creepy book you were reading last night.”
She cleared the table and went into the kitchen to put their plates into the dishwasher; then, as she’d done the night before, she washed, dried, and put away the dishes they’d used.
On her way back into the store, Lis picked up Ruby’s book and her reading glasses from the table in the sitting room. She took them into the store and handed them to Ruby.
“I think I’ll take that walk around the island now,” Lis told her.
“Be a long walk if you’re thinking of going all the way around,” Ruby reminded her.
“I’ll just go as far as the point.” Lis helped herself to another bottle of water from the cooler that stood near the cash register. She started toward the door, then stopped. “Gigi, do you still own that land out at the point?”
Ruby stared at her for a moment, then asked, “What made you think about that old place?”
“I don’t know.” Lis shrugged. “I guess because I’m headed out that way, and don’t want to be trespassing on someone else’s property, maybe get run off with a shotgun.”
“Don’t need to be worrying ’bout that none.” Ruby turned her attention to her book. “You have a nice walk, now.”
It was a nice walk. The south side of the island was slightly more populated than the north, but even at that, Lis passed few people on her trek to what islanders referred to as “the point.” Driftwood Point was the proper name given to the twenty-two-acre spit of land that stuck into the bay like a defiant child’s tongue. Lis’s family had owned it since the days when the island was first inhabited. As a child, she and Owen and their cousin Chrissie had spent many an afternoon exploring and playing hide-and-seek. Owen had learned to fish off the pier their great-grandfather—Ruby’s Harold—had built and they’d spent hours catching crabs that hid in the seagrass that grew under the dock. They dared each other to go inside the crumbling ruins of the old one-room cabin that stood against a wall of pine trees and they made up stories about who had lived there and why it had been deserted. The old house that Ruby and Harold had lived in for the first years of their marriage was located closer to the bay, and by modern standards, had been pretty primitive. The kids had all loved playing there on rainy days. Most of the furniture had been moved to the living quarters above the store by the time Lis and her generation had been born, but there was still a fascination about the place.
Which brought to mind the real stories about the real people who’d lived on the island. Those were the ones that should be preserved. Lis reflected on her earlier conversation with Ruby, the one about Ruby dying and going on to the next place. Lis knew that much of the island’s history would be lost once Ruby was gone, and once again, she found herself thinking that someone needed to write it all down, preserve the truth and the myths, separate fact from fiction. The stories were not only part of the island’s history, but they reflected the fabric of life on the island.
That someone, Lis knew, was going to have to be her.
She should sit down with Ruby with a recorder every night for an hour or so, and ask about the family members she’d never known. She knew names, and had heard bits of stories about this one or that, but to the best of her knowledge, no one had ever written any of them down. Recording Ruby’s voice telling of the tales would be much more effective in years to come, especially in those years after Ruby had passed on.
Lis couldn’t bear to think about that. It made her heart ache too much. Ruby Carter was the most fascinating woman Lis had ever met. It humbled her to know that Ruby’s blood flowed in her veins, and even at that, Lis felt unworthy.
She rounded a bend in the road and knew that she was almost there. Unless things had changed drastically, there’d be a wide stand of pines right on the other side of the bend, and from there the land stretched to where it would jut out into the bay. Her feet moved a little faster as if they knew they were close to their goal.
The pines were still there, as were the remnants of the tiny cabin, though the walls had completely crumbled since her childhood days, leaving just the outline to prove what had once stood there. Lis was trying to remember if they ever had discovered who had lived in that place, who had been born there and who had died, when she saw the black Jeep parked up ahead. She paused, scanning the property for movement. There, out on the end of the pier, was a figure, male if she wasn’t mistaken, but he was too far away for her to recognize him. She stood still for a few long moments in the shade of the trees when the figure began to move toward her. It took a moment for her to realize it was Alec, though what he’d be doing out here was anyone’s guess.
“Hi.” Her greeting held a touch of a question.
“Oh, hey. Lis?” he called back.
“Yes.” She began to walk toward him, to meet him halfway between the pier and Ruby’s old house.
“Boy, twice in one day. I guess I hit the jackpot.”
She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not, so she replied in kind. “I guess you did.”
“Beautiful day, right?” He was closer now, and as he moved into the shadows, he removed his sunglasses and tucked them into the open neckline of his shirt.
A shirt that was not a ripped tee, like the one he’d been wearing back at the shop. His shorts were different, too—not a hole to be found.
“Sure is.” She watched him approach, wondering if he was going to offer an explanation as to why he was on her family’s property.
“Out for a walk, I see.”
She nodded. “You?”
“Just felt like getting out for a bit.”
“The sanding dust getting to you?” She raised an eyebrow. St. Dennis wasn’t exactly Manhattan, and Cannonball Island wasn’t even St. Dennis. Why bother to change just to walk around?
“What? Oh. Right. Yeah, it does after a while.”
“So what brings you out here today? Looking for another boat to buy?”
He shook his head and artfully deflected the question. “One boat at a time. The Annie G is enough for me. She has all my attention.”
“Isn’t it hard to make a living that way?”
“I’m not going to be selling her,” he said. “She’s all mine.”
“Oh. I thought you worked for the boatbuilder. Ellison’s.”
“Cliff Ellison was my uncle. He raised me after my folks died. He was the boatbuilder, he and his dad. He passed away when I was still in college.”
“Is that when you
decided to be a carpenter?” she asked.
“I learned all my carpentry skills from Uncle Cliff. If he couldn’t build it, it couldn’t be built. He taught me everything I know. Boats, houses, whatever.”
“So you, what, build boats, then in your spare time you build back porches and kitchens and bathrooms? Or is it the other way around?”
Alec smiled. “I spend my spare time with Annie. She keeps me busy when I’m not otherwise engaged. Eventually, I’d like to build boats full time, like my uncle did. I have a real fondness for the classic Chesapeake working boats.”
“That skipjack of Uncle Eb’s—”
“Was built by my great-uncle. I found the plans for her and some photos taken of her when she was just a work in progress. They’re not great—the lighting in the shop wasn’t so good back then, and since they built her over a winter, the place was closed up most of the time, so the pictures are pretty dark. But you can see her lines, her bones . . .” He laughed self-consciously. “Yeah, I know, she’s just a boat.”
“But she’s special, I get that. I never really knew Eben—he always seemed to keep to himself. Actually, I never really knew anyone from that generation on either side of my family. My grandmothers both died when I was a baby, so I guess that’s why I always felt an attachment to the boat. It was a tangible link to . . .” She paused. “I don’t know why I just said all that.”
“I get it. The boat is part of your family.”
“She was part of the landscape around the store. I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t there. I could look out my window at night and she would always be there.” Like a sentinel, she could have added, watching over her and Ruby after her father died and her mother moved to Arizona and Owen was away at college. “Anyway, it’s interesting that Gigi was willing to part with her after holding on to her for so long.”
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