“Just taking some time to renew an old friendship, that’s all.”
“Owen, even you said you hardly knew him back in the day. You can’t renew a friendship you never had.” She smirked. “You just wanted information on the blonde.”
“Maybe. No harm there.”
“So what did you find out?” Lis shifted the box in her arms. “About the blonde.”
“Curious, are you?”
“Don’t make me hurt you, Owen.”
“Right. As if you could. All I know about her is that her name is Cass—”
“I know that much.”
“—and she’s an architect.”
“I knew that, too. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“She likes art—that’s why she was there last night. She’s renting a place over on Dune Drive, and she went to Penn undergrad and Columbia for graduate school.”
“That’s it? You talked to her all that time and that’s all you found out?”
“She’s divorced.”
“So I guess the rest of the time you talked about yourself.”
“Pretty much. Now that you mention it, yeah.”
“Self-centered much?”
“Hey, I didn’t offer to talk about myself. She just kept asking me about me. Not saying that I might occasionally bring up my accomplishments, but last night, I didn’t have to. She asked.”
“Interesting.”
“What is?”
“That she found you so fascinating.” Lis turned to start back up the steps.
“Lighten up, Lis. It may come as a surprise to you—you being my sister I can overlook it—but there are some ladies who find me hot.”
“I personally don’t know any, but we’ll let it go. So did you get her number?”
“No,” he admitted.
“I would have put real money on that. She declined?”
“I didn’t get a chance to ask her. I meant to. But when it was time to go, I went to check on Gigi. When I came back, Cass was gone.”
“So I guess she didn’t find you all that fascinating after all. Better luck next time.”
“Say it like you mean it.” Owen went downstairs and disappeared into Ruby’s sitting room.
Lis reached the landing and headed for the room in the front of the house. The door was open and she left the box she’d been carrying on the floor near the side window. With light coming in from two sides, the room was perfect for her to work in. Owen had set up her easel, and earlier she’d carried up a small table from the storeroom to hold her paints. She opened her case and set it on the table. She’d once told her mother that all she really needed to be happy was a place to set up her easel and some great light. Now that she had both here on the island, she could work, and few things made her happier than working. She sat on the edge of a stool she’d brought up from the store and gazed out the window.
The sky was clear and blue and the water dark and as smooth as the deepest blue silk. The rocks that formed the jetty were the color of granite, and the sand along the shore was pale gold. The dunes were paler still, and the grasses that grew along their mounds were shades of green and gray and brown. In the distance the pines grew in a haphazard pattern and overhead gulls swarmed and dove. In her mind, Lis was already mixing the colors she would need.
She sat in front of the window, a sketchbook resting on her knees, while she quickly drew the rudiments of what she saw beyond the window. She wanted it to be right, to be as near perfect as possible. This was the scene that had greeted Ruby and her Harold every morning for so many years, and Lis felt a compulsion to preserve the view. She’d learned long ago that sometimes you had to go with your gut, and since she’d arrived here, she had the urge to paint the iconic island scenes, especially those that might mean something to Ruby. She told herself that the feeling had been born of wanting to record the island’s stories in Ruby’s words, so wouldn’t it follow that she should record the way the island had looked for so long? There had been some changes over the years, but the island she’d known and grown up on basically remained the same. Maybe Ruby had spooked her with her “change is coming” talk. Whatever, Lis’s hands itched to feel her brushes and she needed to work.
When the sketch had been completed, she lined up her brushes, her tubes of paints, and her palette. She repositioned the easel so that the surface was horizontal. Soon she was lost in perfecting the blue of the sky and the nuances of the sea below. Sun sparkled off the bits of mica in the granite, and she worked to get that right. When she stopped for her first break, she found she’d been working for almost three hours. She looked around for water but realized she hadn’t brought any upstairs. She rested her brush on its holder and went down into the store and found a cold pitcher of iced tea on the island in the kitchen. She poured herself a glass and leaned against the counter to take a long, cool drink. There was a shuffling noise at the doorway and she looked over to see Ruby leaning on the jamb.
“This is great iced tea,” Lis said. “Thanks for making it.”
“That be your brother’s making,” Ruby told her. “He likes to poke in the kitchen. Made chicken salad for lunch, too. That boy spent half the morning in here.”
“Are you talking about Owen?”
“You got a brother I don’t know about?”
“I had no idea he liked to cook.” Lis frowned. “Why didn’t I know that?”
“Maybe you two spend more than half a minute talking twice a year, you might learn something ’bout each other.” Ruby turned to go back into the store.
“Gigi, can we talk again tonight?” Lis drained the glass and rinsed it out at the sink.
“We talk every night, best I recall.”
“I mean, about the island. About what you remember from what your mother and father told you, about the old days.”
Ruby nodded. “I be around.”
“Do you mind talking about it? Does it bother you?”
“Bother me more if things that should be remembered be forgot in time.” Ruby turned toward the store and called, “Essie, you go on and make yourself some tea. I be just a minute.”
Essie called back but Lis couldn’t hear what she said. Ruby was still in the doorway looking at Lis.
“Is something wrong, Gigi?” Lis asked.
“Things be right, by and by. Can’t change what’s meant to be, Lisbeth Jane. Time be coming when you be needing to think with your head and your heart. Mind you take care.”
“Take care with what?” she asked, but Ruby had already walked away.
It was so like Ruby to be cryptic sometimes. There were times when she would appear to be giving a warning of sorts, and then something would happen and Lis would wonder if that was what Ruby had meant. There was no denying that what people on the island said was true, that Ruby had “the eye,” and if that meant the ability to sometimes see things that other people didn’t see, Lis could attest to that. It was just a little spooky in a way. It used to scare her just a little when she was younger, especially when she’d hear Ruby talking to Lis’s mother.
“I see nothing good coming of this, Kathleen,” she’d hear Ruby say, and Lis’s mother would back off whatever she’d had in mind to do. Lis supposed that maybe her mom had experienced enough of Ruby’s “seeings” that she found it more prudent not to tempt fate.
Whatever, it was disconcerting sometimes, especially when Ruby would get that expression on her face and sort of look past you, and she’d say things without explanation, like just now: Mind you take care. As if disaster was about to strike at any minute.
Lis refused to dwell on the fact that sometimes it appeared that Owen had inherited the ability.
She shook it off and went back upstairs to work. The sketch of Ruby she’d started a few days earlier was on the table. She picked it up and studied it, then put it aside. She’d work on that mo
re when she and Ruby sat down to chat later. That painting would be for herself. The watercolor painting of the island would be for Ruby, and she wanted to finish that first.
Her phone was buzzing to alert her to an incoming text message, and she picked it up.
Congrats again on a great exhibit. Celebrate tomorrow? Parade starts at nine.
Lis frowned. Parade? What parade?
She looked at the date on her phone: July 3. Tomorrow would be the fourth.
St. Dennis always had a huge parade to commemorate the Fourth of July, but as a child she’d never been permitted to attend and she’d never been back on that particular holiday.
Love to. Meet you there.
A minute later, Alec replied.
We’ll never find each other. Will walk over to Ruby’s around 8:30.
If all she’d heard about the parade in the past held true, he was probably right.
It’s a date. See you then.
She smiled, picked up her brush, and turned her focus to the view out the window and the colors that were swirling around in her head.
Chapter Thirteen
The local high school band marched along Charles Street behind the ancient baby-blue convertible carrying this year’s Miss Eastern Shore that led the parade.
“That’s some car,” Lis observed.
“A 1957 Olds Super 88,” Alec told her. “She’s a beauty. You don’t see fins like that these days.”
“Well, I think it’s safe to say they don’t make ’em like that anymore.”
“No, but when you see one that’s been restored the way that one has, you have to admit, that’s a beautiful machine.”
“It is.” Lis pointed at the band coming along next. “Oh, look! Bagpipes!”
“Don’t have to look to know bagpipes are on the way.”
“I love the sound of the pipes. My dad used to play them,” Lis said.
“He did?”
“All the men in my family played bagpipes.”
“Somehow I don’t see Owen playing the bagpipe.”
“Well, except for Owen. But he did play the violin.”
“Didn’t see that coming, either.”
“He wasn’t very good at it.” Lis laughed. “Don’t tell him that I said so. He thought he was quite the virtuoso.”
A seemingly endless sea of kids of all ages on bikes festooned with red, white, and blue crepe paper streamers followed the pipe band. Behind the bikes came the strollers similarly decked out in crepe paper streamers, their little occupants dressed in patriotic finery. Next came a string band from Philadelphia, and then a World War II tank.
“Where do you suppose they got the tank?” Lis asked.
Alec shrugged. “No telling. I think my aunt Grace was on the committee this year, so I can ask.”
The parade went on for a respectable thirty minutes, with bands from all over and different organizations represented by floats and marchers. By the time the local middle school jazz band went by to end the parade, most of the onlookers were done—well done, because the temperature had risen to ninety-three humid degrees and they were standing in direct sun. Alec ducked into Sips, where he stood in line for fifteen minutes to buy cold drinks behind a lot of other hot, thirsty parade-watchers.
“Sorry it took me so long,” he said as he returned with two large bottles of cold water. “The place is jammed.”
“No surprise there. Thanks.” Lis pulled the elastic from her hair and redid her ponytail, lifting it higher in an attempt to keep it off her neck. Alec handed her one of the bottles and she took a long drink. “That was one heck of a parade. Thanks for bringing me. I enjoyed the festivities.”
“Babe, you haven’t even begun to see festivities. That was just the appetizer.” He took her hand and led her toward the center of town.
“Where are we going?” She noticed everyone else was headed in the same direction.
“First to the park, where we’ll watch the little kids run footraces and toss water balloons at each other and carry raw eggs on spoons while we eat ice cream and try to keep from passing out under this merciless sun and talk to people we haven’t seen since last year’s parade. The agenda hasn’t changed in fifty, sixty years.” He looked down at her. “You seriously never did a St. Dennis Fourth before?”
She shook her head.
“Well, after the games and the socializing, we go back to the inn. We have lunch on the terrace and then we go down to the water and sit on the grass and watch the sailboat races. That will take us to around three o’clock, at which time we will probably fall asleep in the shade of one of those big old trees. After that, we have dinner—they do a barbecue for the inn’s guests and the family always grabs a plate before the fireworks start.” He paused. “What did you used to do on the island to celebrate the Fourth?”
“Nothing like what you all do on this side of the bridge. Mostly it was just watching one of the big-city parades on TV and a barbecue in the afternoon.” She shrugged. “Most years we’d go out on someone’s dad’s boat to watch the sail races in the afternoon, and at night we’d sit out on the pier and watch the fireworks from St. Dennis and from across the bay.”
“Guess you didn’t have much of a marching band.”
“Very funny. A couple of the kids from the island were in the school band. Everyone’s parents weren’t as prejudiced as my dad was.”
“What about your mom?”
“My mother didn’t much care one way or the other. I had the feeling that when she was younger, she tried to buck the system, defy my dad, but I don’t think that ended well for her.” Thinking about the relationship between her father and her mother made her sad, and she said so. “We didn’t have the happiest home life. I think my mom was getting ready to leave my dad when he got sick. She stayed till the end, then she left to go as far from the Eastern Shore as she could get. She has a friend who lives in Mesa, so she went out there to visit and decided to stay.”
“That was senior year, right?”
“Right. My dad died in July following our junior year, and as soon as the dust settled, my mom left for Arizona. I didn’t want to go because I had one more year left in high school and I couldn’t see starting over somewhere else as a senior. So I stayed with Gigi. After graduation, I did visit Mom, but it was just too hot and I missed the bay, and I missed Gigi, so I came back.”
“And promptly left for college.”
“Art school in Philly,” she told him.
“I remember seeing you one day that summer at the library here in town.”
“You did? Did we talk?” Lis was pretty sure she’d have remembered.
“No. I was with a bunch of the guys, and since they’d never let me forget that you turned me down for the prom . . .”
“Oh God, you remember that.” Lis covered her face with her hands. “I was hoping you’d forgotten.”
“A guy doesn’t forget rejection like that.”
“I am so sorry.”
Alec shrugged. “It was my own fault for being so cocky. It never occurred to me that you’d say no. In my own foolish head, I thought you’d be dying to go with me.”
“I was.”
“Was what?”
“Dying to go with you. It never occurred to me that you’d ask. Which is why I had nothing to say after I said no. I knew I wouldn’t be allowed, but I really wanted to, and it was too hard to explain in front of everyone.”
“Is that why it took you so long to respond?” Alec tried to make light of it. “It seemed that in my head, I heard that Final Jeopardy music playing while I waited for you to answer. And of course I expected your answer to be yes.”
“I wish I could have said yes.”
“Did you go with someone else? To the prom? I remember looking for you but never did see you.”
“Jerry Willets asked me.”
“Now, that I would have remembered.”
“I stayed home.”
“Seriously? You didn’t go?”
“Seriously. What was the point?” Lis shrugged. “Get all dressed up to go someplace I didn’t want to be, with someone I didn’t want to go with? It was easier to stay home.”
“Did you go senior year?”
She shook her head no.
“So you’ve never been to a prom?”
“Nope.”
“Not even in college? Homecoming dance? Sorority formals?”
Another shake of the head. “I didn’t join a sorority.”
“So are you as antisocial as you sound?”
“I’m really not.” Lis laughed. “I had friends and I had a good time in college, but I was really focused on my art classes. You may not have noticed, but the art department in our high school left a lot to be desired. When I got to Philly and had all these incredible instructors, it was like someone had turned the lights on after I’d been sitting in the dark for a long, long time. I had a ton of raw ability but I’d had very little direction. I got that in Philly.”
“Did you date?”
“What kind of a question is that? Of course I did.”
“A lot?”
“Enough.”
“Did you have a steady guy?”
“Sometimes. How about you?”
“I did it all. Fraternity. Homecoming. Sorority date nights. Played lacrosse.”
“And somehow you still managed to graduate?”
“I did.”
“Were you lucky or were you that smart?” As soon as she said it, she remembered just how smart he’d been in high school. It was one of the things that had attracted her to him back then.
“A little of both, I guess.”
They reached the park and filed through the open gates along with a few hundred others. The distance to the playing fields where kids would compete for prizes and medals wasn’t far, but it took twenty minutes or so, because they ran into so many people who complimented Lis on her paintings, or who asked Alec how the boat renovations were coming along.
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