As for Dallas, she didn’t feel much regret over leaving the place, but since she couldn’t get out of her lease, she decided to use the apartment for storage, which would allow her ample time to make a long-term decision. Whether or not she continued at the helm of the Tribune remained to be seen, but she wasn’t going to stay in Charleston an entire year without her belongings, so she packed up everything she couldn’t live without, and whatever wouldn’t fit in the car, she shipped.
After all was said and done, it took her five days to accomplish what Augusta had taken nearly two weeks to complete—or rather, what she claimed took her two weeks, because, in fact, she’d shown up in Charleston without much more than she’d left with. Caroline foresaw many more “trips” to New York for her recalcitrant sister.
Caroline made her escape from Dallas during lunch-hour traffic, and once she was settled on I-20, with gas in her car and a steaming cup of coffee, she called Savannah to let her know she was on her way.
“Everything’s quiet here,” Savannah reassured.
“Good. How’s Augie?”
Savannah gave a little snort. “Augie is . . . well, Augie. She’s fine.”
Not much more needed to be said. “At least she’s predictable,” Caroline offered. “Once I get back, you can go do whatever it is you have to do in D.C.”
“I’m good for now.”
Caroline furrowed her brow. Savannah had already been in Charleston more than three weeks. At some point, she would have to go home to make her own arrangements.
What was she avoiding?
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“All right. Well, you know best. So how’s everyone else?”
Savannah seemed relieved when Caroline abandoned the topic of D.C. “Fine. Josh is MIA—he and Augie got into a tiff. Sadie’s fine. She’s here now. Wanna talk to her?”
“Nah, that’s okay. I still have to call the office, and then I need to pay attention to the road. I haven’t driven this way in years.”
“All right,” Savannah said. “Drive carefully.”
“I will. Love you,” Caroline offered.
“Love you, too.”
They hung up and Caroline tried to recall the last time she had said those words to anyone besides her sisters. The last man she had said them to was Jack. And though she was certain she had, at some point, she couldn’t ever recall having said those three little words to her mother. Nor could she remember her mother ever having said them to her—or to anyone else, for that matter. Not even to their father. It was difficult to know conclusively if Flo had truly ever loved anything or anyone. Certainly she didn’t hate anyone, but she’d always seemed so emotionally barren. Though if Caroline thought back . . . to a time before that day on the beach, she could vaguely recall her mother’s laughter. But it was such a ghost of a memory that she couldn’t even be sure it was real. She sighed, staring at the road ahead. A semi passed her and she caught the guy in the cab staring down into her car.
“Jerk,” she said aloud.
What about the Tribune?
Had Flo loved the paper? She’d guarded it jealously—still did, right from the grave—but to Caroline, that smacked of the need to control, not love. But while Caroline wasn’t Augusta—tireless in her rebellion—neither was she Savannah. Her mother had lost the right to control any aspect of her life. The paper was on the path to change and Caroline had already engaged an expanded Web team. As soon as she was able to, she intended to hire someone who was experienced with social media.
What about her father? Together, Flo and he had produced four kids within four years. Was that love? Or simply lust? Pretty much the only thing Caroline remembered about her dad was his absence. He was either coming or going or planning to leave. Before his death, he’d built a very promising political career, but apparently—despite the differences in their politics—he had one critical flaw in common with John F. Kennedy. He had a weakness for women. Caroline knew little else about him—at least nothing that wasn’t public knowledge. Flo was closemouthed about him and never welcomed that discussion.
Her father had moved out less than two months after Sammy’s death and three months later became one of Hurricane Hugo’s fifty-six victims—but not for the reason people were expected to die during a natural disaster. While Hugo’s winds whipped through Charleston, yanking up ancient trees and mangling bridges, her father keeled over dead upstairs in his Legare Street home from a massive heart attack at the age of thirty-eight—five years older than Caroline was now. His new girlfriend, a twenty-three-year-old College of Charleston graduate, broke the news to Flo sometime during the chaos of reconstruction. Caroline didn’t recall her mother shedding a single tear. She’d thanked the girl politely and then directed Caroline to gather her sisters. Once she had them all in one room, she broke the news as a matter of fact, somewhere between haggling with the roofers and cajoling Sadie into making her famous key lime pie—as though key lime pie would magically be able to cheer them.
Admittedly, Caroline had never felt more than a morbid and very detached fascination over the details of her father’s death. She often tried to imagine what it must have been like for the girlfriend—barely out of school, and probably crazy about her older, distinguished senator—to have to face his death alone in that house, without any access to a phone or EMS, with water rising all around her.
Caroline took a sip of her coffee, realizing she’d been clutching the phone in her left hand for nearly thirty minutes. She set it down. She didn’t know the office number anyway. For the past few days, Pam had called her every hour on the hour, but the ringer was strangely silent today. In fact, when she realized it was nearly four-thirty, she started to pull over to locate the office number in her call history just as the phone rang.
“Pam here.”
“Hi, Pam.”
“Frank wants to know if you’ll be here for the morning meeting?”
“I don’t see why not. I’m on my way back now.”
“Oh, good!” She was talking low suddenly, whispering. “He’s been super grumpy today and he isn’t happy you’re proposing a six P.M. bedtime. He says we’ve been putting the paper to bed at midnight since we rolled out the first edition and it’s a desecration of tradition.”
“I appreciate your telling me, Pam.”
Caroline had already begun to set a few cost-saving decisions in motion, and putting the paper to bed earlier was just one of them. “Anything else?”
“Well, yes. You know that lady, Karen Hutto?”
“Yes?”
“She wants to run an ad for her missing daughter.”
Caroline didn’t even think about the decision. “She doesn’t have to. Tell Frank to fill the news hole with a small update.”
Pam was whispering again. “You sure? I mean, he’s going to split his skull on his desk if I tell him that.”
Caroline sighed, probably more for Pam’s benefit than because of weariness. Truthfully, everything about the Tribune invigorated her as much as it terrified her. “Do you work for Frank, or for me?”
“You.”
“Then tell him, please. Get someone to call Mrs. Hutto. Let’s get some details out there. If the police aren’t making any progress, let’s give the public something that might help Karen find her daughter—get everything she’s got and print it.”
“Okay. Who do you want to cover it?” There was a hopeful note to her voice.
“Tell Frank to decide.”
“Okay.” She sounded disappointed.
“Don’t be afraid of him, Pam. He’ll come around.”
“Okay. Got it. Fill the news hole with Amanda, get details from Karen, tell Frank to decide who covers the story and don’t be afraid of the big bad wolf.”
Caroline grinned. “You’ve got it, girl! Remember, he’ll huff and he’ll puff, but that’s about all he can do because he’s one cigarette shy of an oxygen machine.”
Pam snickered. “Okay.”
Caroline laughed, realizing she hadn’t seen Jack smoke even once since she’d come home. “Oh, and before I forget. I glanced at your résum é. You have journalism experience!”
Pam suddenly sounded a little sheepish. “I do.”
“Do you want to write, Pam?”
“I do!” she exclaimed. “And I have—a little—but Frank is particular about the newsroom and Ms. Aldridge—I mean your mother—she thought I could win him over by learning the ropes from the ground up. So she started me at the receptionist desk.” She paused and said much lower, “I’ve been there a long time.”
“Okay, put some of your clips on my desk. Let’s see what you’ve got and I’ll see if we can’t speed up that process a bit.”
Caroline could hear the smile in Pam’s tone. “Thank you!”
Caroline’s phone beeped. “Call me if you need me,” she said. “I’ll be there in the morning.” She ended the call with Pam and glanced down at the caller ID, her heart jumping a little at the sight of the name on the display.
Chapter Ten
Caroline tossed her phone onto the passenger seat without answering. It rang three more times, and she stared at the road ahead, feeling painfully ambivalent.
What are you afraid of?
Her feelings for Jack were the one thing she had never been able to control. She could deal with her mother—and pretty much everything else in her life—without waffling, but she had never been able to take a stand with Jack. That, more than anything, was why she’d left Charleston.
It was past time to face her fears, she told herself—all of them. Not just those having to do with measuring up to her mother’s expectations. Except that where he was concerned, she didn’t have a clue what it was she was truly afraid of.
Having his love then losing it?
Or was it that she was just afraid she wasn’t worthy of love—anyone’s—and that Jack might wake up one day and figure that out?
For years, any time she had considered more than drinks and dinner with a guy, Jack’s face always popped into her head. She could lie to herself, but the reason was perfectly obvious. What she’d felt for him was real. But loving someone didn’t mean that being with him was right. Nor did it mean he reciprocated her feelings. Caroline didn’t want to settle.
That’s why you’re still alone.
But she was going to be living in Charleston, and her position at the paper would put her face-to-face with Jack more often than she might like. Was she really going to continue to go to incredible lengths to avoid him?
She eyed the phone, annoyed by the dialogue in her head. Reaching out, she picked it up and weighed it in her palm a long moment, staring at the road ahead. And then she took a deep breath, unlocked the phone and tapped the first entry on her call history.
It’s just another place, Caroline assured herself.
The new building with its meandering wooden ramp reminded her less of the original graffiti-etched edifice and more of something you’d find on the strip in Myrtle Beach. The only thing that was familiar to her now was the enormous mountain of discarded oyster shells out back. The original restaurant had been a Charleston institution until it burned in 2006. It was also where she and Jack had had their first date. Unfortunately, she didn’t recall that part until after she’d already hung up. But where in the city could they have gone to be free from the ghosts of their past?
Nowhere.
“Wow,” she exclaimed, as she got out of her car. “This is so different !”
Jack waited at the bottom of the ramp, his lips slanted a little ruefully. “Of all places . . . you picked this spot?”
Caroline lifted a brow as she reached his side. “Technically, our first dinner here wasn’t a date.”
“Just like this isn’t?”
He was challenging her.
“That’s right,” she said with an anxious smile.
Truthfully, she had no idea what this was and she hoped he wouldn’t ask for further clarification, at least not now. Her attraction for Jack was alive and well, but tonight was more about setting boundaries, forging a tenuous new friendship and maybe a little fishing—although not the sort generally done with a pole. Caroline hoped to get a little insight about Amanda Hutto’s investigation—anything that might give her mother hope. Although Folly Beach had its own small police force, which was handling the case, Caroline knew Jack had friends among them.
Touching a hand to her waist, he urged her up the ramp before him and Caroline jumped at the contact, peering up at him in surprise. The glance they shared was far too revealing, and Caroline averted her gaze. Thankfully, he didn’t touch her again, but the air between them was charged with undercurrents.
Inside the restaurant, the atmosphere was no less touristy and Caroline had the overwhelming impression of plasticity. Gone were the mismatched graffiti-covered chairs and rickety, newspaper-covered tables. Although still a hodgepodge of furnishing, the tables and chairs were all now plastic and the shack-like atmosphere was gone. The tables were covered in red-and-white plastic checkered cloths and there were talking fish on the walls. And it was clean.
Jack seemed to sense her disappointment. “Mind sitting on the dock?” he asked. “There’s a breeze tonight. Mosquitoes shouldn’t be bad.”
“I’d like that.”
“Let’s do it.”
Caroline stepped back to let him talk to the hostess, studying the small crowd. It was chic to come here now. A couple sat at the bar with martinis, staring dreamily into each other’s eyes. Back in the day when she and Jack had come for the occasional oyster fix, there was no glamour to the experience, and the place was usually empty but for the few locals who knew where to find the hidden entrance on Folly Road. It looked to Caroline as though they were now set up for bigger functions—weddings maybe.
Like the one she’d never had.
The thought sidled through her brain before she could filter it out.
This wasn’t about her and Jack.
It was about Amanda Hutto. It was about proving, at least to herself, that she could live up to the expectations her mother had set. There was more at stake here than feelings and the death of romance. The picture was far bigger.
With Jack’s natural charm, they didn’t have to wait long for a table on the narrow dock, surrounded by Sol Legare Creek. The waitress placed them at a table for two and tried a few times to light their candle. Caroline nearly told her not to bother, except that the sun was setting and there didn’t appear to be any other light source on the dock.
A sliver of sunlight on the horizon sent tendrils of pink and peach for miles, casting a supernal light over the creek.
Caroline sat, wholly regretting her choice of restaurants. She had chosen this place because it was the least romantic setting she knew of in the entire city, not realizing until Sadie enlightened her on the way out the door that it had been rebuilt.
Ignoring the other couple at the end of the dock and the too-intimate setting, Caroline compared the images to the ones that lived in her memories. The evening breeze was balmy and the scent of plough mud, whence the oysters they’d soon eat had been so recently plucked, was pungent and strong. Out here, she could easily imagine that nothing had changed . . . that inside, every inch of the interior—chairs, tables, walls—were covered with the graffiti of ages. Back in the day, there was only one reason anyone came to Bowens Island—for the oysters. She hoped that hadn’t changed.
“Don’t worry,” he said, seeming to read her thoughts—at least the part that didn’t have to do with lovers or regrets. “They’re still great.”
“Oh, good!” Caroline said a little uncomfortably.
Luckily, they didn’t have long before the waitress returned. “Drinks?” the girl asked buoyantly.
“Not for me,” Caroline announced, setting down her menu. The last thing she needed tonight was impaired judgment.
“Guinness,” Jack said easily, scooping up her menu and handing both back to the waitress. �
��We’ll have two all-you-can-eat oysters and one Frogmore stew sans the frogs.”
The waitress didn’t catch Jack’s wink to Caroline. “Oh, there ain’t no frogs in the stew,” she reassured.
Jack sounded disappointed. “Not even one?”
“No, sir. The stew gets its name from . . .”
Despite herself, Caroline hid a smile but Jack didn’t hold back his chuckle.
“You’re teasing me!” the girl declared in a thick Southern drawl, and laughed, lingering a moment too long, her gaze on Jack while she shuffled the menus nervously.
“Just a little,” Jack confessed and his grin was full of good-natured mischief.
He still had the same effect on women—the moment he opened his mouth or smiled, he somehow charmed every last one—except her mother.
“So tell me why we’re here,” Jack said, not bothering to mince words. He didn’t even notice the girl’s moony-eyed expression as she walked away. “I was surprised you called back.”
“Well,” Caroline began, unraveling her napkin, “I’m not sure whether you’ve heard yet, but I’m home to stay . . .” She glanced up to gauge his expression. “For a while.”
He didn’t appear all that surprised, but she explained anyway, in detail, not realizing until this instant how much she needed to talk about the changes in her life. She went on to tell him about the stipulations of her mother’s will, Augusta’s temper tantrums and even her concerns about Savannah’s avoidance of her life. She hadn’t realized how long she’d been talking until the waitress returned with Jack’s Guinness.
“So is this what you want?” he asked, referring to her return to Charleston.
Caroline shrugged, relaxing a little. “As much as I don’t like that Mother is calling the shots from the grave, I’d be stupid to walk away from it all. Even Augusta can’t do it.”
Jack shrugged. “You can do a helluva lot of good with that kind of money,” he acknowledged. “That’s for sure.”
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