A Lowcountry Wedding (12 page)

Carson flushed with pleasure at his hearty welcome. “I’m good. Glad to be home.”

“You look good.”

“I stopped at Blake’s place to freshen up.” She glanced at Blake, who met her gaze with a conspiratorial smile.

“Well, be prepared,” Taylor said ominously. “Harper’s been revving up, just waiting for you to get here. And her grandmother
arrives next week. Whoooeee, Blake”—Taylor patted Blake’s shoulder—“there’s going to be a sea of estrogen bubbling over wedding details here. You and I have to make ourselves scarce and get out of their way. Let’s start with getting ourselves a beer.”

As the men chuckled and walked off to the kitchen, Harper glanced at Carson and could see the anxiety in her face, the awkward looking around the room, unsure of where she should go.

“Well, I guess I’d better get settled. Where do I sleep?” she asked Harper, in a nod to her authority over Sea Breeze.

Harper visibly relaxed. Her smile bloomed with enthusiasm. “In
your
room, of course. It will always be your room, Carson. That will never change.”

Carson heard the sincerity in Harper’s words and moved to wrap her arms around her.

Harper smelled the oriental scent of Bal à Versailles, Mamaw’s scent and now Carson’s as well. Harper always associated the scent with love and security, and it brought her instantly back to the days of their girlhood summers. In that moment all the tension vanished and there was only her and her sister, back at Sea Breeze, together again.

When a woman lives long enough to see her grandchildren married and settled, she feels blessed.

L
ater that evening, when the moon rose over the earth and the stars sparkled in a crisp, cool sky, Mamaw stood at the kitchen window peering out at the Cove. The moon shed dreamy light across the water, creating a ribbon of light on the rippling tide. Her granddaughters were sitting together on the dock—Eudora, Carson, and Harper. This early in the season that water would be nippy, so instead of dangling legs in the sea they sat huddled in blankets against the chill. Occasional yelps of high-pitched laughter sang out in the quiet night. In the moonlight, they could be young girls again—her Summer Girls. Her heart expanded as she said a prayer of thanks that the summer before her plan to bring the girls back together at Sea Breeze, after their being scattered to the four corners of the United States, had worked so well. Far better than her
expectations. Here they were once more, happy, connected. Sisters.

True they were half sisters. The daughters of her only child, Parker, and his three wives. Not that she blamed him for wandering. Though she loved her granddaughters to distraction, her daughters-in-law were a disappointment to say the least. Dora’s mother, Winnie, was a small-minded, prejudiced woman Mamaw found annoying at best.

Then there was poor Sophie, Carson’s mother. Mamaw couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the eighteen-year-old French nanny, even though she broke up Winnie and Parker’s marriage. But then again, if it wasn’t Sophie, it would have been someone else. Her son had a wandering eye, and Sophie was too young and too weak to withstand his charms. Her tragic death had scarred young Carson, but in consequence, the four-year-old was delivered to Mamaw’s care. And for that special bond she shared with Carson, Mamaw would always be grateful.

Mamaw only had disdain for Harper’s mother, Georgiana James. A more arrogant, self-righteous harridan she’d never met. And a negligent daughter and a narcissistic mother to boot. For the scant few months she was married to Parker, Georgiana was also cruel. The best Mamaw could say about that union was that Harper was born—and a sweeter child never walked the earth.

But Parker, bless his heart, though a dear boy, had displayed little restraint or sense of responsibility to himself or his daughters. Mamaw had done her best to support him, but in the end she’d only made excuses and cleaned up his messes. Edward was furious with his son, then disgusted, then finally
apathetic. He’d wanted to cut Parker off since college, but Mamaw wouldn’t hear of it. In her day, a mother did what she could to help her child. Yes, she’d spoiled him. But Parker was her only child. She’d made mistakes, she knew that now. Her therapist had taught her the word they’d coined for what she was—an
enabler
.

Mamaw had her regrets, true. But one thing she had no regrets about was inviting her three granddaughters to Sea Breeze each summer. She gathered her Summer Girls together like precious seashells and helped them to connect as sisters should. Mamaw sniffed. She couldn’t count on their mothers for that! Besides, with Carson in California and Harper in New York, how else could she be certain they’d know where they were from? To remind the girls of their southern roots.

And they did come. Every year, from the time they were young girls until they reached their teens. Then, typically, each of the girls made other summer plans, and before too long they stopped coming to Sea Breeze. The slim thread that bound them together was broken.

They visited rarely. In fact, only for the funerals of their father and a year later, their grandfather, her dear husband, Edward. She received letters and phone calls, but Mamaw had felt lonely, even neglected, by the girls. She reasoned it was all part of the selfishness of youth. Yet when she reached the ripe old age of eighty and realized that she could no longer care for an estate on the sea with all the nips and tucks necessary for maintenance, she brought the girls home once more to celebrate her eightieth birthday and bid farewell to Sea Breeze before it was sold.

She had hoped they would all come for the weekend. But
the girls had ended up staying the summer. . . . Mamaw sighed in memory, hardly able to believe how perfectly everything had come together. She owned that it was due to her admittedly manipulative ways. Lucille had pointed her finger at her and accused her of “foolin’ around where you ought not.”

Mamaw shifted her weight and sniffed. She saw her actions as simply the determination of a devoted grandmother to protect her beloved granddaughters. Sometimes one had to be creative, eh? And what did it matter now, anyway? Mamaw smiled again as she looked out at the girls sitting shoulder to shoulder on the dock, a unified block of family. She’d succeeded. Far more than she’d thought she would, even in her wildest dreams.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

She turned and smiled when she spied Girard approaching. In his presence she was not Mamaw, the name her granddaughters affectionately called her, but Marietta. Ageless, still attractive, full of life. A woman in love. Girard was a courtly figure. At eighty, with his tanned skin and white hair streaked with dark gray strands, his blue eyes that always held a hint of mirth, he still turned her head. She recalled her friend Sissy’s comment the night they’d first met Girard and his wife, Evelyn, fifty years earlier. Sissy had nudged Marietta and whispered how Girard reminded her of Cary Grant. Mamaw laughed to herself. God help her, he still did. She and Girard had been friends back then. Good neighbors. But all these years later, he a widower and she a widow, they’d reconnected, thanks to the charms of one beguiling dolphin.

Girard stepped closer and placed his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him with a long sigh.

“I was thinking how I look out there and see my Summer
Girls talking like sisters should and know how lucky I am. We’re all back together again at Sea Breeze. They seem happy. And in a short while Carson and Harper will be married to good and decent men. Dora, too, in her time. When a woman lives long enough to see her grandchildren married and settled, she feels blessed. I feel quite content. My life has come full circle. I am complete. I want nothing more in life.”

“I hope I’m part of that circle.”

She rested her head on his shoulder. “A very important cog in the wheel, my dear. And a wheel that is still turning. We’ll have weddings soon, then births, baptisms. We’ll begin the circle again.”

“Together.”

“Yes, together.” She smiled once more when she felt his hand squeeze her shoulder.

Carson closed the door to her bedroom and, leaning against it, sighed deeply in the peaceful darkness. Dinner was over. Blake had left for his apartment. It had been a wonderful evening with the family. A long one, too. Carson yawned and began unzipping the sleek silk dress. She let the dress slide from her body to the floor as she walked toward the window. Her bra and panties followed, also left on the floor. Carson opened the window to the spring-night air, chilled and moist with the remnants of winter. She breathed deep the scented air and spread out her arms. She was home. At Sea Breeze.

Her Sea Breeze. The attachment to the place was visceral. Impossible to let go. Yes, this was Harper’s house now. Intellectually Carson knew that. Accepted it. Harper couldn’t have
been a more welcoming sister and hostess . . . thus far. Yet by virtue of being Harper’s house, Sea Breeze was no longer Carson’s. She crossed her arms and jutted out her chin. In her heart, Sea Breeze would always be hers. Her touchstone. The only place that had ever made her feel secure. The only house she had ever called home.

She’d thought going away again would lessen the ties, but the moment she’d seen Harper open the door as mistress of the house, when Carson was served dinner at the table, ever so graciously, by Harper and Taylor, she had felt more a guest. The thought occurred to her—how long could she stay? Could she help herself to something from the fridge? Did being a sister allow her to drop in or were reservations required? She supposed they were. This was the new reality at Sea Breeze.

With a groan she fell back onto the bed, spread-eagled. The soft mattress of her youth wrapped itself around her like a cocoon. Lying on her back, Carson glanced idly around her room—the four-poster rice bed, the long mahogany bureau, the two brass-and-crystal lamps, and directly across from her bed, the elaborately framed portrait of her great ancestor Claire Muir. Her lustrous dark tresses curled to her shoulders in an elaborate coiffure complete with a charming hat spilling over with lace and feathers. And speaking of spilling over . . . the great lady’s endowments were barely concealed by the lace and velvet of her eighteenth-century blue velvet gown and the rows of lustrous pearls that revealed her wealth.

Still, it was her eyes that drew Carson in. A blue so unique and brilliant, a color so dominant, that it defied being recessive through generations and was inherited by each of the three Muir granddaughters. Legend claimed that Claire’s blue eyes
had first captured the attention of the rogue Gentleman Pirate when he reached port in Charleston. But her wit and fiery spirit were what had won his heart and caused him to give up a life on the seas and settle in Charleston. Their love was fabled. How much was true and how much conjecture was uncertain. But Mamaw loved the stories and told them to the girls with relish, especially how their illustrious ancestor had left treasure buried somewhere on Sullivan’s Island. Carson and Harper had spent much of their youth searching for it.

Carson would never forget the evening that Mamaw had entered Carson’s room to say her usual good-night and found Carson crying bitterly. She was in the turbulent, angst-ridden preteen years. She’d been an ugly duckling with her long, skinny body, her big feet, and untamed, thick dark hair that other children had teased was a “rat’s nest.” Carson had wept that she would never be the southern belle that Dora—or Mamaw—was.

Without a word, the following morning Mamaw had driven to her house on East Bay Street in Charleston and returned with the painting of Claire in tow. With Lucille’s help, Mamaw had hung it so that Carson could look at the famed beauty every day when she awoke and every evening before she fell asleep, so that Carson would appreciate the beauty of her own dark hair and blue eyes. Mamaw understood that the motherless girl needed a role model to emulate, someone with spirit and courage.

Carson had stared into her ancestor Claire’s eyes when she’d needed to find her own courage, or to confess her heartbreaks, the changes in her body, her thoughts, her dreams. The times a girl needed her mother. This painting had been the one thing
she’d most wanted from Sea Breeze, and the previous summer Mamaw had given it to her. Someday, Carson knew, the portrait would hang in her own home. But that was a ways off. For now, the portrait of Claire would remain at Sea Breeze, in Harper’s good care.