Beach House Memories (43 page)

“I should have called,” Lovie replied, wiping the perspiration from her brow. “I’m sorry you worried.” She looked up at the wall clock. “You’ll want to be going soon. I wanted to talk to you.”

Vivian dried her hands on her apron and came closer, her eyes searching Lovie’s face with concern. “You look ready to drop. Do you want some coffee?”

Lovie shook her head. “Vivian, I need to get away,” she said. “Just for the night. It’s terribly short notice, but can you possibly stay?”

“Yes’m, I can stay. But sit and let me get you some water before you faint.”

Lovie didn’t want to sit, yet she was exhausted from more exercise than she’d had in weeks. She slumped into the wood chair.
Vivian handed her a glass and, sipping, Lovie felt the cool water flow along her arid throat. She’d been holding her cry in for so long her throat felt raw.

“Are you all right?” Vivian asked, standing watch over her. Her tone was doubtful.

“Yes . . . no. I just need time to think. If you’ll stay for the night, I’ll pack a bag and leave right away. I won’t be far. I just need a little time alone. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

Vivian eyed her suspiciously. “Where you going?”

“I’m going to the beach house.”

A low voice thundered from the hall. “You’re going
where
?”

Lovie and Vivian both swung their heads to the doorway to see Stratton standing there in his dark gray suit, his tie loosened at the neck. He still carried his briefcase.

Lovie set down the glass and swallowed the lump of fear that was rising in her throat.

Stratton stepped into the kitchen. “Did I hear you say you’re going to the beach house?”

She swallowed again and almost coughed, her mouth was so dry. “Yes. I thought I’d go for the night. I need to get away. To think.”

His eyes darkened. “Who is going with you?”

She knew what he was asking and she looked directly into his eyes. “No one. I swear on my children, I am going alone.” When he didn’t reply, she added, “There is no one else there, except of course Miranda. Everyone else has left.”

She knew they were talking in code and that he understood she was telling him she was not going to meet her lover.

“Maybe I’ll go with you,” he said.

“You can,” she replied evenly. “But I wish you wouldn’t. I went to see Bobby Lee today.” She saw his eyes widen slightly, enough to know that news had surprised him. “I also went to see my mother. I need time to think.”

Stratton knew the truth when he heard it, and his shoulders lowered. She saw again a range of emotions flicker across his face, and she realized with a stab of regret that he was suffering, too.

Cara burst into the room. Her eyes were suspicious, leaving no doubt that she’d heard the tense words between her parents. She came to stand by her mother and leaned slightly against her chair.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes on her father.

“It’s none of your business,” Stratton told her.

“I thought I heard Mama say she was going to the beach house,” she said.

“I might be, Cara,” Lovie replied.

“Then I’m going, too,” she exclaimed.

“Cara . . .” Lovie began to tell her she could not, but Stratton beat her to it.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he told her sharply. “And neither is your mother!”

Cara was lightning fast as she stepped in front of her father and boldly shouted, “She can go if she wants to. You’re not the boss of her!”

It all happened in split-second timing. Stratton’s face colored, and he raised his hand in the air. Cara took a step back, turning her shoulder in an instinctive protective move.

“Stratton!” Lovie shouted, jumping to her feet, knocking over her chair.

Stratton stilled his hand midair.

Vivian grabbed Cara’s shoulders and pushed her along out of the room. Stratton dropped his hand to his side with an anguished sigh.

There was a long, pained silence between Stratton and Lovie as they struggled with what had almost happened.

Stratton spoke first. “I wouldn’t have struck her. I swear it.”

Lovie couldn’t reply. She didn’t believe him. That was the cold truth of it.

“What’s happening to this family?” Stratton said with a cry in his voice. His face creased with anguish as he ran his shaky hand through his hair. “We need to fix this mess between us, Lovie. It’s starting to affect our kids. My heart is breaking. I’m at the end of my tether. I raised my hand to my own daughter! Don’t you know that’s killing me? That’s how far you’re pushing me. But I didn’t strike her. Thank the Lord, He held my hand back. I’m not an evil man, Lovie.”

His voice broke and his eyes filled with tears. Lovie felt her heart twist in her chest.

“And Cara . . .” he continued. “Can’t you see what’s happening to our daughter? I tried to warn you about it, but you refuse to pay it any mind.”

Lovie listened, hearing the frustration in his words, the hint of anger lurking. He was rationalizing again, blaming the incident on her.

“All I’ve been worried about is coming true,” he expanded. “She’s got a mouth on her and doesn’t know her place.” He shook his head, his lips a tight line. He took a breath, regaining his composure. Then his voice became pleading in tone, cajoling. “She needs her mother’s guidance now more than ever. But how can she get that with you hiding up in that room all the time? The family needs you. I need you. We’re falling apart, Lovie. Can’t you see that? God help me, I don’t know what to do.” He raised his fingers to the bridge of his nose, holding back the tears pooling there.

Lovie could count on one hand the times she’d seen Stratton cry. The first was at the birth of Palmer. Then Cara. The third was at her bedside, when he’d witnessed what he’d done to her. And now this. Each time, she realized, she was the source of his tears.

Reaching out, she placed her palm on his chest and patted it as gently as she would her child. “I understand, Stratton,” she
said in a low voice. Her energy was waning. She felt her knees go watery at the weight of her decision. “I hear what you’re telling me and I’m taking it to heart. I’m going to the beach house tonight, to ponder all you’ve just said, and all Bobby Lee and my mother said. And I have to listen to my heart as well. I can’t do that here. There’s too much noise. I need a little time to reflect so that when I return, we can talk again.”

Stratton put his hand over hers and wrapped an arm around her, holding her close. “You go, then,” he said with his lips against her hair. “Then you come home, where you belong. I love you. And I’m sorry.”

Fall had come to the Isle of Palms. An early cold front brought a chill to the dawn air. Lovie wrapped a favorite patchwork wool and cashmere shawl of muted blues and creams around her shoulders, slipped her bare feet into sandals, and stepped off the rear porch of her beach house out into the still-gray morning. She lifted her nose and breathed in the heavy scent of pluff mud. It was strong this morning, and she smiled, feeling reassurance flow through her blood.

She was home.

She carefully made her way along the narrow beach path in the dim light. It was bordered by high walls of sand dunes that were crisscrossed with wildflower vines as thick as kudzu. September had brought two tropical storms that had wreaked havoc on the remaining sea turtle nests. But the heavy rains and the cool air had gifted the Lowcountry with brilliant color. The undulating dunes were blanketed with countless cheery heads of yellow primrose, gaillardia, and the tiny, sensual wild purple orchids she adored. She bent to inspect a primrose, her favorite, letting its soft buttery yellow blossom, damp with dew, rest in her fingertips.

These seemingly weak flowers had deep roots, she thought. Roots that went so deep they anchored even in the soft sand. Another lesson, she told herself, and left the blossom to the thousands of migrating birds and monarch butterflies that needed its sweetness to survive.

Her heels dug into the cool sand as she climbed the final, tall sand dune. She heard the roar of the ocean before she could see it. She reached the top and stopped as her breath escaped her. The vista of mighty ocean spread out to infinity to meet the heavens moved her to tears. She stood for a moment as the breath of the ocean washed over her, and tasted its salt. She breathed deep, feeling vulnerable and weak, never needing the ocean more.

“Hello, old friend,” she said, near tears at seeing its breadth and power again. “I’ve missed you!”

She walked toward the sea, attuned to its temperament. The storms had ravaged the shoreline, cutting through the dunes and leaving a long line of wrack, a foot high in places. Shells of all kind and size—some magnificent—littered the wrack beside sponges and sea whip. Any other time she would have collected them, but her mind was preoccupied, roiling like the sea.

She had never seen a more beautiful morning on the beach, she thought with a sense of wonder. A fiercely pale blue sky was covered with a thin layer of pearly gray, wispy clouds, like lace over a gown. The turbulent ocean reflected the gray color, mysterious, even threatening. Yet in the distance, hints of pink fringed the horizon, promising dawn. The tide was going out, leaving a wide watery sheen on the sand that was aglow in brilliant rose reflection.

Lovie tugged the shawl tighter around her shoulders as she felt the dawning of hope pierce her dark despair. Despite the storms and incessant rain, another day dawned. The tides rolled in and out with the constancy of a metronome. The piercing cry
of an osprey drew her attention toward Breach Inlet, where it circled, gliding, searching for a fish. A flock of pepper-and-salt sandpipers ran on skinny straight legs, poking their little black awls into the sand with an urgent hunger. Above, a laughing gull seemed to mock her pensive mood. She half smiled.

She’d spent the night curled in her bed, the lights out, the porch doors open, listening to the low roar of the ocean as the snore of a beloved. This morning she’d awakened at first light, having slept little but eager to rise, dress, and get to the ocean to see the sunrise.

The message of dawn was that life went on.

She looked over her shoulder back at the dune where she and Russell had made love during those glorious days of summer. The sea oats had been young and green then. Now it was fall and they were tall and amber, their long, dangling panicles catching the wind and sending tawny seeds out to colonize the dunes. Life, death, and rebirth, she thought. Beginnings and endings. Nothing remained the same.

She recalled Russell’s words that they would take it day by day and trust that they would know what to do. This morning, Lovie knew what she had to do. The landscape might be changing around her, but what would never change was her responsibility to her children. Nothing mattered more to her than Palmer and Caretta.

Stratton didn’t understand his daughter, but she did. Cara’s challenging spirit defined her, and Lovie admired it, treasured it, and, perhaps unknowingly, fostered it. It was a quality Lovie knew she’d had once upon a time but had never nurtured. Russell recognized it. This past summer with him, she’d rediscovered glimpses of that adventurous, independent girl. It was as if part of her—the part she most wanted to be—was gaining strength with each success and each validation.

Stratton sensed this, he’d sniffed it out from the start, and it
threatened him. By ordering Lovie to train her daughter in the social arts, he was reminding her not only of her obligations to her daughter but also of his expectations for his wife.

But Cara was not her! She wanted to channel her daughter’s independence, not suppress it. If she did, Cara would grow up bitter and angry, a reflection of her father’s worst qualities, as well as her own. Over and over during her troubled sleep she revisited the scene of Cara standing up to Stratton, defying him. She saw again the raised palm a breath away from a strike. That vision haunted her. What had flickered in Stratton’s mind in that millisecond to still the hand? Was it Lovie’s cry? Was it Cara’s crouching in fear? Or was it the moral voice of his conscience?

Cara’s defiance could be contained only so long. One day, Stratton would push her too far, and her natural rebelliousness would come bursting out in all its fury. Then, Lovie knew, she would have to be there to protect her. No matter what she wanted for herself, Lovie could not leave Cara to live alone with Stratton. After last night, she knew that one day, that hand would fall.

She had come to the beach house to quiet the noise and to listen, really listen, to the ageless wisdom she’d found here, on the beach, with her old friend. The myriad sounds of the waves, the hope of a new dawn, the castanet trembling of the grasses, the second spring of the wildflowers spoke to her. She understood the language of the changing seasons with the lessons of migrating birds and butterflies. Most of all, she heard the voice of the turtles in their constancy, their loyalty to instinct, their commitment to return.

Turtles had been a constant in her life. She’d forged a bond and made a vow to protect their nests. For nearly thirty years—from Cara’s age until now—she’d protected the nests. She’d stood her ground with her brother. She’d gone toe-to-toe with mayors, councilmen, and now developers. She wouldn’t back down to Russell with the raccoons, and she’d fought Stratton year after
year to not sell the beach house. Protecting the nests is what she did. Her vocation defined her.

Lovie cast a wide, sweeping gaze around the beach and breathed deep with the certainty of decision. She knew who she was, where her history lay, and how deep were her roots. She would protect her nest. It was as simple and clear as that. Her role as a mother was bigger than her personal needs.

She would be there to raise her son and her daughter, to teach them their heritage, to reveal their Southern roots, to water and nourish and guide them to grow up and to scatter into the world as the adults they were meant to be. There could be no turning back from this commitment.

Lovie slunk to the dunes and brought her knees close to her chest, wrapping the shawl around herself. Her heart felt lifeless in her chest and tears streamed down her face. She stared out at the sea for a long time as her decision settled in her mind, heavy and somber. Out in the distant sky, the fringe of hopeful pink pushed back the gray clouds, allowing the brilliant blue to fill the sky. Lovie watched the dawn rise and felt none of the usual inspiration from the sight. She was cold, numb to its beauty. To her, today the sky appeared gray. This was, she knew, just the first of a long series of gray days she’d have to endure.