Driftwood Point (7 page)

Alec would do the best he could to protect the island environmentally and culturally, while at the same time offering economic opportunities to the residents. If the development was approved, there would
be jobs to be filled. Alec knew of at least four guys from high school who'd left the island to find work only to discover that jobs were scarce in places other than Cannonball Island. And for those who had land to sell in the areas that were appropriate for building, there'd be fair market value offered from the buyer. Alec would see to that.

It was inevitable that someone, someday, would build there. In the right hands, a certain amount of development could be very good for Cannonball Island. In the wrong hands, it would be a disaster. Which meant that Alec had to ensure that the reins for this project remained where he could see them—preferably in his hands. He just hadn't figured out quite yet how to make that happen.

Chapter Four

L
is sat on the new back steps of the Cannonball Island General Store and watched Ruby water her flower garden, which along with the family graves was enclosed by the newly painted white picket fence.

After a few moments of silence, Lis asked, “So what do you have growing this year, Gigi?”

“Much as every year,” Ruby replied. She turned off the hose. “I started this garden when your mama was younger than you. Added on over the years. I like to think of it as my memory garden. When I see my flowers come back every year, makes me think of where they came from. There's a little bit of this from one, a little bit of another from someone else. Some folks gone now, but a piece of their garden still be blooming right here on the island.” She turned the hose back on and continued with her task.

“Nice that your friends shared their plants with you.”

“I did in kind.”

“What did you share?”

Ruby turned off the hose again. “Some of that red hollyhock be growing over at Hedy's these days. She passed on seeds to her daughter and her granddaughter who lives over to Annapolis. Gave some to Jenny Painter four years back. You go past the Painter place, you'll see 'em growing like weeds out front of their fence. Those black-eyed Susans, them come from Libby Allen. Grow so fast and spread so far I have to pull some out every summer. Take over the whole yard, if I had a mind to let them.” She leaned over to check the buds on an airy-looking plant with lavender blue flowers. “This here is geranium,” she told Lis. “Got a shoot of this from Mother Bristow when I first moved here from the old house on the point. She was the widow of Reverend Bristow, who used to preach at the chapel over to the village.”

Ruby picked a flower and handed it to Lis as she straightened up. “She passed not long after giving her plants away. Some to me, some to Abby Turner, a bit to Virginia Larson. You walk around the island with your eyes open, you'll see this blue geranium growing here, there, and everywhere.”

“It doesn't look like any geranium I ever saw.” Lis held up the flower. “And I'm sure I never saw a blue one before.”

“Well, that's what it be.”

Ruby went back to her watering.

“Which one's your favorite, Gigi?”

Off went the hose. “All of them. Can't pick a favorite amongst your children.” She started to turn on the water, then looked over her shoulder at Lis and asked, “You 'bout done with your questions now?
You got anything else you need to know right at this time? 'Cause I would like to finish up here before the store gets busy. Right about two or three, folks start to stop by for this or that.”

“I'm done.” Lis nodded. “For now.”

Ruby watered the flower bed on the far side of the porch, then turned off the water for good. She wound the hose around her arm and carried it to the hose bib, where she left it coiled on the ground.

“That's a neat-looking hose,” Lis observed. “What's it made of?”

“Some sort of soft thing,” Ruby told her. “Not near as heavy as the old rubber kind. Easier to carry, easier to put away.”

“You buy that at the hardware store in St. Dennis?”

“Carl down to the store don't carry these, best of my knowledge.”

“You send for it?”

“I thought you were all over your questions for today.” Ruby planted her hands on her hips.

Lis made a zipping motion across her mouth.

“Guess then it's my turn.” Ruby dried her wet hands on her apron. “You find what you be looking for over to St. Dennis this morning?”

Lis's jaw dropped. How could Ruby have known . . . ?

“Less my eyes be failing me, that be ice cream on your shirt.”

Lis looked down at the front of her T-shirt. Sure enough, there, right in the middle of her abdomen, was a small blob of something faintly pink.

“Stopped at Steffie's, be my guess.” Ruby folded her arms across her chest, a glint of
aha
in her smile.

“There's sure nothing wrong with your eyes,” Lis muttered.

“Should there be?”

Lis shook her head. “You just . . . you never fail to amaze me, Gigi.”

Still smiling, Ruby climbed the steps and folded herself into one of the rocking chairs. Lis shifted her body around to face her. In this morning light, the lines on the old woman's face were more noticeable than usual. Not for the first time, Lis was struck by the beauty that radiated from within her great-grandmother. The woman had an aura, a presence. What would it take, Lis wondered, to capture that radiance, that
knowing
Ruby seemed to possess? What color could re-create the clear blue of those eyes, the pure white of her hair, and the softly tanned skin of that remarkable face? Was Lis artist enough to even attempt such a thing? She'd never liked painting portraits, but maybe . . .

“Folks on my side live long,” Ruby was saying. “Not that I'm fearing the hereafter, mind. Nothing fearful about seeing them who gone before. See my Harold, my sisters. My mother and father. The baby son we buried, me and Harold. The daughter we lost to influenza. Eight years old and pretty as them roses growing around the front porch. Resting all peaceful, just waiting for me. Now, Harold and my mother and father, they be laid right down there on this side of the fence. The babies, well, they were laid to rest down by the old house on the point. I been thinking
about moving them up here so they can be with me and their daddy. Never did hear of anyone moving a grave, though.” Ruby stopped rocking for a moment and asked, “You think that would be bad luck for them? Being moved after being in one place all that time?”

“I . . . I don't know.” Lis was somewhat taken aback. “I never thought about . . . well, about doing something like that.”

“I swear, I don't know what's right. Me and my Harold talked about it, but he died before he ever said.” Ruby resumed rocking. “Decision might come to you and Owen, by and by, if I don't figure out before I go.”

“I don't like to think about that, Gigi.” The words stuck in Lis's throat.

“Why not?”

“Because I'd miss you too much.”

“Much as you miss me when you're off doing whatever, and I be here?”

“I know. I should spend more time here. And I will.” Lis nodded. “I will. Just don't leave me yet, Gigi.”

“Got no plans for soon. We'll see. It's all in his hands, and he keeps his plans to himself, no reason to let me know ahead 'a time.”

Ruby stood and turned toward the back door, then paused to glance over her shoulder and look Lis in the eye. “You don't be worrying about what you can't change, what's past or what's to come. Dying is like living, all part of the same. You be born when he say it's time, you go on back when he calls you.
Be up to you and Owen to bury me right. Don't be forgetting where I need to be. And don't be letting your cousin Chrissie Jenkins have a hand in it. That girl be too fancy by a mile. Sent her grandmother to her grave in a pink satin-lined coffin. I never saw such a thing. A box is a box and you need to keep in mind where it's going.”

She patted Lis's head before heading inside. Lis heard voices from the radio that Ruby had turned on in the store, heard a window being opened to bring in fresh air from the bay. When Alec had talked Ruby into renovating the building, Lis wished he'd talked her into central air-conditioning. It hadn't been too hot the night before, but Lis was betting tonight would be uncomfortable. The humidity already was rising along with the temperature.

She picked at the little sludge of ice cream that Ruby had noticed, and she smiled. Damn, but that woman really didn't miss a thing. If Lis had to put money on it, she'd bet that Ruby knew where she'd been and whom she'd been talking to.

Alec Jansen. She hated to admit it, but as her mother would say, he'd grown up real nice, but that wasn't much of a surprise. He'd been all too hot for his own good back in high school. Nice to see that some things never change. She'd never let on to anyone, not even to her best friends, that she thought he was the best-looking guy in their class. She'd been grateful that he'd always sat behind her; otherwise, it would have been all too apparent to everyone else that she had a crush on him. She'd be staring at him all day long, and her secret would be out.

Her mind wandered back to those days, when she and Judy Compton and Margaret Townsend were inseparable, mostly because they'd started kindergarten together and because the only other two girls in their class from Cannonball Island were the Doran twins and they only spoke to each other. The school on the island went up through fourth grade, and more often than not, grades intermingled because there might only be one or two students. Lis's year there were eleven—five girls and six boys—who eventually were sent across the bridge every day to the elementary school in St. Dennis.

Lis would have loved to have been friends with some of the girls she met there, girls who didn't live on the island but who were smart and seemed like they'd be fun to know, but her father wouldn't hear of it. Lis often wondered what those friendships might have been like. Jack Parker's dislike of all things St. Dennis had been the source of most of Lis's teenaged angst. She wouldn't dare defy him—he had a well-earned reputation as a hothead—but there were times when she came
this close
to going behind his back.

Lis would have given anything—
any
thing—to have accepted Alec's invitation to the junior-senior prom, would have been the happiest girl on the planet if she could have said yes when he'd asked her. But the situation was more complicated than she'd been able to express that day. Maybe if he'd approached her in private, she'd have been able to explain. But he'd done it very publicly, and she couldn't find the words to talk about her father's deep-rooted prejudice
in front of everyone in the lounge. So she'd just said no, and left it at that. She spent prom night in her room, staring out the window, pretending to be in the garishly decorated but dimly lit gym, dancing in a beautiful dress with the best-looking guy in the junior class. Of course, she was wearing a blue satin gown, à la Cinderella at the ball.

She was certain that Alec had forgotten the incident, especially since everyone knew he'd taken Courtney Davison, and from all reports, had himself one heck of a good time in the backseat of Ben McLemore's car. But Lis remembered the way her heart had first leapt with joy, then crumbled with pain and disappointment, and the look on Alec's face when she turned him down. Whenever she looked back on that day, she felt her heart fill with anger all over again. Anger toward her father, anger toward her mother, who wouldn't—or couldn't—stand up to him, anger toward the people in St. Dennis who drove her ancestors onto the island and gave her father an excuse to be a mean SOB.

“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.”