The Summer Girls (36 page)

Dora turned on Carson, her eyes flashing with fury. “Get out of here,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Haven’t you done enough damage? The last person I need mothering advice from is the daughter of an unfit, husband-stealing, drunken suicide!”

Carson’s face grew ashen. “What did you say?” she sputtered.

Dora’s face looked as though she knew she’d crossed a line, but it was too late. “It’s true. Everyone knows it’s true. No one believed that lie about the lightning. Except you.” She turned her back on Carson and tended to Nate, speaking in a low, calming voice as he wailed.

Carson didn’t respond. She stood staring blindly, feeling the sting from the slap. Something in that accusation niggled at her, like a ghost howling at the window. Bewildered by Dora’s accusation, she instinctively looked to Mamaw. Mamaw’s face drooped with sorrow and she looked every bit her eighty years. She shook her head slowly, then motioned for Carson to follow as she left the room. Harper stood by the door, her eyes wide.

“Harper,” Mamaw said, “go on and bring your sister and Nate a nice cool glass of water.” She turned to Carson. “You come to my room. It’s time you heard the truth from me.”

The thick, creamy matelassé curtains fringed in blue tassels were still drawn, leaving the room cool and serene. Mamaw sat in her favorite upholstered wing chair and motioned for Carson to sit beside her. Carson shut the door, silencing the sound of Nate’s keening wail, and joined Mamaw in the sitting area. She slid soundlessly into the soft cushions, utterly exhausted and yet still bristling with pain from the nightmare of the morning.

“Do you want something to drink?” Mamaw asked her.

“No.” Carson closed her eyes, trying to calm down. Trying to focus. She was so upset she had to concentrate to get the words out. “What I want is to know what Dora meant about my mother. She said
suicide
.” Carson opened her eyes and stared at Mamaw, demanding the truth.

Mamaw’s hands fluttered in her lap. It unnerved Carson to see her nervous and she tensed, sensing another hurt coming.

“Is it true?” Carson asked. “Did my mother kill herself?”

“It’s not a yes-or-no answer,” Mamaw began hesitatingly.

“She either did commit suicide or she didn’t.”

Mamaw looked at her. “No, she didn’t.”

Carson reconciled this in her mind. “Then why did Dora say she did?”

“She was wrong. That’s just malicious gossip.”

“Gossip . . .”

“Listen to what I have to tell you, Carson. It’s the truth.”

Carson clenched her hands tightly on the arms of the chair.

Mamaw sighed, then began in a slow cadence. “It was all such a long time ago, but I’m still haunted by it. Carson, your mother’s death was a terrible, terrible accident. Sophie had
been drinking. She had a problem with alcohol, you see. Like Parker. She was in her bedroom, in bed, watching television or reading, I don’t know. But she was smoking. She smoked quite a lot.” She stopped and took a little breath. “A lot of us did back then. The fire department concluded that the fire started in her bedroom. The likely explanation was that Sophie passed out while smoking—that’s what the coroner determined. Your mother never meant to die in that terrible fire.” Mamaw paused. “I pray to God she died quickly.”

“But . . . but I always thought . . . you always told me that the fire started from a lightning strike,” Carson said.

Mamaw put her hands together in her lap. “Yes. That’s what I told you. There was a storm that night, true enough, with a lot of lightning. Edward and I talked about it and together we decided that you didn’t need to know the unsavory details. You were only four years old, after all. Your mother had just passed away. That was enough for you to deal with.”

Carson listened, pressing her fingers to her eyes, trying to make sense of it. “But later, when I was older. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What good would it have done? I don’t know, maybe I should have. It just never seemed the right time.”

“My mother was a drunk, too?” Carson asked, stunned by the enormity of that fact. That really stacks the deck against me, doesn’t it? When I came to you and told you I was worried I had a problem,
that
would’ve been the time to tell me about my mother. Don’t you think?“

Mamaw sighed and nodded her head.

“But how did Dora know?”

Mamaw’s eyes flashed. “She should never have said what
she did to you. It was wrong of her. Wrong that she even knew. Her mother must have told her. That horrible gossip. Never forget that in life there is gossip and there are family secrets. We can tolerate the prattle, but to break the bonds of family is unforgivable.”

“Don’t defend the secrets!” Carson cried.

“I’m not,” Mamaw told her. “If we’ve learned nothing else this summer, haven’t we learned that secrets in a family are like a disease? One lie on top of another. The truth always comes out in the end.”

“I’m sick to death of secrets in this family. Why don’t we try honesty for a change?”

Mamaw’s eyes filled with tears. “I was with Nate when he put out the hooks.”

“What?” Carson stilled.

“Last night,” Mamaw said, holding back tears. “I caught him sneaking out to the dock with the fishing rods. So I went with him. I helped him set the bait and put out the line. We both left the rods there. I didn’t see the harm in it. He wanted to catch fish for Delphine, you see. He was trying to do something for
you.
”

Carson stared at Mamaw. “Why did you let me yell at Nate if you were the one who let him put the rods out in the first place?”

“I . . . I don’t know, I didn’t fully understand what the commotion was about until it was too late . . . I . . . I feel so terrible,” Mamaw said. “And when I saw that poor dolphin . . . I know the boy must feel terrible, too. He cares so deeply for the dolphin, and for you, Carson. You need to know that.”

Carson let out a guttural groan and rose from the chair. “I don’t know what to say. My head and my heart
ache,
” she cried. “They really, physically hurt.” She stopped and glared at Mamaw, her mind reeling from the string of revelations. It was all too much to take. It felt like the room was closing in on her, and she stumbled running from it.

By the time Carson got to Dunleavy’s the ovens were lit, the fryers jump-started, and the coffee made, and Ashley was covering both of their tables. After punching in, she almost tripped over the liquor shipment that had come earlier that morning. The top box nearly tipped but she grabbed it just in time.

“What happened to you?” Ashley asked when she burst into the kitchen to deliver the order.

Carson was tying her apron around her waist. “Don’t ask,” she said. She grabbed a stack of menus and headed out to face the lunchtime rush. She needed to keep busy or she’d go crazy with worry over Delphine.

Brian gave her several of his punishing looks during the shift but Carson felt too numb to care. She went through the motions like an automaton, not laughing at the cornball jokes the patrons made, answering the monotonous questions that she’d heard a thousand times with a dull voice. Ashley sensed something was wrong and gave her a wide berth during the shift.

When the last customer finally left, Brian waved them over to the bar. He was drying a glass with a towel.

“Ashley, you can go home early,” he told her. “You covered the shift. Carson, you close up. Any complaints?”

“I don’t mind helping close,” Ashley said, but her hesitancy was polite more than altruistic.

“Go on,” Carson told Ashley. “Thanks for covering for me.”

Carson began stacking dirty glasses on a tray.

“What happened to you today?” Brian asked her when Ashley walked off.

Carson shrugged. “I got held up. Family problems,” she replied.

Brian studied her face, then let the matter drop. “Okay, then,” he said, and went back to drying his glasses. “Don’t make a habit of it.”

Carson ran the cocktail trays through the dishwasher and put away clean glasses so hot she had to pull them out with a towel. After that she got the restaurant ready for the evening shift. Brian had left the bar and gone to pick up something from the grocery store. Carson was alone in the pub. She stocked the waitress station with ice and wiped each table, making sure the condiments were filled.

The last task was cleaning the bar. She walked behind it, polishing the lacquered wood clean. Wiping the liquor bottles was next. Her hands ran along the bottles one by one as a sudden thirst felt like it was burning in her throat. Her hands shook on the bottles, the urge suddenly so strong. Looking around, she saw that she was alone. Quietly, she reached under the bar for a shot glass and grabbed a bottle of tequila from the shelf. She filled the shot glass, her hand shaking so hard she spilled some. She took a deep breath and paused, staring at the glass.

Her mind railed at her not to drink it, to fight the temptation to fall off the wagon. Yet even as she heard the voice in her head, she knew she would do it. She didn’t care anymore about sobriety. What did it matter? Her mother was a drunk. Her father was a drunk. So was she.

Ducking low, she drank the tequila down in a gulp. Carson winced at the jolt of what felt like needles flowing down to her stomach. Brian would fire her if he caught her. But Carson was far from caring at this point. Without thinking further, she poured a second shot and, closing her eyes, sent it down the hatch. Licking her lips, she screwed the top back on the bottle, rinsed the shot glass and wiped it with a towel, then neatly put all back in order. Reaching for a lemon slice, she popped it into her mouth to mask the scent of tequila.

The clock over the bar was neon with a beer logo surrounding the casing. Brian had told her that the distributors coaxed him to put it up there with season tickets to the Citadel games. Glancing at it, Carson saw it was time to go home. She went to the back room to get her bag and lock up.

Home. Where the hell is that?
she wondered bitterly, putting her fingers to her forehead and pressing hard. The one place she’d always felt was her home—Sea Breeze—was the last place she wanted to go to now. She felt adrift without an anchor. Desperately sad and lonely. She just wanted to forget this horrible day. Forget Delphine and Nate and Mamaw. Forget Blake.

And her mother. A horrid image of her mother burning in her bed flashed in her mind.

Oh God, she needed another drink. A real drink.

She spied the shipment of alcohol waiting to be shelved. The top box was open and partially emptied. In a rush, Carson pulled out a bottle of Southern Comfort and quickly wrapped it in one of the dirty towels. Looking over her shoulder, she stuck it in her purse, locked the back door, and walked directly to the golf cart. She opened up the small metal trunk in the back. Carefully she set the bottle next to her beach bag. When she turned back toward the restaurant, her heart leaped in her chest. Brian was a few yards away, walking back to the pub. He was carrying the mail and shuffling through the envelopes.

Carson didn’t wave or shout out a hello. She slipped into the cart and fired the engine, her heart racing. She’d never stolen anything before in her life. Not even when she was a kid and her friends shoplifted for fun. Carson had never been able to do it, because she knew it was wrong.

As she drove down the street, farther from Dunleavy’s, she was surprised how, after a morning of ragged emotions, she now felt absolutely nothing.