The Summer Girls (41 page)

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t.”

After she’d said good-bye to Blake, Carson walked directly to Dunleavy’s. There was one more atonement she had to make.

The pub was quiet, in the lull period between lunch and the cocktail hour. A few regulars sat at the tables. She spotted Devlin at the bar. There was no way to avoid him and get to Brian behind the bar. Brian looked up when he saw her and stopped polishing the glass.

“Hey, Brian,” she called out as she approached.

“Carson,” he replied, strangely aloof. “You’re feeling better?”

“Yes, thanks,” she replied, nervous at his obvious coolness.

Devlin’s eyes sparked at seeing her. “Hey, stranger,” he said, leaning over the bar. “Glad to see you back. Missed your pretty face. It’s tough staring at Brian’s ugly mug.”

She looked at Devlin, not entirely surprised that he wasn’t the least bit sheepish about his bad behavior. She wondered if he even remembered it.

“Hey, Dev,” she replied casually, then looked again at Brian. “Can I talk to you? In private.”

“Sure.” He set down the glass and towel. “In my office,” he said, directing her to one of the booths.

She followed him to the booth farthest away from the bar and slid in opposite him. Devlin followed them with his gaze, perplexed. Carson sat on the booth bench with her knees tight together and her hands clasped in her lap. She looked across the wood-slab table at Brian. He’d leaned back, hands laced on the table, waiting.

“Brian, I’m ashamed of something I’ve done,” she began haltingly. “You might’ve heard what happened to the dolphin at the Sea Breeze dock?”

He nodded soberly. “It’s a small island. Very sad.”

“I loved that dolphin and it was my fault. A few other things went down that day and I was hurting. Bad. When I came to work, I wasn’t myself. Not that it excuses what I did,” she hurried to add. She swallowed hard. She had to stop scurrying around the truth and just spit it out. “Brian, I stole a bottle of Southern Comfort from you.”

Brian was quiet a moment. “I feel a little sick about it,” he said, looking at his hands.

“That makes two of us,” Carson said. “Would it make you feel better if I told you it was the only time I ever stole anything? Like ever, in my life?”

He looked up and saw the sincerity in her eyes, but his jaw was clenched. “Would it make you feel any better if I told you it didn’t matter?”

Some of the color drained from her face and for a moment she thought she might get sick. “I’ll pay for it,” Carson said.

Brian looked at her with an
oh, come on
stare. “Yeah, then everything will be fine. We’ll just go back to the way it was.”

Carson looked at her hands, feeling her heart sink. “No, I know that can’t happen.”

“I know how drinking can seem to put problems on the back burner.” Brian pulled at his nose. “No back burners, kid. You’re turning a blind eye, that’s all. It’s no solution.”

“I figured that out. You seem to be familiar with this stuff,” she said cautiously.

“Twenty years sober,” he said. “And yes, I am an alcoholic.”

Carson was caught off guard by his admission. “Then why work at a bar?”

He half smiled. “Look, kiddo. I’ve been doing this a long time. I know I can be around liquor and not drink. You don’t know that. You can’t be around liquor.”

Carson watched Brian as he leaned back in the booth. He was a caring, honest man who didn’t deserve what she’d done to him.

“So, what’s next?” she asked.

“About stealing or drinking?” he said in a soft voice, not sarcastic.

“Both.”

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you everything is going to be okay, because it’s not,” he said. “Believe it or not, you’re not the first person to steal from here. I’ve seen it all. Stuffing things, booze and food, into plastic bags. Then pretending to take out the garbage. Hell, I had one cook put twenty steaks in a plastic bag in the garbage, and his friend came by
and picked them up. Clever, but desperate. I wasn’t so nice to them. A restaurant is one of the toughest businesses to keep afloat. Each nickel and dime counts.”

Truth was, she hadn’t given much thought to any of the restaurant’s profits or losses.
What employee really does?
she thought. She hung her head. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel worse about stealing than she already did.

“I don’t envy you having to face this problem,” Brian said. “But I don’t need to tell you, I can’t have you working here anymore.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m grateful, Brian. For the job and for your kindness.”

He offered some in return. “You’re not a little girl, Carson. This is your decision. But if you think you might have a problem with alcohol, I hope—I pray, you’ll look into AA. I think you’re strong enough to fight it. I’d be glad to take you to a meeting. But if you’d rather go alone, there are a lot of meetings around the area. But go. At least once.”

“I’ll look into it, Brian, I promise. I appreciate your kindness. About the stealing and for caring enough to suggest some help.”

Brian reached over and shook her hand. “I appreciate you had the courage to come speak to me first. I knew you took the bottle.”

Carson paled at the admission as she shook his hand.

Brian smiled. “You’re welcome here anytime. And bring Mamaw. I haven’t seen that renegade in ages.”

A
few days later, Carson peeked through the window and was surprised to see Blake at the front door. She’d spent the night with him and they’d said good-bye after coffee that morning. Blake had headed off to work at Fort Johnson and Carson had returned to Sea Breeze. She wondered what Blake might have forgotten that brought him back to see her.

“Hey,” she said with a welcoming smile, opening the door.

Blake’s smile was tight and his dark eyes troubled. “Hi,” he said.

“Come on in,” Carson said, her face clouding as she stepped back. “What’s the matter?”

“Do you have a minute to talk?”

Now Carson’s thoughts roiled. “Uh, sure. How about right here?” she asked, indicating the living room.

She followed him into the room and they each took one of the wing chairs. Blake sat stiffly, his pale blue denim shirt frayed at the cuffs, exposing tanned hands that lay flat on his thighs. Carson raked her hair from her face.

“It’s so humid today,” she said, initiating conversation. “Mamaw won’t boost the air-conditioning. She claims she likes it.”

He laughed but his heart wasn’t in it. He clasped his palms together and stared at them.

She crossed her legs, holding her lips tight, feeling her stomach clench.

“Carson, I’ve got something I need to tell you.”

“Okay,” she said warily.

“It’s about Delphine.”

“What about her?”

“These past few days I’ve been going through all my photo files on the dolphins we’ve recorded in our area for the past five years, trying to find a match with the photos you sent me. Carson, I’ve searched till my eyes were blurry. Eric did, too. There’s no record of Delphine in our data files.”

Carson’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”

“It means that she isn’t classified as resident to the Charleston estuary system. She’s not one of ours.”

“How can that be? She was here, wasn’t she?”

“There are several possibilities. She could have just been migrating along the coast when she got mixed up with that shark and was injured. That might’ve brought her into safer waters for a while. Then she found you and a free meal and decided to stay.”

“Do they do that? Do coastal dolphins roam into the rivers?”

He nodded. “Yes. Most have a preference for one area or the other, but a few go both ways. There are always those that follow a shrimp boat from the coast into the harbor, too, and you said there was a shrimp boat around that morning. My guess is that she wandered into the cove for whatever reason and just stayed.”

“So, she’s alone out there?” Carson said, feeling a pang for Delphine. “It’s no wonder she befriended me.”

“Or she stayed
because
you befriended her. There’s a difference.”

“You are always so damned quick to remind me of my mistake.”

“I don’t mean to be harsh. I just don’t want you to slip into that sentimental thinking again. For both your sakes.”

“So, what do we do now? When she’s returned, will she eventually become a member of the local dolphin community?”

He rubbed his hands together, as though upset that he wasn’t handling the situation well. “That, Carson, is the problem.”

Carson sensed the change in tone and felt the tension radiating from Blake’s body. She quieted her emotions and listened attentively. “What problem?”

“Carson,” he began on solid footing. “If Delphine is not part of the resident population in this area, the Mote Marine Laboratory’s hospital will not release her back into our estuaries.”

“What? They can’t do that. This is where she belongs.
We brought her to them to heal her. They can’t keep her!”

“They won’t keep her,” he said, trying to calm her.

“They can’t release her in Florida! That’s ridiculous. She is not a local resident there, either. What’s the point? At least here she has me. She knows me.”

“Carson, listen to me. It’s more complicated than that. First of all, the fact that she isn’t a resident in our estuarine system means she won’t have a support system. That’s the first problem. The second is what you just said: that you’d take care of her. That can’t happen. We’ve discussed that. Frankly, Carson, Delphine’s extreme friendliness made us concerned that she has already learned to depend on humans. She’s a possible candidate to be another beggar, and that’s bad for her. Third, and most importantly, her wounds were intense, and add to that her already mangled tail fluke and you have a compromised dolphin.”

Blake puffed out a plume of air and his eyes searched hers. “We’ve considered all the factors. NOAA doesn’t make the decision lightly. We all want the dolphin to return home to the wild, if that’s possible. The decision is still out, pending how well she heals. And,” he added soberly, “brace yourself. There may be a fourth problem. Delphine is not progressing as well as they’d hoped. She is not eating well and is increasingly listless.”

Carson was taken aback. “How long have you known this?”

“A few days.”

“And you’ve waited until just now to tell me?”

“I didn’t want to upset you. We were all hoping she’d come around.”

Carson tried to picture Delphine—her curious eyes, her persistent friendliness—listless and injured in some strange holding tank. She felt her palms go clammy and drops of perspiration formed on her brow. She swiped the moisture away, cursing the humidity.

Blake said, “Some dolphins become listless because they’re in an unfamiliar environment, and sometimes there’s an underlying medical cause—but we don’t know for sure what is going on with Delphine. In the end they may need to transfer her to another facility.”

“They can’t,” Carson cried. She rose to pace the room, horrified—threatened—by this new development. “I don’t get it. Why did you take me out to see the wild dolphins? You showed me how much better it was for them to live in the wild, to socialize, to hunt. Now you’re telling me that they won’t release Delphine back into the wild? That they’re putting her into a facility? And you’re going to go along with that? She won’t understand why she was put there. It’s too cruel.”

Blake reached out for her. “Carson.”

“Don’t touch me!” she exclaimed, lifting her hands into an arresting position. “I don’t understand why you’re letting this happen. You’re with NOAA. You can stop this. You can make them bring her back here.”

“No, I can’t. I don’t have that authority. And even if I did, I wouldn’t.”

“Why not?” she said through clenched teeth.

“Because it’s always got to be what’s best for the dolphin.”

She sputtered as she bit back her words. She wanted to
shout at him that she hated him, but of course she didn’t. She hated the situation. She hated her role in it. She hated to see Delphine in this state of affairs.

But she still couldn’t bear to look at Blake, to be in his proximity. She had had it with his rules and regulations, his inability to understand her relationship with Delphine. His insensitivity. She was done with him, done with all of it. She stopped pacing, feeling once again the walls of the room closing in on her. The old panic built in her chest and all she knew was that she had to get out of there.