I swallow hard and try to find my voice. “D-Daddy?” I stutter out again and he still stares straight ahead. He’s froze up like a rabbit when it senses danger nearby.
Through the window, I see Camellia with her face mashed to the glass. The little kids have climbed up on the bench to look in. Lark’s got big tears rolling down her fat cheeks. She hates to see any living creature hurting. She throws all the baitfish back in the river if she can get away with it. Whenever Briny shoots possums, or ducks, or squirrels, or deer, she carries on like her best pal’s been killed dead right there in front of her.
She’s looking at me to save Queenie. They all are.
There’s a spit of lightning someplace off in the distance. It pushes back the yellow coal-oil glow, then goes dark. I try to count the seconds before I hear the thunder, so I’ll know how far off the storm is, but I’m too rattled.
If Briny doesn’t get Queenie to the doctor soon, it’ll be too late. Like always, we’re camped on the wild shore. Memphis is all the way on the other side of the wide, dark Mississippi River.
I cough a lump out of my throat and stiffen up my neck so the lump won’t come back. “Briny, you gotta take her across-water.”
Slowly, he swivels my way. His face is still glassy, but he looks like he’s been waiting for this—for somebody besides the midwife to tell him what to do.
“Briny, you gotta carry her off in the skiff now, before that storm comes in.” It’d take too long to move the shantyboat, I know. Briny would realize that too if he could think straight.
“You tell him!” the midwife eggs me on. She starts toward Briny, shoving me ahead of her. “You don’ get that woman offa this boat, this child’s mama be dead befo’ mornin’.”
CHAPTER 3
Avery Stafford
AIKEN, SOUTH CAROLINA, PRESENT DAY
“Avery! We need you down here!”
Nothing takes you from thirty years old to thirteen faster than your mother’s voice rebounding up the stairs like a tennis ball after a forehand slice. “Coming! I’ll be right there.”
Elliot chuckles on the other end of the phone. The sound is both familiar and comforting. It calls up a memory trail that stretches all the way back to childhood. Between Elliot’s mother and mine giving us the hawkeye, we never had a prayer of stepping out of line, much less getting away with the sorts of miscreant deeds other teenagers were guilty of. We were more or less doomed to be good. Together. “Sounds like you’re on, sweetheart.”
“The family Christmas picture.” Leaning toward the mirror, I brush blond corkscrews away from my face only to have them fall again. My quick walk down to the stable after returning from the nursing home event has brought out the Grandma Judy curls. I knew it would, but a broodmare foaled last night, and a new baby is more than I can resist. Now I’m paying the price. No hair straightener known to man is a match for the water-laden breeze off the Edisto River.
“Christmas pictures in July?” Elliot coughs, and I’m reminded of how much I miss him. This business of living so far apart is hard, and we’re just two months into it.
“She’s worried about the chemo. They told her that Daddy wouldn’t lose his hair with this kind, but she’s afraid he will.” There’s really no doctor on the planet who can comfort my mother about Daddy’s colon cancer diagnosis. Mama has always been in charge of the world, and she’s determined not to abdicate now. If she says Daddy’s hair will thin, it probably will.
“Sounds like your mother.” Elliot laughs again. He should know. His mother, Bitsy, and mine are cut from two corners of the same cloth.
“She’s just scared to death of losing Daddy.” I choke a little on the last word. These past few months have rubbed us raw from the inside out, left each of us silently bleeding beneath our skins.
“Of course she is.” Elliot pauses for what seems like an eternity. I hear computer keys clicking. I remind myself that he has a fledgling brokerage firm to run and its success means everything to him. He doesn’t need his fiancée calling in the middle of a workday for no particular reason. “It’s good that you’re there, Aves.”
“I hope it’s helping. Sometimes I think I’m adding to the stress rather than reducing it.”
“You need to be there. You need the year in South Carolina to reestablish your residency…just in case.” Elliot reminds me of the same thing every time we have this conversation—every time I’m fighting the urge to catch a flight to Maryland and return to my old digs at the United States Attorney’s Office, where there was no need to worry about cancer treatments, early Christmas pictures, constituents, and people like that desperate-looking woman who grabbed my arm at the nursing home.
“Hey, Aves, hang on a minute. Sorry. Things are crazy here this morning.” Elliot puts me on hold to answer another call, and my thoughts drift back to this morning. I see the woman—May—standing in the garden, wearing her white sweater. Then she’s beside me, her face barely at the level of my shoulder, her bone-thin hands clenched over my wrist, the walking cane dangling from her arm. The look in her eyes is haunting, even in retrospect. There’s such a sense of recognition there. She’s certain she knows who I am.
Fern?
I’m sorry?
Fernie, it’s me. Tears frame her eyes. Oh, dear, I’ve missed you so. They told me you were gone. I knew you’d never break our promise.
For a second, I want to be Fern, just to make her happy—to give her a respite from standing by herself gazing into the wisteria. She seemed so very lonely out there. Lost.
I’m saved from having to tell her that I’m not the person she’s looking for. The attendant intervenes, red-faced and clearly rattled. I apologize, she whispers just to me. Mrs. Crandall is new here. She wraps an arm firmly around Mrs. Crandall’s shoulder and drags her hand from my wrist. The old woman is surprisingly strong. She surrenders inch by inch, and the nurse says quietly, Come on, May. I’ll take you back to your room.
I watch her go, feeling as if I should do something to help, but I don’t know what.
Elliot comes back on the line, and my mind snaps to the present again. “Anyway, stiff upper lip. You can handle it. I’ve seen you take on the big-city defense attorneys. Aiken can’t be too much of a problem.”
“I know,” I sigh. “I’m sorry for bothering you. I just…needed to hear your voice, I guess.” A blush rushes up my neck. I’m not usually so dependent. Maybe it’s a by-product of Daddy’s health crisis and Grandma Judy’s issues, but a painful sense of mortality clings to me. It’s thick and persistent like fog off the river. I can only feel my way through it, blind to whatever might be lurking.
I’ve lived a charmed life. Maybe I never understood that until now.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Elliot’s voice turns tender. “It’s a lot to deal with. Give it some time. You can’t solve anything by worrying ahead of yourself.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right.”
“Can I have that in writing?”
Elliot’s joke pulls a laugh from me. “Never.” I grab my purse from the bureau, looking for something to tie back my hair. A dump-out on the bed scores two silver bobby pins. Those will do. I’ll pull back the front and do a wavy look for the picture. Grandma Judy will love it when she sees the photo. It’s her hair I’m working with, after all, and she always wore it curly.