Falling into Forever (6 page)
“It's a pleasure to meet you both,” he said, grabbing his motorcycle helmet and stowing it away under the bar.
“Let's get this show on the road,” said Taylor. She slid from the bar stool onto her shaky, high-heeled feet. The two friends followed Brad's careful steps over the wet boat docks, toward the
Miss Alex.
High tide swelled in the harbor as the
Miss Alex
cruised lazily away from the marina. Once on board, Taylor appointed herself first mate. All the while, Alexandra's belly ached from laughing at her best friend's attempts to stand on a swaying boat in five-inch heels.
“So what do you want to be when you grow up, Brad?” asked Taylor. She stretched her aching legs out in the sun as Brad dropped the anchor in the middle of the harbor.
“I have some ideas,” he told Taylor, scrounging the deck for a fishing rod. He spied Alexandra rummaging through a cooler. “Let me see one of those sandwiches,” he called to her.
Taylor persisted with her interrogation. “Do you go to school?”
“I'm in law school at Vanderbilt,” he told her as he slipped a piece of sandwich meat on his fishing hook.
“Gross,” Taylor whined. “So you just do this for fun?”
“Actually, yes; but the money helps, too,” he said, casting the line into the ocean.
“I might apply to Vanderbilt this fall,” Taylor told him. “But I'm not sure if my extracurricular activities are well-rounded enough.”
“I'm guessing you're a cheerleader,” Brad said, watching Taylor daintily chew on a cold ham-and-cheese sandwich.
“Not anymore,” Alexandra offered, listening to their conversation.
“I volunteer at an old folks home,” Taylor exclaimed.
“Does it count if it is court ordered?” Alexandra smiled as Brad smirked in her direction.
“Be quiet,” hissed Taylor as she reached inside the cooler for a soda.
Leaning over the side of the sailboat, Alexandra dropped her bread crust into the choppy water until a fin rose up from the waves by her hand. “Look,” she shrieked, quickly stumbling backward from the rail. “Shark!”
“Cool!” exclaimed Brad, jumping up to look. But then he said to assure her, “It's only a dolphin.”
As her heart slowly returned to its normal pace, Alexandra leaned back over the rail. The high sun reflected harshly from the water back into her face, and she squinted in the glare. As the back of the dolphin rose toward her in the murky water, she leaned over the side of the boat once more for a closer look.
“I think I can touch it,” she said, extending her arm over the side of the boat.
As Alexandra stared into the water, she caught a glimpse of her own reflection on the rippling waves. Looking at the mirror image of herself, she suddenly saw a man standing behind her. She felt frozen in place along the railing. A cloud scurried across the sun, blocking the once-clear reflection. Grabbing the railing, she tried to steady herself as the boat swayed back and forth.
Taylor, seeing her friend's unsteadiness, reminded Alexandra, “This isn't Sea World.” A sharp gust of wind rocked the boat and knocked Alexandra headfirst into the water. With a loud splash, Alexandra descended into the dark waves. “Alex!” Taylor screamed at Brad as Alexandra fell into the sea. “She can't swim, Brad! Help her!”
Sinking fast, she struggled to find the surface. Her eyes stung in the salty water. Despite not being able to see in the water, she became aware of a figure looming toward her. She was certain that it was a shark, swimming quietly only a few feet away. Panic gripped her. Her arms and legs flailed helplessly under the waves.
Don't fight
, she thought.
Maybe it will go away
. She started to submerge far below the surface. She shut her eyes tight.
I don't want to die.
The next instant, she felt a grip around her waist, and she rose to the surface. With her head now above the waves, she opened her eyes and saw Taylor throw her a round life preserver from the boat. She saw Brad jump into the waves. He dragged her to the ladder at the boat's stern. Then he lifted her out of the water and pulled himself up beside her to the safety of the deck.
“Alex, you scared me,” said Taylor, rushing to her friend's side.
“Get a towel!” ordered Brad.
Alexandra shivered in the wind, but soon Taylor was back with a towel that she'd found below deck. Covering her scared and soaking friend, Taylor asked, “What happened? It looked like you leapt into the water.”
“I fell,” stuttered Alexandra, wrapping the towel tightly around her body. “I sawâumâwell, I don't know what I saw. Something was standing behind me,” her voice trailed off. She looked into Brad's face.
“I think you look like you've seen a ghost,” he said.
“Can we go back now?” asked Alexandra, her hand gripping the necklace around her neck to assure herself that it had not become lost in the ocean during her struggle.
“Sure,” he said. “Why don't you come and stand by me at the wheel?” he offered, helping her to her feet.
As the boat sailed quietly back to the marina, Alexandra's eyes scanned the waves, waiting for a fin to break the surface of the choppy water. Safely docked, she glanced back again at the water before stepping up onto the wooden pier. But all she could see was a dolphin, flipping in and out of the waves.
“We'll put the top down on the convertible so that you can air-dry on the way back to your grandmother's house,” Taylor joked as the three of them headed for the parking lot.
Reaching the car, the girls slumped into their seats. Taylor let down the convertible top, as promised. “Thanks for everything,” Alexandra told Brad as he held the car door open for her.
“No problem,” he said, closing the door as Taylor cranked the engine. “Do you two have plans for tonight?” he asked.
“What do you have in mind?” Taylor asked, winking.
“Some of my friends are getting together for a bonfire on the beach,” he told them. “You're welcome to join us,” he said, all the time watching Alexandra.
“Thanks,” Alexandra said, smiling. “We might do that.”
“Ciao!” exclaimed Taylor as she punched the accelerator and squealed out of the parking lot, heading back to Peyton Manor.
As they drove to the estate, Alexandra was exhausted and subdued from her ordeal. She didn't want to talk. She tried to relax. She closed her eyes to concentrate and to forget the shark, which was still lurking in her memory. During the drive, to get her mind elsewhere, she thought about what Granny June had told her about her family. It was a somewhat mysterious story that involved a fortuneteller.
Granny June's parents, Charles and Martha, had been born in poverty in South Carolina; their parents had been sharecroppers. Granny June had said that Charles never felt at ease among his siblings, as if he had been placed there by mistake. As a boy, Charles had accompanied his father on deliveries of cotton, riding in their wagon through the streets of old Charleston. Charles saw the city's stately homes and decided that he would never be a sharecropper like his father.
Charles met Granny June's mother, Martha, during the four years that sharecroppers's children were allowed to attend grade school. When Charles was fourteen, he left the cotton fields and ran away to the trading ships in the harbor. There, an aging sea captain took pity on him and let him swab the decks of his vessel in exchange for passage to Europe. For three years, Charles had adventures that led him to the cliffs of Dover, the Eiffel Tower, and the Parthenon in Athens. Along the way, he convinced the sea captain that he needed a loyal partner, a young man to expand the business into a full trading company.
But the sea captain needed convincing. What did he want with a trading company? He was already a successful seaman, crossing the oceans for the highest bidder, with tobacco, rum, and cotton in his hull.
But the captain's chance encounter with a gypsy at a port in Romania changed his mind. The fortune-teller read the captain's palm and saw great wealth in his future if he took Charles up on the plan. Then Charles offered his hand to be read by the gypsy. She recoiled, terrified to touch his skin. Only curiosity finally persuaded her to see his palm. She said that Charles, the captain, and their families would never want again.
When Charles returned home to South Carolina, he married Martha, and they had two children, Joseph and June. With Charles's grit and determination, the shipping company was highly successful, and he built the estate by the ocean for his family. Joseph grew up strong and smart. Granny June told Alexandra how much she loved her brother Joseph, who helped their father run the business while she attended tea parties and auditioned dashing young men to be her worthy husband.
Joseph embarked on a military career. When June bid her brother farewell for West Point, she would not see him again until the Army sent him home, a wrecked veteran of General George Patton's Third Army, which had rained hell upon the Germans. Not long after coming home, Joseph died in a hunting accident on the grounds of the estate. But that was all Alexandra knew about Joseph, because her grandmother had gotten strangely silent about him. She did know that when Granny June married her beau Thomas, her parents accepted him almost as another son, allowing the couple to share their large estate and bringing Thomas into the family business.
After what happened to Taylor in the attic at Peyton Manor, June made sure to lock the door to the room. She saw Patrick leave to get groceries. Then she gathered the invitations for her Labor Day barbecue and went out with Dixie. She couldn't be gone long, because Ian, her brother's closest friend, was supposed to visit.
With his mistress in tow, Dixie lunged eagerly down the winding gravel driveway toward the mailbox, which was just outside the security gate. Singing birds and blooming flowers kept the dog distracted while June ambled slowly behind her.
“Whew!” puffed June, mopping her brow with the back of her hand as she plopped the invitations into the mailbox. “That driveway gets longer every day,” she told Dixie. The dog tugged on the leash as they passed back through the gate.
Dixie's ears pricked at the sound of rustling leaves in the trees around them and scampered toward the edge of the driveway. The dog made a low growl and stared intently into the woods. Then Dixie began to bark furiously at the dense, silent trees.
“Hush,” June scolded. She looked up into the trees and spied the remnants of a battered and abandoned tree house. “Good heavens,” she said, gazing at the treetops. “Jonathan!” June suddenly exclaimed her son's name, thinking of his adventuresome childhood. Where was he now? No one knew. Perhaps he was not meant to have been born. When she was pregnant, she had nearly lost the baby when she slipped climbing the steep staircase to her bedroom at the manor house, where she and her husband lived with her parents. Jonathan arrived a month early and had never looked back. Tall and lean from birth, June and Thomas Peyton's golden child grew swiftly and precociously. This thought reminded her of someone she must speak with.
“Quiet down girl,” she commanded to the dog and pulled her into the woods. “This way,” she told the dog, whose eyes searched the ground for a trail.
Moss dripped from towering oaks above their heads as they walked further into the forest. Dixie whimpered at her mistress's side. Under a massive oak ahead of them sat a crumbling, overgrown shack.
Stopping in front of the shack, June watched the doorway. “Are you in there?” she called out.
A figure hovered in the shadows of the doorway, watching the gray-haired woman approach.
Dixie's paws snapped a twig, and she whimpered again. June clung tightly to the leash. “May I see you?” she shouted toward the shack.
“Der a storm comin.” An old woman's thick Gullah voice echoed through the trees, speaking a mixture of Jamaican Creole and English.
“The girl did not disturb anything in the attic,” June called to the figure. “I don't know why the door was unlocked. It won't happen again.”
“Me think someting bad gonna happen,” continued the voice in the doorway.
“Can I see you?” asked June, stepping closer.
Out of the doorway came a white-haired woman with brown skin and deep wrinkles. She stood in the faint light shining through the treetops. “Me dun seen it, June Bug. De spirits shown me,” she hissed.
“Is she in danger?” asked June, tears welling up in her eyes.
“For sure. You know dat,” she shook her head and slid back into the shadows of the doorway.
“For every gift there is a price,” June said softly.
Stumbling backward, she yanked Dixie's leash and fled toward the driveway. When she reached the gravel, she was panting breathlessly. She pulled at the locket dangling from her neck and pried it open with her shaking fingers. Inside, a chubby-faced, pigtailed, five-year-old Alexandra smiled at her. “The age of innocence is over, my dear,” she said tearfully, staring at the picture. After a minute she wiped away the tears with the back of her hand and began walking to the house to see if Ian had arrived yet.
Meanwhile, Taylor and a still-soggy Alexandra were winding their way back to Peyton Manor. Finally a cloud of dust and scattered gravel trailed from the rear end of the convertible as it purred down the tree-lined driveway toward the house. Clinging to her patience, Taylor dug her sharp, pink nails into the steering wheel, while her foot lightly grazed the gas pedal.
“Why doesn't your grandmother have this thing paved?” she asked Alexandra as the car slowly wound down the brown, dirt path.
“Granny says it keeps the traffic down,” Alexandra explained as the front porch eventually came into view.
“Do you ever feel like you're being watched here?” asked Taylor, her eyes darting back and forth over the curtain of silent oaks lining the driveway. They came past the gate with its bronze plaque, which said “Peyton Manor.” Alexandra remembered that Granny June and her husband Thomas put up that plaque after Granny June's parents passed away.
