On Folly Beach (20 page)

Heath and Frank emerged from the water, both shaking their heads in synchronicity and flicking water over each other and Emmy. She stepped back, wiping the water from her face. “Careful!”

“Sorry,” said Heath, although his smile told her he wasn’t really.

“The water feels good—you should give it a try.”

“I should actually get back inside or find a hat and sunscreen. My skin’s not used to the sun.”

Water clung to his lashes, making his eyes appear star-kissed. “The beach is really nice at sunset, especially since most of the tourists have packed up and gone home by then. You should come back then.” He paused, looking at her intently as if he wasn’t sure she’d come back on her own, as if it were important that she love this place. “I’ll bring you sometime,” he added.

She wasn’t sure how to respond, so she said, “Were you serious about sharks?”

He began walking down the beach and she kept abreast of him, being sure to keep him on the ocean side and her feet dry.

“Yep. I’ve even caught a few from the pier. Have to throw back the babies, but you can keep the ones that are over a certain size. There used to be hammerheads and bull sharks, but nobody’s seen those for almost twenty years. Now it’s mostly sharp-nosed and black tips, with the occasional tiger shark and a few others.”

She gave a wary glance over at the water. “Are they man-eaters?” Scenes from the movie Jaws flashed through her head, and from Heath’s amused expression, it seemed that he was reading her mind.

He kept his gaze focused straight ahead. “Some of them.” He let the tension build while they walked a little farther down the beach, and she found herself jogging to keep up with his long strides. “But mostly they leave people alone. You know, you have a much greater chance of being struck by lightning while standing in a cornfield than you do of getting eaten by a shark.”

Emmy raised her eyebrows, still keeping a close eye on the shoreline for any telltale fins. “That’s reassuring. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

They continued to walk, the salty breeze off the water a welcome respite from the sweltering heat. Frank continued to run in and out of the water, occasionally racing up to people on the shore, who greeted him by name and gave him a scratch behind the ear or a treat.

They’d passed several other people with dogs, all of them on leashes. “Isn’t there some kind of dog-nuisance law for the beach?”

“Sure. No dogs allowed on the beach after ten in the morning or before six in the evening, and only on a leash.”

She watched as Frank jogged up to a group spread out on blankets; apparently they were getting ready to have supper on the beach. They greeted Frank with pats and food offerings, and Heath waved to all of them, giving Emmy a running litany of names and occupations as if she would remember any of them. The jumble of names she’d learned from Abigail that morning was already forgotten.

“And Frank is excluded from the rules?”

He sent her a sidelong glance. “Until somebody complains, I guess. He’s actually pretty well behaved, and only goes up to people he knows. Otherwise, he pretends he’s on a leash and sticks next to me.”

She hid her smile as they picked their way across lines of large rocks that stretched like arms from the shore into the ocean, which Heath explained were groins placed there long before Hugo to help with the constant erosion of the beach. “The jetties in Charleston Harbor and these groins probably did more damage to the ecosystem than protect the shore. We actually have a beach renourishment project, where every eight years we get sediment pumped onto the front beach, but that’s only temporary. And, unfortunately, it attracts more development.”

“I would think that as a builder who owns some property here, you’d see it as a good thing.”

“One would think. But Folly has been my family’s home for generations. It’s a little annoying to see the landscape changed so drastically by a few outsiders.” With a shrug, he said, “I guess in the last few years, I’ve begun to think a little differently than I used to—altered my focus, you might say. Which is one of the reasons why I’ve been spending more time on Folly than in Atlanta.”

She wanted to ask him what had changed to alter his focus, but he’d moved forward, as if to deliberately avoid any questions. His words irked her, bringing back memories of Ben and his sense of duty and love of country, which had sent him to the other side of the world and away from her and all that he loved.

She was still brooding when they turned around to go back the way they’d come and Heath asked, “So why are you here, Ms. Media Specialist with a master’s degree in library science?”

She turned to look at him, seeing again the tanned skin, the longer hair, the careless posture in his shoulders—shoulders which had never carried a rifle or traveled in a convoy over mine-ridden roads and belonged to a man whose life’s ambition now seemed to center on playing in the surf. She didn’t want this man, who was made, it seemed, of sea and sun and sand, to question her motives or to attempt to know her loss. But his eyes were kind and not mocking, and her answer was a lot easier than she’d thought it would have been.

“My mother loved the beach.” Emmy realized how stupid that sounded, and tried to clarify. “She grew up here and loved Folly, although I don’t think I realized how much until recently. And she loved Folly’s Finds from when she was a little girl. She patterned her own store in Indiana after it, actually.”

He stopped and she stopped, too. “But what made you come here?”

She looked past him toward the ocean, feeling the pull and tug of the tide as if it were trying to take her someplace she didn’t want to go. With a deep breath, she said, “I recently lost my husband, and my mother thought this place would be good for me.”

They turned at the sound of a sharp cry behind them, and for a moment, they watched a gull circling something still and dark in the sand, flying down to peck at it before swooping up with a cry into the air again. It reminded Emmy of her grief, of the way she continued to live and breathe and eat, but every so often she would return to the dark speck inside, and renew her sorrow.

“I’m sorry. Was it expected?”

Emmy faced him again. “He was a soldier. I guess I would have been naive not to expect it, but I don’t think it really ever occurred to me that I would never see him again.”

He picked up a shell from the sand, then reached back and threw it as hard as he could into the rushing waves before turning back to her. “I hope you find what you’re looking for here. I think you will.”

There was something in his voice, as if he knew what she needed, and the memory of the note in the bottle tree flashed through her head. Come back to me. It was unlike her to hold back any questions when she wanted answers, but Heath Reynolds made her hesitate. And then it was too late because he bent down and pulled something out of the sand before holding it out to her in his palm. She stepped closer and saw what looked like a dark brown seed shell with two thin antenna-like protrusions from the top and bottom.

“It’s called a devil’s pocketbook, although they’re actually skate egg sacks, and in May they’re all over the beach.” He handed it to her and she took it, feeling the slickness of the waterlogged casing against her fingers. “There’re always surprises to find here in the sand. When I was a boy, my mother told me that what you found on the beach was just reminders that we’re not alone in the world. That you’ll always find what you need if you look hard enough.”

Emmy began walking again, unable to answer because of the old familiar feeling teasing the back of her neck. They passed a woman who was at least in her sixties wearing a bikini and a baseball cap with two long gray braids dangling from each side of her head. For a brief moment, Emmy thought it was Lulu before she realized that what she knew of Lulu did not include exposing any skin on the beach. Thinking of Lulu, she turned to Heath. “I meant to ask your mother this, but I figure you would know as well as she does—was Lulu ever married?”

With a soft grin, he said, “Definitely not. There’s never been a man good enough for her, I think.”

Emmy studied him for a moment, unsure of whether he was joking.

Heath continued. “I think when she was younger, she fell in love, but I don’t know what happened to that relationship.”

“Was his name Peter, do you know?”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve heard that name mentioned before. You can ask her, though.”

“I’d rather not.” She said the words without thinking, then quickly looked up to see if Heath had taken offense and was relieved to find him smiling.

“Where did you come across the name?”

“In the box of books your mother sent to Indiana. There was a 1942 edition of a Nancy Drew mystery book and inside someone named Peter had inscribed it to Lulu with the words, ‘Be good and stay sweet.’ I gave it to Lulu today, but she tore out the inscription page before giving it back to me. I thought it odd, but she doesn’t seem that open to questions.”

“I can ask her myself if you like.”

Emmy wanted to say no, reluctant for him to be more involved in her life. But the alternative was even less appealing so she nodded. “If you wouldn’t mind. And I have one more request, and I promise it will be my last. The books in your house—the ones that once belonged to your grandmother Maggie—can I sort through them and rearrange them in some sort of order? They look as if they were just thrown haphazardly on the shelves, and I thought you might like to know what you have.”

He grinned. “That really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” she admitted without blinking. “It really does.”

“Sure—have at it. And if you find something that you really want, it’s yours.”

“But not if it’s valuable. I’ll be happy to give you fair market value for anything I find.”

“No, really. I don’t care. You can take all of them if you like. Or sell them at the store—it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve learned to believe in not holding on to things anymore. They’re only things.”

Emmy stopped abruptly, thinking about the tightly folded flag and Ben’s Medal of Honor, which she kept in her bedside drawer, and of Ben’s clothes still hanging in the closet in the bedroom at her parents’ house. If she had her purse with her, she could reach in and show Heath the nail clippers that had once been Ben’s, and the dog tags he’d been wearing when a roadside bomb exploded near his convoy. They were only things, true; but they were all she had left of what her life was supposed to have been.

She forced the words out of her constricted throat, feeling dizzy enough to faint. “Don’t say that. Don’t.” She sucked in a wheezing breath. “You don’t know.” She swallowed, trying to force the hot, humid air into her lungs. “You don’t know what it’s like.” She stared at him, his image shimmering in the heat like a mirage. “Or you’d know how precious things can be.”

The wind lifted his hair again, revealing the scar. She waited for him to protest, to tell her she was wrong, but he just stared at her with somber light brown eyes.

“Maybe,” was all he said before turning his attention back to the water, where the waves were creeping closer to shore, each bubbling finger grasping more sand than before.

“I know my way back from here,” Emmy said abruptly, stumbling up into the thicker sand, and not caring that they hadn’t talked about scheduling his work time on the dock. “Good-bye.” She didn’t turn around as she headed toward the first beach-access walkway she could find. She passed the same gull they’d seen before, still in its macabre dance as it swooped and swirled over its find in the sand. She stopped and watched, remembering what Heath’s mother had said about the treasures buried in the sand. You’ll always find what you need if you look hard enough.

Turning away, she headed toward the dunes, with their bald pates covered in sparse grassy hair, the sound of the gull like laughter behind her back.

CHAPTER 11

FOLLY BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA

August 2009

A heavy Sunday afternoon downpour darkened the sky and the watery world around the house, creating a cool oasis from which Emmy didn’t want to emerge. She’d spent most of the morning lugging books down from the turret, dangling from the circular staircase again and again to grab hidden and stacked books, refusing to let a single book go unrescued and uncataloged. She then hefted them into the living room in haphazard towers, creating a tiny city of leather and paper.

Her goal had been to have this job done in a week, but she’d quickly found that she didn’t have as much free time as she’d originally thought. Although helping at Paige’s Pages had prepared her for a lot of the work at Folly’s Finds, it was a far cry from the responsibilities of actually owning a store. Handling and anticipating the needs and requirements of the employees, Janell, Abigail, tourists, and locals overwhelmed her at times, in part because everything was new, and also because by nature she was more reserved than what was required of a business owner on Folly Beach. She was relieved that the residents didn’t ask her about Ben, and wondered if that had been Abigail’s doing.

She found herself calling her mother often, asking for advice on bookstore business matters. At least that was how the calls always started. But then the conversation would turn to other things, like the change in the color of the cornfields, or good books they’d read recently, or her father’s health. Strangely, these were topics that were never discussed when Emmy lived with her mother, as if the lines between mother and daughter were placed in a minefield, too easily ignited. And now Emmy had begun to tell her mother about Folly and the people here, and Paige listened and asked questions with the intensity of an exile too far from home.