On Folly Beach (44 page)

AS IT TURNED OUT, DR. Brown beat them to the house by about five minutes. Lulu had run into him coming out of McNally’s and they’d taken his car to the house. Peter and Maggie rushed past the doctor’s car on the curb, stopping abruptly inside the door as a loud scream rumbled down the stairs. Turning to face Peter, Maggie said, “Keep your coat on and wait on the porch. I’m hoping there’s still time to take her to the hospital, but be prepared to wait just in case there isn’t.”

His gaze strayed to the staircase behind her, then settled back on her face. “All right. I’ll wait there. Just let me know if . . . if she asks for me.”

Maggie’s eyes slid away as she nodded, his hand squeezing hers as she turned to run up the stairs just as another jarring scream exploded from upstairs like a sudden tidal surge. Lulu leaned on the wall outside Cat’s bedroom, her color back to normal and looking a lot calmer than Maggie felt.

Just as Maggie reached the top step, Martha opened the door with a bundle of towels wrapped in a sheet. Maggie clenched her teeth when she saw the blood on one of the towels, watching as it stained the sheet in a growing circle of crimson.

Martha handed the bundle to Lulu. “You go take this and throw it on the back porch, then rush right back up here with more clean towels, you here? And be quick about it.” Her brown eyes settled on Maggie. “You get in here fast—she been askin’ for you. Doctor say it won’t be long.”

Lulu stopped at the top of the stairs, holding the bundle as far away from her body as her arms could reach, and turned her face away. Through gritted teeth, she said, “I’m never having babies. Not ever.” Then she ran down the stairs, managing to get down them without tripping.

The stench of blood and sweat hit Maggie as she entered the room. Dr. Brown was draping a sheet over Cat’s upraised knees, and he turned toward Maggie. “That baby’s ready to come. No time to get her to the hospital.” He approached her, his gray eyes serious behind his glasses. “Where’s your phone? I need to call my office and have my nurse bring me what I need. And whatever you do, don’t let her push until I get back.”

Maggie sent the doctor to the kitchen while Martha stood by Cat’s head, mopping her forehead with a damp rag. Maggie moved to the side of the bed, hardly recognizing the Catherine she knew in the swollen, shiny face of the woman on the pillow. The large mound of her stomach protruded under the white sheet like an exposed secret and Maggie found she couldn’t look at it. Instead she took Cat’s hand, the skin clammy and cold. Cat gripped her fingers tight enough to break them, like they were a drowning victim’s last hope.

Maggie glanced up at Martha, who’d given birth six times and had helped bring four grandchildren into the world. “Thanks, Martha, for staying. Does everything . . . ?” She swallowed, unsure how to phrase her question. “Does everything look all right?”

Martha gave her a weary smile. “So far. Baby coming real fast, is all.”

Cat began to thrash on her pillow, squeezing Maggie’s hand even tighter until Maggie could feel the bones rubbing against each other, the band of her ring cutting into the flesh on the inside of her finger.

“Don’t you push, Miss Cat. Doctor ain’t ready for you to push.” Martha held the cool cloth on Cat’s forehead, pressing on it as if to hold in the pain.

Cat screamed, raising the hair on Maggie’s scalp. “I have to. I have to.” She began to groan, and Martha dropped the rag to use both hands to hold Cat’s legs down until the urge had passed.

“I’ve got to see what’s taking Lulu so long with them towels. Miss Cat be fine for a moment with you here, okay?”

Maggie nodded at Martha’s reassuring glance.

Cat was breathing heavily, her eyes bloodshot from the strain. “Open the window, Mags. It’s so damned hot in here.”

Maggie stood, rubbing her hand to renew circulation as she approached the window and pulled up the lock. With an easy shove on both sides, the casement windows opened, allowing a cool breeze and fresh air to penetrate the pall of the room. Forcing a light tone, she said, “I wish the window in my room would open so easily.”

“Mags?”

Reluctantly, Maggie returned to the side of the bed and reached for Cat’s hand with her right one. “Yes, Cat, I’m here.”

“I need you to promise . . .”

A heavy stone of dread rolled into place in the pit of her stomach. “Promise what, Cat?”

“I need you to promise me . . .” She licked dry, cracked lips. “I want you to take the baby. If I die. I want you to raise this baby as your own. You’d be a much better mother—we both know that.” She clenched her eyes, her hands flying to her protruding stomach, her fingers arched like claws. “Promise me.”

Panic seized Maggie as she squeezed Cat’s hand between both of hers. “Everything’s going to be fine. You’re not going to—”

“Promise me.” Cat’s voice was urgent, her head beginning to toss on the pillow as another contraction gripped her frail body.

Martha, carrying a bundle of clean towels, entered the room at the same time as the doctor. She approached the bed while Dr. Brown went to the window, closing both sides with an irrefutable snap. “It’s too cold in here—we’ll all end up with pneumonia.”

Cat began to writhe again, but her eyes settled on Maggie’s face. “Promise me,” her mouth formed but no words came out.

Slowly, Maggie nodded, making another promise that would bind her to someone else forever. She imagined the stone in the pit of her stomach growing moss, reminding her how permanent the bond of a promise made could be: as delicate as a spiderweb, but just as impossible to extricate yourself once the words were spoken. Maggie stepped back from the bed, feeling already the soft filament of a web forming around her.

CHAPTER 24

FOLLY BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA

October 2009

Emmy found a spot close to the Reynolds house on West Hudson, and parked her car. The party wasn’t scheduled to start for another fifteen minutes, but Heath had said he and his dad had found something to show her, and he’d asked her to get there a little early.

Juggling two gift bags with coordinating pink and blue helium balloons, she made it up the stairs of a modest bungalow. It looked like a Folly Beach original that had been updated without losing the character of the house—a straddling of the line that Emmy was growing accustomed to that separated the traditionalists from the newer residents of the island.

She was surprised to find Jolene sitting on a joggling board on the front porch, nursing a tall glass of something cold. Before she could ask, Jolene answered, “Sweet tea, that’s all. I was feeling warm, so I asked for something cold.”

Emmy nodded. It was about fifty-five degrees and she wore a sweater, but she could see a sheen of perspiration on Jolene’s upper lip and her hands trembled slightly as she held the glass.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. It’s just that . . . I’d like a drink. Real bad. But Lulu said she’d knock me into next week if she found out I’d had a sip.”

Emmy frowned. “She wouldn’t really, would she?”

Jolene’s mouth twitched. “No. At least I don’t think so. But I figured it wasn’t such a bad idea anyway. I’m still afraid of her, though.”

Emmy nodded. “Do you want to walk back in with me?”

Jolene shook her head. “No, but thank you. I’m waiting for Lulu.” Her lips turned up in a wry smile. “I feel . . . more comfortable when she’s with me. This sounds stupid, but she’s been sort of my surrogate mother through all this mess with Heath. She doesn’t mind me leaning on her, and I need somebody to lean on right now. I can only hope that I can return the favor someday.”

Again, Emmy nodded, but didn’t go inside right away. “I love what you did with Lulu’s pages on the site. The pictures of her bottle trees displayed like a storybook with changing pages is really brilliant. I’ve gotten a lot more hits since her pages went live. We’re actually getting a backlog of orders. Janell told me that she wants Lulu to teach her how to make the tree branches so that she can help. Which means we might need to do another page to introduce Janell soon, too.”

“Great.” Jolene’s voice was flat, as if she hadn’t really been listening.

“Is something wrong?” Emmy asked.

A furrow formed between Jolene’s delicate eyebrows. “I don’t know. Abigail arrived on foot a few minutes ago saying somebody had stolen her car with the cakes for the party. She thinks it’s just a teenage prank and she’ll get her car back—she’s just worried that the cakes might get ruined. And Lulu should be here by now.”

Joe, Lizzie’s husband, pushed opened the door. “I thought I saw balloons. Come on in, Emmy. We’ve got plenty of food.” He reached for the two bags. “Glad you could come.”

Jolene shot them a tentative smile. “I’ll be there in a bit.”

Emmy nodded and entered the living room, where a few people, early like herself and most of whom she knew as customers at Folly’s Finds, stood or sat in comfortable-looking chairs and a pair of couches upholstered in bright yellow slipcovers. Heath’s father, John, and his wheelchair were in the center of a group of people who let out a laugh at something he’d just said as Emmy approached.

“Emmy!” he said, holding out his arms. She bent down and gave him a hug and a kiss on his cheek, his enthusiasm at seeing her making her smile.

“Hello, Mr. Reynolds. Congratulations on the birth of your first grandchildren.”

Abigail came up behind him holding a tray of what looked like hush puppies. “He says I’ve gone gaga over them, but he should see himself fussing over them. He’s already told Lizzie and Joe that he’s ready for the next one.”

She extended the tray to Emmy, who took a hush puppy and a napkin. “I can’t wait to see them.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You will. Lizzie’s in the back bedroom feeding them, and as soon as they’re done, she’ll be out to show them off.” Abigail moved away to another group, holding out the tray.

Emmy swallowed her hush puppy and was looking around for a familiar face when she felt someone touch her arm. She turned and smiled at Heath, aware of how glad she was to see him. He smiled, too, but his eyes were serious. “You ready?”

“Sure.” Curious, she followed him down a narrow hallway to a room at the back of the house. He opened the door and stepped back, allowing Emmy to walk inside first; then he closed the door behind them.

The room was set up as an office, with a large desk and a conspicuously empty spot where a chair would be. A framed American flag, torn and dirty, dominated one wall, while all sorts of military paraphernalia—medals, swords, bullets, and belt buckles that spanned more than a century of battles—were framed or displayed on every wall and available flat surface.

“Your dad’s office, I’m guessing?” Emmy asked, her eyes going back to the flag.

“Yes.” He followed her gaze. “My dad brought that back from Vietnam. So he wouldn’t forget, is what he tells us but I think there’s a lot more to that story. That’s one area of his life he doesn’t talk about.”

Emmy’s gaze didn’t drop. “Ben didn’t either.” The grief this time came to her like the unfurling of a flag, soft and fluttering as it settled around her. It no longer dulled her vision, or stole her breath, but it was still there. She supposed it always would be, but maybe she could live with it the way a person learns to live with sidetracked expectations.

“It hurt me, the way he wouldn’t talk about it.” This was the first time she’d ever admitted that to anybody, but she wasn’t surprised that it had been to Heath. There was something reassuring about him that inspired confidences.

Heath watched her closely. “It’s normal. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t love you any less; it meant that he loved you enough to want to protect you.”

She looked down, feeling her eyes well up. It was the first time she’d ever looked at it that way, and she felt some of her grief give way to relief. It freed a part of her inside, allowing her to let some of it go. “Thank you,” she said.

Heath moved to the other side of the desk and opened up the top drawer. “My dad pulled this out for you to look at.”

Glad for the change of subject, Emmy joined Heath and peered down at the two handwritten letters. The handwriting was male, but completely different from the writing in the books. Her gaze traveled down to the signature at the bottom of the page. Robert.

She faced Heath. “Who was Robert?”

“My grandfather. He and Maggie were married in June 1943.” His eyes were soft as he regarded her, like he understood her sudden vulnerability, as if the shedding of grief left a person raw. “Does this help you with anything?”

“Sort of. I know that Robert’s not the writer of the margin notes. The handwriting is completely different.”

Heath opened the drawer again and pulled out a stack of letters tied in a faded red ribbon. “This is where Dad found the letters from my grandfather—with all of these. They’re letters between my grandparents written during the war.”

Emmy’s eyes widened. “Maggie? You have Maggie’s letters?”

“Apparently. These have been in a box since Hugo, and my dad forgot they were here until he went looking for a writing sample from his dad. He’s glad he did. Feels like it’s an important part of our history that shouldn’t be kept hidden in a box.”