the years.
She turned to walk up the beach toward three lots that remained vacant on this stretch of valuable real estate and climbed the small dune. Beyond the lots she could see her beach house perched on a distant dune like a tiny island, nearly obscured from view by a row of gangly oleanders. Its once vibrant yellow color was stripped by sunshine and leached into the gala of yellow primroses that grew wild over the dunes. All the angles, corners and quaint panes of glass of the cottage were dear to her. Primrose Cottage was more than a beach house. It was a touchstone. A place of sunshine and happiness, for her and for her children.
Lovie stood alone gazing toward the west. The day’s light extinguished and the night grew dark and silent save for the clicking of the swaying sea oats and the gentle lapping of waves along the shore. As ghosts of the past rose up to swirl in the hallucinatory colors of twilight, she sighed deeply, clasping her hands tight in front of her as one in prayer. She was nearly seventy years old. There was no time left for regret or misgivings, no time for dreams of what might have been. There were plans to be made. The beach house—and all the secrets it held—had to be placed in secure hands. Too much had been sacrificed for too many years to let the secrets slip out now. Too many reputations were at stake.
She had but one hope.
“Lord,” she prayed, her voice raspy in her tight throat. “I’m not here to complain. You know me better than that after all this time. But the Bible says You never close a door without opening a window. So I’m praying for You to open the window. You know how things are between Cara and me. It will probably take a miracle to make peace. But You’re famous for those, so I’m hopeful. Please, Lord, that’s all I’m asking for. Not more time. I’d go willingly if I knew things were settled here before I left.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m going whether it’s willingly or not—I know that, too.” Her smile fell as she grimaced in pain. “Please, Lord, answer this one small prayer. Not just for me, but for Cara. Help me play with my child once more before I die. Bring my Cara home.”
After living at sea for twenty years or more, the female loggerhead returns to the beach of her birth to nest. She travels hundreds of miles through the Atlantic, her three-hundred-pound, reddish-brown carapace filled with hundreds of fertile eggs.
CHAPTER ONE
C ara had begun this long journey home many times in her mind over the years, but always there was some project, some appointment, some emotional obstacle of her own construction that stopped her.
Road weary and life tired, Cara was traveling the path of least resistance as she headed south across the flat expanse of the old cotton country known as the coastal plains. It had been over twenty years since she’d driven this long stretch of South Carolina highway toward the sea. Growing up, she’d always considered it someplace to drive through on her way to somewhere else. Anywhere else.
She passed vanishing woodlands and acres of farmland for sale, huge, flat-roofed warehouses and sun-faded billboards heralding exits for boiled peanuts, tree-ripened peaches, stock car racing and fireworks. It was late May. Spring was already giving way to sizzling summer in the South. Elderberry bushes rambled along the roadsides, and beyond in the pinewoods, Cara knew the coral beans were aflame and swamp roses decorated the banks like some wild hothouse garden.
The thought that the sea turtles were returning home to nest sprang to mind. She laughed out loud at the irony.
If someone had told her a year ago that the following May she would be driving to Charleston for an extended visit with her mother, Cara would have tossed back her head and laughed in that throaty manner of hers. “Impossible,” she would have told them, the smile slipping from her face and a flash sparking in her eyes. First of all, her schedule would never have allowed it. Every minute of her day was double booked. At best, in an emergency, she might fly in for an overnight stop, as she had for her father’s funeral. Secondly, there was nowhere on earth she’d least want to visit than Charleston. And no person less than her mother. The current status of a polite truce had worked well for them both over the past years of her self-imposed exile.
But, as always, Mama’s timing was impeccable. Where else would one go but home when there was nowhere else to go?
Cara tightened her grip on the steering wheel. How could her orderly life have careened so far out of control? How did it happen that, after twenty-two years of living independently, after a successful career, after complete and utter self-sufficiency, she found herself back on this damnable stretch of road limping back home?
It was her mother’s letter that had lured her. The day before, Lovie had sent the customary flowers for Cara’s birthday. As Cara gingerly unwrapped the purple florist tissue, the heady scent of the gardenias permeated her apartment. Instantly, Cara was back in her mother’s walled garden in Charleston where an ancient magnolia spread its broad glossy leaves and the white, heavily scented flowers of the gardenias competed with the climbing jasmine. She’d opened the letter from her mother and read her familiar, feathery script.
,!
Happy Birthday Dear Caretta!
I never smell gardenias without thinking of you.
Things have been in a state of flux since your father’s death. Now it is time for me to, shall we say, put my house in order. Come home, Cara, just for a while. Not to the house on Tradd Street. Come to the beach house. We’ve always had the best times there, haven’t we?
Please don’t say that you are too busy or that you can’t get away. Remember how we used to say “Take charge of your birthday”? Can’t you grant yourself this one gift of time and spend a few days with your ancient mother? Please come home, Cara dear. Soon. Your father is gone and we need to sort through years of accumulation.
Love,
Mama
Perhaps it was the scent of the gardenias that prompted the sudden loneliness, or simply that someone had remembered her birthday. Or perhaps it was her desolation at having just lost her job. But for the first time since leaving her embrace at eighteen, Cara felt a sudden, desperate longing for her mother.
She wanted to go home. Home to the Lowcountry, where once she had been happy.
Cara crossed the Ashley and the Wando rivers, took a final turn off the highway, then sped over a new, graceful arch of roadway that connected the mainland to the small barrier island called Isle of Palms. The vista yawned open before her, revealing a breathtaking view of endless blue sky and watery, greening marsh stretched out as far as she could see. She felt her mind ease as she took in the wide-open space. The hustle and honking of the crowded roads felt a world behind her. Ahead, cutting a wide, blue path through the waving grasses, was the sparkling Intracoastal Waterway and parallel to it, the smaller Hamlin Creek lined with docks, one after another, most with a boat at moor. She reached the peak of the arch.
Suddenly, looming straight ahead, like a magnificent yet serene beast, lay the vast, glistening expanse of blue that was the Atlantic Ocean. It was a living thing, pulsating power beneath the quiescent surface. Her breath caught, her body shivered and in that soul-striking instant, Cara knew that saltwater still ran thick in her veins.
She was back on the Isle of Palms. Even the name was soft on the tongue and evoked images of waving palm trees and tranquil, sunny afternoons by the rolling surf. For a hundred years, the Isle of Palms was a place the folks of Charleston and Columbia escaped to when the summers got too beastly hot. They took the ferryboat over to camp in the
