you made your decision. It’s done. Let it lie.” In Cara’s job she made a thousand decisions a day and never understood how some people could waffle back and forth. But she knew it wasn’t just the indecision that annoyed her. It was the turtles. It was always the turtles. From May till October, every year for as far back as she could remember, her mother’s life had revolved around the loggerheads. And so, by default, had hers and Palmer’s.
“I know, you’re right. I can’t move them now anyway and I’m just fussing.” Her face clouded before she turned toward the door. “Come in. Let me make you that drink.”
One step and Cara was inside the house, floating back in time. Her mother’s was one of the few remaining original beach cottages on the island. It was all cramped and worn, but comfortable. Tongue-in-groove walls and heart pine floors warmed the small rooms that her mother kept immaculate. Lovie’s eye for comfort and charm was evident in the muted, worn, oriental rugs, the ivory-colored walls adorned with family photographs and paintings of the island done by local artists, many of them old friends. Mismatched, plump sofas and chairs clustered in spare but cozy arrangements before a large front window that provided a breathtaking view of the ocean beyond.
The family heirloom antiques were kept at the main house in Charleston, out of harm’s way from hurricanes, children and visitors in swimsuits. Only the “not-so-good” pieces were brought to the beach house. Cara’s friends had always wanted to come to her house to play because her mother never said, “Feet off!” “Careful!” or “Don’t touch!” Icy sweet tea was always in the fridge and sugar cookies in the pantry. Life here at the beach was so different than in the city. In so many ways.
She followed her mother single file through the front room down a narrow hall to the two bedrooms at the end—hers and Palmer’s. As she walked she felt the pressure of memories lurking in the musty walls and darkened corners.
“Your room is made up for you,” Lovie said, opening the bedroom door. A gust of ocean breeze whisked past them into the hall. “Do you want me to close the windows?”
“No, it’s fine. I like them open.” How like her mother not to use the air-conditioning, she thought, inhaling the moist, sweet-scented air that seemed to soften the bones. They stood facing each other.
“There are fresh towels in the bathroom,” Lovie said with a quick gesture.
“Okay.”
“Feel free to use the toiletries. There’s soap and shampoo. A spare toothbrush.”
“I’ve brought my own, but thanks.”
“The hot water’s slow in coming.”
“I remember.”
“Well then,” Lovie said, clasping her hands anxiously. There was a moment’s awkwardness, as though they were strangers. “I’ll just leave you to freshen up.”
“That’d be great.”
Her mother’s hand lingered on the bedroom door and there was such yearning in her face that Cara had to turn away from the bruising intensity.
“Take your time,” Lovie said, closing the door behind her.
The door clicked, and in the resulting privacy, Cara took a deep sigh of relief and dropped her suitcase. It landed with a thud. Round one went pretty well, she thought, considering the ruts they’d avoided. She was exhausted from the long drive and the tension of the duet with her mother brought a worrisome throbbing to her forehead. Rubbing the crick in her neck, she slowly surveyed her old room. Amazingly, it was exactly as she’d left it twenty years earlier. The old black iron double bed covered with a pink crazy quilt filled most of the floor space. Pink-and-white gingham curtains fluttered at the single window over her sturdy pine dresser with the rosy marble top. A narrow door beside the window opened to the screened front porch.
It was a girl’s room, comfy yet spare. Her posters of rock stars had been replaced by paintings of palm trees, but all her old books were still here. She ran her fingers over familiar titles that had carried her through the summers for years: Nancy Drew, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, The Hobbit, Wuthering Heights, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Words that had helped form a young girl’s mind. What books did she need to add to her shelf to help her through this next phase of her life?
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and stopped short, surprised at the reflection. It was a surreal moment, one fragmented by time. Back here in her old room, she half expected to see the skinny, stringy-haired child that had once stared at this mirror with tear-filled eyes. That poor, pitiful girl.
By Southern belle standards, Cara wasn’t considered the beauty her mother was. All Cara’s parts were too big. At five feet ten inches, she was too tall, her body too thin and her chest too flat. Her feet were enormous and her lips too full for her narrow face. And her coloring was all wrong. She used to curse God for His mistake of giving her her father’s tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed genes and Palmer their mother’s small-boned, blond-and-blue-eyed genes.
Lovie, however, adored her daughter’s dark looks and used to call Cara her Little Tern because of her dark, shining eyes and her glistening, black-crested cap. And sometimes, teasingly, she called her a Laughing Gull, another black-headed bird but with a loud, cackling call.
Cara leaned closer to the mirror and brought her hand up to smooth the flesh of her cheeks. All nicknames aside, the South of the sixties and seventies was not an easy place for a skinny, unattractive girl to grow up in. But this ugly duckling grew up to be a dark swan. Cara’s once-mocked gangling looks had matured into what colleagues now referred to as “strikingly attractive” and her previously scorned aggressive intelligence was described as “the appealing confidence of a successful career woman.”
Tonight, however, even those descriptions felt woefully out-of-date. She was neither a child nor a young woman. In her reflection she saw the new fragility of her skin, the fine lines at the eyes and corners of her mouth and the first strands of gray at the temple. She thought with chagrin that she was no longer striking nor successful. Rather, she appeared as tired and sagging as the old beach house.
I’ll just lie down for a minute, she told herself, turning away from the mirror and slipping from her clothes. She left them in a pile on the floor. Wearing only her undies and a T-shirt, she pulled back the covers and stretched out upon the soft mattress, yawning. Just long enough to rest my eyes.
The old linen was crisp, and ocean breezes, balmy and moist, whisked over her bare skin. Her mind slowly drifted and her eyelids grew heavy as she felt herself letting go, bit by bit. The life she’d led mere hours ago seemed as distant from her now as the city of Chicago. As her mind stilled, the quiet deepened further. Outside her window, she listened to the ocean’s steady, rhythmic motion, lulling her to sleep, like the gentle rocking of a mother’s arms.
Her mind floated as helplessly as a piece of driftwood through the turbulence of the past few days’ events that had sent her on this journey. It began on Tuesday morning when her office phone rang and she was invited, without warning, to Mr. David Alexander’s office. Dave was executive vice president of the chopping block. Everyone knew that an invitation to his office was the equivalent of an invitation for a long car ride in the Mafia.
Why didn’t they just shoot her, she’d wondered wildly as she rode the elevator to the thirtieth floor. She was a workaholic mainlining hours of work and she was about to be cut off from her supply. She’d lost a major account,
