We began to walk in earnest and talked now and then about safe topics—the day, the view and so on. She told me about Claudia Kelly, her plastic surgeon friend from Atlanta. This led us to discuss the many sins of the media and how it hyped public opinion that women over forty were finished unless they got a surgical overhaul.
“The number one reason men leave their wives is for a younger woman.”
“How come you know so much about divorce?”
It seemed like the moment to give her some background information on myself, hoping she would feel more comfortable to talk about her disaster.
“I’m an attorney,” I said. “I was a senior partner in the largest matrimonial practice in South Carolina. Until I quit.”
“Oh? Why did you quit?”
I stopped, leaned to put my hands on my knees and breathed deeply. Rebecca stopped too, waiting for me to answer. If I thought I had the right to grill her about her private life, then was she not entitled to the same privilege? I considered it and then decided I would tell her.
“My son died. My husband died two years later. I needed to reorder my life. It was a lot to take. It still is.”
“Oh! My god, Abigail! I am so, so sorry. Can I ask what happened?”
“Sure. My husband went into the hospital for knee replacement surgery. When he was in college, he played football for Carolina and tore up his knees so many times that he had to…Well, we’re all familiar with the agony and the ecstasy and so forth. Anyway, he was too heavy, and while he was under the anesthesia, he had a heart attack. They couldn’t revive him. He was only forty-seven.”
“Good Lord! That’s awful! And your son?”
“Car accident. He was twenty. That’s the worst. Yeah. Ashley was just twenty. My beautiful boy. My only child.”
I choked up and struggled to regain my composure. Rebecca didn’t know what to say. What could she say? Only what everyone usually managed to sputter…
“Oh, Abigail! I am so sorry!”
“Yeah, well, thanks. That’s the story. I can’t stand around and see people I like be taken advantage of. It’s my perpetual lawyer gene or something. I’d give anything to have my husband and son back. Anything. So I’m thinking that if I can’t have mine, maybe I can at least see if it’s possible to do something about what’s happened to you. That’s why I have been asking so many questions, I guess. Besides that, I guess Huey and I probably are a couple of busybodies.”
I started walking again. Rebecca followed, working to keep up pace. I took a number of deep breaths. I hated to talk about Ashley. If I just kept the story to myself, if I didn’t say the words, then maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe it had not all really happened. Maybe Ashley was home with John, watching a ball game. Maybe I was just on vacation at Pawleys for a few weeks or months, in some kind of limbo that would keep me from the reality of my horror. Stolen lives. Death. So final and unbelievable that it was impossible to accept. If I didn’t look at it, think about it, talk about it…I could stay sane. I worried that if I lingered around it too much, I might be in danger of something happening to me. Something just as final, to relieve my pain.
Over the last three years, there had been so many winter nights at Pawleys when, surrounded by darkened houses, I would go to the dunes in my bathrobe, stand under the milky moon, under the wild stark sky of deep night, and scream like an animal until my throat was raw. There was no one to hear me over the roar of the waves and no one to stop me. I had begged God to help me, with no response. I begged night after night until I came to understand that what had been taken from me was permanent and there was nothing to be done about it.
It was my therapy. If the remembering in the day was too hard, I could promise myself the reward of a night of releasing screams. I finally realized that it was how I spent the rest of my life that mattered now. You can’t bring back the dead—unless it’s Alice Flagg. The days and nights that numbered the rest of my life were laid out before me like steppingstones, a path to where? More sorrow? It didn’t matter I had to just keep going. All those realizations put on a plate in front of me to inspect, and I believed they were true, I still carried unbearable sorrow. Truth did not heal, and to date, neither did time.
Rebecca had been done a bad turn but at least her family was still alive.
So I walked on, my pace harder and my feet sinking deeper with each step. My breathing was uneven, and I knew I was on the edge of falling apart in broad daylight, right there on the beach. If I did, there was no reason for her to have any faith in me or my ability to help. I felt her hand on my arm and I slowed down and stopped, looking down at my sneakers. One of them was untied and I knelt to retie it.
“Abigail?”
“What?”
“I don’t think you’re a busybody. Or Huey.”
“Thanks.”
The ocean was at half tide and rising. Soon there would not be enough beach for us to walk. If I didn’t move, my running shoes would be soaked in salt water by the small but threatening waves that raced ahead of the tide. Warnings. I had ignored too many all my life. I stood to face Rebecca.
“Let’s go get Huey his Cokes and sausage biscuits.”
“Okay.”
I knew she thought I was a little manic. First, I had called to see if she wanted a walking buddy, and within minutes of beginning that walk I had begun to skirt that dangerous part of my psyche. My mood changed so dramatically that I frightened myself. It was time to put my monsters back in their closet. No one wanted to see them.
I waited while she changed clothes, and then she followed me to Sam’s Corner. I ordered six bottled Cokes and four sausage biscuits—one for her, two for Huey and one for myself.
I followed her to the gallery. Just the short distance from the car to inside where Huey waited was enough to break a sweat. In the span of time it took us to drive from the beach to Huey’s, the temperature and humidity climbed so much that the thick air was wet like a sauna. If I had known the name of the person who invented air-conditioning, I would have sent the genius the most outrageous and spectacular orchid in captivity.
“Huey? Breakfast is here!”
“Bless you! How are we this gloriously tropical morn?”
“Practically growing moss under my fingernails,” I said. “Other than that, I’m great.” I opened the bag and Huey opened the Cokes.
“Morning, Huey,” Rebecca said.
“Morning, sweetheart.” He handed her a Coke, and she said, “No, thanks. Refined sugar. But thanks.”
Huey clutched his heart and gasped. “Mah dee-ah! Surely you are merely lacking in understanding of what food of the Gods truly means! Besides, you’re too skinny.”
“I even got one for myself,” I said when I saw Rebecca’s face pleading for a bailout. “Eat.”
“Oh, fine,” Rebecca said. “Fine.”
Rebecca ate in silence, picking up errant crumbs with the tip of her unmanicured fingers and depositing them back on the waxed-paper wrappers. Huey and I chatted about the inane—how delicious dinner had been the previous night, how well Miss Olivia seemed and once again about how successful the opening had been. I watched Rebecca from the corner of my eye. She was having trouble swallowing, but then that had always been the problem with biscuits and sausage. Thick, hot, crusted dough and a greasy, tough sausage patty—delicious, but a difficult combination to work through, even when life was perfect. Poor Rebecca, I thought as Huey went on and on about the daily grind of running a chic art gallery. She took a sip of her Coke, and Huey stopped her.
“Rebecca? Co-Colas are intended to be chugged, not sipped like Madeira. Ah, Lord! When I was a young rascal, my father would pile me in the car and take me to Marlow’s store. Now it’s Frank’s Restaurant. And in those days, it was really something. Marlow’s had a great red cooler filled with freezing-cold bottles, all hung inside by their necks, like the doomed, on this little metal track. The bottom of the cooler was filled with ice water. Anyway, Mr. Marlow would say to my father, I see you
’ve come for your Coke! He would push back the top, slide two bottles along the track, liberate them and pop the tops with the church key he kept attached to the cooler with a piece of string. My daddy would throw back his head and drain the Coke without a breath.”
“Chugging anything is considered an art form by most Southern gentlemen,” I said.
Rebecca giggled and continued picking up bits of crust and biscuit. Then she wiped her hands, picked up her bottle and took two large swigs. “Satisfied?” she said.
“It’s a start,” I said. “Frankly, except for these early-morning chugalug fests, I usually have mine in a glass over ice. My mother would roll over in her grave if she could see me consume anything straight from a bottle. Historically, Southern ladies don’t do this kind of thing.”
“Well, Miss Abigail, I’ll have you know that this little bottle has more than a footnote in history. Did you know it was invented in 1915? It was made this way for several seriously artistic reasons. First, the grooves on the sides are supposed to resemble a cacao pod. And its color…”
“Get comfortable, honey,” I said to Rebecca, well within Huey’s hearing. “His sermons can go on for days.”
“Shush!” Huey said, mildly irritated. “Its color was meant to enhance the brownish liquid to make it appear black like coffee, thereby broadening the market appeal to adults and children alike.”
“Most days I prefer an espresso,” I said, “but when it’s this hot…”
“It becomes the perfect coffee substitute!” Huey said, beaming. “I must say, though, there is no substitute for how the bottle feels. I mean, seriously, ladies, would you prefer this lovely little perfectly balanced jewel against your lips, or one of those nasty ragged plastic bottles?”
“Well, that is a good poi—”
“It’s rhetorical, dear,” I said to Rebecca and rolled my eyes. Honestly! Sometimes she was exasperating. All that naivete? “Yes, Huey darling, it’s like drinking from Stueben.”
“Oh, go kiss a goat’s fanny,” Huey said. He blushed and turned to Rebecca. “Forgive me, Rebecca, but sometimes our Miss Thurmond gets up on the wrong side of her duvet.”
“Sorry.”
Huey puffed himself up. “That’s not the issue. The issue is chicken walking.”
“What? What’s that?” Rebecca was mystified once more.
One more puff and he said, “Chicken walking is what hens do in a chicken yard—they peck around and around. That’s what we’re doing here. I’ve known Abigail Thurmond long enough to know when she’s upset. So, before the entire morning slips into the hands of the Lily Pulitzered decorators searching for the perfect painting to match a divine blue and yellow plaid couch, may we please—just us three—may we have a word about Rebecca’s situation?”
“What is there to say?” Rebecca said, shifting her weight and wrapping her arms around herself.
“I could make a phone call,” I said, wondering again if I really wanted to get involved, much in the same way a diver changes his mind in a midair jackknife.
“What possible good could a phone call do?” Rebecca said.
I drained my Coke and put it on the counter. “Huey? I sure could go for another one of these. Why don’t you be a sweetheart and go back to Sam’s. Buy every cold one they’ve got. Rebecca and I can watch the store and then we can chat alone—attorney/client privilege, right?”
Huey raised himself from the bar stool where we all sat in the framing area and made one of his campy departure speechettes.
“You are quite correct,” Huey said. “The fine details are none of my beeswax. It’s blazing hot and it’s best to keep consuming liquids. I shall return in two shakes of a lamb’s tail with enough hydration to fortify us for the day!”
We watched Huey leave and shook our heads, smiling at each other as the door closed behind him. Huey’s dramatic craziness was crazy-like-a-fox craziness. He had seen Rebecca flinch when I offered to make the phone call. So had I. I hadn’t even said who it was I intended to contact, or what they did. Still, she had gripped her hands on her bare arms so tightly that white spots immediately appeared where her fingers pressed her flesh.
But Huey and I had made careers from dealing with people. His typical client was a little insecure about the art world and just wanted to be sure they were investing their money wisely. My clients ran the entire gamut. In any case, Huey knew that if he lightened the mood, ducked out for a moment and left Rebecca in my hands, I would begin the process gently, letting Rebecca set the pace. I would not prod her any further than she wanted to go. On a curious note, this was a first for me. Usually the client sought me out. Here I was practically soliciting her business.
“So? Who are you thinking of calling?” she said. “Here, give me that.”
She took the wrappers and napkins, put them all in the bag to toss away, squirted the counter with Windex and began wiping up the nonexistent remains with nervous anticipation of what I was about to suggest.
“Sherlock Holmes,” I said.
“Be serious.”
“I used to know a guy who’s a PI—private investigator—who’s a regular Sherlock Holmes. I used him all the time. He owes me one. Actually, he owes me a lot. He’s fabulous.”
“What would he do?”
“Follow your estranged husband around for a few days, take pictures if there’s anything interesting going on, then report back to me. If there’s something fishy, you’ll know it. You can do what you want with the information. You can turn the tables on your rat, Nat.”
“What if he gets caught? What if Nat shoots him? Nat carries a handgun.”
“Nice of you to mention that.” Jesus, I thought, what else has she got up her sleeve? “Look, Everett Presson can handle himself. If he gets caught, he knows what to do. But just so you know, he’s never been caught.”
“I don’t know…I can’t imagine Nat is up to something like another woman or something. I mean, he’s just not like that.”
“Yeah, that’s what Jack Welch’s wife said, and Hillary Clinton, and Ivana Trump—honey, it’s a long list. You don’t think men cat around?”
“No. No, I know they do, it’s just that I would’ve known it. At least I think I would have.” Her voice trailed off as she began searching her memory.
“Sure.”
Rebecca took a deep breath. I could read her mind. She didn’t want to know what was really happening and she wanted to know what was happening. In a way, I didn’t blame her.
“Go ahead then. Call your friend, this Everett Presson person, this private whatever he is. Is he going to charge us a lot of money?”
“Zero. I told you. He owes me.”
“Okay. Abigail? Thanks. I mean, I appreciate your advice. Maybe you’re right, I don’t know. It’s just that—well, let’s not talk about this anymore unless something turns up, okay?”
I understood. Constant facing of the demon that’s eating you alive is just too much to bear. Especially when the demon might be you.
SIX
DIGGING THE DIRT
IT was six in the morning, and once again I was staring at the ceiling fan. There was too much I didn’t know about Rebecca’s husband, and the more I thought about it, I knew I had to talk to Rebecca again before I unleashed Everett Presson to her husband’s shadows. Like, for starters, I didn’t even know what the lout did for a living. We’d had the chat at Huey’s, and the moment he returned I’d left for a hair appointment. That just goes to show how reluctant I was to immerse myself in this.
I kicked back the bedcovers, washed my face and made coffee, taking it out to the porch to watch the ocean for a while. I settled myself in one of the Kennedy rockers and rocked. I wondered what could make a woman so passive, so meek that she wouldn’t fight back when something like this happened to her. It didn’t quite add up in my book, but then I wasn’t Rebecca. I would have killed anyone with my bare hands who tried to touch my son, much less take him away from me. But I had never had the chance for that figh
t, and I had lost him anyway.
I got up to refill my cup, stopped at the porch rail and looked out at the horizon. When the world was so filled with trouble, how could the day be this magnificent, this stunningly beautiful? Everything before me was so perfect it could have been the location for an ad for the department of tourism. The soft dunes were so fragile, one after another, springing plumages of feathered sea oats from the crowns of their heads. Buttercups, black-eyed susans and clumps of yellow-green grasses crept around the bottoms of them, happy to live on droplets of water during dry spells and growing rampant after heavy rains.
Beyond them, for as far as I could see, was the sparkling water of the Atlantic—another day dawning, birds repeating the hunt for food today as they surely would tomorrow. Everything about the birds and the plants was designed not only for their survival but for them to thrive. Maybe that was one reason I loved Pawleys Island so much. Eternity seemed to be in sight but slightly out of my grasp. Maybe it was the challenge to bring them together that convinced me Pawleys was the only place where my imagination and my soul could live in sync with nature’s plan.
I wondered what Rebecca’s real story was. Battered women—whether it was physical or emotional or both—sometimes they believed they deserved the punishment. But what woman could believe she deserved to lose her children?
I refilled my mug, found a little pad of paper and a pen and decided to stroll down the beach, making a list of questions for Rebecca. The first thing Everett would want to know was where to find Nat. I needed the address of his office, their home, his usual haunts and so forth. If she could give me his license plate number, that would be helpful. I could already envision her giving me the information but with reluctance. She didn’t seem frightened of Nat. It wasn’t that. The more I thought about it, her complacency made no sense. In fact, it seemed slightly grotesque. But I decided that my own experience was coloring my judgment and that I had to wait until the facts came in.