The weeks went by quickly as Julia secured the venue for the wedding and reception, strategized her department chair bid, organized her fall classes, and packed for her Budapest summer. Her passport was renewed. She ordered the supplies she’d need to paint and had them shipped ahead of her to the apartment she rented from a professor there. She bought a new Nikon camera that cost her nearly half of her monthly paycheck.
Bess and the kids had packed up and headed for the Hamptons for the summer and Graham joined them on the weekends. Bess was going to handle any of the other imminent wedding arrangements that came up during the summer. And she was going to track down the perfect little flower girl dress for Chloe, the only other member of the wedding party beyond the matron of honor (Bess) and the best men (Simon’s two sons, Philip and Colin). Simon was off to England for Philip’s graduation from Eton. He’d meet Julia in Budapest in two weeks for their romantic getaway to Istanbul.
Every now and then the idea of Marney and the cancer growing in her lungs surfaced in Julia’s mind, but the fact that no one else had called her about it made her sure someone had stepped up to the plate.
She prayed as she still did from time to time when the world around her stopped and she felt alone and yet not alone. Her prayers were quick and one-sided, not like the ones she used to have in her mother’s sunflower garden after Aunt Dot told her that God sometimes talked back if you were willing to hear beyond audible words. She prayed Marney would fully recover—it was a selfish prayer, of course. She prayed it because she didn’t want anything to tie her to the woman and her family. She wanted to go her whole life without having to face Marney or her half siblings.
THE DAY JULIA WAS HEADED TO THE AIRPORT, SHE couldn’t find her passport. She had tucked it away in a safe, obvious spot, only she couldn’t remember where. It finally appeared in the zipper of the old brown leather jacket she always wore on flights because it was light and smooth as butter and made a wonderful pillow when rolled up tightly. She made it to LaGuardia with hours to spare, got her boarding pass, and was standing in the line of the international flights terminal when an unrecognizable number with a Charleston area code flashed on her screen. With time to kill and a concern that it could be her mother calling from work battling her old anxiety about Julia flying, she answered it.
“Juuuul-yah.”
“Aunt Dot?” she said. The old woman’s voice sounded faint and a good deal frailer than it had a few weeks ago. “Are you all right?”
“If you count being carted to the hospital with a fractured hip as all right, I guess I’m dandy.”
“What?”
“I slipped and fell in the bathroom at Marney’s last night and now I’m at Roper Hospital awaiting surgery. Going to get that hip replacement a little sooner than I expected.”
“Oh no. I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. Marney just had her operation two days ago and she’s hardly even coherent according to Dr. Young, her surgeon. Anyway, I had to get your daddy’s old friend Skeeter to come watch the kids while they hauled me off in an ambulance, but he can only stay until sundown because he still works nights as a flounder gigging guide, so if you can’t hop on an airplane and get down here, I’m going to have to call Mary Ellen and ask her to take off some time from work and help.”
“My mother?”
Aunt Dot clucked her tongue. “Yes. I’m out of options, Julia.”
Now Julia’s heart pounded like an angry fist in her chest. Her mother hadn’t been out to Edisto in eons. Could she even withstand a trip to that house with her husband’s second family and all of the old memories? She’d been doing so much better.
“But Meg.”
“Meg’s not an option. She just isn’t. You have to trust me there.”
Julia exhaled slowly. She was starting to see spots, and she blinked hard as a man behind her cleared his throat dramatically, indicating that the line was moving forward and she needed to keep up.
She turned back to the man, gave him a grumpy look, and hauled her suitcase and carry-on bag forward as she balanced her cell phone between her shoulder and her ear.
“Julia. You know what you need to do, don’t you?” Aunt Dot said as Julia came to a halt behind the woman in front of her.
Julia bit her lip as she watched the woman in front of her take off her boots and tuck them beneath her arm as the muffled security guard called through a crackly megaphone, “Take out all liquids and place them in a separate scanning container.”
There was a pregnant silence on the other end of the line. Julia knew Aunt Dot was still there, waiting for a response. She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. She pictured her mama driving out to Edisto, holding back the dread and the fear of facing the loss she’d worked years to put behind her. Plus, there was the reality. Her mother’s employers were kind but demanding, and how would they feel about her suddenly taking off a week or two to look after her husband’s children? Yes, Julia’s mother needed that job for the extra financial security, but more importantly, she needed it for the steady routine, for a sense of being useful, and for playing a role outside of the hundred-year-old walls and slanted hardwood floors of 10 Savage Street. Could Julia stand herself if she was hopping around Budapest painting the banks of the Danube with her mother’s emotional state and work life falling apart back in the States?
“I’m on my way home,” Julia said, surprising herself.
“Good girl,” Aunt Dot said. “I knew you would be.” And the old woman hung up the phone.
NOW JULIA STEPPED OUT OF THE LINE AND ROLLED her luggage down the corridor and back to the ticket counters for domestic flights. She walked over to the Delta counter. “I need a ticket to Charleston, South Carolina.”
As the woman’s long, silver manicured nails clicked on the keyboard, searching for direct flights to the low country, Julia texted Simon. I know it’s crazy, but I’m going home.
BY EIGHT P.M. JULIA TURNED OFF OF HIGHWAY 17 ONTO Highway 174 in a small red rental car. 174 was an old two-lane highway that led to the bridge that connected the mainland to Edisto Island. She hadn’t traveled this road in a long, long time and she was shocked by its lack of change—a church every couple of miles, trailers set on cinder blocks, rusted mailboxes leaning this way and that, an old barn nearly swallowed by kudzu. An unexpected lump formed in her throat as she drove over the tall bridge that connected the mainland to Edisto. The sun was beginning to set, and the way it glistened on the river and the green marsh and the mud banks was shockingly picturesque.
She knew she was not prepared to face her old home and her half siblings, but she didn’t realize the visceral assault that the beauty of the South Carolina coast could have on her. It was heart wrenching not only because it was scenic but because she was only now realizing how much she had longed for it.
She couldn’t deny it at this moment as she hit the crest of the bridge—she had missed the magical, soulful home of her childhood, her happy childhood, the setting where she’d hooked her first spot-tail bass, thrown a cast net, driven a johnboat, pulled a seine, caught a blue crab, harvested vegetables, fired a rifle, kissed a boy, and painted a sunset. She rolled down the window and breathed in the smell of pluff mud and the salty air thick as a wool blanket. She blinked back tears. It was almost too much to take.
Lord, have mercy, she said to herself. And then, Get a grip, Julia. Get a grip. The phone in the pocket of her leather jacket vibrated and she answered.
“Julia, what is going on?”
It was the first time she’d heard from Simon since she’d texted him back at LaGuardia.
She found her voice beyond the lump in her throat just as her car touched down from the bridge. “I’m on Edisto Island.”
“Are you insane?” His voice was slurred and high pitched. It was one in the morning there and he must have been out celebrating his son’s graduation or carousing with old Eton friends.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m insane. I don’t know what I’m doing, but my aunt was keeping the kids and then she fell and broke her hip. It was either me or my mother, and I couldn’t let my mother shoulder this, could I, Simon?”
He cursed under his breath. Then he inhaled slowly, surely taking a drag of the cigarette he relished every time he went back home. She had never actually seen him smoke.
“I’m sure it will just be for a couple of days. A week at the most. Until I can find someone to take over.”
“Our trip to Istanbul is in thirteen days.”
“I’ll make it,” she said.
She could imagine him shaking his head in disbelief and annoyance. “I really can’t believe you’re walking directly into this backwoods nightmare. Don’t expect to come out of this without scars.”
Her heart raced with dread and she thought about how to respond. You’re probably right, she wanted to say, then she realized she no longer had service and Simon was suddenly an ocean away and would be until she drove back over the bridge to call him again.
The road darkened as the sun quickly set, shooting dusty beams of soft white light through the live oak trees, the Spanish moss, and the scrub palmettos. The oaks formed a tunnel over the old road like an open mouth that was growing darker by the moment, swallowing her and her little rental car whole. She passed an abandoned gas station, a tomato farm, the old Presbyterian church, and then a field with a burning trash heap. How strange it was to see smoke rising and not feel the need to call 911.
After she passed the Old Post Office restaurant and then Store Creek, she turned onto Peters Point Creek Road, and the road narrowed further. She passed Cousin Bertram’s house, the Seabrooks, the Reids, the Quattlebaums, the Belsers, the Walters, Red House Road. Finally, toward the end of the gravel drive she saw the old mailbox she and her father had secured into the ground when she was eight or nine years old. She had stuck the glossy silver stickers with the numbers on herself and the letters that went down the stake that held the mailbox. BENNETT.
As she pulled into the driveway, a girl in a long, white nightgown and bright red rain boots ducked back into the pine trees beyond the long dirt drive. She rolled down the window to speak, but the girl was hiding and she didn’t want to force her out. These kids were probably as nervous about getting to know her as she was them. Then again, maybe they had no idea she was coming.
She pulled on down the road. It was dark now, and the mist from the cooling earth was lifting itself up in eerie ribbons she sliced through with the nose of her car. Eventually she saw the house set several yards back from the salt marsh creek with its rickety old dock and the plastic molded owl—meant to keep pesky gulls and varmints from congregating—still at the top of its post.
She parked the car next to an ancient Ford pickup truck that must be Skeeter’s. She took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding, but she was too tired to get all worked up. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.
“Well, lookey here.” Julia heard the screech of a screened door in need of WD-40 and then spotted Skeeter in the back doorway with a little boy with tufts of blond hair and huge brown eyes eyeing her suspiciously. The boy shimmied out from behind Skeeter’s leg and darted toward the north side of the house, shooting Julia as he went with some sort of imaginary gun.
“Warm welcome,” she muttered.
“Julia Bennett.” Skeeter hobbled over to her car with his cane and spread his arms wide. “Haven’t seen you since Charlie’s funeral, and even then you were gone before I had a chance to get a good look atcha.”
She inhaled. Skeeter smelled like he had when she was a child. Like the earth and like a slow-roasted hog. He had a toothpick in his mouth. His skin was leathery, a well-worn hide. He’d slimmed down a good bit and had more of a forward lean than she’d remembered, as if his shoulders were just too heavy to hold him upright anymore.
He must have been in his early seventies by now and looked too frail to guide a flounder gigging expedition. But then again, her father had always said he was one of the best fishermen around.
“Get over here, son,” Skeeter said when the boy peered around the house and aimed for Julia’s chest.
Charlie sauntered over. “This here is Julia. Your daddy’s eldest. Now, reach out your hand like Dot taught you.”
“How do you do?” The boy was stunning. Even more so than the vista over the bridge. He had long dark lashes and a little birthmark on his right cheek as if a sculptor had seen fit to give him one little smudge so he could appear believable. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you.” Her voice was hoarse. How could a boy be so striking? Looking at him was a kind of torture.
A light lit up the porch and in seconds two moths were encircling it. There was a girl, maybe eleven or twelve, standing there. She was the spitting image of her mother when she’d been young and healthy. Thick mane of hair, full lips, and sharp, deep-blue eyes. The girl blinked slowly. She appeared to be biting the inside of her cheek.
Julia had met the girl briefly at her father’s funeral, but she reached out her hand. “I’m Julia,” she said. “And you are Heath, the oldest, right?”
The girl nodded and cautiously extended her hand. Julia had to take a few more steps to meet it.
Then Heath raised her head and looked out at the woods behind the house where a twig had snapped. Julia followed her gaze. She didn’t see the girl she had seen when she drove in, but she knew she was out there. Etta was her name. The middle one. She turned back to Heath and their eyes locked.
“Are you the enemy?” The question came from Charlie, but it was the same one that was written all over Heath’s face.
“Enemy?” Skeeter laughed and slapped his thin thigh. He bent down to look Charlie in the eye. “She’s not the enemy. She’s a relative, boy. And you better be good ’cause she’s going to be taking care of you for the next few weeks until your mama gets back.”
Julia’s eyes widened. Oh no, no, no, she wanted to say. I’m not here for a few weeks. I’m here for a few days until I can beg, borrow, or hire someone to take care of these kids.
Charlie was narrowing his eyes toward Julia, and she could practically feel Heath’s gaze boring a hole through her skull. She thought she’d better be quiet for now.
“Well.” Skeeter patted her shoulder and ambled back toward the screened door as Heath stepped back into the shadows. “Let me show you around, and then I have to scoot. C’mon, Julia.”