I STARED INTO THE WOMAN’S COLD EYES, SHOCKED AS much by the malevolence I saw there as by her words. It took me a long time to regain enough composure to speak.
“How did you know my mother?”
Elizabeth Shelly didn’t respond. I could feel her assessing me, more than just my appearance, almost as if she could pierce my skin and crawl inside my head—and heart. It was a crazy notion, but I found myself unable to hold her gaze. I brushed imaginary lint from my black trousers and marshaled my forces. When I looked back up, she had turned and moved toward the house.
I gave serious thought to sliding back into the Jaguar, firing it up, and getting the hell out of there. Although the March sun now shone brightly from a nearly cloudless sky, I shivered. But I had come out of curiosity, and Miss Lizzie’s reference to my resemblance to my mother had done nothing to dampen it. Quite the contrary. I checked my watch and followed her to the verandah.
She paused on the warped and weathered boards to wait for me. For a moment, I thought she would continue on into the house, but instead she moved to her right. Past a curtain of bougainvillea vines twining around the columns, I spotted two rockers pulled up to a wicker table where a pitcher of iced tea sweated in the slowly warming afternoon. Without a word, the woman sat.
A moment later, I joined her. I set my bag on the floor, crossed my legs at the ankles, and waited. She took her time pouring the tea, never speaking, and finally pushed the tall tumbler in my direction. I was determined not to initiate the conversation, so I busied myself with adding a couple of lemon slices to my glass from the delicate plate on which they’d been artfully arranged. A crystal sugar bowl sat alongside, the silver spoon polished to a brilliant shine. Such contrasts, I thought, as I glanced through lowered lashes at Elizabeth Shelly. Roughly dressed, she still managed to exude British upper-crust disdain for the commoner, to which class I had undoubtedly been consigned.
“I was almost certain when I encountered you last Saturday,” she said, her voice making me jump in my chair despite the softness of her tone. “Now that I see you in repose, the family resemblance is quite marked.”
I sipped briefly from the glass and set it back on the table. “You chose a strange way to issue an invitation for an afternoon call,” I said, remembering the note she had secreted in my bag. “Nonetheless, here I am. It’s your meeting. Can we get on with it?”
My brusqueness seemed to rattle her for a moment, but she recovered quickly. “It’s not a meeting so much as an interview.”
“An interview? For what? Look, Miss or Mrs. Shelly or whatever your title is—”
“You may call me Elizabeth.” She might have been one of those queens bestowing favors.
“Fine. Elizabeth. I have another appointment, so could you please come to the point?”
She placed her own glass on the cracked wicker table and leaned back in the rocker. “I want to tell you a story.”
“About my mother?”
My interruption annoyed her. “It will go much faster if you allow me to tell it in my own way.”
“Fine,” I said and used the toe of my black loafer to set the rocker into motion. It was taking every ounce of self-control I could muster to maintain the pretense that I was only marginally interested in what she had to say.
“I came to the Lowcountry as a young girl. My father was a ship’s captain. One of his voyages brought him to this area, and he fell in love with the land. Nothing would have it but that he’d settle here. My mother didn’t want to leave England, but he could be very persuasive. I grew up on Edisto Island.”
She paused, and I thought about all the disconnected threads from the past few days that kept leading back to Edisto. I could feel my heart racing, and I had a million questions, but I forced myself simply to nod at her to continue.
“I had a friend, one of those bosom chum sort of things that begins with simple kindness to a stranger in a small, tightly knit community. We were inseparable all through our school years, until she went away to university. My parents had begun a shrimping business soon after arriving, and I helped them.” Her head snapped up as if I’d spoken. “I had the intelligence, but there was no money. I stayed on the island.”
I covered my confusion by sipping more tea. Elizabeth Shelly delivered her story in a flat, no-nonsense tone that dared her listener to feel sorry for her. I waited a moment to see if she expected any comment, but she was already moving on.
“She came back after completing her studies, to use her education to help those on the island. She could have made a good living in Charleston, but she came back to us, and we took up our friendship again.”
Something was niggling at the back of my mind. If I’d had a few minutes of silence, I felt sure I could tease it out, wrap my head around it. But Elizabeth gave me no opportunity.
“She was quite beautiful. Not like you and your mother. Not striking. Softer, more gentle.”
I let the left-handed compliment go.
“She met a young man, a stranger. Charming. Handsome, in an overpowering sort of way. I warned her, but she was besotted.”
I almost smiled. I didn’t think I’d ever heard the word besotted outside of a Jane Austen novel. The overwhelming feeling that somehow I already knew the punch line to this story made my breath catch in my throat.
“Then he left. She was devastated, but eventually she got over it. Over him. And life went on as before.” I watched her face cloud with anger. “But he came back. And my friend fell once again under his spell.”
This time the pause was longer, but she had me now. I waited.
“There was a child,” she whispered, and suddenly I knew.
I opened my mouth to tell her, when a sudden shriek pierced the somnolent afternoon. I whirled at the slam of the screen door behind me. A flash of red plaid and denim blue streaked by me. I caught a glimpse of masses of dark hair streaked with gray as she leaped from the verandah. In the distance, the dogs set up an ear-splitting howl, their voices drowning out Elizabeth’s shouts as she jumped from her chair and set out in pursuit of the fleeing woman.