I love Sundays! The library’s closed and I have nothing to do all day except relax, read, and indulge myself. I slept late and then enjoyed a long, luxurious morning in bed with coffee, a toasted bagel laden with cream cheese, smoked salmon, and capers and my book. I pushed aside the internal voice telling me to be a good daughter and call my mom. Mom, I reminded myself, was more than capable of entertaining herself. The storm Connor had predicted had not arrived; instead sunlight poured through my window. The book I’d been afraid of in the quiet and the dark was nothing but a good, satisfying read in the warmth of a sunny day.
Josie didn’t often take a day off, so I’d been pleased when she contacted me yesterday to suggest we go to the beach. I struggled out of bed at eleven and threw my beach things together. I was ready and waiting when Josie arrived to pick me up. I was happy to see that our friend Grace was with her.
It being a Sunday in July, the beach was busy, but it never gets too crowded and we found a quiet spot to lay out our towels. Grace pounded an umbrella into the sand. Then the three of us stripped off shorts and T-shirts, kicked our flip-flops into the air, and ran, screeching with delight, into the waves. When we came out of the water, Josie and I arranged our towels in the sun. Grace, her Irish ancestry plainly written in her red hair, freckles, and pale skin, crawled into the shade of the umbrella. Grace opened the cooler and pulled out bottles of tea, bags of chips, and sandwiches from Josie’s Cozy Bakery.
“It’s nice,” I said, selecting a ham and cheese on a croissant, “that you could take the day off.” I dug my toes into the sand and my teeth into the sandwich. It had been made yesterday but was still delicious.
“I’m trying to tell myself that I can’t be at the shop all the time,” Josie said. “Not if I want some kind of a life. Not if I’m ever going to have kids. But it’s tough to let someone else take over. I guess I’m a control freak.”
“The Wyatt women are.”
My cousin smiled at me. “Some of us are. Not you, though.”
“These days, I’m incapable of having control over my own life. Speaking of kids, any news on the wedding front?”
“Ha!” Grace shouted.
“If there is, you two will be the first to know,” Josie said. “Between Jake’s new restaurant and the bakery, I don’t know that we can even find a day when we’re both free so we can have a wedding.”
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“It’s all good. You know me—I like to grumble.”
“You can say that again,” Grace said. She wiped her hands on a napkin, arranged her towel under her head, lay back, and closed her eyes.
“No comments from the peanut gallery,” Josie said. “Despite the occasional grumble, we’re happy, Jake and me. We’re making our life our way. We’re chasing our dreams, and we know some sacrifices have to be made. The bakery’s booming, the restaurant’s getting great reviews, and business has been good. We’re concentrating on making money now, and in the winter we’ll have time to sit back and make long-term plans.”
North Carolina is too far north to be a year-round beach destination, and the tourist trade dries up over the winter months. A welcome break for some, but it can be hard to make a year-round living.
“Have you put Grandma’s Dream Cake on the menu yet?” I asked, as I popped the last piece of my sandwich into my mouth.
“Yes, and it’s been a huge success. We sold out yesterday, or I would have brought some leftovers. I have triple-chocolate brownies, though. Want one?” She started to get up.
“Sit down,” I ordered. “I’m perfectly capable of getting myself a brownie. You do need to stop working sometimes.”
She laughed. “So my mother keeps telling me.” She dug in her bag for her book. I wasn’t at all surprised to see that it was a cookbook: Baking with Chocolate. Yum. I forced myself to remain where I was. No triple-chocolate brownies for me.
Maybe one wouldn’t hurt.
I crawled across the hot sand to the shelter of the umbrella and dug in the cooler. Grace rolled over. She was sound asleep. “Want one?” I asked my cousin.
“No, thanks.”
Too lazy to stand up, I sort of crab-crawled back to my towel on one arm, holding the rich dessert aloft.
When it was finished, I lay back. I’d slathered myself with sunscreen, and now I pulled a Red Sox ball cap down over my eyes. I started to drift off.
I sat up. “Josie?”
“Yes?”
“Does your mother ever talk about when she was young? In high school, say?”
“Once in a while. She’s still friends with some of the girls she knew back then. The high school had a big reunion last year for its fiftieth anniversary. Mom was disappointed that your mom didn’t come.”
“She wouldn’t. She’s not exactly proud of her Outer Banks childhood.”
“Her loss,” Josie said. I agreed with her. The Outer Banks back in the sixties and seventies must have been a wonderful place to grow up, and my grandparents hadn’t exactly been poor. Just solid, respectable, hardworking people. “Why are you asking, sweetie?”
“I don’t even know if I know. Mom didn’t kill Karen. She hadn’t seen Karen for more than thirty years until this week, and then the next day jewels are stolen, Karen’s killed, and Mom’s accused of both those things? I’m thinking that whatever did happen might have roots in their past. Did your mother ever say anything about any trouble my mom was in when they were young?”
Josie lowered her sunglasses. She focused her intense cornflower blue eyes on me. “You’re thinking about that necklace, right? The one that was stolen and found in your mother’s possession.”
“Not in her possession, in her bag. Where anyone could have put it.”
“Everyone who was at the library that night was questioned by the police. Sam Watson came to the bakery the day you found Karen, not long after you left. I told him what I knew, which wasn’t much. Another detective came around later to ask me about your mom’s bag. Questions like, if I’d seen anyone paying attention to it, moving it, that sort of thing. I said no. At the time, I didn’t know why they were interested in that bag, but word got around pretty fast. Stolen diamonds make delicious gossip.”
“Do people think Mom took it?”
“Local gossip says that Karen stole it and was killed by one of her criminal contacts. No one seems to know who that might be or why. A double cross maybe. Gossip doesn’t have to make sense.”
“And that’s all this meeting of the book club that Louise Jane has called for tomorrow is going to be,” Grace said in a voice thick with sleep. “A rehash of the worst of the gossip. She’s read too many mystery novels.”
“More like too many old Westerns,” Josie said. “Louise Jane wants to seem important. She’ll probably suggest we deputize her to help the police. I won’t be surprised if she has a tin star to fasten to her scrawny chest.”
“Well, I for one am positive your mom didn’t kill anyone or steal any necklace, Lucy,” Grace said. “I thought she was very nice. I told Detective Watson that.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I don’t know how you two can sit in that sun. I’d be broiled to a crisp. I’m going for a swim. Anyone coming?”
Josie stood up, and I followed. “Sweetie,” my cousin said. “If you want to know about your mom’s past, why not ask my mom?”
We ran into the water, sending a flock of sandpipers scurrying to get out of our way.
We packed up and headed home around four. After Grace and Josie dropped me off at my front door, I took a long shower, washing away the salt and sand. Then I put on a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt and headed back out.
Josie had suggested I speak to Aunt Ellen. It was time to do precisely that.
I drove past the colorful beach houses set into patches of drifting sand and tough vegetation that lined either side of Virginia Dare Trail until I reached a small yellow home. The house backed onto the dunes protecting the beach, and was built in typical Outer Banks style: tall and thin, with outdoor staircases and balconies on every level, including the roof, to give sea views.
Aunt Ellen’s car was in the driveway.
She answered the door, wiping her hands on her apron. “Lucy, this is a surprise, although a very nice one. Come in. Your mother’s coming to supper. You’re more than welcome to stay. I apologize for not inviting you. I thought you’d enjoy a break. Was I wrong?”
“Not at all. It’s because of my mom that I’m here. Do you have a moment? I can come back another time.”
“I’m just putting the chicken in the oven, and then we can sit down and have a chat. I have a fresh pitcher of sun tea. Why don’t you pour us each a glass, and take a seat outside?”
I followed her into the big, welcoming open-plan kitchen on the second level. A fat white chicken, coated in a thick layer of herbs and spices, lay on the table, beside a pile of yet-unpeeled potatoes. A baked pie, probably from Josie’s Cozy Bakery, rested on the counter. I breathed in traces of apple and cinnamon. I pulled down two tall glasses and poured the tea. Leaving Aunt Ellen to pop the bird into the oven, I carried the drinks outside. Soft blue-and-yellow cushions had been laid out on the chairs, and the table set for three. I stood at the balcony railing for a moment, watching the end-of-the-day activity on the beach.
“There,” Aunt Ellen said. “Dinner’s in the oven and I can sit for a while. You don’t mind if I peel potatoes while we talk?” She put two plastic bowls on the table and sat down.
“Of course not.” I turned away from the view but did not take a seat.
“What’s bothering you, honey?” Aunt Ellen asked.
“Why do you think something’s bothering me?”
“Because I saw you take your first breath, and I can read that pretty face like a book. Now spill.” Her hands moved deftly to strip the peel off the potatoes.
I smiled at my beloved aunt. Sometimes she seemed as much a mother to me as my own mom. The happiest times in my life had been long summer vacations on the Outer Banks, in Ellen and Amos’s chaotic house, surrounded by my cousins and love and life and laughter. Ellen had been the one at my mother’s side when I was born. My dad couldn’t make it—some incredibly important business trip that couldn’t be postponed.
“I think something’s bothering Mom, but she won’t say anything.”
“Sounds like your mother to me. She’s an intensely private person. You must be used to that.”
“Yes, but this time, with all that’s going on, I’m worried. This awful business with the death of Karen, and then being accused of stealing, has to be upsetting her. But there’s something else, something underneath. Something deeper worrying her. Do you have any idea, Aunt Ellen, what it might be?”
My aunt peeled potatoes. “Comes a time in a woman’s life she feels the years catching up to her. Catching up, and then passing her by. Happens to men, too. They go out and buy themselves fast cars and sometimes take up with young girlfriends. Heavens, look at Norm Kivas the other night, acting like cock-of-the-walk with that young woman. Looking like an old fool, more likely. For women? I love my sister, Lucy. She’s a wonderful person. But she did get through life on her looks and it can’t be easy to start losing that.”
“She’s not losing her looks. She’s still fabulous.”
“But she’s not twenty, honey. Or even thirty, and soon her fifties’ll be in the rearview mirror, too. It’s gonna be hard.”
I studied my aunt as her strong, competent hands stripped skin from the potatoes. Ellen’s fingernails were unadorned, the nails neat but not painted. Her gray hair was loosely pulled into a knot at the back of her head, tiny lines spread out from the corners of her eyes and mouth, and the delicate skin under her eyes fell in soft folds the color of a distant storm. She wore no makeup and her only jewelry was small gold earrings.
“Do you think she’s had plastic surgery?” I asked.
Aunt Ellen popped a naked potato into a bowl of water. “That I can’t say, honey. If she did, they did a very good job. You won’t remember our uncle Gus.”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“Our mother’s older brother. He died in a boating accident when you were a baby. He was a wild one, for sure. Anyway, Gus always said Sue was the pretty one and I was the brainy one.”
I laughed, but Ellen gave me a look. “Honey, you cannot imagine how much that hurt. Imagine telling a young girl she wasn’t pretty. Being smart didn’t exactly make up for it.” She smiled at me. “Now, you, Lucy, have the brains and the looks.”
I felt my mouth twist. “Yeah, right.”
“Gus thought he was being witty. I doubt he intended to be mean, but he didn’t do Susan any favors, either. She could have done fine at school, gone on to college if she wanted, but as soon as she reached puberty, she decided she wanted to get out of the Outer Banks and the way to do that was to play on her looks. She took singing and acting lessons. Our dad encouraged her, although Mom thought it a waste of money. Poor Sue had no talent whatsoever. Did you know she was planning to go to New York after high school, try out for a model?”
I shook my head.
“Unlikely that would have worked out. She’s lovely to be sure, but not tall enough. You know the story. She met your dad and that was that.”
I took a deep breath. Ellen and I had never talked about Mom before. Not like this. “Do you think she married him only because he was rich?”
She put down her potato peeler. “Honey, your mom loved that man like crazy. In all my life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl so in love. My mama was dead set against the marriage at first, thought they were too young. Course, she came around mighty fast, and we all knew why when your brother was born. Your dad absolutely adored Sue and she loved him completely. Would she have loved him as much if his daddy wasn’t rich? That I can’t say.”
I thought of my parents, sitting at far ends of the dining room table, Mom chattering about her social circle and her round of activities while my dad grunted, almost rude in his obvious lack of interest in whatever Mom was talking about. When dinner was finished, she’d put aside her cutlery and tap her lips with her napkin, and he’d push back his chair and head off to his study.
I wondered when they’d stopped loving each other.
“Was Mom popular in school?” I asked, thinking of George and Karen, who both remembered her all these years later.
“She sure was, honey. She was one of the in girls, the pretty and popular crowd. Me, I was the brainy one, remember? I belonged to the chess club.”
“Do you remember a guy named George Marwick? He’s the manager of the Ocean Side now and he dated Mom back in school. That is, he says they dated. She says they didn’t.”
The potatoes had all been peeled and were resting in a cold-water bath. Ellen leaned back and sipped at her tea. “Your mom had a lot of boyfriends. Even then I thought she went with them mostly because that was what popular girls were expected to do. She was a real heartbreaker. Uncle Gus approved of that, too. He told me once that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t pretty. I could get a good job as a secretary and help support my husband.”
Aunt Ellen had a wonderful life: marriage to a man she clearly still adored, who adored her in return; a comfortable home in the Outer Banks; great kids; friends and community. But even all these years later, I could tell that good old Uncle Gus’s casual insults had hurt her deeply.
“I vaguely remember some boy named George, and some rather mean gossip about him having ambitions above his station.”
“What station?”
“I’m sure you remember what high school can be like, Lucy. The social structure of the court of Louis XIV couldn’t have been stricter. George wasn’t a football player or from a family with money. If he wanted to date one of the popular girls, according to the ‘rules’”—Aunt Ellen made quotation marks with her fingers—“he didn’t have a chance. But rules or not, Sue never got serious about any one boy, and I don’t think she led anyone on. She didn’t need to. The boys followed her like dogs follow a man eating a hot dog, hoping something will fall their way. No, your mom wasn’t going to get trapped into a life as wife of a garage mechanic or fisherman.”
“Karen Kivas said something to Mom when we ran into her at the hotel. About being a thief. Do you know what she meant, Aunt Ellen?”
Ellen studied me for a long time. A seagull swooped low over the balcony, and then turned and headed out to sea. “Our family was never anything more than solidly middle-class. Mama and Daddy worked hard and provided for us well. We had a nice home, a car, but not a lot of extras. We didn’t go on fancy vacations or have expensive clothes. Sometimes my mother shopped at the secondhand store. Sue, well, you have to remember that according to Uncle Gus, Sue was special. Heck, even my daddy would buy her bits of jewelry or a pretty blouse if he had some extra money. At Christmas and birthdays Sue got fancy things. I got books. I remember one year in particular. I was about to graduate high school, and Mama and Daddy were saving every cent they had to send me to college. Never for a minute was there a question that I wouldn’t go, so money was tight at home. Sue had an after-school job, but she didn’t make much. The big end-of-year dance was coming up and she wanted a new dress. She couldn’t afford the one she liked, and went into a screaming fit about how hard done by she was.
“The night of the dance, she came down wearing the dress. Daddy fussed about how beautiful she looked, but I could tell Mama wasn’t happy. A few days earlier, one of the girls at school had reported that her purse had been stolen and a lot of money taken.”
“You think Mom stole it?”
“Yes, honey, I do. And so did a lot of other people. Rumors swirled like mad. Now that I think of it, it was around that time that your mom and Karen Whiteside, later Kivas, fell out. Karen never came to our house again. I suspected at the time she’d been eagerly helping to spread the rumors. Anyway, if your mom had been less popular, she might have been accused, maybe even the police called in. You know what high schools are like. The girl who’d been robbed was one of those who are always on the outside, wanting to be allowed in. Her family was reasonably well-off, but she was overweight, badly dressed, and socially awkward.
“Your mom didn’t have a good time at the dance. She came home early and went straight upstairs to bed. I figured at the time she’d had a fight with whatever boy she’d gone with, but later I understood that she was plain guilt-stricken. It was a few months before she met your dad, and after that dance she seemed quieter, more serious. She even started being friendly with the girl who’d been robbed. I know why you asked me all this, Lucy, honey, and I can tell you that if something was stolen from a room at the Ocean Side Hotel, it was more likely to have been a creature from outer space than Suzanne Wyatt Richardson.”