The dog was barking again: The sound was so loud, so full of misery that Ella imagined a small dirty animal living with a sweaty fat man who forgot to feed him. That dog needed to stop barking. God, for just five minutes.
Ella dropped down on the couch, a sagging brown corduroy number that had been left there by the previous tenant. The room appeared in front of her like a still from a bad movie. A thick black cable snaked across the floor where it hooked up to the back of the TV. A wooden coffee table had magazines stacked in a lopsided pile. A bed, unmade with white sheets and a watered-down blue bedspread, was across the room and against the wall. And in the tiny kitchen, her one good pot sat on the chipped counter, like a gleaming jewel at a garage sale. This is what the landlord deemed “furnished.”
She’d come here to Crumbling Chateau after Sims had handed her a suitcase with what he thought she might need—a couple of dresses, pjs, yoga pants and tops, underwear, T-shirts. That was four months ago. Now she had most of her clothes and a few kitchen necessities because Sims had been oh so generous and left them with the manager. He hadn’t even had the courage to face her.
Ignore him.
That was item number twelve on her growing list of “how to get over a breakup.” Ignore him. It came from a Cosmo article. A “thirty-day detox” they called it. “Getting On with Getting Over Him.”
1. Let yourself cry (all too easy).
2. Show him that you can survive without him. (Yeah, good luck with that.)
3. Find a hobby (other than getting over him).
4. Remember the things that annoyed you (and wish there were more).
5. Erase his text messages. (Nope. Not yet.)
6. Get a pet. (Does a tortured mutt in the apartment below count?)
7. Pursue your career with new vigor. (Does sketching dresses count?)
8. Spend time with girlfriends. (Sure, if they hadn’t deserted her.)
Blah. Blah. And blah.
Accept.
Move on.
Abandon hope all you who enter here.
Who knew how to get over a breakup? Not Ella. Not Cosmopolitan. Not a single book she’d read so far. Number one was still the easiest. Cry. That she could do.
It was almost impossible to imagine how she’d ended up here. But she could explain it to anyone who asked. Which not many had. Not really. So she’d gone a little crazy. Anyone in her situation would have done the same.
Sims had one other obsession besides sailing. (And obviously now Betsy, his true love.) Baseball cards. He’d been collecting them since he was six years old. He had boxes and boxes of them, labeled by year and by team. If he had ever agreed to sell his collection, or even a few selected cards, they could upgrade the house. But that wasn’t the point. (He’d told her this again and again.) It was the having of them that mattered. The finding and keeping and collecting and acquiring. The ownership.
When she tells this story to the few people who ask, she says that she didn’t know why she settled on the baseball card collection. “Really,” she would say. “I was out of my mind with grief. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
But that wasn’t true. She knew exactly what she was doing.
On the day of the Debacle she got up from the couch, removed the washcloth from her forehead, and threw it across the room. It landed with a damp thud. She was hurt. Angry. Betrayed. And she wanted Sims to feel the same way.
She took a box. And not one at random as she would later claim. She chose the most valuable one. No sense in doing things by halves.
The streetscape was dark that night. Thick cloud cover. No moon. She knew the way to the construction site at the end of the cul-de-sac. She had listened to the backhoe and jackhammer for months now while a neighbor renovated his house. The hideous Dumpster, red and black with graffiti she couldn’t read, squatted right in the middle of the driveway.
Destroying those cards—tearing some, tossing some in the Dumpster, setting light to others—had been more fun than she would admit to anyone. The way the cards caught the wind and fluttered like birds, the precision with which a few of them slipped under the Dumpster like they were hiding. She ripped a handful in half without looking at the names and photos of the players she obliterated. She threw one on the ground, digging her heel into it until she made a hole in Roy Campanella’s head.
If she’d asked herself in the moment why she was doing it, which of course she didn’t—reason can’t interrupt revenge—she would have said that she needed Sims to experience something of the ugly pain he had caused her, that he needed to lose something that meant everything to him, even if it was just some cold statistics on a set of cards.
But the thrill hadn’t lasted. By the time she’d walked home, she was sick with what she’d done.
“Where are they, Ella?” Sims had asked in a broken voice. He was standing at the front door, cell phone in hand.
“In the Dumpster at the end of the road.”
Sims ran into the house and grabbed the monstrous industrial flashlight, the one they used when storms knocked out the power. He bolted to the end of the road and called Betsy to come help him.
The police came the next day, and with them, the restraining order. Her outburst—the Debacle—came under the heading of malicious damage to valuable private property. Since her name wasn’t on the deed (nice one, Sims), she could actually be “kicked out.” Ella didn’t even know this was a thing, being kicked out of your married home. Now she knew. If your name wasn’t legally part of it all, you weren’t the “owner.” And if you weren’t the owner, you could be removed. She could get a lawyer and fight the inequity of it all. And she would. Seven years of married life was worth something in the courts, after all. But that would have to come later. After the humiliation. After Crumbling Chateau.
* * *
When she was younger—much younger—she would have thought this apartment to be a romantic place. Plaster walls and a tiny kitchen, vintage appliances and crooked hardwood floors … she would have loved it. In her twenties she liked shabby chic. Function? Safety? Who cared? Now she wanted the stove to work and the floors to be level and the air conditioner to exhale frigid air instead of dust. Hell, she’d be happy if the rain didn’t seep in under the warped windowsill.
There were so many things she’d believed when she was younger—like how she’d have children by now. But that hadn’t happened. They still didn’t know why—Sims said he didn’t want to know why; he didn’t want to place the blame on either of them. We’re in this together, he’d said after years without a pregnancy. No blame. We have a great, great life.
Now alone in the apartment, she checked her cell phone again. It was old habit, looking to see if Sims had texted her. Of course she wouldn’t hear from him. He was in love, the very real kind of lasting love. Or so he said. As if the love they shared had been some sort of knockoff.
There was only one text. Her father.
Hi, bunny. Just checking in. How are u?
I’m great. How are you?
Been fishing. Now for a nap. Just wanted to say love you.
Ella wanted him to stop calling her “bunny.” That was her mom’s pet name for her. But how could she tell him to stop? He’d lost his wife and then his only daughter went and moved away and never looked back. They carried on with their relationship with perfunctory texts. Her dad didn’t even know she was in this apartment, alone. He didn’t know much at all because Ella had moved away and stayed away, an ember of blame burning just below the surface of their relationship. Hell, he’d been on that boat: couldn’t he have saved her?
Ella had never discussed these things with her dad because to do so would be futile—what happened had happened and there was nothing new to be done about it. Her dad had married after six years as a widower, moved on with his life, and Ella was trying to do the same. Obviously not doing so well at it at the moment.
Ella tried to force herself to stop thinking about her mom, about how much she needed her. But it was like trying to slow a hurricane. Even ten years later, Ella still felt the acute emptiness of her mom’s absence. Ella needed to find distraction; she moved from the couch to the kitchen, where a folding card table with wobbly metal legs was set up. Its faux leather top was dotted with pen marks like moles on skin, and it had a hole in the top right corner that she’d patched with duct tape. She spread her wedding dress sketches across the table.
As a child, Ella designed new wardrobes for all her paper dolls—not one of the outfits they came with was good enough. Even then, as now when she was drawing, Ella would find a calm she couldn’t access at any other time. Sometimes she would start to work on a wedding dress and her hand would fly across the paper as if compelled by some unknown force. Not today. She drew for more than an hour without coming up with anything. Nada. Zip. Nothing. Still, she sketched and scribbled, until a little figure became clear on the corner of her page. It was a funny-looking character and he was wearing a deer stalker of all things. Like Elmer Fudd when he was hunting Bugs Bunny. A hunter. Hunter.
She laughed.
What had she been thinking? She would not pick up when Hunter called. If he called, that is. Because … why would he?
But if he called, she would tell him the truth. Listen, she’d say, “I made up a few things. I’m not who I said I was and if you need information about the town, you should stop at the visitor’s bureau.” That is exactly what she would say.
She glanced again at her cell phone but the screen was blank except for her screensaver: the Eiffel Tower. Then she did exactly what she’d told herself she wouldn’t do anymore: she read old text messages from Sims. The good ones. The I love yous. Home soon. I miss you. She kept those texts. She’d deleted the others, the ones that in hindsight were so obviously cover-ups.
Crisis at work, home late.
Meet me an hour later than planned?
Sorry, something’s come up. I’ll explain later.
The sadness came again, a punch to the heart. There was nothing to be done, just ride it out. Just cry, like she’d been doing for months. God, this grief felt so heavy. Who knew sadness had such a weight to it?
She’d read all the self-help books. After the Affair. Women Who Love Too Much. Codependent No More. Whatever. Take care of yourself, they all said. Righto. This was the time friends should surround her, but silence was all she heard. She understood, sort of—most of them had grown up with Amber, Sims, and Betsy. What were they to do? Call her, that’s what. Take her out, bring her a bottle of wine, offer a kind word. Something. Anything. Be a friend.
Finally her cell phone buzzed to interrupt the latest cry fest—Hunter.
Lunch?
What about it? She texted back.
Let me try again. Can I take you out to lunch in an hour?
Sure. But I can’t go for long. Work is crazy busy.
Got it. Where should I pick you up?
I will meet you at the same place in an hour.
k
This would be the last time she’d meet Hunter. There was no reason to keep talking to him, but one last time couldn’t hurt, right?
* * *
Blake wanted to see where Ella lived, but he didn’t want to push it. He’d never spoken to a single woman on this journey more than twice. He knew his limits, he always had. Until now.
He must have lost count of his JD the night before. His mouth tasted like cat litter, or what he imagined cat litter to taste like. His head felt too big, too wobbly on his shoulders. God, he hated hangovers—they ruined entire days. He could still act young. (Or so he told himself.) But the day after, he felt all of his forty-nine years and more.
His cell phone buzzed and his assistant’s name appeared over and over as if his phone was in a spasm. Ashlee. Ashlee. Ashlee.
“Hello, baby,” he said, the words sliding off his tongue. He’d never called her baby before.
She laughed too loud for his hangover. “You’re silly,” she said. “What’s up with the cutesy name?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “It just came out. So what’s up? I only have a second.”
She sighed, long and loud, exasperated he knew. “You always only have a second. That sucks so much,” she said.
“You sound five years old. You know I’m busy out here trying to get…”
“I know. I know. I just missss you.”
“You, too.”
“You know that story idea from Newport Beach?”
“I get my cities mixed up,” he said.
“Well, the one about the woman who was pregnant with her husband’s brother’s child and she didn’t tell him, and then the baby saved their marriage and…”
“Stop.” Blake rubbed at his temples and squinted against the almost-too-perfect day. “I know that one.”
“Well, I’ve really started to dig into that idea. You know, I started writing it.”
“You started writing it?” He wanted to moan.
“Yep. I thought, why not? Maybe when you get back you’ll like where it’s going and we’ll have less work to do.”
“Ashlee, honey, I don’t think I want to write that one. I think … this one is better.”
“Which one?”
“The one here in Watersend. The one I dictated to you yesterday. That one.”
“Oh. Well, I like the other one.”
“Okay. You do whatever you want. I’ll be home in two days.”
“I thought you were coming home tomorrow.”
“I need another day.”
“But we have that party. We worked so hard for that invite and now…”
“You can go without me,” he said.
“No, it says Blake Hunter and guest.”
“Ashlee, I have to go.”
The sidewalk ended and Blake found himself staring at the bay. He never understood why they called it a river here. The water looked alive like the current had a heart and was beating fast and hard. He sat on a bench, to write that down—“the river has a heart”—when he realized that maybe he didn’t have one at all, a heart that is.
His Moleskine was damp on the edges from a glass of water he’d spilled the night before. He dug around for a pen at the bottom of his leather satchel, worried he’d lose the thought, that it would disappear into his hangover, where he’d never retrieve it again. And it seemed important, like it had something to do with the story of this woman, Ella.
He had to trust that it would come together. Until recently, it always had. He scribbled in his notebook and then stood to walk toward the café, texting Ashlee:
Sorry for the disconnect. I lost service. Xo More later.
Blake adjusted his glasses (he was glad he remembered to wear the fake glasses for their second meet), and walked toward the café. He glanced around with what he hoped was panache. There was Ella sitting at an outdoor table and looking straight at him. Damn. He hated the thought of someone catching him unaware.
She was even cuter than he remembered. Her hair was in a ponytail, curled at the edges in a flip that bounced in the slight breeze. Her bangs were pinned back with a bobby pin. She looked like a teenager. She smiled, but it wasn’t a full smile. She didn’t stand or speak as he approached her table, and for a terrible moment he thought she might not remember him.
“Hi, Ella,” he said.
“Hello, Hunter.” She motioned to the chair across from her. “How are you?”
“I slept like hell. How about you?”
She laughed. “I’m good. I guess you must be sick of hotels by now.”
“The sad part is I’m getting used to them. But I’ll be home in a day or two.” He sat across from her. “Thanks so much for meeting me. I promise not to take up too much of your time.”
“No problem.”
The same waitress, Dana or Dylan, he couldn’t remember, approached their table.
“Morning, Darla.” Ella stood and hugged her friend. Blake couldn’t help but feel slighted. He’d received only the vague finger wave and a motion to sit.
“Omelet?” Darla asked, and looked to Blake.
“Perfect,” he said.
They sat in silence. Blake, who was never at a loss for words, felt off-center, his mind padded and spongy.
Ella spoke first. “You’re really lucky. This is one of the most beautiful springs we’ve ever had.”
“It is lovely.”
“Doesn’t spring always seems so glorious after the bareness of winter? When it bursts open, I always think it’s the best we’ve ever had.”
Damn, he wished he’d been taping her.
She shrugged. “Guess I’m rambling. Tell me what you really want to know. I don’t want to waste your time, either. I can point you to the tourist office and there are some really wonderful horse-drawn carriage rides that you can take. We like to call ourselves the Front Porch of the Low Country.”
“Yes, I saw that on a billboard. But I’d rather talk to you.”
“Okay,” she said, “but I don’t really understand why.”
“Because you seem like you are the city.” He was amazed at his ability to lie. It was a skill he hadn’t realized he’d cultivated.
“That’s nice, but trust me, there’s much more to this city than I can explain. Places and restaurants and bars I’ve never been.”
“Yeah? I went to Mulligans last night.”
“Ah.” She laughed. “There you go. That’s a place I’d never go to. How many divorced or unhappily married women hit on you?”
“None. They were too busy complaining to one another.”
“And that, my friend, is why I never go to Mulligans.” Ella swirled the straw around inside her iced tea. “Okay. I better earn my drink, I suppose. But I don’t know where to start. How about asking me some questions? That’ll be easier.”
Blake launched into his topics for the history book that didn’t exist. Founding year. Battles. Best beaches and boardwalks. He’d been using that list in the last cities and even he was starting to believe that he was writing a book. They ate and talked, sipped iced teas until they were done and Ella asked, “You don’t take notes?”
He dug his fork into the remainder of his omelet. “I remember what matters most and write it down in here.” He pulled out his Moleskine and dropped it onto the table. “But I don’t like to write while I’m talking.”
He needed to be careful with this one.
Her hand slid across the table. She picked up the notebook and opened it to the middle. Blake, on instinct, grabbed it back. His fork clattered to the ground.
Ella held up her palms in surrender. “Sorry. That was rude of me. I didn’t…”
“No, it’s okay. You can look at it if you want. I don’t know why I grabbed it like that.” He held it out to her and took the chance that she wouldn’t want to see it.
“No. I wouldn’t want anyone looking at my sketches. I should have known better. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She waved her hand toward him. “Hold on to it.”
The restaurant grew busy around them. Every table was full. Couples holding hands and oblivious to the outside world; young moms in workout clothes with their babies in fancy strollers; a white-haired man alone with coffee and a newspaper. On those tables, small Mason jars were full with gerbera daisies, Queen Anne’s lace, poppies, and wildflowers. Blake absorbed the setting. It felt like a movie scene to him, something that needed to be saved. The air was almost like washed linen blowing across his face. The sunlight filtered through the branches, moss and leaves, patterns created on faces and sidewalks. He sat still, and absorbed the moment.
“A drawing,” he finally said, and tore a piece of paper from his notebook. “Try one for me.”
Ella lifted her hand to her cheek and brushed away something invisible, then looked away. “No … I’m not … I can’t just do it on the spot like that.”
He handed her a pencil from the bottom of his satchel. “Then show me one of the designs you’ve already done. Something simple.”
The paper fluttered on the table. It would have taken flight if she didn’t put her hand on top of it. She grabbed the pencil from his hand. On the paper, slowly a thin silhouette appeared and then a skirt flowing from the waist. She didn’t talk. The tip of her tongue rested in the right corner of her lips, settling there while she drew. She removed her sunglasses and squinted at the drawing, twice making a small noise in the back of her throat, like a whimper.
“Nice,” Darla said as she leaned over Ella’s shoulder.
Ella’s hand flew from the side of the table to cover the sketch, and with a swipe, she knocked over her glass of tea. A tawny liquid spread across Ella’s drawing. She jumped up with a half shout, half laugh. Darla grabbed a napkin and threw it over the mess. “Oh, no. Did you ruin the drawing?”
“It’s not good anyway,” Ella said. “I was just messing around.”
Darla looked to Blake, who threw his own napkin over the mess. Ella picked up the drawing and shook it. Her dress, it moved around her small body like it was dancing on her skin. She would make the perfect character; not only would he use her story, but so much about her, the way she moved, the way she dressed, the way she—
“Hunter?”
He startled out of his reverie. “Yes?”
“You ready to go?” Ella asked.
He looked to the left for Darla. “I’ll go inside and pay. I’ll be right back.”
“She’ll bring it out,” Ella said, but he was already gone.
He entered the café and took a deep breath, winding his way back to the men’s room where he quickly wrote some notes. He wanted to remember how this all looked. How it all felt. He used to believe that he could remember every detail. Now he knows that the sooner he writes it down the better the screenplay will be. And this—after all this time—was finally something worth remembering.
* * *
The first lie about Sims’s death had just slipped out. It had been a defense against the truth, a soft-padded denial of reality. This one? About being a wedding dress designer? It had been all too easy. Hunter didn’t need to know that she sold shoes, cleaned the backrooms, and entered orders for her boss-from-hell. Ella dried off her sketch with a napkin. It wasn’t the best she’d ever done, but she liked the way the pattern on the waist migrated down the skirt.
And the drowning. Anyone who knew her would have known that she was telling her mother’s story. The drowning that had been accidental.
Ella’s mom had fallen off the back of the boat reaching for her hat, which had blown off in the wind. It was so simple, Ella’s dad told her, like it wasn’t real. She reached into the air, the boat running at full speed, when she slipped and fell into the water. She didn’t seem to make a splash, her father had said. Just disappeared into the wake. The hat floated away and Ella’s mom didn’t come up for air. The autopsy showed that she’d slammed her head into the engine as she’d come down into the water. She had been knocked unconscious almost immediately. She never knew what hit her. Ella never knew what hit her.
Sims’s death was such a blatant lie that Ella was going to have to stop talking to Hunter. She could only take this so far. And there was no way to back up now.
Hunter exited the café, squinted against the sun and put his Wayfarers on. He looked like the L.A. guy he was. She wouldn’t tell him that he’d fit in much better if he wore a pair of khaki shorts and a Vineyard Vines button-down. His jeans and black T-shirt were good with her. She’d had enough of preppy-Savannah-false-aristocrat to last the rest of her life.
A shrill laugh echoed across the café and Ella’s stomach rolled over in what was becoming an all-too-familiar way. Ella knew that laugh from the time she’d been on the back porch drinking lemonade with Amber and Betsy a long-ago afternoon. She’d made that lemonade herself, squeezing each lemon by hand. Oh, to do that to Betsy’s little head. Maybe this was the “anger stage” she’d heard so much about.
Ella turned slowly. If she didn’t disturb the air, maybe they wouldn’t see her. But her eyes found them just as theirs found her, all at once and with wide surprise. She froze, as if in a dream where she couldn’t move. A really bad dream. There was Sims, his hand on Betsy’s back, his mouth open in surprise.
They pulled in closer to each other and Betsy placed her arms around Sims, a move of ownership. Ella’s world was in turmoil, a twisted metal car accident. But she knew how to save face. She turned away from them and sauntered—she would not run—toward Hunter. “You ready to go?” she asked.
“Ella,” Sims called her name. She heard it. So did Hunter. He stopped.
“Someone is calling you,” Hunter said.
Embarrassment would come later, a sick aftertaste in the back of her throat. But for now, she needed to get out of the café. She put on her best shaky smile. “Oh, I’m not in the mood for him. He’s … kind of annoying. Keep walking.”
“Okay,” Hunter said. Not quite a statement. Not quite a question.
“He’s an old friend of my husband’s and I don’t want to hear any more condolences. I’m done with false reassurance, with prayers and love being sent my way.”
“I get it,” Hunter said. “When my dad died I got more texts and e-mails and letters with ‘prayers’ than I’d received in my whole life. I know they meant it, but the words started to sound candy coated.”
“Yes,” Ella said, “exactly.”
They rounded the corner and, brave face or not, Ella was starting to feel sick.
“Are you okay?” Hunter asked as she dropped to a bench. “I thought you had to go to work.”
“I’m fine.” She patted the bench. “So this park square is one of three in the town. The elementary school kids come here from half a block away. Sims and I had picnics here about once a month during the good weather, just to watch people and sit in the sun.”
Hunter sat next to her. “I’m so sorry. It must be terrible to see him on every corner.”
Oh, he had no idea.
“Do you all have kids?” he asked. “I didn’t even ask…”
“No.” She shook her head. “We couldn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Seems like you’re having to say that to me a lot,” Ella said.
“Sorry about that,” he said, and then laughed. “Comes too easily I guess.”
“Do you have kids?” she asked him, twisting to face him.
“I do. A fifteen-year-old daughter.”
“You have a fifteen-year-old daughter? Oh, God. You’re in the thick of it for sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was once a fifteen-year-old daughter,” Ella said.
“Ah, so is this normal? The kind of father-daughter standoff that hits at this age?”
Ella closed her eyes for just a moment, imagining those days when she’d been so close to her mom, when her dad had tried so hard to be a part of their closed circle. She opened her eyes and looked at Hunter. “I don’t know, really, if it’s normal. But I know that you just have to keep being there for her.”
“Are you close to your dad now?” he asked in a voice that sounded full of hope.
“No,” Ella said. “But it’s different. Very different.”
“How?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Ah, it’s complicated. Meaning, you don’t really want to talk about it. Got it,” Hunter said.
“Thanks,” Ella said.
“Well, now for the business part of our conversation.” He pulled out his notebook. “Tell me more about your city.”
“Back in the day, whatever that means, the town was originally one square mile sitting on a bluff. They say we started the secession movement.” She spread her arms wide. “So this was the place where defiance was the definition. But still we are so small that both our movie theater and our bookstore closed.”
“So if a tourist came here, what would they do?” he asked. While she’d been talking, he had taken out his black notebook and scribbled in it.
“I don’t know. Maybe go out in the boats from the marina. Paddle boarding and kayaking seem popular, too. We have a slave relic museum. Then there is the art—we have about five studios.”
“A slave relic museum? What the…”
“I know. It’s odd … especially if you’re from L.A. It probably seems barbaric.”
“I have to see this. Now.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It’s the first interesting thing I’ve had to write about in a while. Take me?”
“Well, it’s only a block away. We can walk there. But wouldn’t you rather run by the city hall and get information and all that? I mean, don’t trust me on dates and facts. There’s a library with old documents and—”
“I will definitely get all those things, but before I get the facts I’d like to see the city from your vantage point.”
She shrugged. “Okay.”
They walked side by side. Twice their hands brushed each other as their arms swung. She tried to see the town from his point of view, that of a stranger who had never walked these sidewalks or seen these houses. The town was like a painting, she’d once said to Amber. She wondered if Hunter saw it this way. The brick sidewalks buckled in places where the oak tree roots pushed upward, groaning against the mortar. White picket fences really did surround the yards; the gardens were riotous in their need for attention. Rocking chairs and hanging ferns dominated the front porches, almost a parody of a Southern street. Every fifth house or so was decrepit, falling in on itself with the weight of neglect. Cars squatted in those yards, grass growing underneath the metal carcasses as if for protection from a lawn mower that didn’t exist. Someone would come along and buy this house, see it as a fixer-upper, and the structure would turn into a home, join the ranks of the others with kids in the front yard on plastic play toys, dogs barking, and small boxed herb gardens for the green generation.
They rounded a corner and Ella pointed to an empty building, a painted white brick structure with a crumbling sign hanging sideways: FOR LEASE. Above the white brick structure a marquee had three words on it: You’ve Got Mail. “That was the last movie that was here. We keep hoping someone will turn it back into a movie theater, but for now…”
“What is it now?”
“Well, all the seats and equipment were sold in the bankruptcy, so now it’s just an empty building. Sometimes it’s used for parties or high school concerts, but you have to stand or bring in seats.”
“Can we go in?” Hunter walked to the door and pulled at the locked doors, which made a rattling sound, groaning against being touched.
“Do you know anyone to ask for keys?” he asked.
“I do.”
“Will you?”
“Sure. It’s really pretty inside. There’s beautiful millwork and stars painted on the ceiling.” She walked away and then looked back at him. “You coming?”
Hunter remained in front of the movie theater, his forehead against the glass, trying to see inside. He looked so young, a little boy wanting to sneak in. He tried the door one more time and then walked to Ella.
“I adore movie theaters,” he said. “Everything about them. The smell, the chairs, the sticky floors, the hushed waiting.”
“Me, too,” she said, “but I have to drive a half hour for that. Sometimes I go alone, just to sit in the air-conditioned quiet and eat Milk Duds and popcorn.”
“Raisinets for me,” he said.
She stared at him for a minute. What an odd creature. He looked the part of the writer, with his glasses and rumpled hair, his notebooks and satchel. But he seemed interested in everything but what he said he was writing about.
They reached the slave relic museum and the sign, handwritten with a handless clock image, said CLOSED.
Ella made a noise in her throat. “Sorry. I don’t really know the opening hours. It’s not somewhere I go. In fact … I’ve never been.”
Hunter touched her arm and then pulled away quickly. “No big deal. Just to know it’s here is enough to write about.” He shook his head. “The South. It’s a funny thing sometimes. Even though I grew up in the South, it was definitely not Southern.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“South Florida,” he said. “The Everglades. The snake and alligator part of the South. But definitely not Southern like this, with the history and plantations. It’s not the same.”
“Yes. It’s different.…”
“Your husband,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Was your husband from here?”
Ella didn’t know what to say, how to describe a dead man who was still alive. This was absurd. They could run into him any minute—not that he’d be strolling through the slave relic museum—but they were standing in the middle of town. “Yes.” She stopped. If she kept going, she’d trip over her lies.
“Tell me about meeting him,” Hunter said.
He looked at Ella through those black-rimmed glasses. “I didn’t want to love him,” she said. “He was all bravado and smoothness, all wonderful and hip and cool. And my boss.”
“Yes?” he asked in this quiet voice that made Ella want to tell him everything.
“His family had always owned the marina,” she said, walking slower now and glancing sideways at Hunter. This was more fun than she’d had in months and yet it also felt wrong. Yet she continued. “He had a big sailboat and I was hired to work on it, a ‘stewardess’ if that’s what you want to call it. The rules were strict: absolutely no fraternizing. It was grounds for firing. I needed the job. Badly. So I lived in an eternal state of longing. Constantly passing him in the tiny passageways or on the docks.” Ella closed her eyes as if she could see what never existed. There’d been no sailboat. No yacht. Only the docks and some rental boats. But she’d talked her way into the story this far.
“How long did this go on?” Hunter asked.
It had been so, so long since someone asked about her life that she dove back in. “A year or so,” she said, and looked at Hunter. “Have you ever been in love for that long and just known you were supposed to be together but also knew there was just no way? That it was impossible?”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“You’d know,” she replied.
“So what finally happened?”
“He offered to teach me to sail. We’d come back to port and we were unloading the boat. His girlfriend ran off to the spa because she needed an emergency mani-pedi and a blow-dry. We were there, just standing on the edge of the boat, the wind blowing…” She paused and looked away. “And that was that.”
“Love arrived,” he said
“Yes. Love arrived.”