The Bridge Between Page 3

  She lifted the shell from the box and held it to her ear the way children do, listening for the sound of the ocean. After Patrick’s proposal, she had walked all the way back into town and called her daddy from the Whaley’s payphone, before realizing she’d kept the shell. Into the box it had gone, memories sealed with tears and dust, while she forged a new life away from this place that once held her captive.

  “Captivity’s a mind game, Louisa.” Her mother’s voice echoed in her thoughts. “We’re only imprisoned by what we let hold us.”

  But the Edisto of her youth had been a yoke around her neck. Too plebian and too isolated for her mind caught up in the progressive movement of the seventies. She’d wanted the freedom to make her own choices and forge her own way.

  Fearing if she didn’t leave then, she’d spend the rest of her life following the boot prints of her daddy through a muddy field.

  ~~~

  If only Grace had learned to keep her mouth shut. Or hardened her heart. One would think a lifetime of abandonment would do that.

  But nope, she’d always bled wide and open, arteries pumping compassion for all to see. Which is how she wound up in charge of the January food drive. Not only that, but canvassing the island for folks to personally hand over their leftover canned goods and extra bags of holiday baking flour.

  She bumped over the ruts in the old dirt road leading to the Coultrie homestead. There she’d be forced to have a conversation with Louisa Halloway without the buffer of their children between them.

  They weren’t friends or enemies or hardly even acquaintances, but soon, if the look in her son’s eyes stayed true, they’d be family.

  Grace slowed the car with a mile to go.

  She’d never been jealous of Louisa. Not even when Patrick first shared their story. To her mind, Lou had done the leaving, and he’d picked up the pieces, fitting his heart neatly back together and giving it to her full and whole and ready for something new. She’d never doubted his love for her, and until the night he died, she’d never thought Louisa Coultrie had really cared.

  Grace pressed a little harder on the pedal now as the white house came into sight at the end of a dirt lane, bordered with pecan trees. In the distance, Russell Creek glinted in the afternoon sun. She remembered the stream of visitors pouring in for Annie’s funeral, parking all over the one field Thornton Coultrie hadn’t sown with pine trees.

  “Lou sees difficulties instead of opportunities is all. You can help her, Grace.” Mrs. Annie’s words echoed in her head. She’d promised.

  Cora Anne’s worn Civic was in the drive, and Grace didn’t even try to control her relief. But when she knocked on the back porch screen, Louisa, wariness in the edges of her blue eyes, came to the door.

  “Hey, there.” Grace’s Tennessee twang crept in under the Lowcountry rounding of vowels she’d learned to emulate. But she could never possess the accent—especially when nervous. “Happy New Year.”

  “Same to you.” Louisa’s voice sounded raspy, as though she’d been crying. “Would you like to come in?” But she didn’t push open the screen.

  The formality of the invitation—and Lou’s ramrod-straight stance—would’ve quelled someone raised with these genteel rules.

  Yet Grace nodded and pulled the door. “Sure is cold out here today.”

  Lou tightened a cardigan across her chest. “It’s that wind off the Atlantic, my father used to always say.”

  The kitchen was impeccable, except for a worn box of letters on the table, though without the warmth Annie had always given it. By now Lou’s mother would’ve had the teakettle going, the breadbox open, and her chatter filling the space. As it was, Lou merely shifted foot to foot and looked at Grace.

  Well, small talk never had been one of the woman’s attributes.

  “The church has me collecting for the food pantry, so I’m doing some old-fashioned canvassing. Figure now that the holidays are behind us, most people have a little extra taking up room.”

  “Doesn’t hurt that most probably made the obligatory ‘eat healthier’ resolution yesterday.” Lou crooked her fingers around the words, and actually grinned.

  Grace laughed. “Made that one myself. Course Tennessee will undo it by bringing home a key lime pie before long.”

  “Oh, let’s break it now.” Lou jammed the lid with its busted corners back on the shoebox, and Grace wondered for a moment what reverie she’d interrupted. But Louisa was suddenly her mother’s daughter, as though she’d remembered what it meant to invite another woman into her kitchen. “Coffee or tea?”

  “Tea, please.”

  “You and Cora Anne.” Lou filled the kettle, her back turned. “She’s off with him, you know.”

  If Grace knew Lou better, she could tell if that tone was flippant—or wistful. “No, I didn’t know. I thought he’d be getting back to a job today.”

  Lou brought two mugs and a canister of teabags to the table. “Help yourself.” Grace flicked through the choices while Lou unwrapped an Earl Gray packet. “Does he confide in you?”

  Her hand stilled opening the paper from a bag of peppermint. She met Lou’s eyes and saw how they were rimmed in red, the lashes still matted, and she knew it wasn’t just the weather that had her down. “Yes, he does now.”

  Lou’s eyes lowered. “So you’d know if he, if they—”

  “If they had concrete plans and not just castles in the sky?”

  The kettle whistled, and Lou jumped. Her hands shook as she poured, and Grace grabbed a dishcloth hanging over the stove to wipe the spill. Louisa Halloway didn’t make messes, that she knew, and she wondered again what she’d interrupted that had her skittish as a hermit crab scooting back into its shell.

  “Patrick used to say that.” Lou jerked the string on her teabag.

  Grace brought the sugar bowl, still exactly where Annie had kept it, to the table without asking and fetched her own spoon. “Yes, he did.”

  “His mother said it first, you know.” The words were a challenge.

  No, she didn’t know. Patrick’s mother had collectively had no more than a dozen conversations with Grace the entire thirty years she’d known her.

  “When she was trying to shame him into doing things her way.” Lou continued. “You can build all the castles in the sky you want, young man, but the real stronghold will always be right here.” She got the inflection just right because, Grace supposed, Louisa herself had grown up with a Charleston-bred mother.

  “She was wrong.”

  “Yes.” Lou lifted her mug and drank the tea she’d now probably steeped too bitter. “Charlotte often was. But I suppose she loved him, in her way.”

  “In her way.” Grace sipped her tea, eager to change the subject. “But Tennessee and Cora Anne, they’ll be happy, don’t you think?”

  Lou pushed away her cup and folded her hands. “I hope so.”

  The unspoken lay between them—the idea that maybe their children were righting a wrong—but how could that be? Grace knew she and Patrick had been meant for one another, knit together in soul as well as flesh, and she’d often thought, if Louisa hadn’t done the leaving, he would have. Eventually.

  Eyeing those old letters she’d shoved aside, Lou added, “But they want different things.”

  “No,” Grace countered. “They want each other’s happiness. That’s the same thing.”

  “Not always.”

  Grace bit her tongue before she said more. What did this woman know of sacrifice? Grace would be amiable because she loved Cora Anne and had loved Mrs. Annie, but Louisa’s prickly self would have to find a friend somewhere else.

  Lou rose. They were done, no doubt. “I’ll get you some canned goods. I’m sure there’s a box around here somewhere.”

  And that, Grace thought, was that.

  ~~~

  Once Grace Watson had taken her canned goods and judgments back down the drive, Lou dumped the teacups’ contents. She wanted to dash the porcelain against the sink just to hear the smash
. See if breaking something would relieve the tension tightening her lungs.

  But she knew it wouldn’t. She’d broken many a dish in the months after David left. That tension hadn’t dissipated until she hit her knees more often and learned contentment looked less like perfection and more like soldiering through a broken mess.

  Gripping the sink’s edge, Lou leaned over, resting her forehead on her white knuckles.

  She needed a distraction beyond those old letters and breakables. A plan that would solve the looming financial hole she’d dig living off her retirement salary. Retrieving her file from upstairs and a thick afghan from the den, she settled on the porch in a rocker. The winter sky shone deep blue, and clouds scuttled across like snow flurries—a rare sight for the Lowcountry.

  Creaking the rocker into a steady tempo, Lou flipped open her notes and shut herself off to the memories. Like the one of her daddy scraping thin powdery snow together to make a pitiful snowman while Mama rocked and laughed right here on this porch.

  Her father had always been content. She knew he’d wanted that for her, too. Why he’d always encouraged her to study the ecology surrounding this place, even as she argued the better jobs were elsewhere.

  Technically on paper, the farm now belonged to Lou, her sister Carolina, and their brother, Jimmy. But Jimmy preferred Walterboro where he’d made his own name running their daddy’s landscape supply business, and Carolina thrived outside Charleston as an event planner. In one of life’s ironic twists, Lou had been the one to come home.

  Jimmy and his crew would continue to tend Daddy’s rows of trees. Eventually, she and Carolina would clean out the house. By then their brother may want it, and if not, there were options that didn’t bind her to this place.

  But if she was going to make a living here, work until she was accepted into a PhD program, she needed a job. Preferably, conducting research would suit her best. Unlike her fellow teachers, Lou enjoyed analysis. She thrived on data maps. Each statistic was like a road map telling her exactly where to go.

  She chewed her lip over the College of Charleston job description her father’s old friend, Liam Whiting, had sent her. The degree requirements might be a problem. Her specialist was in educational leadership, and her master’s was biochemistry, not environmental science.

  Another engine rumbled down the drive. Lou pulled a lip balm out of her pocket and rubbed it across the sore spot she’d created. A moment later, composure intact, she waved to her daughter as Cora Anne bounced from Tennessee’s truck. He stuck a hand out the window as he turned around and left.

  Cora Anne jogged up the porch steps. “Hey, Mama. Why are you out here?”

  “Vitamin D.” But Lou tucked the afghan more snugly over her legs. “How was the beach?”

  Her daughter shivered. “Cold. But Still Waters was good.” The sale of the family cottage would have been heartbreaking if anyone but Tennessee Watson had bought it. Now, it seemed destined to stay in the family.

  “So I was thinking …” Cora Anne dropped into the other rocker. “What if I stayed in the cottage for the rest of winter?”

  Lou raised her brows. “I thought you were staying here to save your spare change? Working at a non-profit historical museum will barely pay a power bill.”

  She should know. Opening the latest one for the farmhouse had made her want something stronger than coffee.

  Cora Anne called the museum job her “in-between.” She’d already negotiated a transfer from Tulane University to the College of Charleston, starting in the fall. For once, the gap between plans hadn’t bothered her daughter who usually lived by a calendar and to-do lists.

  “I still have Nan’s money.” Cora Anne pushed her rocker, slow and steady.

  Lou brought her own to a halt. “She intended that for school, for whatever you need.”

  Cora Anne stretched out her arms, wide. “Whatever else could I need, Mama?”

  Lou closed her notes, lips pressed together. Her child had fallen in love, deep and strong, certain she desired nothing else.

  She’d been that way too, once.

  Chapter 6

  Nashville, Tennessee, Spring 1976

  Dad had left nearly three years ago, and now, Grace counted the days until graduation, so she could leave too.

  Nearly midnight, and she should be studying for final exams—but her mother had been in a frenzy when Grace came home. At least the meal had been good— golden brown gravy drizzled over cubed steak and potatoes, green beans simmered in ham hock, biscuits light as air. But more than her mother’s sudden hunger alerted Grace’s senses.

  When she’d gone outside to water her plants, she caught the sweet-over-putrid smell that still lingered on the porch swing cushions.

  But the high wore off and Mom fell asleep on the couch, and Grace now scrubbed burned potatoes from the pot. The roller coaster of up and down had worsened after Dad left, and her mother found another way to cope. For that alone, Grace despised him. But she hadn’t stopped wishing he’d come back.

  She gave up and left the pot to soak. Soap bubbles floated up from the sink, popping before they went too far.

  Mom wasn’t on the couch, and Grace frowned. The drugs weren’t the only demons eating her mind, and for long years now, she’d worried her mother would find another route out of her depression.

  A lamp glowed on her mother’s bedside table. She sprawled across the bed, the angle unnatural but not unusual. Grinding her teeth against her frustration, Grace pulled the blanket up over her mother’s bare legs.

  Something seemed wrong.

  Mom often slept deeply but she didn’t stir at all, and when Grace leaned over, she could barely feel her breath against her cheek. She glanced around—and saw it.

  An empty pill bottle tipped on its side. Grace snatched it up. Her mother’s sleeping pills. Empty though the prescription had been filled only two days before.

  She fumbled through the yellow pages for poison control, all while trying to shake Mom awake. “You need to call for an ambulance,” the blunt voice on the phone line instructed.

  An ambulance.

  Grace swallowed and dialed their neighbors—her mother’s only friends. Patsy and Robert came at once. While he made the emergency call, Patsy led Grace to the couch in the living room and sat with her, arm around her shoulders. “She’s not in her right mind, sweetie.”

  “She never has been.”

  The older woman brushed her fingers through Grace’s curls, smoothing them into place. “Robert thinks she’s a manic depressive. Your father’s leaving has made it harder for her to cope.”

  “I don’t want to do this anymore.” Grace heard the smallness in her voice, the near whine, like a child. She was all her mother had—how selfish of her to think this. But how unfair of the world to ask it of her.

  Patsy hugged her tighter as the siren’s wail approached. “That’s all right, hon. You don’t have to anymore.”

  Two days later, after her mother’s stomach had been pumped and she was stable, the state of Tennessee committed her to a psychiatric ward—and Grace to the temporary care of Robert and Patsy Bell.

  Chapter 7

  David would never have called himself a jealous man, but the green edge of envy crept up in his periphery anytime he drove out to the Watson property. Patrick had chosen well when he bought this little bit of land with Steamboat Creek cutting across its corner. Over the fall, when he’d visited, Tennessee had put the boys and him up in the little bungalow down by the creek. There one could swing on the porch and smell the tides coming in. They’d sat for hours on the dock, watching the dolphins feed and languish against muddy banks.

  His townhouse made a good investment—even if it had sucked his savings dry—but David figured if they all stayed around here, eventually he’d want something like this. The Coultrie farm met the requirements. He nudged those thoughts back in the box they belonged—with the lid shut tight.

  First things first. Home. Job. Which had brought him to Gr
ace’s door with a laundry basket of canned goods and non-perishables.

  When he rang the bell, he heard a quick bark and a scuffling of nails on hardwood floors. She pulled open the door but left the screen closed. Seeing the size of the dog whose collar she kept in a firm grip, David was absurdly grateful.

  “Hey, there.” Grace’s blond curls were tamed behind a scarf of bright colors that spilled over one shoulder. She’d exchanged her typical skirt for wide pants that puddled at her socked feet. “What brings you over?”

  How the woman planned to cross her muddy yard while wearing those pants mystified David. But then, Grace had often been a conundrum. He offered the basket. “Heard you’re a collection agent.”

  “That I am.” Tugging at the beast, she pushed open the screen. “Come on in. I promise he won’t bite, but I can’t promise he won’t lunge.”

  The dog was nearly half her size, and although Grace was not a large woman, this made for a large enough dog. He had a head the size of a football. Floppy ears belied the massive teeth. But his eyes were, no other word for it, soulful. Soon as David stepped over Grace’s threshold, the giant leapt.

  “Hank!” She protested as his wet nose inspected David’s collar and deemed him friend.

  Laughing, David set down the basket so he could scrub Hank’s neck with both hands. Had to be a mix of boxer and something else bigger—maybe even some greyhound the way those legs went on and on. “So you’re not really a big scary watchdog, huh, boy?” He’d dreamed of a dog scuffing up their floors. Lou always said she had enough messes to handle already.

  Grace huffed. “More like a giant, sloppy toddler. Come on into the kitchen, David, and I’ll get you some tea and a towel for the slobber.”

  “When did y’all get a dog? Tennessee never mentioned him.”

  “Hank bears mentioning, for sure.” Grace filled two glasses with ice and tea. “I’m fostering him for a little while. Apparently a family brought him on vacation and decided that was the last straw for the mongrel. Isn’t that right?” She cooed at the puppy-beast nuzzling her leg and handed David his glass across the granite island.