Low Country (22 page)

190 / Anne Rivers Siddons

husband lay beside me pregnant with a great betrayal.

Presently I said, wondering that my voice was not

cracked and choked, leaking life, “So it’s true. I thought

he was a liar and a fool. I guess the fool was me.”

And the liar was you, I did not say. But it lay

between us.

After another long moment of silence, he sighed, a

thin, tired sigh, and said, “There’s a lot I have to tell

you, Caro. None of it’s good. I didn’t want to do it

yet, and I didn’t think I had to, until after Christmas

maybe. And I guess I thought there was just a chance

that I wouldn’t have to tell you at all. But Cassells has

put the kibosh on that. Maybe it’s just as well. I just

wish it had been me and not him.”

“I wish so, too, Clay,” I said, feeling the pain inside

so deep and viscous that it felt like blood pooled in

my chest. “You just don’t know how much I wish it

had been. So. You’re going to tell me now, right?”

“I…Caro, Christ, I’m so tired I think I could die from

it. Couldn’t we just…sleep? Get some sleep, and talk

about it in the morning? It won’t seem so bad then.

It’s not so bad, come to think of it. It’s nothing that

can’t be fixed. But I’m so tired.…”

“I don’t care,” I said, and found that I didn’t. “I don’t

care how tired you are, Clay. I hear it

Low Country / 191

now, whatever it is, or I’m getting up from here and

going back to the island and I don’t know when I’m

coming back. Or if. You can’t just…Listen, you tell

me. Sit up and tell me.”

And so he did. He turned on the bedside lamp and

pulled on a T-shirt and sat up in our bed, half turned

away from me toward the hidden sea, and he told me

that things were so bad financially with the company

that unless he got an infusion of cash very quickly, he

ultimately stood to lose it all. All of it. The scattered

island properties, even Peacock Island Plantation, the

flagship of the line, the mother church, the first and

still best thing he had ever created. He would lose it

all. Everything.

I could not understand. I could not comprehend

what he was saying. My head felt as empty as if my

brain had atrophied. I simply sat in the lamplight, still

naked and not noticing at all, and looked at him. Or

rather, at the side of his face.

Finally I said, “You mean…we wouldn’t have a place

to live? We wouldn’t have any money?”

“Well, it’s not that bad,” he said dully. “We could

keep this house, of course. We own it. I’d keep some

company stock. We have a few other personal invest-

ments. Carter’s almost through school. We could live.

It’s just…that all this wouldn’t be mine anymore. Ours,

rather. I…Caro, I can’t let that happen. I can’t. This

is everything, all this…” He gestured, his hand taking

in

192 / Anne Rivers Siddons

the sweep of beach and sea and land that spread out

from the epicenter that was our bed.

“Oh, Clay…is it really?” I said, feeling the pain flare

up until I thought I would die from it. This will be

mortal, I thought. Those five words are what will kill

me now.

He turned and looked at me wordlessly. His face

was flayed, burned, scoured. I did not know this face.

“After you, it is,” he said, eyes closed. “After you and

Carter, it’s everything. There isn’t anything else. Not

for me, anyway.”

I lay back against my pillows, knowing that in some

vital, visceral way I would never sit up whole again.

“I need to know about it,” I whispered. “I need to

know.”

A great, indrawn breath. Then he said, “Remember

Jeremy? Jeremy Fowler, at Calista Key?”

I nodded. Who could forget Jeremy? The golden

boy, the chosen one, the flaming comet that had come

streaking out of Texas when he was only twenty-two,

just out of the University of Texas Business School,

shining with youth and charm and intelligence and

energy and Texas oil money, begging Clay to hire him,

to let him do anything for the company, let him tend

bar at one of the plantation clubs, let him trim shrub-

bery, let him answer the telephone or sort the mail.

I’ll

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make you glad you did, Jeremy Fowler said, and his

voice held all the promise of the new millennium in it.

Of course, Clay hired him. And Jeremy did what he

said he would. Within a year he was second in com-

mand at one of Clay’s oldest resort communities, an

established mountain family resort in Tennessee. In

two years he was back on Peacock’s, heading up the

elite forward planning team. A year later Clay sent him

down to Puerto Rico, to head up the just-borning

Calista Key Plantation. He was by far the youngest

project manager Clay had ever had, and his trajectory

took him and Calista straight into the Caribbean sun.

The first two years’ reports out of Puerto Rico were

stunning. Advance sales were unprecedented. Jeremy

didn’t come back to the States often; he made it a point

to be a hands-on manager. But when he did, with his

fey, beautiful, haunted wife, Lila, he trailed a kind of

glittering aura that was nearly palpable, and he received

a hero’s welcome.

“He…Calista’s bankrupt, Caro,” Clay said. “The fig-

ures that came in were…not true. There’s hardly any

occupancy. The project is way behind construction

schedule; he hasn’t paid any of his suppliers in months.

Nobody’s been working since summer. Whoever went

down there from the home office got shown a great

bustle of activity and dozers and workmen, but they

were free

194 / Anne Rivers Siddons

lances he hired for the day. The photos he sent…Christ,

I think they were the same few units, in the various

stages of construction, with different paint and plant-

ings. From what I hear, morale is so bad that half our

kids down there are drunk most of the time, and the

other half are on drugs. Seven marriages have broken

up. Lila Fowler has left and gone back to her folks in

Philadelphia. The construction engineer split for Arkan-

sas last month. Hayes says Jeremy is living in a broken-

down hotel in Humacao with a Puerto Rican woman,

drinking like a fish. He says there are chickens walking

around in the courtyard.”

He stopped and scrubbed at his eyes with his hands,

as if the chickens were the worst of it.

“How could that happen?” I said. “How could that

be?”

“I don’t blame Hayes,” he said. “I should have gone

down there myself. Hayes is new to this kind of stuff.

He’s never overseen a project before. Jeremy always

did have Hayes in his back pocket. He’s not the only

one, either. Hayes had no reason to doubt the figures

or what he saw with his own eyes. And I didn’t butt

in because I wanted…I thought it was time for Hayes

to have something of his own. And I thought Jeremy

could handle it. I didn’t go down there on purpose. I

didn’t want to hover.…”

“Hayes,” I said leadenly. “Of course. It would be

Hayes, wouldn’t it? I thought Hayes

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didn’t have a project of his own. I thought he was a,

quote, perfect second banana, unquote.”

“He didn’t want anybody to know until he got the

hang of it,” Clay said.

“Well,” I said, “so we lose Calista Key. Why does

that mean that everything else…what does that have

to do with the island? With Dayclear?”

“Because,” Clay said, “I’ve…we’ve…things have not

been so good for resorts in the last few years, Caro.

I’ve kept expanding because I didn’t think I had any

choice. I could pay the Alabama Gulf investors, for

instance, with the money we made when we opened

up Biloxi. And we paid the Biloxi guys when we

opened up Georgia. And so on. But Calista…we owed

a ton of money on that one. That one was a money

pit from the beginning. There’s not enough cash in all

the others put together for me to pay off the Calista

folks unless I sell Peacock’s. And when that goes…it

all will. Eventually, it all will. Or…”

He fell silent. I waited. Then I said, “Or you could

open up a new property, right? Get some more joint

venture money. But you don’t have enough cash to

buy one, so you’d have to use land you already had.

Like the island. My friend Mr. Cassells says it’s a nat-

ural, that site. The only thing is, Clay, it’s not your

land, is it? It’s mine. Did you forget that?”

“No,” he said in a low voice. “I didn’t forget that.”

196 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“Clay, isn’t all this a pyramid scam or something?

Isn’t all this illegal? Who knows about this?”

“Not strictly, no,” he said. “It’s done often, and done

quite successfully, if you can keep all the balls in the

air at once. I thought I could. There was nothing to

make me think I couldn’t. Nobody said anything; none

of the company money people ever said a word. Hayes

has always been a wizard at finding properties and

investors. He’s the one who just might save us now.

And to answer your question…nobody knows about

it, I don’t think. Not outside the Plantation family,

anyway. I mean…they know about Dayclear coming

on line, but not the reason for it. Yet. I don’t think too

many of our people know about Calista…yet.”

He lay back against the pillow and closed his eyes.

He might have died, he was so still, so white, his face

so emptied of everything that had ever meant Clay to

me. I waited for my heart to twist with pain, but it did

not. My heart felt as cold and hard as a cinder, dead

for eons.

“Remember how my grandfather felt about that

land?” I said finally, feeling as if I were going to col-

lapse from the effort to talk. “Remember what he said

about the Gullahs in Dayclear always having their

homes, about the wild things, the birds, the fish, the

things that bloom and grow there that don’t anywhere

else? Remember the panther? Would you really…could

you

Low Country / 197

really just doze all that down and put up a…a…what?

A golf course? A lagoon community? A marina?

What? Cluster housing, condos where the old houses

are now?”

“It can be done well, Caro,” he said in the new, dull

voice. “You know it can. I’ve got studies, a master plan,

that leaves so much of the land and marsh in place

that it almost looks as if it hasn’t been touched. There’s

plenty of wild habitat still provided for, over where

your grandfather’s house is. I wouldn’t…we wouldn’t

disturb that. This looks like an award winner; the joint

venture people are crazy about it.…”

“I gather that’s what you were doing in Atlanta,” I

said. “Peddling it. Who is it this time, Clay? Texas

money? Los Angeles? Arab?”

“Local Atlanta,” he said. “Fellow Southerners who

know land like this. A long track record, lots of exper-

ience, solvent as all get-out, plenty of cash. I’ll tell you

about them later. They’d respect that land, I think.

They’ve been crazy to get down here for a long time,

but nothing’s really pleased them till they saw the

marsh property. If it’s got to be done, I’m glad Hayes

knew these guys.”

“Clay. Listen to me. I’m sorry about…everything.

But that land…that land is mine, Clay! Weren’t you

even going to ask me? Couldn’t you at least have

leveled with me before…before it got this far? Don’t

I matter? Doesn’t my grandfather? Were you
ever

going to talk to me?”

198 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“I haven’t been able to talk to you for a long time,

Caro,” he said. It was almost a whisper. I opened my

mouth to protest, and then did not. It was true. He

had tried. Maybe not about Dayclear, but about other

things that were important to the two of us. I had not

refused to discuss them, but I had not talked back. My

very silence had been his answer.

“What were you going to tell the people in

Dayclear?” I said. “What were you going to do about

clear titles and all that stuff? Providing that I agreed,

which I cannot imagine doing?”

“Well, we’d do a substantial cash buyout. It would

be more than enough for them to relocate, and we’d

do that for them, too; find them homes, or maybe build

some for them off-island. They’d be better off finan-

cially than they’ve ever been in their lives.…”

“Except that they wouldn’t have their homes. Can’t

you understand what that means? It seems to me you

should, if you’re about to lose yours.…”

“There are other things we can do. Hayes thinks we

might leave the settlement as is, maybe make a sort of

cultural attraction of it. You know, a preservation

center for the Gullah culture, with the Dayclear people

doing the things their people have always done,

planting and harvesting rice and cotton, spinning,

dyeing, growing vegetables, making sweet-grass bas-

kets, telling the old stories