Swimming Lessons (11 page)

Emmi gave Cara a glare that said
I told you so
.

“I didn’t realize,” Cara said at last, reaching out to put her hand over Flo’s. “No, I didn’t notice,” she amended. “I’ve been caught up in my own world, my own problems. I should have realized that you might be missing your mother. Needing some help. But you have to admit, you put up a pretty good front.”

“Yeah,” Toy added with feeling. “What about all your gentlemen friends?”

Flo snorted. “What gentlemen friends?”

Emmi tilted her head in question. “You always say you have a date.”

Flo’s smile slanted. “Ah…that. Well, I have a few friends I play cards with on Tuesday nights at the REC Center. Then there’s bingo at the church on Thursdays. A movie club on Friday afternoons. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I go out with men
and
women. We go out together. They’re not
date
dates!”

Cara sat back in her chair, laughter bubbling inside. “Why you old fake!”

“Yeah,” Emmi joined in.

Toy skewered her eyes and said in a scolding tone, “And you making me feel like a total loser for staying in on weekends while you waltzed out.”

“You
should
go out more,” Flo countered. “You’re young! Pretty. You’re shouldn’t be hiding your light under a bushel like you do.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Cara said. “It was all a cover-up. Why didn’t you just tell us you were lonely?”

“It’s not the kind of thing you just up and tell someone.
How are you? I’m lonely, thanks. How are you?
” She shrugged one shoulder. “Besides, I didn’t want your pity. Don’t want it now!”

“Not pity,” Cara said gravely. “Never pity.”

“After Miranda died, you were fussing around me, treating me like I was the next to go. Girls, there’s a lot of life left in this old mare. I’m not ready to be put out to pasture.”

“We were just worried about you.”

“Well, don’t,” she replied brusquely.

“I couldn’t help but notice the garden has gone to seed,” Emmi said, not beating around the bush.

Flo looked down at her hands as a faint blush crept up her cheek.

“Let us help,” Emmi concluded.

“I can hire someone.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Cara spoke up. “You just told Toy that she couldn’t hire anyone because you wanted to help. Why can’t you accept that we want to help you?”

“You’ve always been there for us all these years,” Emmi said. “It’s our turn now.”

“If you won’t let us help you, then I won’t let you help me,” Toy said.

“You girls are too much,” Flo said. Her voice was low and her eyes averted.

Cara glanced across the table to meet Toy and Emmi’s gazes and they shared a silent pact to be on better watch for Flo and her needs.

“You are not alone,” Cara told her.

“Oh, honey, I know,” Flo replied in a rush, obviously embarrassed for her position.

“You are not alone,” Cara repeated.

“I know that darling,” Flo said, pulling her hand away.

Cara reached out and took Flo’s hand again, then looked into her eyes. In the fierce blue, she saw for the first time in all the years she’d known her, the advancing age and her new vulnerability. “You are not alone.”

Flo opened her mouth to speak, then she closed her lips. The fight flowed from her shoulders as they lowered. Toy reached out to put her hand over the two. Emmi joined in.

“You’re my girls,” Flo said in a husky whisper.

Cara squeezed her hand, then let go, sitting back in her chair and averting her gaze. The others did likewise. She knew Flo would have been mortified for anyone to see the tear pooling at her lashes.

“How about some dinner?” Flo asked in a voice filled with false cheer, pushing back and rising to a stand. It was obvious to all that she was desperate to escape the tender moment.

“How about some more wine?” asked Emmi.

S
ummer on the Isle of Palms was in full swing. By the first day of summer children across the country were released from schools and families loaded up cars with gear and kids and headed for the beach. Cars with license plates from South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, New Jersey, Illinois and others were spotted all over the coast.

Cara didn’t like to venture out on Palm Boulevard between four and five o’clock, especially not on the weekends. It was the hour of mass exodus from the beaches and cars lined up at the traffic light for the chance to get on the connector to the mainland. She glanced in the rearview mirror to see her niece, Linnea, and Little Lovie in the backseat, shoulder to shoulder, bent over Linnea’s teen magazine. She’d taken the girls on a shopping spree at Towne Centre. They’d each found a swimsuit, flip-flops, beach hats and cute accessories for their hair and ears. She’d had so much fun watching them make their choices. Linnea was into the current fashions and was pushing the boundaries from girl to teen. Little Lovie liked anything that sparkled.

Cara had to work to keep the smile off her face as she
listened to Lovie desperately trying to be grown up for Linnea. She was showing her the sparkly lavender nail polish she’d just purchased. Linnea never clucked her tongue or rolled her eyes when Lovie said something silly. What great girls, Cara thought, then made a quick decision. She turned off Palm Boulevard and into the parking lot of Acme Cantina, their favorite island restaurant.

“Aunt Cara?” Linnea asked, looking up from the magazine. “We’re going out to eat?”

“Why not?” she said, letting loose the grin. “I’m not in the mood to cook and I thought we deserved something special.”

“But will Daddy know where to pick me up? He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

“Let him wait. It’ll do him good.”

She cut the engine and turned to look in the backseat. Linnea’s face was shadowed with distress. At thirteen, Linnea had lost the soft roundness of girlhood. Her long neck and high cheekbones under brilliant blue eyes gave hints at the beauty she would someday become. Though there was some of her mother, Julia, in her nose, Linnea looked remarkably like her grandmother, Olivia Rutledge.

Perhaps it was because Linnea looked so much like her mother, and that an expression of worry had been so common on her mother’s face growing up, that Cara instinctively sought to erase it from Linnea’s.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I won’t do anything to get you in trouble.”

“It’s just that Daddy gets so mad if I’m not ready.”

“Does he?” she asked dryly.

Her brother, Palmer, though a dear at times, could be an ass at others. Since she’d returned home to the Isle of
Palms they’d had their run-ins. Her brother couldn’t stand it when she voiced
her
opinions, but that didn’t stop him from voicing his—loudly and often. While she was living in Chicago, Cara hadn’t had much contact with her brother and his wife, Julia, and their two children. She wouldn’t have recognized her niece and nephew if she’d walked past them on the street. It wasn’t a situation she’d been proud of. She’d made up for lost time in the past five years, taking the children to her house on weekends, spoiling them with gifts, and bringing the whole family out on Brett’s tour boat to Capers Island for camping expeditions. Cara and Julia maintained a civil relationship but Brett and Palmer had struck up an unlikely friendship. Once they got together they were two wild good ol’ boys, especially out on the water. Seeing it always made her laugh.

The one thing she couldn’t tolerate about her brother, however, was his penchant for running his house with a firm hand, and especially the women in it. He liked being the king in the castle, a trait he’d inherited from their father.

“What time did your daddy say he’d pick you up?”

Linnea looked at her Swiss Army watch. “In about an hour.”

Cara pulled out her cell phone. “No worries. I’ll call him and let him know where we are. He can just as easily pick you up here. Okay?”

Linnea brightened. “Okay,” she said as she set aside her magazine and unbuckled her seatbelt.

The back porch of the funky Tex-Mex restaurant was packed with folks getting a head start on the sunset happy hour. Inside the small, wood restaurant it was quiet and they were seated right away. Cara wanted a chance to talk to Linnea about the summer looming before them. June was almost over and Linnea usually
spent the month of July with her and Brett at their house on Hamlin Creek. Linnea loved working on the turtle team with Cara in the mornings, and surfing and hanging out with her friends during the afternoons. Cara loved having kids hanging out at their house.

She ordered her usual chicken fajita salad. Linnea ordered a cheese burrito and Little Lovie ordered whatever Linnea did.

“Here’s to a great summer,” Cara said, raising her soda glass.

“I’m so glad you took us out to eat,” Linnea said. “Mama and Daddy are going out tonight and that means Cooper and I will likely get stuck with pizza again.” She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t eat that stuff. So many calories.”

Cara gave the slender thirteen-year-old a stern look. “Calories? Precious, don’t even go there. You’re so young. You can eat anything you want and burn it off. I remember those good ol’ days. Wait till you hit my age…”

“You have a great figure, Aunt Cara,” Linnea argued back. “You’re so tall and thin. Not short like me.”

“Oh, Linnea…” Why was it young girls were never happy with what they had? They always thought what they didn’t have was better. “When I was your age I was in agony because I had long legs, big feet and unruly dark hair. I wanted to look like my mother, like you do,” she added ruefully. “Your grandmother was a real beauty, you know. She was the quintessential belle—petite, blond and graceful. I was a Rutledge from head to toe, which would’ve been great for a guy. But tall, dark and brainy wasn’t so great for a young Southern girl back when I grew up. I was the proverbial ugly duckling.”

“You grew up to be the swan, though.”

“Did I tell you today that I love you? And keep on talking,” she replied with a light laugh.

“Love me, too?” Little Lovie asked, worried. She climbed up on her knees in the booth to better sip her soda. Like her namesake, Little Lovie was destined to be another beauty.

“With all my heart.”

Cara laid her right hand in the middle of the square wooden table. “Okay, first pact of the summer. Let’s swear that we’ll love each other forever. No matter what.”

They loved to make secret pacts at the beginning of every summer. Her heart pumped with affection when two small hands joined hers. “Forever,” they all said.

Their dinners arrived in good time. After they swallowed the first bites, Cara brought up the topic on her mind.

“I was thinking about this summer. You’re getting pretty old now, Linnea. What do you think about a job? Brett was saying he could begin training you on the tour boat. Nothing hard. You could go out on the boat with him, help haul up the crab traps and show the tourists the shells. Easy things like that.”

“All summer?” Her voice took on that worried note again.

“Maybe not
all
summer.” When she didn’t reply, Cara added, “For a month, maybe?”

Linnea swirled her drink with her straw. “I dunno, Aunt Cara. It sounds great and all, but…” She looked up. “Here’s the thing. I’m going away this summer. To camp. It’s all arranged. There’s this really great place in North Carolina. All the girls are going.”

Cara was never popular as a girl, but even she knew that if
all the girls were going
, there was no use arguing.
But all she could think was,
a summer away from the beach?

Linnea took off on a long, rambling description of the camp in the mountains, the girls who were going, the activities, the boy’s camp across the lake. Cara half listened over the inner roar of her disappointment. She had stored up years of knowledge to share with a young girl. She saw herself as Linnea’s mentor as much as an aunt.

Looking at Linnea’s face as she went on and on about the girls and the camp, however, Cara realized that this was her niece’s first step away from her and toward independence.

“It sounds like heaven,” she lied, trying to sound upbeat and supportive. “I guess I can understand. But I don’t know how I’ll tell your Uncle Brett. He was counting on you being here this July.”

“I’ll miss being here with you this summer, too,” she replied with a woman’s perspicacity.

Little Lovie looked crushed. “You aren’t coming to our house this summer?”

“I’ll come by after camp. After all, I can’t spend a whole summer without the turtles.”

“Looks like it’s just you and me, kiddo,” Cara said to Lovie.

“Auntie Cara, if Linnea isn’t going to be on the turtle team, can I?”

Cara looked into the bright blue eyes of the child and realized that she, too, was growing up. At nearly six, she wasn’t the baby any longer. Maybe it was the hormone treatment, maybe it was because she was due to have her eggs implanted, but Cara felt a sudden welling of emotion. Toy, Linnea, and now Little Lovie. All my babies are growing up, she thought, and her smile was bittersweet.

“Well,” she replied, “I suppose the turtle team will have an open spot, won’t we?”

Lovie nodded her head, eagerly.

Cara glanced at Linnea, who was also smiling in a very grown up way. She looked again at Little Lovie. “You’ll have to go through basic training, of course. Early morning risings without complaints and nights slapping mosquitoes on the beach. Are you up to it?”

“Yes,” Lovie replied as though making a vow.

“And you’ll have to make sure no other children touch the hatchlings.”

“I can do that.”

Cara paused, pretending to scrutinize the child. Then she burst into a wide grin. “Okay then. You’re on the turtle team.”

Lovie was beside herself and grinned ear to ear.

Linnea hugged Lovie and Cara thought of all the little children her mother had taught to care for the sea turtles. She felt another surge of emotion, the kind that often comes with the passing of a torch.

Cara was about to launch into the turtle team’s plans for the summer when from the corner of her eye she saw Palmer at the entry asking the waitress where they were seated.

“Oh, look,” she said, changing the topic. “Your daddy’s here.”

Linnea took a final bite of her burrito then scurried from the booth to greet him.

“Take it easy, sugar,” Palmer said in his long drawl as he hugged her. “There’s no fire. Let me say hello to my sister here.” With that he bent at the waist to kiss Cara’s upturned cheek. “So, how’re you doing, sister mine?”

“Good, thanks. You?”

“No complaints.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a few quarters. He gave one to Linnea and the other to Lovie. “There’s a gumball machine over by the door. Why don’t you girls find out what a quarter will get you?”

The girls took off giving Palmer room to slide into the booth. Middle age had given him a paunchy belly but he squeezed in and settled back against the wood stall. His face was ruddy and full cheeked, a common enough reaction to too much sun and bourbon.

“I see you’re taking care of her kid again,” he said.

He always knew exactly the right thing to say to get her riled. “Her kid?” she repeated in an icy tone.

“Yeah, Toy’s kid.
Little Lovie
, right?” he said, stretching out the name. “I never understood how she named her after our mother. Kinda cheeky, don’t you think?”

“It was an act of respect. And love. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

He shrugged. “Just seemed odd to me. Like she wanted something for it, you know?”

“Oh, puhleese,” Cara said, pushing her plate away.

On cue, the waitress showed up. “Can I get you anything sir?”

“Yeah, I’ll have a Coke.”

“Nothing more for me,” she told the waitress. Then to Palmer, “I thought you had a dinner date?”

“I do. But not till later. If you’ve got a minute, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Fire away.”

“It’s about that Toy Sooner girl, actually. Well, not about her, but about the beach house.”

Cara bristled. The beach house was always a touchy subject between them. Palmer had never completely reconciled that their mother had left her the beach house
at her death. Her brother had already been given the family house on Tradd Street in Charleston, complete with the heirloom antiques, the cabin at Lake Lure and the family shipping business. But, as their mother had said, Palmer’s hand was always in the cookie jar. Sadly, Cara had come to see that this was true.

“What about the beach house?” she said as evenly as she could.

“You do realize what it’s worth today?”

“Not this again.”

“Hear me out. Your taxes have shot up accordingly. I reckon…” He spread his palms. The broad gold wedding ring flashed. “What? Fifty…Sixty percent?”

“Forty. Ditto on the insurance. It’s common knowledge. What’s your point?”

He whistled softly and shook his head. “That’s a hefty hike. I’m not talking out of turn when I tell you that Brett’s talked to me.”

Cara’s eyes widened. She couldn’t comprehend this. “About what?”

“We boys get together from time to time. We talk finances. You know that.”

“Brother dear, I do the finances in our family.”

He chuckled, low and rumbling. It was a sonorous sound that always had the power to lessen the tension between them.

“Sweetheart, I’m on your side. What I’m trying to tell you is that your husband is worried about keeping up the payments. He’d never say that in so many words, he’s too loyal to you. But it’s got to be hard going. You opened up two new locations of his business. That’s a lot to undertake.”

Cara felt a squeezing in her chest and stared out the window. Everything he said was true. Outside the
window, The East Islands real estate sign advertised a three bedroom condo for just under a million, as though it was a bargain. And it was. The prices were shooting to the stars. Was Brett worried about money, she wondered?

The waitress brought Palmer’s Coke and he took a lusty gulp. When he finished, he asked, “How much are you charging that lil’ gal for staying in that house?”