The Bookshop at Water's End Read online

  “Stop.” I held my hand up. “I know you’re trying to scare me. I can feel it all the way inside. And it’s working. It’s definitely working.” I took the papers, gripping the file folders and feeling their edges dig into my sweaty palms. “Leave. Please. I’ll go through these.”

  “I am leaving,” he said and then his lip lifted over his teeth, a grimace of anger. “You’re a fool.” His anger moved like waves under his skin.

  Maybe I was, but I didn’t say a word.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked.

  “No.”

  This was obviously the wrong response. Twenty-two years of arguing and fighting back and defending myself had left him believing I would again engage. I saw how my reactions all those years had kept this going—he attacked; I defended; he increased the criticism; I increased the justification. But now that I didn’t defend, what was there left to attack? My very being, obviously.

  “You are ridiculous and absurd. I am taking Piper home with me.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Who was that boy with her?” he asked.

  “A friend,” I said. “A very, very nice friend.”

  “Dear God, don’t tell me she’s dating a black guy.”

  “You,” I said. “Do you see who you’ve become? Oh, God, Lucas.” And I walked away, just like that. No more explaining. No more excuses. No more fixing. Before I reentered the tent, I opened the top folder and he was right—the paperwork was intimidating and frightening, and I didn’t want to do it. But I would.

  I’d loved him once. When I’d met him, his sense of adventure, his easy laughter and charm had lured me. The marriage death had been a slow undoing of kindnesses, and an escalation of dismissive disapproval. And now this: the End.

  Inside the tent, the atmosphere had shifted to a more raucous party, and I watched Lucas walk away to the dirt parking lot at the end of the block. My heart hammered against my ribs and I wanted to go home, back to the river house and the porch. Whatever I’d believed still waited for me in Charleston was gone. I’d ruined everything. This was my undoing and nothing remained. There would be no going back.

  The band played, and the dance floor overflowed with families and couples and teenagers. Mimi and Harrington waited for me with Lainey and the kids at the table. I sat and took a long drink of the lemonade we’d brought—the adult version—and they sat with me.

  “Where’s Piper?” I asked.

  Lainey pointed at the dance floor. “Dancing with that cute guitar player who is eyeing her as if she hung the moon, the stars and the majority of the planets.” Lainey patted George the panda’s head. “I think someone here is a bit jealous.”

  George sat cross-legged on the pavement, dejected and playing with a Tonka toy truck, which he ran over his legs and under the picnic table.

  “Are you okay?” Lainey asked me. “Where is he now?”

  I kept my sight on Piper and Fletch as I answered. “I don’t know. He went home, I assume. I’m fine. Or not.” I took another long swig of the lemonade and felt the vodka spike its way inside and then flow through my veins as surely as the Dilaudid had for Mr. Rohr. Back to him, always a return to that night with my mind looping ever backward. “Lucas gave me these.” I held out the folders for Lainey.

  She opened one, glanced inside and then closed it quickly. “Oh . . .”

  “Yes, oh.” I slid the folders back across the table and stuck them into my purse. “You’d think I’d be happy to get what I wanted—divorce papers.”

  “I know this is awful timing and . . .”

  “There’s no going home now,” I said. “There is no home. No job. No husband. No house.”

  “Bonny . . .”

  I ran my hand through my hair and closed my eyes tight against the forming headache. “No one took it away. I lost it. Or I gave it up.”

  “Lost what?” Daisy’s voice asked from under the table. She popped up and jumped into my lap, wiggling her way to comfort.

  “Not you,” I said and kissed the top of her warm hair. “I’d definitely never lose you.”

  “I can hide really good,” she said.

  “I’d find you.” I touched the tip of her lion nose and then looked at Mimi. Harrington sat next to her, although he looked toward the dance floor as if pretending he wasn’t there at all.

  Mimi glanced around the room as if searching for danger. “Did you know he was coming?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t. But can we change the subject? I’m fine. This was such a beautiful night and I refuse to let him ruin it.”

  “Okay,” Lainey said. “Change of subject.” She turned to Mimi. “Is it odd to see us all here again? Like no time at all has passed?”

  “Oh, time has definitely passed,” Mimi said and laughed.

  “I want you to tell us something about your life,” I said. “I know there’s more than just the bookstore, the bourbon and the pound cake. And Harrington.”

  “Oh, darling, of course there is.” She tucked a stray hair into her bun and leaned forward. “I have a garden that will blow your socks off, full of every flower that will grow in zone eight. I have a host of hilarious friends, although I’ve also lost so many. I’m obsessed with the new movie theater and never miss the opening night of any movie, even if it’s horror.”

  “Where do you live?” I asked, feeling my heart slow then, like Mimi’s life could be mine. So beautiful. So simple.

  “I have a little guesthouse behind another house, only a few blocks away. But oh, darling, I’ve lived in so many places in Watersend. From the worst apartment to the nicest house. It’s been a wild ride of a life.”

  “I bet there’s very little you don’t know about this town,” I said. “You could write a book.”

  “I want to ask something kind of crazy.” Lainey twirled her glass and glanced sideways at her kids before speaking in a whisper. “Do you remember my mom at all?”

  Mimi’s face changed so quickly that I could have sworn she was going to cry. “Of course I do.”

  “Do you think anyone in town remembers?”

  “I’m not sure, dear.” Mimi looked at the table and then reached to take Harrington’s hand. “We don’t talk much about it around here. Most people who knew her all those years ago are gone or didn’t know her well. You know she didn’t come into town very much unless she came to pick you girls up to go home. She stayed out at that river house or sometimes came to a party or two. I only knew her because she would talk to me when she came for you.”

  “I hate asking,” Lainey said, “but I believe that one day I will say her name and someone will reply, ‘Oh, yes! I saw her in Houston,’ or, ‘I heard she was in Atlanta’ . . . I know it’s crazy. It’s like a tic. She’s probably gone.” Lainey paused and then said what she must have wanted to say all along. “There’s this detective I hired years ago. I stopped paying him—Tim begged me to stop. But the detective says he’s never stopped thinking about this case—it burrowed under his skin. So every once in a while he runs another quick look, and he’s called to say she might be in Houston, Texas.”

  “Texas?” Mimi asked. “Why there?”

  “Wait,” I said. “You heard from a PI. I thought you said you’d stopped.”

  “I did stop, but he called Tim. And I have no idea why Houston. But he does a sweep every few months in his database and I guess this woman turned up without real identification and she’s the right age . . . I know I should ignore this, but . . .” Lainey looked at the twinkle lights and shook her head. “I even looked at plane flights. I’ve thought about leaving here to go to Texas. Just. In. Case. It’s insane.”

  “Lainey, you are going there again—to that place you told me you wanted to avoid, to the place you promised Tim you wouldn’t go, grasping at straws.” I reached to touch her arm, a motion of solace and understanding.


  Mimi shook her head. “But how could you not keep asking and looking? She’s your mother. But I bet that if she’s staying away, she has her reasons—and I know they aren’t because she doesn’t love you or your brother, if that’s what you’ve been going through all your life believing.”

  Lainey laughed, but it was a choked sound. “That is such a Mimi-nice thing to say, but of course if she’s alive she doesn’t love us. I have children. There is nothing—not fire or hell—that could keep me away from them.” She dropped her hand onto Daisy’s blond hair where she now sat on the ground with George after she’d jumped from my lap to color in her mandala coloring book.

  “I can see why you’d feel that way,” Mimi said softly. “But sometimes we don’t know everything there is to know.”

  “Well, that’s enough about me, Mimi. I thought we were supposed to be talking about you. You’ve always been in Watersend, right?” Lainey changed the subject quickly.

  “Where else would I go? This is home. Speaking of homes, I’d love to see what you’ve done to the old river house, Bonny.” Mimi shifted on the bench closer to Harrington, who seemed still preoccupied by the dance floor.

  The singer began to butcher an Alison Krauss song and I said, “I’d love for you to come see the house. At least it means I’ve done something. If I’m done saving lives at least I can save a house.”

  “You aren’t done,” Mimi said.

  Harrington turned to us then, but he seemed absent at the same time. “You know, Mimi, I think I’m going to head home.”

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Just tired, my dear.” He slurred his words and I wondered how he’d gotten so sloshed so early in the evening when I hadn’t seen him take a sip of a drink.

  Mimi looked confused and a low thrum began in my chest. Something was wrong. I wanted to bolt from the picnic table, head toward the fresh air. Was it Lucas again? I glanced around the tent but didn’t see him. I stared across the table with white static filling my mind. The music reverberated, bouncing off the edges of my skull; the bluegrass violin’s screech ricocheted off the edges of my consciousness. But underneath, in a small corner of my mind, the doctor in me screamed, Do something right now. But what was there to do? I didn’t know. Dizziness and electric panic swirled through me like a storm.

  “Harrington,” I heard my voice say. “Smile for me.”

  “What?”

  “Smile real big for me.” I repeated myself, and the fog started to lift. I stood. “Now.”

  “What in the gravy?” Mimi asked.

  But he did smile, and his gaze wandered away and the left side of his grin didn’t lift. I moved quickly to the other side of the table. “Lainey,” I said without looking at her, “call 911 and tell them to notify the hospital to have tPA on hand and ready.”

  “What?”

  “Now,” I said, repeating my instructions. I reached Harrington’s side. He stood as I approached, and then he wavered, grabbing to the side of the table. “Sit,” I said. “You’re having a stroke.”

  “Hell no, I’m not,” he slurred.

  “Harrington,” Mimi said calmly. “Do exactly as she says.”

  He looked to Mimi and his eyes softened and closed. “I don’t feel right at all.”

  The sirens were far off and then closer and closer. I held his hand and Lainey pushed back the crowd, moving them to the far end of the tent. Mimi held his other hand while Harrington tried to convince us that he was just tired and hadn’t drunk enough water, and that we needed to let him walk home. When the ambulance arrived outside the tent, and the paramedics rushed to his side, I rattled off his symptoms and then stepped away.

  For a long while I stood still in the street, alone, unable to move until the sound of the sirens disappeared and the music started again. Something shifted inside, a slight tectonic movement that didn’t yet change the landscape, but I was quite sure would.

  chapter 24

  BONNY BLANKENSHIP

  “You saved his life,” Lainey said simply.

  Back at the house, the little ones settled in bed, I sat on the back porch with Lainey and stared into the darkness. I couldn’t see the river, but I knew it was there, pulsing and moving. Same with my life. I couldn’t yet see it, but tonight had given me a glimpse into the darkness—I was going to be okay. Not yet, not tomorrow, but someday soon I would be.

  “I just saw the symptoms,” I told her.

  “You know, he was getting ready to leave. And if he’d walked off and gone home . . . I know enough about strokes to know it’s all about catching it in the first hours. You saved his life.”

  “It was surreal, Lainey. We talked about your mom and the kids and home; I knew Lucas was gone; and then I was paralyzed. I couldn’t do anything at first. I was frozen as solid as I have been for months. But some part of me, something inside, broke loose from the iceberg and took over.”

  “The real you.”

  I laughed. “Maybe.”

  “It was the woman who told Lucas you would not go back. The woman who saved a life. It is the woman who sits on this porch with me.”

  “We are never just one thing, are we?” I asked. “Never just this or that.”

  “Never.”

  “Where’s our Piper?” I asked.

  “Asleep in bed with Daisy,” Lainey said. “Too adorable to even tell you.” She paused and then asked, “Do you think Mimi was weird about Mom? I mean, defending her and all that.”

  “No,” I said. “I think she was just trying to make you feel better. That’s how she is.” I settled back into the cushions and exhaled. “I know this sounds crazy, but sometimes when we’re alone like this, and our kids aren’t yammering around, I feel like your mom is going to walk in the door. Or my mom. That we have sand on our feet and we’re rubbing aloe on our sunburns. That we’re scribbling in our notebook. That we have a half-finished game of Monopoly on the kitchen table, and peace sign appliqués ready to stitch onto our jeans.”

  “Me, too, Bonny. Me, too.”

  We were silent for a time and then Lainey stretched and told me good night, leaving me alone on the porch. And, as if she’d summoned her brother with her voice, my cell buzzed and his name showed on my screen. I would answer this time—the need for him winning out over my strength to stay away.

  “Hi, Owen.” I tried to keep my voice calm, steady.

  “Finally, Bonny. I’ve tried so many times. You know when you don’t answer I think something terrible has happened.”

  “Nothing is wrong,” I said. “Or everything is, depending on your take.”

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  I laughed. “That is usually my question for you,” I whispered and walked off the porch to the backyard, where I hoped neither Lainey nor Piper could hear me.

  “I’m in North Carolina,” he said.

  “Tell me you aren’t back in the air,” I said. “Not with that broken collarbone and dislocated shoulder and . . .”

  “No, Doc. I’m not in the air. My feet are firmly on the ground. Where are you?”

  He repeated his question and a wash of realization almost made me smile. It was the first time he’d ever had to ask me anything twice. So willing was I all the time to give him exactly what he needed when he needed it. The urge when he arrived, always at that last minute, was to keep him there as long as possible, with the everlasting hope that “as long as possible” meant “forever,” which I knew it didn’t. But wouldn’t it be nice if it did?

  “Are you still there in Watersend?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Are you okay?”

  This was the chance to tell him that his sister was with me, that she was just a few hundred yards away in a room next to his niece and nephew. I didn’t. “Yes, I’m okay.”

  “God, give me something. Tell me . . . I mean, have yo
u heard about your job?”

  “I really can’t talk to you about any of it.”

  “Oh, Bee, why can’t you?”

  “Because it breaks my heart to share it with you. Because you shatter my heart. Every. Single. Time. And this time won’t be any different. And I want to begin again, and I want to start over and I want to focus on the things that are most important to me. And when you are anywhere near me I forget everything else. You become the one thing, and I lose my way.”

  “That’s a lot of ‘and,’” he said in that light tone that came with a smart-ass grin and his hand coming to the back of my neck to pull me to him, to kiss me so anything I said and anything I thought faded. No matter how many years had passed, still that memory lingered.

  “There’s more of them,” I said, “but none of that matters. You have to leave me alone.”

  “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me—what are the most important things?”

  “Saving my daughter and myself. Anything else comes second. Everything else.”

  “I’ll be second. Or third. I don’t care. Just don’t take me out of the lineup.”

  “Like I’m a baseball coach.” I laughed and felt our banter begin.

  “Yes. I’m on the B team and you’re trying to decide if maybe I need to be sent back to the farm team. Or worse, sent home.”

  “How could I send you home when you don’t have one?”

  “Good point.”

  There was a beat or two of silence, a time when we measured our own breath. I closed my eyes. I was falling into his voice; I always did. God, I always would. There was no way out. It was a magnetic force, a terrible gravity.

  “Do you remember the night before my wedding?” I asked. “The night you showed up at my house?”

  “Yes,” he said, so softly I barely heard him.

  “You begged me not to get married, but you said you still had to leave the next day. Just wait, you said. Just always and always wait. That’s what you wanted. It’s what you still want.” My voice rose and I felt the sickness of his desertion again, as if it was that night and my wedding dress hung in the bedroom closet.