She had tried to tell Maisy about Sheldon on the night of the bonfire. Later, she’d wanted to tell Maisy how the events of that one night had not only broken apart their relationship, but also formed a new life in Brayden.
In the days before that last summer, Maisy had been the kind of sister to whom Riley would have confided this story of Sheldon. Once upon a time they’d have hidden beneath the canoe stored on the side of the Beach Club and whispered secrets. In that sweet past they’d tiptoed down the hall and sequestered themselves beneath the blankets on Maisy’s bed and told each other about the boys who wanted to kiss them.
Tears filled Riley’s eyes at these memories from before she’d betrayed her sister in jealousy. She understood why Maisy had left town, why she hated her, but she didn’t understand why Maisy had never pursued Mack, why she had never gone after him or told him of her love. When Mack didn’t return the following summer, Maisy had run away instead of going after him.
Brayden touched Riley’s shoulder as she pulled the car into the driveway. “Mom, is something wrong?”
She smiled down at him. “I don’t feel all that well. I’m gonna go lie down for a while. You can play with Tommy next door, or hang with Gamma.”
“Got it,” he said, jumped from the car’s passenger seat and ran through the hedges to the next-door neighbor’s house, calling Tommy’s name.
The car idled, and Riley rested her head on the headrest. Walking into the house, talking to Mama and then retreating to her own bedroom seemed too monumental a task compared to just closing her eyes. The sun’s warmth filling the car pressed her toward the comfort of dreams.
A loud thump startled Riley and she opened her eyes, realized she’d fallen asleep with the motor running. Adalee stood outside the car, her eyebrows furrowed. Riley shut off the engine and opened the door to stand and face her sister. “Hey, Adalee.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but I can’t believe I fell asleep just now.”
“I’m headed over to the bookstore. I was hoping you could drive me.” Adalee glanced back toward the house. “If Mama thinks I drove, she’ll lose her mind. She is madder at me about that DUI than she’s ever been about anything ever.”
“Oh, Adalee. I just left the bookstore. Can Maisy come get you?”
“No, she’s working on . . .” Adalee stopped her words short. “Forget it. I’ll get Harriet to take me.” She turned on her heels and ran back into the house. Riley stretched, lifted her face to the sun’s warmth, wanting to absorb it into her heart and mind, let it wash the mourning and regret from her body.
Riley slipped through the back door, ignored Mama and tiptoed up the stairway to her old bedroom, where she curled into her childhood bed and slept.
NINETEEN
MAISY
Maisy was filled with the frantic need to create something beautiful. She knew to take advantage of this drive. It was when she did her best work—when love’s promise appeared before her and it seemed as if her dreams might just work out . . . this time. Her creative work reflected the promise of fulfillment. As soon as the cookbook ladies went home, she’d head for the storage room and the project she was working on with Adalee, but now she sat at the café bar and chatted with the club members about their latest dish—shrimp and grits from Nathalie Dupree’s cookbook.
A crowd sat in rows of chairs where the café tables were usually arranged. Cookbooks were displayed on iron stands throughout the area. The aroma of garlic, shrimp and a spice Maisy couldn’t name wafted across the room. Classical music, chosen by the club members, brought a sense of peace. Maisy stood behind the counter as the club cooked, and the leader, Sharon Martin, spoke to the audience about the process. When the public had had its fill of food, and Ethel had rung up the cookbook sales, Maisy took a seat on a barstool and smiled at the club. “You all did a fantastic job. I think I might even be able to cook that dish now.”
“It’s an easy one,” Sharon said. “Now that everyone else is gone, we get to have our own party.”
Eventually the discussion turned from the dish they had prepared to issues within the community and the personal problems in their lives.
Sharon placed a clean plate in front of Maisy, dropped a ladleful of steaming shrimp and grits onto it. “This is for you,” she said.
“Thanks.” Maisy dug in. “Delicious,” she said. The discussions continued: children who hadn’t visited from college; grand-kids who needed tending; husbands who had lost their jobs or their sex drive. The women shared their joys and pains as Maisy helped them clean up and pour more wine, listening and laughing with them.
Sharon was complaining about her teen daughter, who barely spoke to the family anymore. A beautiful woman, tall and thin, replied, “Well, Carla is still talking to us, but only in country music lyrics.”
Maisy laughed. “What?”
“She’s not making that up,” Sharon said. “Her daughter thinks that if she only speaks in lyrics, her country music career will finally take off. It’s some weird superstition.”
“Has she thought about maybe just moving to Nashville and breaking into the music scene? Seems a lot less complicated than talking in lyric-only language.”
“Well, I’ll just let ‘Jesus Take the Wheel,’ ” the woman said with a laugh, then explained to Maisy, “That’s a Carrie Underwood song.”
“I know, but maybe you should tell her to find a ‘Good Friend and a Glass of Wine.’ ” That was the title of a LeAnn Rimes song.
“Ooh . . . that was a good one.” The woman laughed with her head back, wine almost spilling from her glass. “By the way, I’m Barbara.” She held out her hand and shook Maisy’s free one. “So nice to have you here.”
“Thanks,” Maisy said, and thought of a song title she’d like to recite to Mack: “If You Ever Have Forever in Mind” by Vince Gill.
Adalee came through the front door, iPod buds in her ears, singing too loud to a beat only she could hear. “Oh, to be young again,” Sharon said. “To not care that you’re singing off-key.”
Adalee noticed the women staring at her, placed a hand over her mouth and popped her ear buds out. “Oh . . . hey. I’m sorry.”
The women waved at her to join them and returned to their discussions while
ooh
ing and
ahh
ing over the food. Adalee whispered to Maisy, “Can I go out with Chad? I know you want me to spend the night here with you, but this is the perfect chance for me to get out and see him. Living in Mama’s jailhouse, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Maisy leaned closer to Adalee. “I thought you were gonna help me with the furniture and stuff tonight. That’s the main reason we got Riley to leave.”
Adalee made a cute pouty face. “Just for a bit?”
Remembering when she’d been twenty-two and in love beyond reason, Maisy nodded. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”
“Not at all,” Adalee said, jumped off the barstool and ran upstairs, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder.
Once the dishes were clean, and the café back in order, the Cookbook Club sat down to rate the food in their Big-Book-of-Recipes notebook. Each woman wrote down her comments in a special section. Comparing their remarks inspired as much laughter and conversation as the cooking itself had. Sharon wrote:
Reminds me of my first date with Bill when he took me to the Boathouse in Isle of Palms.
Barbara scribbled across the page and then showed her comment to everyone:
Wish we had My Keylime Pie.
“Get it?” she asked.
They all shook their heads.
“I get it,” Maisy said. “ ‘My Keylime Pie’—you know, that Kenny Chesney song.”
Laughter filled the room as each woman continued to fill the comment section.
After they had hugged one another goodbye and the club had gone home, Maisy unlocked the storage room and began to move the furniture she and Adalee had bought and were hiding from Riley. Maisy could now sit in this room, her music blaring, and not imagine she saw Tucker Morgan. Instead she imagined only the beauty that would emerge from this old furniture and the odd knickknacks. She had to admit Adalee did have a great talent for decorating, maybe bigger than her own. They were taking a chance that Riley and Mama would love the transformation without having contributed to it.
The history boards were tucked neatly behind a screen of cane chairs, still sticky with new paint. Another set of boards, ones Adalee had made about their family, were propped on the other side of the room.
Maisy laughed, turned her music all the way up and began to paint another set of chairs in the sage green Adalee had chosen. Perfect color. The slipcovers from Beach Chic should arrive in the morning, and the linen she’d dropped off at Mama’s seamstress should be ready by the afternoon. Maisy realized she was smiling even as she worked.
This was where she felt most at peace: in the midst of a consuming project. Her smile grew wider as she recalled the day with Mack; the way he’d touched her face. She reached her hand up, caressed her own cheek, closed her eyes and sighed. “Please,” she whispered out loud. “Let it happen this time.”
Maybe it was true that happy endings were formed here at Driftwood Cottage. Maybe that was the real reason the cottage was now full to overflowing with books, stories, clubs and gossip. Maisy approached the history boards and read what Adalee had written in calligraphy below photos from when the Logan family had lived here:
Legend says that Driftwood Cottage is a place where people connect and all stories have happy endings. But maybe Driftwood Cottage is a place where all of our stories are played out over and over, again and again, none of them ever really ending, just continuing. . . .
Maisy touched the picture of the Logan family sitting on the front porch. She stared into a young Mack’s eyes. “Or,” Maisy whispered under the music, “maybe this is a place where happy endings come true for me.”
An hour later, she was engrossed in painting when her cell phone vibrated on the hardwood floor; Peter’s name appeared on the screen. She took a deep breath, and decided not to answer him. Yet, by the time she’d reached over to turn off the ringer, she found she’d already taken the call.
“Hey, baby.” Peter’s soft voice traveled over the airwaves. Maisy sat down on the floor, leaned up against the closed doors and felt her stomach clench with rising longing. She hadn’t spoken to him in three days, and at the mere sound of his voice, every emotion she felt for him returned full force.
“Hey, Peter,” she said.
“When are you coming home? I miss you terribly.”
Maisy stared up at the old brass chandelier that had once hung over Mr. Logan’s desk, when this room was the library. “What am I supposed to say now?” She thought of Mack, his wet hair on his forehead.
“You’re supposed to say you miss me, too,” he said in a whisper so quiet she barely heard him.
“Why are you whispering? Where are you?”
“In the back bedroom . . . well, in the bathroom.”
“Is Sue home?”
“She’s in the kitchen. . . . She can’t hear me. I just had to hear your voice.”
Maisy recalled the woman in the Blonde Book Club, the one who loved the married man. She heard Lucy speak of her husband as if he were faithful and true. Maisy’s breath caught as she realized who she was in this scenario: the pitiful one who believed that the married man really loved her and would eventually leave his wife. She didn’t want to be
that
girl.
Peter’s voice came across in a breathless murmur. “Are you there? I need you.”
Oh, Maisy thought with her eyes shut, his voice seemed close, as if he were lying next to her. He still had the power to conjure up in her the terrible need to be needed. “I’m here,” she said.
“I wish.”
Over the phone line, Maisy heard someone banging on the door and a voice saying something she couldn’t make out, followed by the distinct click of disconnection. He was gone. Desire and need receded like a retreating wave, leaving Maisy with a familiar sense of loss. She snapped her phone shut. She was tired of wanting what she couldn’t have, tired of waiting for something she would never get.
She dialed information, found the number for the Seaside Inn and asked for Mack Logan’s room. The phone rang until the call went through to voice mail—he was out eating with his dad; he’d told her that. But she wanted, no, needed to see him. She stood, paced the room. Where would he go to eat? There weren’t a lot of options besides the Beach Club and Bud’s. She would try Bud’s.
She laid the paintbrush on the drop cloth, slammed the top back on the paint can. She needed a break anyway, didn’t she?
Her rationalizations continued on her walk to Bud’s, where a crowd spilled onto the sidewalk. Maisy greeted a few familiar faces and entered the bar. She scanned the crowd, no longer fooling herself into believing that she wasn’t chasing Mack.
She wound her way through the room, around the pool table, where a young couple melded in a tight embrace blocked her way. She tried to squeeze past and ended up knocking the two into the table. “Sorry,” she said. The young man looked straight at her.
Chad.
Maisy stopped in her tracks and confronted him. “Where is Adalee?”
The girl tilted her head at him. “Who’s Adalee?”
Chad squinted at Maisy as if he were trying to place her. “Huh?”
Maisy took a step closer and spoke slowly, deliberately. “Where’s Adalee?”
“How am I s’posed to know?”
The girl made some adolescent cooing noise, cuddled up next to Chad. “Who’s that?” She nodded in Maisy’s direction.
Maisy answered for him. “His girlfriend’s sister—the girlfriend who got him his summer job.” Maisy didn’t wait to see their reactions. She turned toward the front of the restaurant. If Chad was here, where had Adalee gone?
“Maisy?” She turned to see Mack and Sheppard sitting in a far booth. Her anger immediately dissipated. She smiled, and went toward the table, conscious of every movement of her body: where she held her hands, where her hair fell across her forehead, where her jeans rubbed against her stomach.