Paper Castles (26 page)

Phil’s mouth was on her throat and she dug her hands into his hair. She pulled his face back to hers, hungry for more of his mouth.

Then he pulled back. He looked as if he’d awaken from a dream and couldn’t find his bearings. His eyes stared into hers and the moment shifted. The clouds rolled away and he blinked. The winds died down to a dead calm.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

Leaning against the wall, Savannah struggled to catch her breath, struggled to find her place.

“It’s this damn storm,” he said. “It’s got me all tied up in knots.”

Savannah bit her lip to keep from smiling. “The storm, huh?”

Phil managed a small grin. “Yeah, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.”

Savannah straightened up, glad to have the wall for support. She gathered her composure, trying to read the moment. What did he mean he was sorry? Sorry because he didn’t really feel that way about her? Or sorry because he
did
feel that way, but he shouldn’t?

“I’m sorry.” Phil shook his head. “I was completely out of line.”

“It’s all right.”

“No it’s not all right. It’s the furthest thing from all right. I don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what? Kiss?”

“I don’t kiss clients.” He took her hands. “Look Savannah Palmerton, you’re one hell of a woman. But I can’t do this. We both know
we
can’t do this.”

Savannah nodded.

“I could compromise everything.” He ran his hands through his hair, an unconscious gesture she’d seen him do dozens of times when he was looking for answers.

“I should probably resign from your case,” he said, now looking down at his hands as if they’d betrayed him.

A wild stab of panic had Savannah in its grip. “No. Please don’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Please. I won’t make it without you.”

“If you’re sure.”

His head drooped. Clearly he was embarrassed his professional hat had been knocked off his head. He was always so strong and confident. Seeing him weak, for her, touched her in the center of her soul.

“I don’t want to go,” he said. He hadn’t yet moved from where he had her pressed to the wall. She was still captured, held in by his arms and eyes.

“I want to be the one to save you,” he said.

“Then save me.”

T
HE SEA was contrite the next morning. Sitting on the beach in the late morning sun, Savannah could see no trace of last night’s storm. But it lingered in the air, just like Phil’s kiss lingered in her body.

That kiss
. Easy to excuse, brush it off by saying it came out of nowhere. Like a hurricane. But Savannah knew hurricanes didn’t crash onto shores without warning. They started as the smallest breeze sweeping across the waters. Hardly noticeable at first. But as the winds circled around one another, gaining strength, they refused to be ignored.

Long before it made landfall, the storm was tracked. Even named.

Had she known all this time that Hurricane Phil was heading for her?

After the kiss, Phil said it was probably best if he went to bed, and he did, trailing his tattered ethics behind him. Savannah stayed up, staring into the fire and listening to the wind howl like a lonely lover, while her thoughts took a scenic tour around the image of Phil in his bed. Then both of them in bed. His body curled around her and the taste of him on her lips.

She saw him walking toward her now. Head down, steps slow, wearing doubt like a heavy winter coat. Her heart went out to him. She knew what it felt like to lose sight of yourself. To find yourself on the other side of a line you thought you couldn’t cross.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice flat and lifeless.

Savannah guessed he spent the night listening to that inner voice chiding him for his lapse in judgment.

“Good morning.” She took the cup of coffee he offered.

Phil sat down, set his cup in the sand and drew his knees up to his chest. Quiet wrapped around the two of them. In spite of the ocean’s song, she was dialed into the silence. She could almost hear him breathing, thinking. She stared out to sea, letting him come to her in his own time.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Phil said. “I feel awful.”

“Phil, it’s all right,” she said. “Don’t beat yourself up over a kiss.” Offering him a playful escape from the situation, she leaned and nudged her shoulder hard against his. Not a lover’s caress, but a friend’s admonishment to snap out of it.

“Yeah. Just a kiss.” He nudged back but he was looking sideways at her and she couldn’t read his expression. “I’m sor—”

“Stop apologizing,” she said. “My self-esteem is taking a hit. You’re acting like kissing me was the worst thing that ever happened to you. “

“You know that’s not true.”

Now he turned his face to her. The hunger was still there. She had to look away, because if she didn’t, he’d own her. As she wrestled her gaze from his, she almost felt something physically rip inside her. Atoms and molecules wrenched apart. She turned away to save them both.

She said the first innocent thing she could think of. “Thanks for the coffee.” She lifted her mug in a small salute.

“Sure.” His eyes watched her drink. “You know you’re a contradiction in so many ways.”

“Name one.”

“Well, you take your coffee black, but you take a five pound bag of sugar in your iced tea. Makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. The two are totally unrelated.”

He grinned and her world shifted back toward normalcy. “How silly of me.”

She stood and dumped the last dribble of now cold coffee on the sand. “Come on, let’s go check out the graveyard.”

“The what?”

“The graveyard. You’ll see.”

They walked down to the water’s edge. Exhausted from last night’s display of power, today, the waves rolled up on the beach with a sedate sigh.

“Ah, here it is.” She waved her arm over the highway of shells running in a parallel strip along the shore. Alms the sea offered to the land every morning, taking back what remained with the next tide.

“After a storm is when you find the best treasures,” Savannah said. “Although it’ll be hard to beat the shell I got yesterday.”

They walked along, eyes cast down along the ribbon of tiny sea homes, their inhabitants long gone. Savannah stooped to examine shells, either putting them in her empty coffee cup to keep, or setting them back on the sand. Phil picked up shells only to throw them back into the surf.

Savannah stopped, hands on hips surveying the horizon.” Right here is where I sent my love letter out to the world.”

“Love letter?”

“I was thirteen. Angela’s age.” She smiled at the memory. “I put a message in an old Coke bottle, my plea for Prince Charming to find me, and I tossed it out to sea. I was so sure I’d get a response.”

Phil laughed.

“I’m still down here checking,” she said, laughing with him, relaxing into the sound. “Every time I come to the beach.”

“Good luck with that,” Phil said. “I’m starving. We missed breakfast, it’s almost time for lunch. Let’s eat.”

They hiked back up the dune, the sun on their backs, food on their minds. As they neared the house, Savannah saw a teenage boy in the driveway, waving.

“Mrs. Palmerton?”

“Yes?” Savannah didn’t recognize him.

“Your father sent me out here to fetch you. The phone lines are down.”

“Fetch me? What’s happened?”

“I don’t know. He just told me to tell you something happened at the house.”

“The house? My house or his house?”

He looked confused. “I don’t know.”

Savannah and Phil exchanged looks, then spoke at the same time.

“Beverly.”

J
USTICE KENDALL’S car was in the driveway when Phil pulled in front of Savannah’s house. Her stomach churned, a feeling all too familiar: coming home at ten, or sixteen, or twenty, because something had happened to Beverly.

“I think I should leave,” Phil said.

The car was still running and Savannah wanted to throw it in reverse and head back out of town.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said. It was pointless to drag Phil into the middle of private family business. Yet she didn’t seem to have the courage to move. A headache had already started at the back of her skull and her nerves jangled like Phil’s car keys against the steering wheel.

He leaned and took her hand. “Whatever this is... It’s not your fault.”

“Right.”

Phil gave her hand one last squeeze. She closed the car door and waved as he backed out of the long driveway.

Her father and mother were in the kitchen. Beverly looked fine. Distraught, but fine.

“Darling.” Jack Kendall walked up to his daughter and placed both hands on her shoulders.

Savannah felt her heart rise up in her throat.

“What?”

“There’s no easy way to say this. It’s Neenie, honey.”

“Neenie? What happened?” She shrugged off his hands, and bolted toward the stairs. Jack was right behind her, reaching for her arm.

“No honey,” he said. “She’s not there.”

“Where is she? Stop this.”

He pulled her back into the circle of his arms. “She’s gone, honey.”

Gone
where?
Neenie wouldn’t leave without her. Wouldn’t leave without telling her. What nonsense was this?

“She’s gone,” Jack said.

“No.” It was the only word with the courage to step forth. No. A thousand no’s. She saw her father’s face twist in pain as she slid to the floor and her soul cried out, again, “No…”

Claudia had been the one to find Neenie, shocked to see her boss was still in bed at nine o’clock, instead downstairs barking orders. A closer look showed Neenie wasn’t sleeping. No sign of struggle on her face, no hint of pain or distress. Some time in the night she’d slipped away.

Claudia called Jack and Beverly. The Kendalls called everyone else: the police, the coroner, Kip. Everyone but Savannah, who couldn’t be reached on Tybee. Without her, decisions were made and Neenie had been whisked away before Savannah even knew she was gone.

Standing in Neenie’s empty room, Savannah seethed with helpless rage. They could have waited for her. They
should
have waited.

It was Neenie’s heart, they said. Of course it was her heart. What else would it be for a woman who had stepped into a family at loose ends and wrapped them all up in her big brown arms, giving them a transfusion of love from that enormous heart?

The covers were pulled back on the bed as if waiting for Neenie to return from the bathroom down the hall. Savannah’s fingers smoothed over white sheets. She didn’t understand why there wasn’t any blood. With this much pain, there should be blood everywhere. Evidence of this tragedy. How could the end of an era, fade into history without so much as a whimper? Would Walter Cronkite take off his glasses and wipe the tears from his eyes tonight?

She reached for the pillow. The case still smelled of Neenie’s talcum powder. A faint hint of gardenia. She hugged it to her, a flimsy substitute for the woman, but Savannah buried her face in the scent and softness, never wanting to breathe anything else. She lay down on her side, pulling the pillow close, and she cried. Cried for Neenie. Cried for herself. Cried for her children. Cried for the unfairness of it all.