Marta Perry - Twice in a Lifetime

“That’ll be fine, sugar.” Miz Callie touched the blond ponytail lightly.

Georgia rose. “I’ll walk down with you. I need to get something from my car.”

Miz Callie sent her a glance that said she didn’t believe a word, but she didn’t attempt to deter her. He didn’t believe it, either. Georgia had something she wanted to say to him in private.

He followed her down the steps. Lindsay hurried ahead of him along the sand, her gaze fixed on a flight of pelicans overhead. He’d be amazed if those cookies reached home in one piece.

He took a few steps away from the stairs, Georgia moving next to him.

“I didn’t realize you lived so close.” Georgia’s gaze was fixed on his rental. “The Fosters owned that house when I was little. They had five children.”

“There are a few kids in the neighborhood now.” He watched Lindsay stop and stare at the pelicans as they swooped close to the water. “But Lindsay isn’t getting acquainted as easily as I’d hoped. Your grandmother is the only person she’s really gotten to know.”

“Miz Callie is worth as much as a gaggle of kids any day.”

“That sounds like personal experience speaking.” Maybe meeting his daughter had softened her attitude toward him.

But she looked at Lindsay, not him. “I was pretty shy as a kid. With my grandmother, there was no pressure. I could play with the other kids if I wanted to, but she never objected to my sitting in the swing with a book, or helping her make cookies in the kitchen.”

“Sounds ideal.” He spoke lightly, but he thought Georgia had revealed a lot about herself in those few words. Again he had a glimpse of someone he might enjoy getting to know, if not for the fact that she saw him as the enemy.

“I suppose that’s how my grandmother came to hire you,” Georgia said. “Getting to know you through Lindsay.”

“I suppose.” He kept it noncommittal. The truce was over already, it seemed.

“Havers and Martin have been the family’s attorneys for a couple of generations. It seems a little odd that she came to you instead.”

“Does it?” The spark of anger in her eyes amused him.

Her jaw tightened. “I don’t believe I heard exactly what it is you’re doing for my grandmother.”

“You don’t really expect me to violate my client’s confidence, do you, Ms. Bodine?”

She stopped, her fists clenching, anger out in the open now. “No.” She bit off the word. “I don’t expect anything from you, Mr. Harper.”

She spun and walked quickly back toward the beach house.

Georgia slung her suitcase on the twin bed in the little room under the eaves that had always been hers, the movement edged with the antagonism Matthew Harper had brought out—a quality she hadn’t even known she possessed. She’d spent a lifetime unable to confront people, even her own mother. Especially her own mother.

She caught sight of the pale band on her finger in her peripheral vision as she put T-shirts in a drawer. She still had to break that news to Mamma.

Oddly enough, she hadn’t had any trouble making her anger clear to Matthew Harper, maybe because she didn’t care what he thought of her. Or maybe her love for Miz Callie overrode every other instinct.

Frowning, she shoved the drawer closed. Whatever Matt had in mind, he wouldn’t be easily deterred. She’d seen that kind of type A personality in action before. In a way, Matt reminded her of James, although he didn’t have her former fiancé’s charm. James’s smile could make you think he cherished you above all others. The only time it had failed to work on her was when she’d walked out of the office, knowing things were over.

Anyway, this was about Matt, not James. The only time she’d seen any softening in Matt was when he looked at his daughter, and even then his gaze was more worried than loving.

No, she wouldn’t be able to dissuade him. She had to find out what Miz Callie had him doing for her before she could learn if her family’s suspicions were on target.

She hadn’t gotten anywhere with her grandmother over chicken salad and Miz Callie’s feather-light biscuits. Dinner had been an elaborate game, with her grandmother determined not to talk about her plans and Georgia equally determined not to talk about her breakup.

Maybe now they could relax and get things out into the open. She took a last look around the room, windows open to the evening breeze, and then hurried down the stairs.

Miz Callie was on the deck, a citronella candle burning next to her to ward off the bugs. She looked up with a smile as Georgia came out.

“All done unpacking? Did you speak to your mamma and daddy?”

She nodded, not eager to get into what her parents had to say. They’d taken turns talking, Mamma on the extension, so that it had been like being caught between two soloists, both vying desperately to be heard.

“They’re fine,” she said, knowing Miz Callie wouldn’t believe that. She touched the shells on the glass table, still there from her grandmother’s impromptu lesson with Lindsay. “Do you want me to put these away?”

“I want you to relax and enjoy.” Miz Callie tilted her head back. “Did you ever see so many stars?”

Obediently she leaned back in the chair, staring heavenward, her mind still scrambling for the right way to bring up the things that concerned her. After a moment or two, the tension began to seep out of her. How could anyone sit here surveying the darkened sea and the starlit sky and fret? The surf murmured softly, accompanying the rustling of the palmetto fronds and the sea oats.

“I don’t even notice the stars in Atlanta. Too many city lights.”

Miz Callie made a small sound of contentment. “They seem to put us in our places, don’t they? ‘When I look at the heavens which Thou has created, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou are mindful of him, or the son of man, that Thou visiteth him?’”

Her grandmother’s gentle voice brought a lump to her throat. “That’s always been one of your favorite psalms, hasn’t it?”

Miz Callie nodded, and the silence grew comfortably between them. Finally she spoke again, eyes still on the night sky. “I am worried about that child.”

The change of subject startled her. “You mean Lindsay?”

“She’s so withdrawn. You must have noticed how she was when she saw I had someone here.”

“She’s probably just shy.” She knew how that felt.

“Grief.” Miz Callie moved slightly, hand reaching out to the glass of sweet tea beside her. “The child’s still grieving her mother’s death.”

So Matt was a widower. She hadn’t been sure, since he still wore a wedding ring, but it had seemed implicit in the interactions with his daughter.

“Maybe he was wrong to take her away from everything that was familiar to her, just for the sake of his career.”

Miz Callie turned to look at her in the dim light. “Georgia Lee, you don’t know a thing about it, so don’t you go judging him.”

When Miz Callie spoke in that tone, an apology was in order. “No, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

Her grandmother’s expression eased. “I suspect he felt it was time for a fresh start. Sometimes that happens.”

“Sometimes a fresh start is forced on you.” What was she going to do after this interlude? Go back to Atlanta and try to find another job?

“And sometimes you just know it’s the right time.”

Something in her grandmother’s tone caught her attention. “Is that why you want to move to Sullivan’s Island permanently? Because you want a fresh start?”

Miz Callie waved her arm. “Who wouldn’t want to live here, simply, instead of being enslaved to a lot of things?” She said the word with emphasis.