Marta Perry - Twice in a Lifetime

“Your grandmother mentioned you were engaged but the ring isn’t there now.”

She nodded. “I don’t expect to be seeing him here. Or anywhere.”

Good. That was what he wanted to say. But why should it make any difference to him who she hugged?

He fought to focus on business. “We need to get together to make some plans.” He said the words quietly, glancing toward Miz Callie. “Soon.”

Georgia’s face tightened a little, but she nodded. “Right. I can come over this evening if you want. After Lindsay goes to bed.”

He almost asked her to come to the office, but that would seem foolish when they were neighbors. He couldn’t let his actions be affected by…well, by the attraction that had blindsided him, like a wave crashing into him when he wasn’t looking. Attraction to Georgia was a mistake, best ignored.

“Around eight-thirty, then.”

Lindsay chose that moment to hurl the ball at them with all her might, cutting off anything else he might have said.

He turned away. Georgia did, too. But he sensed that she, too, was aware that things had shifted between them in some incalculable way.

Someone who hadn’t grown up here might find it scary to be walking on the beach at night. Not Georgia. She used a shielded flashlight through the dunes, but when she reached the flat expanse of sand, she switched it off. The nearly full moon traced a silvery path across the waves, so distinct that when she was a child, she’d imagined that if only she were brave enough, she could walk on it all the way to the horizon and beyond.

She knew better now, but that didn’t detract from the beauty. Miz Callie’s favorite psalm surfaced in her mind, like a dolphin breaking through the waves.

When I look at the Heavens, which Thou hast created, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained…

She tilted her head back to study the sweep of the stars. She felt small in the face of that vastness. Insignificant. And wasn’t that what the psalm went on to say?

What is man, that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that Thou visiteth him? Yet Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor.

The words created a space of peace in her heart, like the walk on the beach. The distance between Miz Callie’s house and Matt’s place gave her time to think about what she would say to him. Unfortunately, she couldn’t seem to think of much except those moments in the surf earlier.

Where had that instant wave of attraction come from? It was crazy. Neither of them wanted that. What was she supposed to do now—pretend it hadn’t happened?

The night, in its stillness, didn’t provide an answer, but the murmur of the surf soothed away the edge of her anxiety. She was worrying over nothing. Matt would be as eager to forget it as she was.

Crossing the dunes to Matt’s deck, she slipped on the shoes she’d been carrying and walked up the steps to find him waiting for her.

“I saw you coming down the beach.” He gestured to a chair, waited until she took it, and sat down next to her.

She perched on the edge of the chair, too aware of his nearness to relax.

Even in the dim light, she could see his eyebrows lift. “You look as if you’re ready to take flight. Is something wrong?”

“No, not at all.” If she couldn’t convince herself, at least she could try convincing him. “Is Lindsay asleep?”

“She conks out pretty quickly. I guess she wears herself out running around on the beach all day.”

“I remember that feeling.”

He’d spend most of his evenings alone, once Lindsay went to bed. That must be lonely.

“Well, to business.” He drained his iced-tea glass and set it on a wide plank of the deck. “We need a plan of action, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.” Tension grabbed the back of her neck. “The trouble is—well, truthfully, I don’t see how this can succeed. I’m afraid Miz Callie will end up being hurt if she can’t clear Ned’s name. And if she goes ahead with her plans anyway…” She trailed off.

He rubbed the back of his neck, as if he felt the same stress she did. “Will there really be that much bad feeling after all this time?”

She gave him a pitying look. “You don’t get it, do you? Charleston—old Charleston, anyway—is a close community for all its size. I don’t suppose anyone will start a petition against her plans, although that could happen. But people she’s known all her life will disapprove, even be angry about it.”

“Maybe she figures that won’t bother her.”

“Don’t kid yourself. She may say that she wants to live to please herself, but I know her. She’ll be lost if people turn against her. Lost.”

“You know her better than I do.” He paused, his face a study in line and shadow in the dim light. “But as her attorney, I have to follow her directions.”

She hadn’t known him long, but she sensed instinctively that he wouldn’t back away from his duty to a client. “Any ideas?”

“Miz Callie must have some reason for her belief in Edward Bodine’s innocence. You’re in the best position to find out what that is.”

“I guess so. I tried to find out what she remembers about his leaving, but it’s not much. Just finding Granddad crying because Ned had run away, leaving a note saying he wasn’t coming back, but that’s all she knows. Maybe it was all Granddad knew. After all, he was just a kid then, too.”

“If he left a note saying he was going, there was no question of accident or foul play, apparently.”

She blinked. “That hadn’t even occurred to me. But no, I suppose not. I can try to get her talking more about her memories. There might be something we can follow up on.”

He nodded. “Good. And there have to be records of Edward Bodine somewhere. I’ll start there, see what that tells us.”

“If there’s something else I can do…”

“There is,” he said, so promptly that it seemed he was waiting for the offer. He picked something up from the floor next to his chair, and she realized it was a long legal pad. “I just have too little information to search intelligently. That’s where you come in.”

She should not be annoyed that he was so quick to take charge. She shouldn’t, but she was.

She shoved the feeling down. Her grandmother was important now, not her. “What do you need me to find out?”

“Vital statistics, like birth date, parents’ names, addresses.” He ticked something off on the pad. “And anything you can get from your grandmother about how and when he disappeared. Why did people think he ran away?” His hand tightened into a fist. “It’s all just so amorphous. A story that’s more than sixty years old and not a single fact to support it.”

“It’s about more than facts. There’s family loyalty and trust involved, too.”

“I can’t investigate family loyalty.” His voice had gone dry, his hand tight on the arm of the chair. “Just get me some facts. Surely your grandmother remembers more than she’s told us so far.”

Was that just a normal lawyer’s reaction, his insistence on sticking to the facts? Or did she sense something deeper in his reaction to her comment about families?

“Miz Callie did say she’s started remembering more about that summer. Apparently she’d been talking with a friend from those days, reminiscing.”

“Who is the friend?” His question was quick, his pen poised over the legal pad. “Maybe we can interview him.”

“Her. And we can’t. She died.” She sounded as terse as he did.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He reached across the space between their chairs to touch her hand lightly.

Her skin tingled at his featherlight touch. She shoved her hair back from her face with her other hand, looking up at the stars again. They seemed very far away.