I can almost feel my grandmother on the Charleston-style piazza along the side of the house. Climbing the stairs, I half expect her to be there. It’s painful to realize that she’s not. I’ll never again come to this place and be greeted by my grandmother.
In the backyard, the greenhouse is stale and dusty smelling. The moist, earthy scents are gone. The shelves and pots have been removed too. No doubt my mother gave them to someone who could use them.
The hidden key is right where it has always been. It catches a beam of late-afternoon light as I remove a loose brick along the foundation. From there, it’s easy enough to slip inside and turn off the alarm. After that, I stand in the living room thinking, What next?
The floorboards crackle beneath me, and I jump, even though it’s an old, familiar sound. Courtney was right. The house seems vacant and spooky, no longer the second home it has always been. From the age of thirteen on, I stayed here during the school year whenever my parents were in D.C., so I could attend classes in Aiken with my friends.
Now I feel like a sneak thief.
This is silly anyway. You don’t even know what you’re looking for.
Photos, maybe? Is the woman on May Crandall’s nightstand in any of the old albums? Grandma Judy has always been the family historian, the keeper of the Stafford lineage, the one who tirelessly pecks out labels on her old manual typewriter and attaches them to things. There isn’t a stick of furniture, a painting, a piece of artwork, or a photo in this house that isn’t carefully marked with its origins and previous owners. Her personal items—any that matter—are similarly stored. The dragonfly bracelet came to me in a well-worn box with a yellowed note taped to the bottom.
July 1966. A gift. Moonstones for first photographs sent back from the moon by American exploratory spacecraft Surveyor. Garnets for love. Dragonflies for water. Sapphires and onyx for remembrance. Custom by Greer Designs, Damon Greer, designer.
Beneath that, she’d added:
For Avery,
Because you are the one to dream new dreams and blaze new trails. May the dragonflies take you to places beyond your imaginings.
—Grandma Judy
It’s strange, I now realize, that she didn’t say whom the gift was from. I wonder if I can find that information in her appointment books. Never a week passed that she didn’t carefully document the details of her days, keeping track of everyone she saw, what she wore, what was served at meals. If she and May Crandall were friends or shared a bridge circle, May’s name will probably be there.
Someday, you’ll read these and know all my secrets, she told me once when I asked her why she was so meticulous about writing everything down.
The comment seems like permission now, but as I pass through the shadowy house, guilt niggles at me. It’s not as though my grandmother has passed away. She’s still here. What I’m doing amounts to snooping, yet I can’t get past the feeling that she wants me to understand something, that this is important, somehow, for both of us.
In her little office off the library, her last appointment book still sits on the desk. The page is open to the day she disappeared for eight hours and ended up lost and confused at the former shopping mall. A Thursday.
The handwriting is barely legible. It trembles and runs downhill. It looks nothing like my grandmother’s lovely, curving script. Trent Turner, Edisto is the only notation for that day.
Edisto? Is that what happened when she disappeared? Somehow, she thought she was going to the cottage on Edisto Island to…meet someone? Maybe she had a dream overnight and woke up believing it was real? Perhaps she was reliving some event from the past?
Who is Trent Turner?
I leaf through more pages.
There’s no mention of May Crandall among Grandma Judy’s social engagements over the past months. Yet, somehow, May gave me the impression they’d seen each other recently.
The farther back I go, the clearer the handwriting becomes. I feel myself sinking into the familiar routines around which I once shadowed my grandmother—events for the Federation Women’s Club, the library board, the DAR, the Garden Club in the spring. It’s painful to realize that seven months ago, before her rapid downward spiral, she was still functioning reasonably well, still keeping up her social calendar, though a friend or two had mentioned to my parents that Judy has been having some lapses.
I leaf through more pages, wondering, remembering, thinking about this watershed year. Life can turn on a dime. The appointment book reinforces my new awareness of this. We plan our days, but we don’t control them.
My grandmother’s January notes begin with a single line scrawled haphazardly in the margin just before New Year’s Day. Edisto and Trent Turner, she’d written again. There’s a phone number jotted underneath.
Maybe she was talking to someone about having work done on the cottage? That’s hard to imagine. My dad’s personal secretary has been handling Grandma Judy’s affairs since my grandfather died seven years ago. If there were any arrangements to be made, she would have taken care of them.
There’s one way to find out, I guess.
I grab my cell and dial the number.
The phone rings once, twice.
I start wondering what I’m going to say if someone answers. Ummm…I’m not sure why I’m calling. I found your name in an old notebook at my grandmother’s house, and…
And…what?
A machine picks up. “Turner Real Estate. This is Trent. There’s no one here to answer the phone right now, but if you’ll leave a message…”
Real estate? I’m gobsmacked. Was Grandma Judy thinking about selling the Edisto place? That’s hard to fathom. The cottage has been in her family since before she married my grandfather. She loves it.
My parents would’ve told me if we were letting go of the place. There must be another explanation, but since I have no way of knowing, I return to my browsing.
In the closet, I find the rest of her appointment books stored in a well-worn barrister bookcase, right where they’ve always been. They’re neatly arranged in order from the year she married my grandfather to the present. Just for fun, I take out the oldest one. The milky leather cover is dry and crazed with brown cracks so that it looks like a piece of antique china. Inside, the handwriting is loopy and girlish. Notations about sorority parties, college exams, bridal showers, china patterns, and date nights with my grandfather fill the pages.
In one of the margins, she has practiced signing her soon-to-be married name, the flourishes on the letters testifying to the giddiness of first love.
Visited Harold’s parents at Drayden Hill, one entry says. Horseback riding. Took a few fences. Harold said not to tell his mother. She wants us in one piece for the wedding. I have found my prince. Not the slightest bit of doubt.
Emotion gathers in my throat. It’s bittersweet.
Not the slightest bit of doubt.
Did she really feel that way? Did she really just…know it was right when she met my grandfather? Should Elliot and I have experienced some sort of…lightning bolt moment, rather than the relaxed drift from childhood adventures to adult friendship to dating to engagement because, after six years of dating, it seems like it’s time? Is there something wrong with us because we haven’t tumbled in headfirst, because we’re not in a rush?
My cellphone rings, and I grab it, wanting it to be him.
The voice on the other end is male and friendly, but it isn’t Elliot’s.
“Hello, this is Trent Turner. I had a call from this number. Sorry I missed you. What can I help you with?”
“Oh…oh…” Every possible icebreaker flies from my mind, and I blurt out, “I found your name in my grandmother’s date book.”
Papers shuffle in the background. “Did we have an appointment set up here on Edisto? To look at a cottage or something? Or is this about a rental?”
“I don’t know what it’s about. Actually, I was hoping you could tell me. My grandmother has been experiencing some health problems. I’m trying to make sense of the notes on her schedule.”