I try not to look happy about it, but I am. Once Fern’s back, we can both get away, but I’ll need to make Silas wait another day. Tonight, I’ll sneak outside and tell him.
I just have to figure out how to do it without the workers catching me. They might be watching me close since it’s my first time to stay upstairs. But it’s not the workers I’m most worried about; it’s Riggs. He must know where I’ll be sleeping tonight too.
And he knows there’s no lock on the door.
CHAPTER 17
Avery
If you have to kill time, Edisto Island isn’t a bad place to do it.
The breeze off the water sifts through the screens and teases the hem of the simple wrap dress I’ve slipped on after whiling away the day. I forgot to grab my cellphone charger before leaving home. Now the battery is at half-mast, and there’s not a compatible charger available anywhere on the island. Rather than answering email or scouring the Internet for anything pertaining to last night’s revelations, I’ve been forced to entertain myself the old-fashioned way.
Kayaking the ACE Basin was worth a second barely lukewarm shower and getting a pair of shorts permanently stained by the blackish mix of mildew and pluff mud from the seat of the rental kayak. I feel as if I’ve rediscovered my childhood self.
The paddle trip brought back long-lost memories of a sixth-grade excursion to Edisto with my dad. I’d been working on a science-fair project about the black-water ecosystems in the Lowcountry. Being the driven little perfectionist that I was, I’d wanted to collect my own samples and take my own photographs rather than just pulling things from books. My dad had obliged. Our overnight visit here yielded one of our few exclusive father-daughter moments that wasn’t tied to a horse show or a press op. The memory is still golden, even all these years later.
I also remember that it was Elliot who helped me put together the massive backdrop for my exhibit. We’d salvaged the parts from a closet full of old campaign materials, then painted over the signs and argued at length over how to make the huge pieces of cardboard stand up on their own. Neither of us was very handy with tools.
I don’t know why you didn’t just buy something, he’d complained after our second epic failure. By then, it was late at night and we were still in my father’s horse barn, up to our elbows in paint smears and poorly nailed lumber.
Because I want to put it in my paper that the exhibit was built from recycled materials. I want to be able to say I made it myself.
I don’t see what the difference is….
The rest of the argument has been, quite fortunately, lost to the sands of time. I do remember that it got loud enough for Dad’s stable manager to venture in with a set of heavy wooden standards used for horse jumps. He added a big box of zip ties and some duct tape. Elliot and I took it from there.
The science-fair memory makes me laugh. I glance at my watch thinking I’ll call Elliot and share, but I don’t want to be tied up on the phone when the call from Trent Turner comes in. Worry creeps up as I think about the time. It’s after five, and I haven’t heard from him. Maybe he’s working late this evening?
Maybe he’s changed his mind about letting me see the rest of his grandfather’s records.
Another half hour ticks by. I’m as anxious as a hamster in a very small cage. I sit. I stand. I move around the cottage checking my cell to make sure it has reception.
I finally surrender to the urge to slip down to the beach and covertly scan for signs of life at Trent’s cottage. When the phone rings, I’ve inched at least halfway there, peeking around dunes and sea oats.
I’m so startled by the ringtone that I jump, lose my footing in the sand, and end up juggling the cell.
“I was about to give up on you,” Trent says when I finally pick up. “I knocked three times, and nobody answered. Thought maybe you’d changed your mind.”
I try to keep my eagerness from showing, but it’s hopeless. “No. I’m here. I was just out back.” Did he say knocked? He’s at my door?
“I’ll come around.”
I look toward the Myers cottage and realize how far away I am. He’ll know what I’ve been doing. “I think the gate has poison ivy growing over it.”
“Nope. Doesn’t look like it.”
I spin around and bolt for the backyard, but I’m running in sand, the long wrap dress clinging around my legs, my flip-flops slapping. I catch the flash of a blue shirt near my grandmother’s palmetto hedge just in time to put on the brakes and act casual coming up the boardwalk.
Even so, Trent reacts with a quizzical look. “You look a little fancy…for digging around in my granddad’s shed. I told you it’s a mess in there, right? And it’s hot.”
“Oh…this?” I glance down at the wrap dress. “It’s the last thing I had in my suitcase. I took a kayak out this morning and trashed a set of clothes. I’m a wreck.”
“You don’t look like a wreck.” I try to decipher whether he’s just being nice or flirting, and I can’t quite tell. I can see why he’s successful in the real estate business. He oozes charm. “Ready?” he adds.
“I am.”
I close the back gate, and we stroll down the beach together. He apologizes for getting home late. “A little excitement at Aunt Lou’s today. Somehow—none of the cousins really want to confess the details—Jonah poked a Cocoa Puff up his nose. I had to stick around and help with the extraction.”
“Did you get it out? Is he okay?”
Trent grins. “Black pepper. The obstruction was cleared via compressed air from inside the nasal passages. In other words, he sneezed. Whether Aunt Lou gets a confession out of the cousins as to who’s responsible remains to be determined. There are seven of them. All boys, and Jonah is the youngest by three years, so he learns life lessons the hard way.”
“Poor little guy. I can sympathize. Being the baby isn’t easy. Our family is all girls, though, and that was bad enough. If you need to go get him…”
“Are you kidding? I’d have a mutiny on my hands if I did. He loves it there. Two of my mother’s sisters and a cousin live on the same street, and my mom and dad are usually here part of the year, so the food and the action are constant, and there’s always someone to play with. That was the biggest reason I moved here and bought the real estate office after Jonah’s mother died. I needed to cut my working hours back to something reasonable, but I also wanted Jonah to have family around. I didn’t want him to grow up in an apartment with just me.”
Questions rush through my mind. Most of them seem far too personal. “Where did you live before?” I already know the answer. I researched him back when I was following the blackmail theory.
“New York.” Given the khakis, polo shirt, casual boat shoes, and slight Texas accent, it’s hard to picture him in the buttoned-up basic black of a New York professional. “Commercial real estate.”
I feel an unexpected sort of kinship with Trent Turner. We’re both adjusting to new surroundings, new lives. I envy his. “Big change, huh? Do you like it here?”
There’s a hint of something, a little regret. “It’s a lot slower pace…but yes. It’s good.”
“I’m sorry about your wife.” I wonder at the details, but I’m not going to ask. What I thought might be flirtation on his part is probably just the kind of loneliness that would be natural only a few months after such a loss. I don’t want to lead him on in any way. I’m wearing my engagement ring, but it’s a princess-cut emerald, so people don’t always realize it’s not just decorative jewelry.
“We weren’t married.”