Besides a few necessary trips to the grocery store and drugstore, and once to Hilton Head to buy shorts for Owen at the mall, I hadn’t seen much of the immediate neighborhood. I’d looked at a street map, so I knew that Beaufort was relatively small, with neatly laid-out streets in straight lines, the water forcing a slight rounding at the edges of the grid to accommodate the river and marshes that surrounded the city.
The water was everywhere, a constant presence that reminded me of a bear in the woods that needed to be kept at bay. From my front porch I could see the ebb and flow of the tides, the river leaching the water from the marsh twice a day, and then refilling it with stealth. It fascinated me as much as it terrified me, and I’d gotten in the habit of looking up the time for high and low tides during the day to reassure myself that the water wouldn’t come any closer to my house. Maybe that was why I hadn’t strayed too far, fearing that the water would creep too close if I weren’t there to keep watch.
“That would be nice. Thank you.”
Gibbes pulled out of the driveway and took a right on Bay Street, away from the downtown area, driving slowly so I could get a good view of the antebellum mansions that perched on the bluff like proud matrons surveying their domains.
He slowed in front of several of them, pointing out historical facts about the owners and about events that happened in the houses during the Revolutionary and Civil wars. The white clapboard Federal-style homes reminded me of Maine, but only briefly. The palmetto trees and giant magnolias in their front yards were an easy reminder that I was far from home.
“They call this one the Secession House,” Gibbes said, pointing to an antebellum mansion on Craven Street with a pink-painted first floor. “There’s an inscription on the basement wall in this house saying that the first meeting of secession in South Carolina was held there.”
I nodded, only half listening. Not because I wasn’t interested—I was. I loved history, and had enjoyed visiting historical sites with my father when I was a girl. There was something about the past; the reassurance that others had lived and loved and survived before me gave me something to cling to in the present. And Southern history was new to me. I’d studied the Civil War in school, of course, but to see the small Confederate flags on graves as we passed St. Helena’s churchyard made it somehow more relevant.
But mostly I was busy studying Gibbes and the relaxed way he held the steering wheel with only one hand, the other arm resting on his door. Cal had gripped the wheel with both hands, his jaw set as if he were ready for battle. And we’d rarely spoken on car trips. Saying the wrong thing in the small confines of a car would have had consequences I hadn’t wanted to contemplate.
“Merritt?”
I jerked my eyes to meet his and for a second I thought it was Cal. But only for a second, until I realized that just the eyes were the same. Ever since our trip into the marsh, I’d stopped seeing Cal when I looked at Gibbes. The marsh had exorcised that ghost, at least. Or maybe it was Gibbes himself who’d done that.
I realized he’d asked me a question. “I’m sorry. I must have been woolgathering. What were you saying?”
“I was asking how you and Cal met.”
“Oh.” I stared out the window at a small white clapboard church with colorful stained-glass windows. “There’s nothing much to say, really. It’s all in the past.”
“Those who refuse to acknowledge the past are condemned to repeat it.”
I glared at him. “You’re starting to sound like Loralee.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
I didn’t argue. Gibbes turned on his signal to take a left on a small street with weeds and grass escaping from large cracks in the asphalt. I felt an odd affinity for the spots of green, knowing what it felt like to think you’d escaped, only to be hit by the next oncoming car.
“My brother is dead, Merritt. But I started missing him a long time before that. I just want to know a little bit about him, about his life after he met you.” He paused, his fingers thrumming on the steering wheel to a beat only he could hear. “I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable or sad.”
I looked down at my hands, wanting to tell him about the Cal I’d first met. The man who sensed my loneliness and filled up all the empty spaces in my heart. At first. But I couldn’t tell Gibbes any of that without telling him the rest. I don’t want to hurt you. I turned back to the window. We were back on Bay Street, passing the marina with the sleeping sailboats rocking lazily on the water, their sails folded like window shades. The tide was high, only the tips of the sea grass visible, and for a moment I imagined they were holding their collective breath, waiting to be pulled from the water.
I cleared my throat. “He came to the museum where I worked. He said he was there from the fire department and was doing a safety inspection.” I remembered myself stammering and flushing, completely taken off guard by the tall, strong fireman who couldn’t seem to stop looking at me. “He asked me out to dinner that night. We were married five months later.”