WHAT A DAY, Cara thought when she finally arrived back on the Isle of Palms. She felt hot and sticky in her work attire and couldn’t wait to take a shower and relax. Maybe have a glass of wine to ease the tension after what she’d learned at the bank. Pulling into her driveway, she was surprised to see Brett’s truck already parked. She glanced at the clock in her car. It was only two o’clock. He didn’t usually get home until four or five, depending on the tour schedule. It was a beautiful May afternoon, sunny and without too much wind. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. She would have thought he’d be busy with the tour boats.
“Honey?” she called out upon entering the house. She set down her purse on the front table and removed her stifling blazer, rolling her shoulders with a satisfied moan.
Brett came around the corner from the kitchen. He was wearing his running pants and a T-shirt and carrying a bottle of Gatorade. His trim, muscular body looked fit and healthy.
“Hey, there you are,” he said. “Where were you?”
“The bank,” she said, dropping her blazer on the back of a chair. “First I went to the beach house to check on Heather—”
“Oh, yeah,” he interrupted in the manner that revealed he’d forgotten all about it. “How did meeting her go? I never had a minute to ask you yesterday. Is everything squared away?”
“Yeah,” she replied absently. Yesterday seemed like ages ago after the busy day she’d had today.
Usually they sat together at dinner and discussed all that had happened in the day, sparing no details. But the night before had been a late night. Their tour services included catering for special events, and last night they’d catered a charity event on Goat Island. They’d hired extra staff for the large group, but still neither she nor Brett had had a moment to sit and catch their breath all evening. By the time they’d cleaned and packed up the supplies and arrived home, they were utterly exhausted and collapsed into bed without any of their usual conversing. Then it was the usual rise and shine early in the morning.
Cara ran her hands through her hair, giving her head a vigorous scratch as she crossed the room toward him.
“Heather’s a very nice young woman, neat and tidy.” She dropped her hands. “But a bit strange.”
Brett propped himself against the counter. “Strange?” he asked with a mock face of horror. “I knew it was too good to be true.”
“No, not weird strange,” Cara said. “More quirky. She’s shy. Really shy. In fact, she barely uttered a word. I don’t know how we would have gotten through the ordeal if not for her father. David Wyatt’s a really good man. Good-looking, too,” she added. “Polished. Considerate. He adores his daughter, you can tell. Oh, Brett,” she said as a new thought sprang to mind. “You should have seen Heather’s eyes light up when she saw the sunroom. You’d have been so proud of all your work.”
“Really?” Brett replied, a delighted smile stretching across his face. “That’s nice.”
Cara nodded. “It’s going to make the perfect home for Heather’s birds, which is a good thing. She seems to open up around them, really loves them. Very attached.”
“How many birds are there?” he asked, unscrewing the top of his Gatorade.
“Not too many, thank heavens. Three. Oh, and this is interesting. She’s spending the summer painting shorebirds for”—her eyes sparkled with amusement—“wait for it . . . postage stamps!”
Brett was bringing his drink to his lips, but his hand stilled midair. “You’re kidding. Postage stamps?” He took a sip. “You know, I’ve always wondered how the government selected the images for those things.”
“Apparently it’s very competitive. They choose who to give the commission to from a pool of applicants. And she got it. Shy little Heather Wyatt. Rather cool, isn’t it? I’ll have to buy loads of them when they come out and tell everyone I know the artist.”
“What does she look like?” Brett asked.
“She’s very waiflike. Pale with long blond hair and big blue eyes. Luminous, really. She could be a model for Faerie magazine. Or Vogue,” she added on further thought. “She’s gorgeous in her own way. Different. Tiny-boned and slender. Actually,” Cara said with a chuckle, “she’s rather like her canaries.”
“People are often compared to their pets.”
“Right. Except those birds are so spirited and curious. And Heather seems so reticent. Cautious.” Cara shook her head and added in a wry tone, “I don’t expect we’ll have any trouble with wild parties with her, at least.”
“Thank God.”
Cara thought again of the young woman in the beach house, her lack of confidence, her youth, her vulnerability. She’d been trying to figure out who Heather reminded her of all day, and suddenly it struck her. When she’d moved home to the beach house ten years earlier, she’d discovered, to her dismay, that her mother had taken in a woman as a caretaker. The woman was young and blond, like Heather. “She reminds me of Toy when I first met her. Without the attitude.” She smirked. “Or the heavy eyeliner.”
“Our Toy?”
“Is there another? She has that same nervous reticence. And lack of confidence. For all her impressive artwork, I get the sense that Heather is still a young woman trying to find herself. Like Toy used to be.”
“And she certainly blossomed.”
Cara’s face eased into a smile as she recalled the young woman she now considered both a friend and the daughter she’d never had. The beach house—and her mother—had worked its magic on Toy as it had on her.
Cara froze, remembering Heather’s dream. Something about what she’d told Cara had raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Usually she second-guessed anything she considered the slightest bit woo-woo, but she couldn’t deny what she’d felt.
“Heather told me the strangest thing today.” She stood with her fingers tapping her crossed arms, lost in thought. “Very unsettling. It stuck with me.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Well,” she said, warming to the story, “remember I told you I went back to see her this morning? I had to pick up some paperwork I’d left at the beach house. I brought her some flowers, to welcome her. Oh,” she said by way of an aside, “Bo was there, by the way. He was helping her build birdcages.”
“Birdcages? That wasn’t on his to-do list.”
Cara chuckled. “No. He’s such a sweet guy. I’m sure he couldn’t stand by and watch Heather struggle with them. They’re enormous, by the way. Not your grandmother’s birdcages.”
“So, what happened?” Brett asked, bringing her back to the story.
“Oh, yes. Anyway, when I asked her how she’d slept, she pointed to the photograph of my mother on the wall in the back hall. You know the one with me and Palmer?”
Brett nodded.
“She asked me who it was, and when I told her, she said she’d had this vivid dream. I almost rolled my eyes—you know how I hate to hear people tell me about their dreams.”
He laughed. “Yes, babe, I’m familiar.”
“But I was polite and listened. Then she tells me that my mother was the woman in her dream! That she stroked Heather’s hair.” Cara’s eyes widened. “That’s what my mother used to do for me when I was sad or sick and had trouble sleeping.”
“A lot of mothers do that.”
“That’s what I told her. But then she said . . .” Cara paused to rub the sudden chill she felt down her arms. “She said the room was filled with the scent of jasmine.”
Brett pushed away from the counter. “Jasmine? That was your mother’s scent.”
Cara nodded.