Cara slapped his arm teasingly. “Don’t get me started.”
“Seriously,” Palmer said, crossing his arms over his belly, “the place looks good. Real good.”
“It’s a pretty place,” she said, looking again at the beach house. And it was true. With its mullioned windows and broad porch filled with baskets of ferns and white rockers, she’d always thought that it was a picturesque image of a lowcountry cottage. “Say what you will about all these mansions,” she said with another wave of her hand, indicating the enormous newer houses. “You can’t buy that old-world charm.”
“You ever been in those big houses?” Palmer teased. He looked around, searching. “So where’s your better half?”
“Brett is out back building a new pergola over the enclosed back porch. He’s worked so hard on it. It’s almost done, and I have to say it turned out so well.”
“Wait,” Palmer said, holding up his hand. “What enclosed porch?”
“You haven’t seen it yet, have you?” Cara asked in surprise. Though Palmer and Julia lived just over the bridge in Charleston with their two children, Linnea and Cooper, she and they didn’t spend time together outside of family events and holidays. Cara doted on her niece and nephew, but with school and social schedules it seemed everyone was always too busy. “Come on ’round. Brett will want to show it off. He did all the work himself.”
“That man sure is handy,” Palmer said as he followed her.
Cara knew he meant it as a compliment. Palmer had tried for years to get Brett involved in flipping houses, especially on the islands. But Brett was as stubborn as he was talented. He truly loved working with wood. He was as much a craftsman as a builder. Like so much else in his life, he did things his own way and wouldn’t be hurried.
She led the way around the cottage, her shoes crunching in the dry sand and shells. Cara kept the property wild, as nature had intended. Only palm trees, wild grasses, and flowers sprouted on her property, especially in the spring, when the island was practically bursting with life. Wildflowers colored the dunes with soft yellows, vibrant blues, and fiery oranges. In the trees birds sang out mating calls, while overhead migrating birds soared, returning home from southern climes.
This side of the beach house faced the long stretch of dunes that reached out to the Atlantic Ocean. The mighty sea reflected the mood of the sky—sometimes dark, turbulent, and gloomy, other times a soft, introspective gray-blue. Today the water was the color of unbridled joy and hope, a blue so vivid the horizon line disappeared where sea met sky, creating an infinite stretch of blue. Sunlight danced on the ocean, making it appear a living, breathing thing. Cara paused to stare out in awe. The dazzling sea always had the power to take her breath away.
“Beautiful day,” Palmer said with gusto, rocking back on his heels and echoing her thoughts.
“It is,” she replied softly, sharing the moment with her brother.
“And a stunning view. I’ve always said that,” he added, then gestured toward the ocean. “No houses standing in the way. You’ve got a straight shot to the sea with that vacant lot in front of you.”
His words broke through her quiet reverie as she realized Palmer wasn’t appreciating the spiritual quality of the view, but rather the commercial value. He spoke as if she didn’t realize all these fine points of her own home. Going for the hard sell, as always. She turned her head to scrutinize him.
Her brother was, in fact, wearing business attire, she suddenly realized, not the sporty shorts and Tommy Bahama shirts he wore for leisure. His gold signet ring caught the sunlight and drew her attention to the papers he was carrying in his doughy hand. Cara sighed inwardly, even as she steeled her resolve.
This wasn’t a social call. Palmer had come on business. Without speaking, she turned the corner of the house toward the back.
“Whoa,” Palmer exclaimed. He paused, hands on hips, to take in the new sunroom attached to the back of the house, the new deck spreading the entire width of the sunroom, with stairs leading out to the dunes. “What have you and Brett been up to?”
“This is what I wanted to show you,” she replied, excited to show off the project that had dominated their lives the past several months. “We enclosed the old porch and gained so much more space, all facing the ocean. We just love it. And then, of course, we will finish the deck. You can see the outline,” she said, pointing to the wooden frame. “It will spread the entire width of the sunroom with stairs leading out to the dunes. Mama would roll over in her grave if we didn’t have a proper deck overlooking the ocean. And if you recall, Brett repaired Mama’s pergola every time the wind blew it down.”
“I do recall.”
“So after we enclosed the porch, Brett built this pergola in her honor.”
Palmer’s face softened. “Did he really?”
She nodded as she surveyed the thick, treated wood of the pergola. Once it was sun-cured, she’d paint it a glistening white.
“When Brett’s done with the pergola, we’ll put out the rocking chairs.” She smiled at the memory of sitting with her mother on the back porch in companionable silence night after night that final summer. “Mama would be so pleased.”
The sound of hammering drew her gaze upward. Brett was perched on top of a paint-splattered ladder, hammering nails into the pergola with focus. Brett was a big man, broad-shouldered and fit. He wore ragged tan shorts, a faded plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and scuffed work boots, revealing the leathery, tawny skin of a seaman. Her mind flashed back to when she’d returned home that fateful summer and had seen him hanging on the nets of a shrimp boat, every bit as dashing as Errol Flynn. Brett Beauchamps was the love of her life, and even after ten years of marriage, bits of gray hair notwithstanding, the sight of him could still make her swoon.
She tented her hand over her eyes as she looked up at him in the fierce sunlight. “Brett!” she called. “Honey!”
The hammering stopped and he turned her way. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his Ray-Ban sunglasses.
“Palmer’s here! Come on down.”
Brett lifted his hand in acknowledgment. “Be down in a minute,” he called back. “Almost done.”
One of Brett’s strengths was his work ethic. He was tireless, pushing himself without pause. She knew he wouldn’t stop until the job was done, and done right.