The city represented both the best times of her life and the worst.
When Charlotte was thirteen years old, they’d come to Folly Beach later in the summer than usual, in August, right before school was starting up. The high season was over by then and their rental was a little cheaper.
On their first night there, Charlotte’s mother said she needed to go to the store.
“I have such a headache,” she’d said. “And I forgot to pack Tylenol. Your daddy is sleeping the drive off so I’m going to slip out and pick some up. I’ll be gone just a few. Charlotte, do you want to go with me?”
Charlotte rolled her eyes, “Uh, no thanks. Vanessa just painted my nails. I want them to dry.”
“Okay, baby,” her mother said, kissing her on the forehead. “You stay here and dry those little toes of yours. I love you. See you soon.”
Charlotte thought about that conversation all the time. At least once a week. She thought about how if she’d only said yes and taken her time to put her shoes on, or grab her purse, or really add any time to her mother’s journey, the whole tragedy could have been prevented.
The sudden, tragic things are often determined by chance and seconds of time.
Her mother had left to go to the store and had not returned. On her way back she’d been t-boned at a stop light, waiting to turn onto the road that led to their cottage.
The driver who hit her had fled the scene.
Charlotte remembered someone telling her that her mother had felt no pain. That the accident had taken her instantly. It was what was told to comfort her and her father, who had been destroyed by the news, and angry that she’d gone alone at night to the store. Her mother’s entire life was lived just to end over a tension headache.
“You should have woken me up!” he yelled at Charlotte that terrible night.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Charlotte tearfully said.
“Daddy, it’s not her fault,” Vanessa defended her sister. “Mom was a grown woman. It was a horrible accident.”
But what was said couldn’t be unsaid.
Her father never again set foot in Charleston, or even in the state of South Carolina. And when Charlotte decided to go to College of Charleston he’d been angry and confused.
“Why would you want to go to college there?” he’d said. “After what we lost in that damn town? How can you go back?”
Charlotte could never have explained it. But for her Charleston was the great ellipsis of her life. In a way she would always feel that was where her mother still was, trapped in a time and place where things had been good and right with the world.
She could also never have been able to describe it, but Charlotte was drawn to it. Like an invisible force was beckoning her back. For reasons unknown to her then, something was waiting for her in Charleston.
Charlotte shook away the memory as she drove down I-26. She turned on the radio and switched through a million gospel and country stations until she gave up and threw in a Ray Lamontagne CD.
His soulful voice filled the inside of her car and for a moment Charlotte allowed herself to forget about what had happened years ago and stop worrying about the future. For now, it was just her and the music, and her trying her best to hang on to the present and forget the past.
For now.
Chapter Three
Declan’s summer in Charleston had not been part of his master plan.
And what was the plan? What it had always been – make money, travel the world, suck the marrow out of life, and forget about the past. And each day and year he’d gotten further away from that past had been such a relief. The pain from it still shrouded him, but the baggage was getting lighter and lighter with each passing day.
Until his father got sick.
So he’d come back, as a good son does. And as an only child, he had little choice. There were no other DeGraffs left to take care of the patriarch, so Declan returned home for the summer so he wouldn’t have to live with anymore regret in his life.
When he’d first seen his father, it had taken everything in him not to show the shock he felt at how skinny the old man had become. Cancer was insidious enough, but pancreatic cancer was a whole other monster. Henry DeGraff had always been a barrel-chested, powerhouse of a man. But his illness had turned him into something different. He was incredibly thin, his skin sallow, blue veins forming rivers up his scrawny arms and legs. Declan had needed a moment by himself to take in what he’d just seen.
His father would not be getting out of this battle alive.
His father’s mansion on Meeting Street was almost two hundred years old and badly in need of renovations. Declan had planned on redoing it completely as a surprise for Henry, but once he’d realized how sick his father was, that plan went out the window.