Same Beach, Next Year
Dorothea Benton Frank
prologue
isle of palms, south carolina, 2016
The conversation that launched my need to tell you this whole crazy story actually came from our son Luke, who, like his twin, is practically an adult. Okay, they are adults. But only because of their age, which is still completely astonishing to me. How dare they grow up and make us, God help us, almost sixty? Some nerve.
They asked us to come along with the Landers family, to spend New Year’s Eve 2016 on the Isle of Palms. Adam and I and our boys have vacationed with Eve and Carl Landers, their daughter, Daphne, and Eve’s mother, Cookie, for decades. We all love Wild Dunes and being together so much that we bought condos near each other and watched our children grow up to the music of the Atlantic Ocean’s changing tides and the squawking of thousands of generations of seagulls. In the early days, we drank enough white wine and various trending cocktails to float a container ship. Mai Tais. Stormy Weathers. Salty Dogs. Moscow Mules. And we cooked dinner together more times than I could count. We were better than best friends, which may have complicated things. Okay, it made things complicated in the extreme. But why wouldn’t you love who you love loves? It’s sort of like you are what you eat eats.
Adam and I rarely, if ever, go to the beach in the winter. Well, maybe my husband takes a drive there occasionally to do repairs or to assess the havoc a renter has caused on the plumbing or to fix a leak. But generally, we stay away because the weather is freezing cold and I can feel the dampness in every one of my bones. I hate winter. But New Year’s was such an unusual request that we all agreed to go. And needless to say, Eve, Carl, Adam, and I were as thrilled as we always were to see each other. Honestly, any excuse to see each other would work, and maybe we are finally all old enough to admit it. Before I go any further I want you to know this wasn’t like that old movie Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, the one where two perfectly nice married couples swap spouses. But boy, there was a moment when it could’ve been. And I’ll get to that steamy business later on.
But for now, we have to begin at the beginning. Even though it’s New Year’s Eve and I’m on my way to a freezing beach. Save your fireworks for a little while and relax while I tell you how the saga of our epic friendships all began. And how we learned what matters. It might matter to you.
chapter 1
meet adam
isle of palms, south carolina, 1994
My fabulous wife, Eliza, has an opinion on everything, but she’s not from here, and it’s always been hard for her to get a grasp on what it means to be from the Lowcountry. So how can she explain the Lowcountry to you? She can’t. The pluff mud is in my veins, not hers. This whole business of Lowcountry versus the rest of the state of South Carolina goes back several hundred years. All you have to do is visualize Charleston, South Carolina, as the center of the universe. To know the Holy City is to love her, but to understand her might take several lifetimes.
In the best of seasons, Charleston is a dowager queen, but still plenty sexy and sultry despite the centuries of her age. She charms the hearts and souls of legions of visitors, year after year. Tourists arrive in droves from all over the world, the same way they do to any other world-class destination. They come with cameras and guidebooks and restaurant reservations to witness Charleston’s illustrious history, her legendary beauty, and her unique way of life. These visitors confide to shopkeepers and guides that they are here just because they wanted to see what it felt like to be southern. Authentically southern. A Lowcountry daughter or son. They seldom leave disappointed.
However, in the height of summer Charleston finds her ferocious core, breathing fire, bringing on swoons and foul moods. And, perhaps most interestingly—because Charleston is a port city—once home to more brothels than churches, her sweltering season invites and coerces every flavor of dangerous seduction. She plays with your soul and doesn’t care if you go to hell. You would return home to wherever you came from in a stupor. You’ve been kissed by the devil herself and someday you’d be back for more. Charleston is as intoxicating as she is addictive.
Here is how our friendship with the Landers family began.
It was July 1, 1994. Every detail of that day is as vivid as though it happened just yesterday. The temperature must have been close to one hundred degrees and the sun was unrelenting. There was not a wisp of a cloud in the sky. I was poolside reading a novel, with one ear cocked toward the background laughter and taunts of my young twin sons, and enjoying a well-deserved vacation. Having lived almost every day of my life in the Lowcountry, I was only too aware of the dangers of extreme heat, but I stupidly believed I was immune to heat stroke, melanoma, or seductive temptations. Despite pretty humble origins, I liked to think of myself as a gentleman. And, okay, maybe sometimes I was a little smug . Still, I was usually smart enough to know that peril is sometimes shrouded in complacency. For all I knew, or for all anyone knew, at any moment Lady Lowcountry might laugh and mock and challenge us by raising the temperature a few more degrees. With a smirk, she might stoke the humidity to such levels that we wouldn’t be able to hold a coherent thought. We could find ourselves walking down a sidewalk in the city, literally unable to go on. It has happened. As it was, my upper lip tasted of salt and the hair on the back of my neck was wet. I was on guard and ready for anything.
Or so I thought.
I glanced at my watch. It was only eleven in the morning. Every hound dog in Charleston County had surely claimed a piece of shade, including our old black Lab, Rufus, who was nestled under my lounger. Except for the occasional jumping fish in the surrounding waters, there was not a sound from nature to be heard. Even the bugs were taking a siesta.
So, with an ear perked for my boys and an eye on the heat of the day, I was slathered in sunscreen and stretched out on a lounger, wearing blue swimming shorts covered in miniature smiling orange goldfish, just like the snack. I was relaxed and thoroughly engrossed in a legal thriller, and in a weird way, I liked feeling the heat bake my skin as though it was good for me.
I’m getting some massive vitamin D, I thought and smiled.
I was a mere twenty or maybe thirty feet away from the condominium we rented in the Wild Dunes Resort. But I didn’t hear Eliza’s approach.