“Her mind is razor sharp,” I said.
“I can’t get away with jack,” Carl said.
“You never could!” Eve said and laughed.
Eve swearing off wine had given her a mental clarity I didn’t know she could access. These days she never missed a trick. Sober Eve was much more desirable company. If we had lived in the same town, we would’ve been inseparable.
Eve said Cookie thought that her advice was a lot of hooey, but she’d signed up for another river cruise in July, this time down the Rhine River.
“She promised she’d try harder to be more congenial and less judgmental on her next trip. She’s determined to make this idea of retiring on cruises work.”
Well, that’s where Cookie found love, on a side trip offered by the cruise line, in the picturesque village of Kinderdijk, snuggled in the southern tip of the Netherlands. His name was Hans, and he was a cheesemaker, a big man, she said, who wore wooden clogs everywhere he went. Or maybe it was the windmills that stole her heart. She called Eve to say she was staying. She got off the river cruise with all her belongings and checked into a quaint bed-and-breakfast.
And of course, Eve told me all this as soon as we got to Wild Dunes and had a moment to ourselves.
“Oh! My goodness! You’re kidding! Wait until I tell Adam!” I didn’t know whether to be horrified or to start laughing hysterically. “Clogs?”
“Yes! She told me his house has a thatched roof and that you can see the windmills from his bedroom. She said, ‘He gave me a night of Dutch magic.’” She imitated Cookie in a dreamy teenage girl’s voice.
“Dear holy mother!”
“Then she said, I’ll let you know if I’m ever coming back.”
I thought, maybe all Cookie ever needed was a good roll in the hay herself.
Eve continued, “Ew. Dutch magic? I don’t even want to know what that means. How’s Adam feeling?”
I had to laugh. Cookie was happy? Puh-leaze!
“What a story! Adam? You’d never believe he was ever so sick, to see him running around these days. So how are you and Carl getting along?”
It was as hot as Hades, the dead of July, and Eve and I were sitting by the pool like we always did. The boys were out playing nine holes despite the heat. We weren’t going to let a little thing like an organ transplant and Cookie running away from home ruin our annual vacation. And that year was sans children. And sans Ted, who had stayed home to oversee the construction of new porches and a new roof on the old plantation house.
And Clarabeth, of course, was absent too. Wild Dunes seemed a little strange and haunted without her.
“Carl is just the greatest guy in the world,” Eve said. “What’s that old Joni Mitchell song? ‘Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’? Something like that. I almost blew it! But you know, Adam’s illness saved us, crazy as that sounds!”
“I almost blew it too! Yes, Adam’s illness saved us all,” I said in agreement. “He’s always said, there are no coincidences.”
“I think I might actually agree with that,” she said.
“Me too.”
That night we went over to the Shem Creek Bar and Grill for dinner. Ted and Judy met us there. We ordered tons of food—salads, deviled crabs, fried shrimp, hush puppies, and flounder.
“That ought to do it,” Angie Avinger, the restaurant’s owner, said.
“They got you waiting tables, Angie?” Ted said.
“For you, darlin’? Anything.”
“She’s my favorite,” Ted said.
“Do I need to be jealous?” Judy said.
Ted reached over and squeezed her hand. “Not for one second. How’s everything at Wild Dunes?” Ted said to Adam and Carl.
“Hot on the golf course,” Adam said.
“Today was a scorcher,” Carl said.
“That’s because you boys don’t have the sense to get in the shade! Ted, it’s the same beach as last year,” Eve said. “I love it there.”
“Me too. I love the Isle of Palms. And it will be the same beach next year,” I said. “I hope.”
“Well, next year I’ll put aside a week and join you,” he said. “This year it just didn’t seem right.”
Adam said, “Dad, we understand completely. How’s that new roof coming?”
“It’s coming, but so is Christmas,” Ted said.
“I’m so looking forward to our trip to Greece,” Judy said. “I’ve been to some of the islands but never Corfu.”
“It’s pretty special,” I said. “My mother was born there and her sister still lives there. And I still have lots of cousins all around Corfu Town. They all say we can’t get there fast enough.”
“Well, your family looks so nice,” Ted said. “This is going to be a real treat.”
Later that night, Adam and I took a stroll on the beach. It was low tide and there were approximately a billion stars glittering above us. We found an old palmetto log and sat there for a while, just musing. Adam took my hand in his and kissed it.
“I love you so, so much,” he said.
“Enough to live here a few months out of the year?” I’d been waiting to ask that question for a while.
“Which months?”
“Oh, I don’t know. March, April, May? It’s a slower rental time.”
“What about your garden?”
“I can put it in with Mr. Proctor and he can watch it, don’t you think?”
“Yes, he could. What about the commute?”
“Well, sweetheart, if you’re still building in Summerville, it’s only about ten minutes longer from here than from where we live.”
“True. You really love this place, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. And to be perfectly honest, it’s a lot closer to civilization.”
He looked at me, and even in the dark I could see him thinking about the many inconveniences of living so far away from all the places we liked to go, inconveniences that had impacted my day-to-day living and my social life for twenty years.
“Maybe we should just build a house over here. What do you think? I can bring a dump truck of black dirt from our property and you can have a garden here. That is, when we find a piece of property to build on.”
“Oh, Adam! Do you mean it? Oh, you’re the most wonderful man in the world!”
“That might be overstating it, but only slightly,” he said, smiling. “Hey! We had a great year and all I want to do is make you happy!”
“Oh, I love you, sweetheart!”
The next morning, Adam and I were lying in bed. Neither one of us felt like getting up. We were talking about buying property. He said we should take a ride around the island that afternoon and see what was for sale. I was so excited. He was too.
“Last night was fun, wasn’t it?” Adam said, fluffing his pillow and turning over on his side to face me.
“Yes. I love deviled crabs,” I said. “I never think to order them because of the breading. But theirs are really good. I love them.”
“I love you,” he said.