Page 15 of Share with Me

Chapter Six

The birthday cakewas more fluorescent purple than black, and Brinley would have none of it. She watched Yun McMillan inch toward it with a tremulous fork gripped in her right hand. The fork never made it to the rectangular piece of cake on the gold-trimmed dessert plate. It clattered to the table. She pushed away what turned out to be cheesecake.

Behind Yun, SISO continued playing an eclectic mix of selections that Brinley was sure wasn’t her sister Zoe’s doing. Might be Quincy’s musical taste.

“I wonder which came first.” Yun shook her head.

“Excuse me?” Brinley sat back a little as a server came by to fill her water goblet. When she left, Brinley had a clear view of Yun, who seemed to have aged in minutes.

Yun pointed to Quincy and Zoe making the rounds through other tables, where they were continuously congratulated.

For the first time in her life, Brinley realized she didn’t know her sister all that well. Whatever happened to childhood innocence and carefree days on the sand and surf? All that insulation was gone. Here was the harshness of time.

“I was hoping for a church wedding.” Yun dabbed her eyes. “I can’t keep up with him.”

“Quincy is not a little boy anymore. He and Zoe are consenting adults.”

“I guess I just have to trust God for my grandchildren.”

Trust God.

Yun placed a hand on Brinley’s wrist. Her fingers were cold. Very cold. “What time is it, please?”

“Eight thirty.”

“Only eight thirty?” Her shoulders sagged. “It’s nearly my bedtime.”

“Who did you come here with?”

“Ivan. Zoe was supposed to take me home.”

Well, Ivan was busy with SISO and Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky’sPictures at an Exhibition. Brinley noticed that his demeanor had remarkably changed. The glint in his eyes was gone. He looked spent sitting there at the edge of the orchestra.

Brinley heard crackles of laughter and followed the sound to Zoe sprouting from Quincy’s lap at another table, a sloshing Bordeaux glass in her hand as she drank from his. It was the wrong time for Brinley to talk to Zoe about fetal alcohol syndrome. And the wrong time to give either of them the car keys.

Back at their table, Aunt Ella was missing. Brinley didn’t remember seeing her leave the table. The rest of the table was empty. Mom and Dad had left minutes after Zoe had dropped the baby bomb on them.

“What time did Ivan say SISO would be done tonight?” Brinley asked.

“Not sure exactly. When the party’s over, I guess.” Yun had weary eyes. Red eyes. Sad eyes. “Zoe, or maybe Quincy, is taking me home.”

No way was Brinley going to let either one of them drive. And she couldn’t sit there looking at the little lady like that either. “You know what? I’ll take you home.”

“Oh no, please don’t bother. I can wait.”

“It’s no trouble at all. Where do you live?” Brinley dug into her purse for the spare key to Dad’s Bugatti Veyron. Every time she was in town, Dad let her drive his Bugatti. Dillon didn’t get the same privilege because he’d wrecked his Ferrari two years before and Dad was leery of his touching his BV.

“Off Old Demere and the marshes.”

“We’ve worked on some houses on Old Demere. We’ll plug your address into the GPS and get you home.” Whenever Brinley was in town, she’d follow Dad around on his pet project renovating old houses and buildings to keep the history of coastal Georgia alive from Savannah to Cumberland Island and beyond.

In fact, that was one of the things she had wanted to talk with Dad about during this vacation.

Yun told her the street address. Brinley knew exactly where that was. Her house was one street over from the block that Dad had been bidding for. He had been trying to prevent overzealous developers from turning the entire oceanfront north of the lighthouse into a series of pastel clustered villas devoid of native trees. Two blocks from the beach, Yun’s neighborhood was next in the developers’ tear-down list. Dad and Brinley were determined to preserve old houses and the green spaces around them the way they’d been the past century.

“Fifteen minutes tops.” She pushed back her chair.

“Are you sure?”

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