Page 9 of Skin and Bones

The house’s most distinctive feature was its double piazza—the tiered side porches that ran the full length of the house, supported by slender white columns. The piazzas faced the river, and ferns and potted palms adorned the railings, creating the impression of a floating garden. Stately palm trees stood at the corners of the property, their fronds thrashing dramatically in the wind. The wrought-iron fence that surrounded the small front garden looked almost liquid in the rain, the camellias and azaleas behind it bending beneath the onslaught of the storm.

“Will you be all right getting in?” Beckett asked, nodding toward the front yard. “That’s quite a river running down the sidewalk.”

“We’ll survive,” I assured him, though the prospect of dashing across my front yard through the downpour was far from appealing. “Thanks again for the ride, Sheriff. It was very kind of you.”

“Dash,” he reminded me quietly. “And it was no trouble.”

I gathered my purse and umbrella, preparing to make a run for it, when he placed a hand on my arm, so lightly I might have imagined it.

“Wait here,” he said, then got out of the Tahoe and jogged around to my side, opening my door and extending his hand to help me out. He was soaked instantly, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, rain running in rivulets down his face.

His hand was warm despite the rain as he helped me from the car, and something electric shot through me at the contact—a sensation so foreign I nearly gasped. My body seemed to remember something my mind had forgotten, like muscles awakening after a long sleep. For ten years, I’d lived in a carefully constructed numbness, and this sudden awareness felt almost painful—a pins-and-needles tingling as circulation returned to a part of me I’d allowed to go dormant.

The guilt followed immediately, a familiar weight settling in my chest. Patrick’s face floated in my memory, but strangely blurred around the edges. When had that happened? When had I stopped being able to recall with perfect clarity the exact shade of his eyes or the particular curve of his smile? The realization made my throat tighten even as my skin still hummed from Dash’s touch.

“Thank you,” I managed to say, pulling my hand away perhaps too quickly. The loss of contact felt both relieving and disappointing—another contradiction I wasn’t prepared to examine.

“I’d walk you to the door, but I think your dog is anxious to get inside,” Beckett said, nodding toward Chowder, who was already waddling at top speed toward the porch steps, ignoring the leash I’d attempted to put on him.

“He’s a fair-weather dog in every sense,” I confirmed. “But really, thank you for the ride.”

“Before you go,” he said, rain plastering his shirt to his shoulders, “I wanted to ask—those Silver Sleuths. They mentioned their backgrounds. Are they really as qualified as they claim to be?”

I smiled, pushing wet hair from my face. “More so, probably. They’re the real deal. This country would be in better hands if they were running things, I promise you that.”

“Good to know. Good night, Mrs. McCoy.”

“Mabel,” I corrected him, feeling bold. “After hours, it’s just Mabel.”

The smile he gave me then was brief but genuine, reaching all the way to his eyes. Then he was back in his Tahoe, pulling away with a wave as I splashed my way toward the porch where Chowder waited impatiently.

Inside, my house welcomed me with familiar shadows and the ticking of the antique grandfather clock in the hall. I peeled off my wet raincoat and boots in the mudroom, and looked down at my sodden dress and stripped that off too. I’d have to take it to the cleaners.

Standing in only my underwear and bra, I toweled off and then helped Chowder out of his yellow monstrosity. I toweled him dry while he grunted in protest.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” I told him, rubbing behind his ears the way Beckett had done. “You’re the one who abandoned me for a ride in a warm car.”

Once dried to his satisfaction, Chowder trotted off toward the kitchen, his nails clicking on the heart pine floors. I grabbed a vintage dressing gown in pale peach that I’d left hanging on the hook in the laundry room and tied it tightly around my waist. It had ridiculous wide bell sleeves and it was trimmed in fur. It made me feel like Rosemary Clooney until I caught sight of myself in the hall mirror and shrieked at the sight.

“Good heavens,” I said, wiping at the mascara and eyeliner that had bled beneath my eyes so I looked like a raccoon. “Mortifying. Absolutely mortifying.”

Chowder’s nails clacked on the hardwood as he came back to check on me.

“Why didn’t you say something?” I scolded. “I’ll never be able to face him again.”

Chowder snorted as if to tell me I was the one being dramatic now and went back to the kitchen to await his treat. I followed after him.

My house had been Patrick’s wedding gift to me—a grand gesture that had both thrilled and intimidated me at the time. “Every Southern belle needs a proper home,” he’d said.

I’d always found that statement to be a source of amusement and embarrassment, considering I was about as far from a true Southern belle as one could get. I’d grown up the daughter of a merchant marine and a glass artist. I’d been born here on the island, but my family wasn’t from the island, if you know what I mean.

My mother was a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants kind of woman and a little flaky, but the constant moving around of military life was too much even for her spontaneous self, so she’d put her foot down when I was born and said she wasn’t moving again. So my dad would go about his life, relocating to wherever he was told to go, and then he’d come visit me and my mom when he got the chance. It had been an arrangement that seemed to work for them. Then my dad died and Mom moved to Florida to be with her sister and make her glass with an ocean view, and I stayed on Grimm Island.

I’d met Patrick while I’d been working as a waitress at the country club, trying to pay for my last semester of college. We’d been something of a scandal in our own right, especially since Grimm Island was full of old money and tradition, and I lacked both of those things. But Patrick didn’t care. He treated me like a queen and ignored the gossip. And I hadn’t realized how I’d wanted a white knight to come in and rescue me, just like in the storybooks. He’d been my white knight. And then he’d been gone. I’d found that I was accepted on Grimm Island as Patrick’s widow, much more than I had been as his wife.

This house was a reminder of him—the views of the water, the Lowcountry charm and grandness of the architecture, and the sycamore tree he’d planted himself in the side yard so one day, the sunlight wouldn’t blast us in the face like a laser first thing in the morning.

I woke up one morning just last year and realized the sun no longer shone through our bedroom window like it once had. The sycamore had finally grown tall enough to cast the shade Patrick had promised it would. I had my shade, but I didn’t have Patrick beside me to share in his small victory. I’d wept that morning—not the violent, consuming sobs of fresh grief, but something quieter, like rainwater finally spilling from a leaf that had held it too long.

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