Page 18 of Dreams of Falling
“Does Ceecee know you still smoke?”
She grunted, holding the cigarette between her lips. “That woman doesn’t miss a thing. She just prefers not to mention it if it’s something she’d rather not discuss.”
I nodded in the near darkness, feeling the sting of my first mosquito bite since my arrival. I slapped my arm, hoping I’d killed it and that it had hurt. “Like what ‘I know about Margaret’ means? Am I going to have to wait until Mama wakes up to ask her?”
Bitty exhaled. I smelled the acrid scent of burned tobacco and paper. “That’s probably best. Ceecee never talks about Margaret. Never.”
I looked up at thewokcall of a chunky night heron that was swooping low over the water before landing on a dock piling. “Neither does Mama. But she was only two when her mother died. She probably doesn’t remember her at all.”
I faced Bitty, realizing there was so much to that story I didn’t know. I’d never asked. I’d never thought to ask. “How did she die?”
Bitty coughed before drawing deeply on her cigarette, the glowing tip creating small pinpoints of light in her pupils. “Fire.” She turned her head to the side and blew out the smoke. “The fire at Carrowmore happened the morning after Hurricane Hazel. The power was out. They say Margaret must have lit a candle or something. So very sad. For all of us, but especially for little Ivy.”
I thought for a moment, trying to picture my mother as a baby, trying to understand what it had been like to be a motherless little girl. “Where was Mama during the fire?”
The night heron took off from the piling, spiraled upward over the water, then glided silently over the house and out of sight. Bitty took another drag and coughed again. “These are questions you’d best ask her when she wakes up. It’s not my story to tell. Of course, you could ask Ceecee, but I’m guessing she’ll tell you the same thing.”
“And nobody has ever thought to tell me about all this?” I blinked hard, trying to believe it was the cigarette smoke stinging my eyes, not the imagined scent of a house on fire with a woman inside. My grandmother.
“You never asked.” She blew air out of her nose, the sound like a soft snort. “Ceecee always did a good job of protecting you and Ivy, making sure you wouldn’t feel any of the pain in life. The jury’s still out on whether that was a good plan.”
Bitty took a long drag of her cigarette and added, her voice raspy, “I’d suggest you start smoking if I didn’t know it was so unhealthy. Ceecee in one of her moods always makes me need a cigarette.”
I thought of her coughing and the ragged sound of her voice, and I almost told her that she should quit. But I’d been telling her that since I was a little girl, and it didn’t seem to matter. Bitty was one ofthe most fiercely independent people I had ever known, intent on doing what she wanted.
I turned around and faced the river, listening to the faint clanging of halyards against metal masts from the nearby marina. The sound gave me an unsettled feeling, like an unfinished sentence. A constant reminder of where home was. Even in New York, surrounded by two rivers, I never felt that way. Maybe the salt water that ran through my veins recognized the East and Hudson rivers as foreign entities, incompatible with my blood type.
“I... I think I need some time alone to think.”
“I get it. But while you’re sorting things out, I want you to remember something important. Regardless of how annoying and unsympathetic she can seem, everything Ceecee has ever done has come from a heart so big, you could park a shrimp boat in it and still have room for a kayak or two. Her whole life has been you and your mama, and you can’t fault a person for loving too much.”
It seemed as if she was warning me against rushing to judgment about some fault in Ceecee’s reasoning that I didn’t yet know. I wasn’t sure I could take one more surprise or disappointment. Not tonight.
“Tell Ceecee I won’t be long.” I heard Bitty draw on the cigarette again as I moved toward the porch steps.
“Larkin?”
I stopped and faced her in the growing darkness. “Yes?”
“I’m glad you’re back. We all are. We all missed you something terrible—your mama most of all.”
I took a step forward, then stopped, lacing my hands in front of me. “Yeah, well, she’s one of the reasons why I stayed away.” I listened to the silence, almost hearing Bitty’s unasked question, but unwilling to answer it.
“Good night,” I said as I stepped down onto the lawn, then walked around to the front of the house, and headed down Front Street in the direction of Prince Street. Mabry had said she lived next to her parents, and even without knowing the address, I was pretty sure I could guess which house would be hers. The yard would be immaculate,with beds full of multihued flowers that weren’t meant to go together, but they would look fabulous and coordinated just because Mabry dictated it.
But I didn’t want to see Mabry or Bennett. I’d already reasoned with myself that my mother would be on the mend in the next few days. I could ask my father why he and Bennett were together when they arrived at Carrowmore. The knowledge of whatever it was couldn’t possibly be worth the awkward awfulness of knocking on Mabry’s door.
It was almost full dark when I set out. The pretty overhead streetlights cast a welcome glow as I passed under live oaks as large and imposing as the ones I remembered from my childhood, as familiar as Ceecee’s brownies. A car passed, the windows down, a song trailing in its wake. I recognized “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi. From the albumCrush. 2000. I rolled my eyes at myself. Some things would never change.
I reached Orange Street and paused. Instead of turning right to go toward Mabry’s house, I turned left, heading toward Harborwalk—the wooden boardwalk that ran alongside the Sampit River and traversed nearly the full length of Georgetown’s historic district. Even though it was the number one destination for tourists, it was a beautiful spot on the river to shop and eat and people watch for locals and visitors alike. As soon as we’d been allowed to go by ourselves, I’d sat on a bench there with Mabry and Bennett, eating ice cream and making up dramatic stories about the people we’d seen, their hidden lives and dark secrets.
Mabry said I gave her nightmares sometimes, that that was the true mark of a storyteller, to make people believe something made-up was real. It was Bennett who’d first said I should write novels. Mabry said I’d be good at picking out the music when they were made into movies, since I knew every song ever written. Like everything back then, I’d believed it all possible.
There were more people on Harborwalk, mostly tourists, although it was still early in the season. Snowbirds from up north found the mild Lowcountry winters preferable to shoveling snow, though they’d usually head back before the South Carolina sun became too hot.
My feet seemed to know where they were going, and I found myself in front of Gabriel’s Heavenly Ice Cream & Soda, one of many eateries perched between Harborwalk and Front Street, their colorful awnings like a happy wave on warm days.
I stopped inside the large rear window, smelling the familiar sugary sweetness. Three small café tables were still set against the wall, just as I remembered, two with couples enjoying what I’d always thought was the best ice cream in the world—not that I’d had a lot of experience from my limited travels outside Georgetown County. On the rear wall was a painted mural of a local scene, the adjacent walls still a pale yellow, decorated with photographs of dolphins, the edges beginning to curl around their thumbtacks.
