Page 22 of Dreams of Falling
Despite Ceecee’s badgering questions, neither Mama’s doctors nor the brain trauma specialist had been able to guarantee a complete recovery or give us a hint as to when they expected Ivy to wake up. The only thing they could tell us was that some of the brain swelling had come down, which was a good sign. Just not good enough for Ceecee, who’d spent half the night browsing the Internet, searching for related cases. She stopped only when I began to cry, the seriousness of the situation finally sinking in.
I’d spent so many years pretending that my previous life in Georgetown had been permanently relegated to my memory. Actually being here, and being involved with my family and my mother’s accident, had seemed like a dream. Until now, with the ugly reality of my mother’s condition staring me in the face.
Bitty had taken me by the shoulders and led me down the hallway,frowning at Ceecee as she did. “Don’t pay her no mind. She’s doing the one thing she knows how to do best, and that’s fierce mothering.” Her eyes turned sad for a moment. “She’s just not always prepared for when it backfires.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, and I was too desperate to get out of the hospital and breathe air that wasn’t laced with antiseptic and bleach to slow down and listen. Thankfully, the ride to Ceecee’s house was short. There wasn’t time for any long conversations, or any questions as to why I hadn’t considered my mother’s possible death before today.
It seemed the old me hadn’t completely packed up and left after all. All of my thoughts so far had been about how the accident affected me and the life I had now. It was the same Larkin who’d never asked how her grandmother had died so young. It was as illuminating as it was humiliating, and I needed to be alone, to consider the possibility that I was irredeemable.
I drove past the eyesore steel mill, which had closed the year before, and then past the International Paper plant. I left the windows down, missing the old smell of my childhood, the plant’s stench of rotten eggs that had somehow—miraculously, some said—been almost completely eradicated in recent years. Mabry, Bennett, and I used to make a show of holding our breath as we crossed the bridges driving into town, competing to see who could last the longest. It had been a rite of passage, the odor and the breath holding. Knowing it was gone left a hollow feeling in my chest.
An old pickup truck, its paint faded to a powder blue, moved in front of me. I spotted the bumper sticker right away—it was the brightest and newest part of the truck.Friends don’t let friends buy imported shrimp.Ceecee had told me during one of my Christmas visits that the local shrimping industry was getting so bad that sometimes shrimpers simply abandoned their boats in the harbor. They couldn’t see any other option. It made me sad in the same way the abandoned steel mill and the lack of the paper-mill smell saddened me. My childhood had been vanishing bit by bit while I’d been living in New York, trying to pretend it had never existed. Maybe that was what the oldsaying—that a person can never really go home again—was all about. You couldn’t go home because even though home might still be there in brick and mortar, everything else would be unrecognizable.
I found the turnoff to Carrowmore without really looking, bumped over the same road, turning left at the fork. The late-afternoon sun played hide-and-seek with the branches of the overgrown trees, while an orchestra of unseen insects strummed their wings in an undulating rhythm that mimicked the waves of the ocean.
I parked my car at the back of the house, near the ruined garden, wishing I knew what it had once looked like. What the house had looked like. Even in its charred state, the mansion was elegant and grand, an old woman whose beauty shone out past the wrinkles and age spots. Except, of course, the damage to the house at Carrowmore was more than superficial, and no amount of cream or potion could hide that.
Stepping out of the car, I smelled the river and the marsh grasses that filled the space where tidal river and land met. It was the steadfast scent of the Lowcountry, of my childhood. It was the one thing that hadn’t changed, and I clung to it, breathing deep and remembering Mabry, Bennett, and myself kayaking and swimming in the river, and jumping off the dock behind my parents’ house.
But I stopped my memories there, before they moved forward in time to a place I never wanted to remember.
Watching where I stepped and slapping at mosquitoes, I approached the oak tree near the riverbank. Purple martin gourds dangled sporadically, forming a pattern recognized only by whoever had placed them there. Something about them wasn’t right, I thought; some odd piece of trivia had come to me the night before as I was drifting off to sleep. I stared at them for a long time, wanting to remember what it was, but I couldn’t.
A snowy white egret perched on one skinny leg in the tall sawgrass on the edge of the river, each of us keeping a wary eye on the other. Not wanting to startle the bird, I walked slowly and carefully toward the tree until I stood in front of the hollowed opening in its trunk. I saw now how much it looked like a cavernous mouth. I couldn’t help butwonder if the opening was trying to hold something in or spit something out.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I leaned forward and stuck my hand inside, my fingers rooting around for anything that felt like fabric. Although I’d been raised fishing on the river with my granddaddy and my daddy, and I was adept at putting all sorts of bait on a hook, I didn’t relish the thought of reaching into the unknown and feeling something soft wiggling beneath my fingers. Or getting bitten.
Right away I felt what could only have been a ribbon or piece of cloth, smooth and even with a ridged edge. I moved my fingers and determined there was more than one, both of them crisp and fresh, as if they hadn’t been there very long. I grabbed them at the same time I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle, music from the stereo piping softly from an open window. I jerked up, either my movement or the sound of the pickup truck coming to a stop near my parked car causing the egret to spread its wings and fly away, coasting low over the water.
Not really knowing why, I shoved the fabric into the front pocket of my jeans, and turned to see Bennett emerging from the truck. I didn’t move as he approached, hoping maybe he hadn’t noticed me or my car. Which was stupid, really, considering I was standing in the open and he’d parked right behind me. But the old habit of assuming everything was going to go my way was hard to break.
He stopped about five feet away from me, his face expressionless. “Hello, Larkin.”
“‘Iris.’ By the Goo Goo Dolls.” I jerked my chin toward his now-silent radio, and he laughed.
“Still the same Larkin,” he said.
“No, actually. Some things are just harder to get rid of than others.” I frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I waited at Mabry’s house last night for you to stop by. Nothing. Today, you didn’t answer any of my texts, so I figured I’d come and find you. I stopped by Ceecee’s house, and she told me you’d practically squealed the tires leaving, you were in such a hurry. So I figured you’d come here.”
That was the thing with people who’d known you your whole life. There was no keeping secrets. I sighed. “Did it occur to you that I’d want to be alone?”
“Of course. But you keep saying you’re going to leave as soon as your mother wakes up, so I figured I’d have to take the chance to talk with you while I could.”
I started walking back to my car, as eager to end this conversation as I was to find out what I’d shoved into my pocket. “Talk fast, Bennett. I’m sure Ceecee will have supper waiting on the table for me.”
“I wanted to talk to you about what your daddy and I were doing the day of the accident.”
I made the mistake of looking into his face. It wasn’t that I’d never noticed him before, never noticed how his eyes were the color of the ocean or how square his jaw was, how nice he looked when he smiled. I would have had to be blind not to. But he and Mabry had been my best friends, as physically invisible to me as if we’d been siblings. And then we hadn’t been friends at all.
Looking into his face now, I could see that Bennett looked different, in the same way Jackson Porter had. Gone were all traces of soft boyhood, replaced with the hard planes and solid stature of maturity. It suited him. Not that I would ever tell him that. He’d never let me forget it if I did.
I always thought you were beautiful.The words he’d said at the hospital came back to me, making me flush. I glanced away. “I’m not sure I care enough to wait, so speak quickly.”
I opened my car door, grateful for the annoying tone that reminded the driver the door was open. He held his hands out, palms up, as if to apologize for the abruptness of what he was about to say. “A few months ago, developers started sniffing around Carrowmore, trying to determine who owned it and how interested in selling the owners might be. Your dad approached me to see what I thought.” He squinted up at the back of the dilapidated old mansion. “Just thought you should know.” He turned and began walking back toward his car.
I slammed my car door. “Wait! You can’t just leave without telling me more!”
