Hatteras Girl (Heart of Carolina Book #3) (23 page)

At the counter, a woman in a floppy white hat arranges yellow roses and baby’s breath in a glass vase. Using shears, she clips off the end of a stem and a few stray leaves.

“Hi,” I say. When she acknowledges me, I add, “I’m Jackie Donovan.”

She gives me a tiny smile, her round face and cheeks showing youth. “Hi.”

I wonder why Selena hasn’t suggested that we interview the owners of this shop. I note the bins of white daisies and zinnias. As I think of how pretty vases of each would look on the tables in the Bailey House, I ask if the store delivers.

“Yeah, we do.”

“Are you Kelly?”

She nods, the hat bobbing like a buoy. “And you’re from the
Lighthouse Views
, right?”

“I am.”

Softly she says, “I recognized you from the photo of your staff.”

I watch her continue with the arrangement. I didn’t think anyone ever looked at the photo of our staff that is in each issue of the magazine.

“You wrote the article about Davis Erickson.”

“Yeah. Do you know him?”

Hesitantly, she says, “My husband and I rent from him.”

“Oh, so do I. I mean, I will. I just signed papers for the Bailey House.” My enthusiasm cascades around the room almost as brightly as the yellow roses shimmer in the sunlight.

With a solemn look, she nods.

The door opens and two women breeze in, exclaiming how nice it feels to be inside a cool place. “We’d like to order flowers for a wedding bouquet,” the shorter one says as she approaches the counter. She appears to be about twenty-five.

“I can talk with you in just a minute,” Kelly replies, adding another rose to the vase.

The older woman looks at me and says, “My daughter is getting married next May on the beach. I think it’s a crazy idea, but I’m just the mother.”

“Oh, Mom.” The daughter lets out an exasperated sigh. “It doesn’t matter where you get married as long as you’re happy.”

When I imagine my own wedding, it takes place in a church sanctuary like Minnie and Lawrence’s. I can almost hear the organ play and see myself in a flowing gown, taking small but confident steps toward the altar. Yet I have no idea who the groom will be. A month ago I might have pictured Davis standing beside me, but now I can only imagine him with Vanessa.

“Good luck,” I say and then bend over to get a whiff of sweetness from a bin of gardenias. If I ever do marry, I want these flowers.

When Kelly talks to the two women, answering their bouquet questions, I leave the shop. Confusion sets in on the drive home. Why did Buck want me to stop by and speak with Kelly? I feel as if I’m viewing one of those detailed pictures where the instructions are to find ten hidden items. What have I missed?

32

On Saturday, The Rose Lattice in Buxton,
a modest restaurant that serves up fried food and music every weekend, is drawing a crowd. I’m amazed at how many people my aunt has gathered for this event. Minnie and I aren’t the only people who want the Bailey House to reopen, I guess. I see people I’ve never met, only seen on TV. There’s the man who gives the weather forecast on the local news and the mayor’s sister. From a cluster of women, I recognize the owner of a Hatteras realty office, the one who had no clue about the Bailey House when I inquired three years ago. Tiny and Beatrice Lou smile at me from across the restaurant floor, and Ropey invites Zane to sit with them.

Zane asks me, “Is that okay? Will you be lonely?”

I don’t tell him that I would love for him to sit away from me, as far as he can. I’m supposed to be delighting in his little-boy ways.

As Zane scampers toward my relatives, Buck comes over and gives me a hug. He’s wearing his Hurricanes cap and a hint of aftershave. “Thanks for being here,” I say.

“Of course. How could I miss an event featuring the Hatteras Girl?” he teases.

“It doesn’t feature me,” I say. “Sheerly planned it all.”

We find seats together on the back row behind women I’ve seen at Sheerly Cut. I think these three women come in every Tuesday to get a cut and color. They also drink cupfuls of the hot tea Sheerly provides.

Then Whistlin’ Walt, who gained his nickname because of his ability to whistle any tune while delivering the mail, joins the ladies. He looks a little heavier tonight without his postal service uniform and hat. The ladies don’t mind. They ask how his mother is doing, and if he thinks it’s going to rain tomorrow.

On a typical night, the Lattice has tables and chairs, waitresses and cooks. Tonight, the chairs have been placed into rows, there is a cover charge at the door of five dollars, and punch, cubes of cheddar cheese, crackers, and sugar cookies sit on a large table behind the chairs.

Sheerly welcomes us to the evening through a mic she holds with ease in her manicured hand. As she speaks, conversations are reduced to murmurs, people shift into chairs, and then the room is quiet.

All I can think of is Buck’s left shoulder. This shoulder, clad in a T-shirt and smelling of aftershave, is touching mine.

Sheerly, tiny yet filled with pep, announces to her audience before her, “We are gathered here to join in raising some money for a landmark that signifies the epitome of our region. Here’s to the Bailey House!”

When the music starts—two guitars and a saxophone—Sheerly’s soprano voice fills the room. Within a few lines, I recognize the song, one she wrote about being a hair stylist, called “Mama Don’t Like My Hair.” My nose starts to itch. I scratch it with my left hand so that my right shoulder remains snug against Buck’s left shoulder. I glance over at him; his eyes are on the band.

Sheerly, L. J., Little Clemmens, who is only five-three, and Jack Junior, an elderly man who used to be a pilot with the Air Force— the entire cast of All That Glitters Is Gold—stand before us and belt out the song:

“Mama don’t like my hair, says it’s too red;
Mama don’t like my hair, says it’s not for me;
Mama asked the stylist and the stylist said,
‘It’s the fashion, and you gotta let this fashion be.’ ”

We clap, and I feel the movement from Buck against my own arm.
This is ridiculous,
I think. Davis is the one I’m interested in. He’s successful, handsome, savvy, and not just working as a waiter at some restaurant, being vague about a carpentry job he used to have with his dad.

When the next song starts, I shift in my seat so that our shoulders are not together in any way. I glance to my left and then try not to stare. Waving at me a few rows over is my cousin Aggie, and seated next to her is none other than Douglas Cannon. His right arm is draped around her shoulders, and she looks content, like the woman dining on the New Orleans poster at the Grille. I give Aggie a smile.

She pushes strands of wavy hair away from her face and smiles back.

“Buck,” I whisper, directing his attention to the couple, “look. They seem happy.”

“Who would have thought it?” Buck says with a grin, before turning to focus once more on the band.

Later, over punch and cookies, Buck tells me he’s flying out to San Diego on Monday to spend time with his cousin.

“How long will you be gone?”

“Two weeks.”

Two weeks.
I stuff a cookie into my mouth and wonder why I suddenly feel sad.

Vanessa approaches us. She’s wearing a cream-colored dress with a tan leather belt that emphasizes her tiny waist. “Hi,” she says to Buck and me. In the evening light, her silver earrings shine like the chrome on a polished car, the chrome on Davis’s car. Even the air around her smells sweet—peonies on a warm spring night.

“Hi,” I say, trying to block out the memory of the last time I saw her at Davis’s office.

“This is a great fundraiser.” She takes a glass of punch from the table.

Somewhere in my head, I hear my mother’s advice: “Be appreciate, be appreciate, Jackie.” I hope my smile looks genuine as I say to Vanessa, “Thanks for being here.”

“I admire you,” she says. “I think it’s wonderful you’re going to open up the bed and breakfast again.”

“Thanks.” She really isn’t a bad person, I tell myself. I just don’t like the way Davis looks at her, or that he sends her flowers, or that they used to date.

Sheerly ushers us to our seats once more, and we listen as she and the band sing a song she wrote about the Bailey House. She says the band has only practiced it once, earlier today, so to bear with them. The lyrics are about the region of Hatteras wanting to put the lovely landmark back on the map under the shimmering sun. The chorus says, “Dreams are made to live.”

An auction follows, and I’m surprised by how many donations my aunt has collected. The most unique is an acrylic painting on canvas. The painter has named it “Frogs by the Marsh on a Summer Afternoon.” The two green tree frogs are perched on the edge of a chipped pier beside a dense marsh. Their eyes are vibrant red.

“You are so talented,” I whisper to Buck.

I consider bidding for the painting, but when the auctioneer starts the bidding at two hundred dollars, I keep my hand in my lap. I’m renting a bed and breakfast. Time to start being frugal.

Within two minutes, the painting sells for four hundred two dollars to an art dealer from Maryland. He’s a tourist who just happened to come by The Rose Lattice after picking up a flyer about the fundraiser.

Buck says, “You have to love the Outer Banks tourists. Each time I see one of those oval black-and-white OBX car stickers, I’m thankful. An OBX lover keeps our jobs from vanishing.”

This is a lesson we all seem to be learning.

After the auction ends, and before the art dealer carts the painting to his vehicle, I view Buck’s frogs. I like the way he shaded in the pier so that it looks like the sunlight is casting a slight shadow over the frogs and marsh. With a closer look, I see he’s added a spindlylegged spider near the grasses and a feathery turquoise butterfly in the right-hand corner.

“Did you go to see Kelly at Ocean Floral?” Buck asks before heading out the door.

“Yeah, why did you—?” Zane bolts around the corner and runs into my legs.

“Jackie,” he says over my groan, “can I ride home with you? And can we stop at Food Lion and buy some chocolate ice cream?”

“Sure,” I say. “Why not?”

Zane doesn’t just want ice cream; he finds cereal, pretzels, and sour-cream-and-chives chips to add to the shopping cart. I agree to one bag of chips for him but remind him that the last bag of pretzels he opened, he spread out on the living room floor and used his trucks to flatten them into the carpet.

“So no pretzels today, Zane.”

“I cleaned it all up,” he says as he crams his hands into his pants pockets.

I distract him by telling him to get some juice while I give in to temptation and grab a bag of white corn tortilla chips to put in the cart, deliberately placing the bag under the container of ice cream.

As we leave the grocery store, walking out into the windy evening, my gaze catches two people entering Movies and Tunes, the DVD rental store at the end of the row of shops. The man, tall and handsome and much too familiar, smiles at the woman in a cream-colored dress. He opens the door for her—one hand on the door, the other hand lingering along her back, fingers moving up and down. The familiar gesture makes me freeze.

“What’s the matter?” asks Zane as the store’s door slams and my own heart knocks against my chest.

When I don’t move, he says, “Come on, Jackie. The ice cream is going to melt.” He tugs at the loaded plastic bag in my right hand.

For a moment I want to run inside the DVD store and scream, “I caught you!” like we used to do when playing hide-and-seek. But I’m not a child anymore, so after strapping Zane into his car seat, I revert to an inane act of adult behavior—I gun my engine. Five times.

Then I back my truck out of the lot as though I’m trying out for the speedway.

Zane giggles. “That’s cool, Jackie!”

This is how short-lived joy can be. I was feeling joy about the fundraiser, yet now I give in to the angry feelings brought about at seeing Davis and Vanessa so happy together.

Suddenly, I realize that if someone saw me seated next to Buck at The Rose Lattice, rumors could start then, too. “Oh, he’s just a friend of the family,” is what I could say. I could launch into the story about catching him spying on Minnie and me when we sat in my bedroom talking about school dances and boys.

Darkness forms around us, and lights start to blink on. As we head north, the truck in front of us towing a red Bay Liner moves slower than frost on a December morning. I’m ready to bang on my horn but then I reconsider. I can’t show anger now. Zane is watching my every move. Mom would tell me I’m an adult and I need to set a good example.

“Let’s sing a song,” Zane suggests, his face shiny with eagerness. “Why?”

“Singing makes you feel better.”

And so we sing “London Bridge Is Falling Down,” and somewhere in the middle, I know that there is no way to repair what has fallen down, my fair lady.