Choosing Charleston Read online

  It turned out that I did have a spare. I watched—admired the way his shoulders and arms moved, actually—while he worked. Fifteen minutes later, I’d finished my coffee and he’d finished changing my tire.

  “Thanks so much for helping me out,” I said. “Can I pay you for your time?”

  He declined my offer of cash. “It’s a full size spare, but you still need to get your regular tire fixed soon as you can. Probably just a nail hole.”

  We replaced the contents of my trunk. In went a plastic bag of clothes destined for charity, a box of microwave popcorn that must’ve fallen out of a grocery bag, an unopened emergency tool kit and a spiky black dress shoe with a broken heel.

  My gut rumbled as a cloud of queasiness engulfed me and I did my best not to burp or fart or make some other unfeminine bodily noise. The sensation rapidly progressed to a warm tingle that traveled the course of my body in every direction until I felt positively hot.

  A flash of shame raced into my conscious, hesitated, then melted into anger. I was ignorantly and happily married just two days ago. I’d been a faithful, loving wife. But like a marked heifer, I’d been cast aside by the head bull. He’d already had me and lost interest. He wanted a new cow.

  To hell with Robert. Why shouldn’t I have a sexual fantasy about another man? And what a man he was.

  Loose-fitting jeans resting low on narrow hips showed off well-muscled thighs when he moved. Muddy tan work boots anchored a confident stance. A squarish jaw covered with a fine layer of dark complimented high cheekbones.

  And the eyes. The ice blue eyes that caught me openly staring at him.

  I tried to focus on what he’d just said and remembered that it was something about having the flat tire fixed.

  “Uh, okay, right. I’ll do that,” I said.

  “Good.” He folded his arms across his chest, studying me.

  “Thanks again for your help this morning… I actually shouldn’t even be up yet because I drank too much last night and I’m hungover. But I just wanted to surprise my folks with breakfast and, uh, so far the day has not treated me well,” I blurted. Then as an afterthought, “My name’s Carly.”

  “Good morning, Carly,” he replied with the grace of a veteran politician endearing himself to a potential voter. “I do hope that the rest of your day progresses in a manner much more to your liking.”

  He certainly didn’t talk like a construction worker. But he had the truck to prove it. It was a big white thing with an extended cab, an impressive-looking toolbox in the bed and double wheels in the rear.

  “I’m Trent,” he added, since I hadn’t asked.

  And that’s how my second day in Charleston began. Hungover, dazzled and feeling only slightly guilty at being outrageously aroused by a stranger named Trent.

  * * *

  Taffy’s nose must have detected the presence of people food because when I turned in, she was waiting at the edge of the driveway, her body already poised in an alert begging stance.

  Inside, Granny sat at the table with a Popsicle in her mouth.

  “Jenny!” she said with delight upon seeing me. “You want a Popsicle? They’re orange cream.”

  I didn’t bother to tell her that I was Carly and, with a flicker of jealousy, I wondered if my sister had always been her favorite granddaughter. “No thanks. I got us ham biscuits for breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?” she said. “I thought we already ate breakfast. I’m just having a Popsicle for lunch.”

  It was nowhere near lunchtime and I opened my mouth to correct her, but swallowed the words before they emerged. She was enjoying the Popsicle, eating it with the abandon of a child.

  “Well,” I told her, “breakfast…lunch. What’s the difference? If you’re hungry, then you should eat.”

  “Right on, girlfriend!”

  I thought I heard a flash of my real Granny, the feisty one whose brain hadn’t begun to exhibit signs of deterioration. I studied her closely. She returned my look and I caught a glimpse of humor in her eyes. It quickly changed to detached contentment and I wasn’t sure if I had really seen the old her or just wished for it.

  Before I had a chance to put the biscuits on a serving tray, Daddy came through the back door carrying a pastry box. The enthusiasm in his stride was forced and I knew that he was hurting as much as I was. But like me, he would never admit it.

  “Morning, everyone,” he said, and the tone was overly enthusiastic, even for him. “I went out and got us some beignets from Joseph’s. What do you have there, Little Girl?”

  “Country ham biscuits from Diana’s. I woke up early and thought they’d be good for breakfast.”

  “Looks like we both had the same idea. What could be better than warm beignets and country ham biscuits for breakfast?”

  Situated in the French Quarter district, Joseph’s restaurant made the most amazing New Orleans style beignets. Although I knew that some food would make me feel better, imagining a doughnut and a ham biscuit sloshing around in my stomach on top of all the coffee I’d already drunk was unsettling. I looked at him and forced a smile. “Sounds yummy.”country ham biscuits

  “You feeling alright this morning?” he prodded.

  “Sure. I feel great. How about you?”

  “Fine, I feel fine,” he said, sitting down carefully, probably trying not to agitate a pounding headache with brisk movement. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.”

  My puffy eyes met with his bloodshot ones and we burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Mamma asked, strolling by in a royal blue gown and matching robe. Her pedicured toes, painted bright pink, poked from beneath it with each step.

  “Your daughter has a hangover,” Daddy told her.

  “I do not!” I lied.

  We laughed some more, carefully so as not to jostle our brains too much, and Mamma just shook her head. Ignoring all of us, Granny was focused on capturing the last bit of melting Popsicle with her tongue before it slid off the wooden stick.

  Daddy settled down with a cup of coffee and the newspaper while Mamma set out plates and poured everyone some juice. She stopped momentarily to rub my back in passing. It really was good to be home. Despite the hangover, I felt warm and safe and… appreciated.

  “It looks like it’s really going to happen,” Daddy said from behind the business section of the newspaper. “Protter is going to put me under, damn it!”

  “You can’t stop progress, Honey,” Mamma said.

  “Who is Protter and what progress are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Protter Construction and Development,” Daddy said with a mixture of admiration and disdain. “The Protter family. They buy parcels of land and put up everything from residential subdivisions to shopping malls. They just bought the sixty-two acres across from our store for a commercial development project.”

  “So? Won’t more retail traffic help your store?” I said through a bite of a beignet. The dough was warm and puffy and had been fried just long enough to make the outside a golden brown. It was decadent, and after a few seconds of indecision, my stomach decided to accept it. An almost human feeling was rapidly replacing my hangover.

  “The plans call for a Handyman’s Depot building center. It will put me out of business.”

  “But your customers are loyal. They’ve been buying from you forever,” I replied, licking the powdered sugar off my fingers. I noticed that he was eating a country ham biscuit.

  “Service doesn’t mean all that much to people anymore. Oh, they’ll complain about bad service, or how they have to deal with a different person every time they go to buy supplies. But ultimately, after proximity, they go for price. And chains like Handyman’s Depot buy in such quantity that I could never compete.”

  “What’s really got your daddy all bowed up,” Mamma said, “is that Patrick and Minnie Beth promised to sell the land to him if they ever decided to sell. That was a long time ago, before they took in Robert. They agreed to a price and
shook hands and everything.”

  “You mean Robert’s stepparents? They sold the Protters their land?”

  Mamma nodded. “I hear that Patrick hasn’t been well lately, and I’m wondering if they’re out of town. We tried calling several times to ask why they didn’t let us know that the land was for sale but they don’t answer the phone.”

  Minnie Beth and Patrick were Robert’s aunt and uncle. When Robert was six, both his parents were killed in an automobile accident. Although Robert never developed a close relationship with his stepparents, I genuinely liked the older couple and Mamma and Daddy were on friendly terms with them. I couldn’t imagine what would cause them to go back on their word and sell the land to a developer without first offering it to Daddy.

  “An oral contract is just as binding as a written one,” I said, knowing that if it went to court, it actually wasn’t. Contracts dealing with real estate, among many others, had to be in writing to be enforceable. But still, there was always a chance. “I don’t understand why Patrick dishonored your agreement to begin with. It doesn’t sound like him.”

  “I don’t know how it happened,” Daddy said, “and I’d never win trying to force the issue of a handshake agreement in court. But somehow Protter got to them and the land was sold out from under me.”

  “Well,” I started, the mediator in me coming out, “if this Protter company didn’t get the land across from your store, chances are they would’ve put up the Handyman’s Depot anyway. Just somewhere else.”

  “Right,” Mamma answered for Daddy. “But there’s not another suitable location anywhere near our store. They’d have to put it a good distance away from us.”

  The crease between Daddy’s eyes deepened. “I can compete with hardware stores and building supply centers. I do compete with them. Even the big boxes, because convenience and personal service count for a lot. But directly across the street? I may as well just shut down right now.”

  I had to wonder if Robert knew about the property sale and didn’t tell me. Although they were not a close-knit family, he was a successful investment broker. Surely Patrick and Minnie Beth would have called Robert to ask his advice before selling the property. A sour taste permeated my tongue. I couldn’t blame it on the hangover.

  I also had to wonder how well Daddy would cope with this unexpected turn of events. I knew he wasn’t ready to retire. He enjoyed work the way another man might enjoy golf or boating. The store had been his livelihood, but also his hobby. He truly loved the business.

  Taffy barked exactly twice and on cue, the doorbell rang. I opened it to find my best friend, Lori Anne, standing there with disbelief.

  “So it’s true! You are in town. One of the girls at my spa said there had been a Carly Stone sighting.”

  It felt good to hug her. Since I’d moved away, we stayed in touch with emails and an occasional phone call. But seeing her again made me realize how much I missed her company. When we let go of each other her smile faded to anger. She was pissed.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” she demanded, crossing her arms and ignoring Taffy’s plea for some attention.

  “I… I guess I’m trying to visit incognito. You know, keep a low profile.”

  “You didn’t even want me to know you’re in town? What’s up with that?”

  Her hair, I noticed, was a golden blond. It had a tendency to change with the seasons. Since high school, when Lori Anne’s mother gave in and allowed her to start using hair color, it had been every tint on the Clairol chart from fire-engine red to jet black. That was more than fifteen years ago and today, she owned one of Charleston’s hottest day spas. Her clients could get everything from a cut and color to injections of Botox and fillers.

  The short curls bounced around her face as she glared at me, questioning, and I knew she was hurt. Were our roles reversed, I’d have been mad, too.

  “You always did look good as a blond,” I said, motioning her inside.

  “That’s your answer to my question? Flattery?” She suddenly froze in place and studied my face. Her anger melted. “Carly, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing, really. I just needed to get away for a few days and it’s been a while since I’ve seen Mamma and Daddy.”

  I headed into the kitchen.

  “Bullshit,” she said, following. “I know you better than that. And I like your hair, too. The highlights look great. But you look like hell.”

  Lori Anne got a round of hugs from my family and a few licks on the hand from Taffy and we all settled around the table. Mamma set a plate in front of her while Daddy handed over the remaining country ham biscuit and the box of beignets.

  “You people know how to do a good breakfast,” Lori Anne said.

  “Thank you,” Daddy and I said together.

  “So.” She opened the box and selected a beignet. “tell me what’s going on. If you don’t, I’ll just ask your mamma. She’ll tell me.”

  “What’s the big secret?” Granny said. “Carly’s husband did the nasty with a neighbor.”

  Lori Anne froze in mid bite, questioning me with raised eyebrows at the same time I questioned Granny with an identical expression. I hadn’t realized she was cognizant of my situation.

  “If your granddaddy ever did me that way, I’d be inclined to get me a pair of pruning shears,” she made an exaggerated cutting motion, “and chop the little sucker off! He wouldn’t be a puttin’ his peg in the wrong hole no more.”

  Daddy cringed. Mamma laughed. Taffy searched the floor for crumbs.

  “Oh, Carly, I’m so sorry for you,” Lori Anne said. “But I still wish you would have called me. You know we can tell each other anything.”

  She was right. After all, when she was twenty-six, Lori Anne married a beautiful man who later admitted he was gay. He thought Lori Anne would turn him into a happy straight man, but quickly decided otherwise. The marriage was annulled before they celebrated their one month anniversary and Lori Anne had been pretty hard on her herself for not recognizing the obvious before they got married. She would have understood. She knew it wasn’t her fault that her marriage failed. And somewhere deep inside, I knew the same thing about me and Robert. But that didn’t make the pain lessen.

  I nodded. “You’re right and I apologize. It’s just that I didn’t want to have to explain… I didn’t want to be crying on anyone’s shoulder.”

  “You’re not going to be crying on my shoulder,” she countered, tugging at the collar of her blouse. “This is a Fendi.”

  I had to laugh, and mentally reprimand myself for thinking she wouldn’t understand.

  “She found Robert having sex with one of their neighbors,” Mamma’s voice lowered to a whisper. “In her own bed.”

  “The bastard!”

  Mamma nodded.

  We ate the rest of our breakfast in emotional silence, catching up on Lori Anne’s business and purposely avoiding any talk of Protter Construction, the store or Robert. There would be plenty of time for us to talk later, after Lori Anne had a chance to digest the news.

  Chapter Four

  For only being back in Charleston less than a week, I’d acclimated to living in my old room quite nicely. I’d visited with the neighbors and shopped at my favorite jaunts, and taken Taffy on a beach walk. Everything was so different in Charleston – so much more like home to me – including the sand on the beach. It was a finer grain, maybe, and it just felt better beneath my feet. New York was already beginning to seem like a hazy part of my distant past.

  After finishing law school, I’d returned to Charleston and severed the financial umbilical cord by renting a townhouse rather than taking Mamma up on her offer to move back into the family home. But I knew my old room would always be there if I needed it. To be occupying it now was somehow humbling and empowering at the same time.

  It felt so natural to be back home, but I forced myself not to contemplate making it a permanent move. Tempting though it was, something nagged at my consciousness, telling me I shouldn’t
quit Robert even though he was quitting me. Plus, he hadn’t yet signed the preliminary divorce papers. He could be reconsidering. His official cause for wanting the divorce was that I refused to have children, which wasn’t entirely true. I just didn’t want to have children so soon.

  It was nearing lunchtime and the Charleston breeze was perfect in a way that caused people to actually stop what they were doing for a moment and enjoy it. Granny and I were sharing a porch swing and a plate of sugar cookies, munching, watching the squirrels dart around the oaks and pines. Swinging with her, I realized that even though Granny’s mind had retreated to some happy place I couldn’t conceptualize, she was entombed by the Stone family bond. Just like I did, she had a place to go where she was welcomed unconditionally. Families just took care of each other.

  “Carly, you’re such a beautiful young woman. I’m real proud of what you do,” Granny told me. “People are too sue-happy nowadays. You keep them out of court, so the courts can be used for the stuff that matters.”

  “Thanks, Granny,” I replied automatically before realizing she hadn’t called me Jenny. And she had spoken knowingly about my job. I looked at her more closely, wondering which wheels were spinning inside her head.

  “You married last year, right? Robert, is it?” She was back in the present and she was lucid. Mamma told me it happened occasionally, but until now, I hadn’t witnessed it firsthand. “I’m real sorry I didn’t make it to the wedding. I had a plane ticket, but got the dates all tangled up!”

  “That’s okay,” I told her, mentally crossing my fingers in hopes she’d stick around for a while.

  “He’s the one messin’ around on you, and you came back home to figure it all out?”

  I nodded. “That, and because I just really miss Charleston. Maybe I should move back here. If Robert goes through with the divorce, there won’t be anything keeping me in New York. The house will be easy enough to sell. And I can always find another job.”

  “He’s divorcing you?” Granny clacked her dentures a few times in indignation. “You’re the one who oughtta be divorcing him!”