15. Keaton Ad Nauseum
I’m not saying we aren’t happy that you are having so much fun on your nights out with your cool, young friends,” Violet says as she sips her coffee on the Dockhouse deck. “But are we being replaced?”
I laugh. “No one could ever replace you four!” I spot Bowen walking down the dock and desperately want to get his attention, but I don’t want to seem too eager. Fortunately, Arlene calls, “Bowen! Come have coffee with us!”
“I have to get to the boat,” he says, pointing to the huge steel Marine Sciences vessel at the dock. “We’re shark tagging today.” He grins at me.
“Just one cup!” Violet calls. “The sharks can wait.”
I can tell Bowen is about to say no, but then he looks up at the deck, and his eyes lock on mine. “Well, maybe just one cup.”
Violet looks self-satisfied, but Betty scoffs, “He didn’t say yes because of you, you old bird. He said yes because of Keaton.”
Four sets of eyes are on me. “What’s going on there?” Suzanne asks.
“Nothing,” I hiss. I shush them as Bowen appears on the porch.
Salt jumps on him, tail wagging furiously. “Salt, down!” I say. But Bowen hands me his coffee and takes both Salt’s ears in his hands, rubbing them playfully. “It’s pretty gratifying to have someone love you like this.”
“Oh, I know. I didn’t think I was a dog person, but now I can’t imagine coming home and no one freaking out at my mere presence.”
“I keep thinking that Anderson should have a puppy, but then I’d have to find someone to let him out in the afternoons, and it doesn’t seem fair to keep a dog cooped up all day when no one’s home.”
Amy walks out with coffee for Bowen and refills for the rest of us, just as Violet asks, “Bowen, honey, are you coming to the opening-night party for the Old Homes Tour? I can put you on the list.”
Amy laughs, but I’m not sure why. I am so excited about attending a party with all the amazing townspeople I’ve gotten to know here, under a tent on the grounds of the Historic Site with music playing in the background. The breeze will be soft, the wine will be cold, and there will be a dance floor. Not that I have anyone to dance with… I look at Bowen and try to ignore the thud in my heart.
“Thursday night, right?” Bowen asks.
Violet nods.
“Opening-night party on Thursday, prep all day Friday, and Saturday and Sunday the touring magic happens,” I say, more to myself than to him. I can’t believe these events are almost here and am trying to ignore my nerves.
“Team Keaton will be there,” he says, smiling. He looks at Amy. “Can I get my refill to go? I’ve got to run.”
She nods. “Sure thing.”
“Bye, ladies,” he says, standing and following Amy inside.
For a few seconds, all the ladies are quiet, which is unnerving in that it has never happened before.
“What is going on?” I whisper as the door opens again and Amy reappears. We’re the only table at the restaurant this early, so she sits down with us.
“Well, I never thought I’d see the day,” she says, almost as if in awe.
“What day?”
“Bowen has never, not once, attended an Old Homes Tour event,” Arlene says with a wink.
My face gets warm, but I try to play it off. “Well, maybe he’s maturing, getting involved in town activities.”
Amy shakes her head. “Jimmy, Clayton, Alex, and I have been discussing the possibility of this…”
“The possibility of what?”
Suzanne shakes her head. “It is indeed as we have suspected.”
Betty nods. “Yup. I knew it.”
“What are you talking about?”
They act as if I haven’t spoken. “He is indeed in love with her,” Violet says.
I laugh. “He is not in love with me. Are you guys talking about this behind my back?”
“Oh, yes!” Violet says. “Ad nauseum.”
Movement inside the restaurant startles Amy out of her seat, but as she goes back in she whispers loudly over her shoulder, “Keaton and Bowen sitting in a tree!”
“Mature, Amy,” I call behind her.
I look at the ladies. “Enough. Bowen is being friendly. And I’m leaving soon. There’s no need to go down this road.”
Arlene nods, getting the hint. She points at the book sticking out of my bag. “I love that you carry Becks’s notebook with you.”
I put my hand to the worn leather. “Do you think she would mind that I’m reading it?” I ask, sheepish.
“Mind!” Violet says. “Becks would be thrilled! It’s the one thing she always had with her,” she says.
“Well, that and that huge honking diamond,” Suzanne adds.
I smile even though this makes me a little sad. “Her engagement ring?”
“It was magnificent,” Violet says wistfully.
“I wish Mom had it. But I guess wherever Becks is, the ring is.”
Betty squeezes my hand and I shake off my sadness, thinking of what I do have of Becks’s that has given me more than any ring ever could. “I love the notebook. I love getting a feel for what she loved, and, let me tell you, I’m becoming quite the cook. I made her heavenly biscuits last night, and it only took me three batches and one smoke alarm to get an edible dozen.”
Arlene pats my arm. “Bless your heart, honey.”
Betty gasps. “Do you know what I just realized?” We all wait. “Keaton is to us what we were to Becks.”
They all nod knowingly. “What?” I ask, feeling like I haven’t been invited to the party.
“We were Becks’s young friends, and now you’re our young friend.”
I’m shocked by how much I’m going to miss them when I leave.
I pause, feeling a tightness in my chest over how sad I’m going to be to lose my foothold here. “Maybe when we sell the house, I can use my portion to buy a little condo here or something, so I can visit during the summers.”
Violet looks aghast. “You will not buy a condo!”
“What’s wrong with a condo?”
“Nothing,” she says. “But why would you buy a condo when you could stay with us?”
I smile and reach over to squeeze her hand. “Okay,” I say. “Back to the salt mines.”
I must, must, must make some real progress on cleaning things out today. I am going through a list in my head as I walk back up to the house and spot Alex on a ladder. He isn’t in his pirate garb, which makes me happy because I always worry he’s going to pass out from heat exhaustion when he is. “Hey, Keaton!” he calls. “Getting these gutters all sorted before the Old Homes Tour. We need to make sure you’re looking right!”
He climbs down the ladder and walks toward me, his shirt stained with sweat. “Well,” he says, “looks like I am officially on your docent team.”
We will have six docents, a.k.a. tour guides, at the house. Each is assigned a room to talk about its history and stories—and, well, keep an eye on all the people wandering through.
I clap in excitement. “Really? What room are you doing?”
“I’m going to be the outdoor greeter, and I’m going to tell a great pirate tale.”
I raise my eyebrow. “Is it true?” We have established that some of the lore from Alex’s pirate walks is… stretched a bit.
“True enough,” he says, wiping his brow.
“Come inside! Cool off. I’ll get you some water.”
He follows me in, and I pour him a drink. “Hey, how many tours do you do a day?” I realize that, despite seeing him on an almost-daily basis, I’ve never asked him this.
“Well, three a day in the summer, one or two the rest of the year. I take groups of ten to fifteen.”
I know he charges twenty-five dollars per person, and, doing the quick math in my head, I gasp. “Alex! Are you serious? You have a gold mine!” My marketing wheels start turning. “Do you have a waitlist or anything?”
He shrugs. “Oh yeah. I mean, I could easily add another tour or two a day. But three hours of tours and a handful of handyman jobs keep me as busy as I want to be.”
“Right. But you could hire someone else to help you! We could get you a website, some social media, advertise a little. You could have this whole huge business and—”
He laughs. “Keaton, sometimes enough is okay, you know? I don’t need more money. And I can’t make more time. I want to work a little during the day, have drinks with you guys to end the night. Fish in the mornings. Swim in the afternoons. You can’t take it with you.”
I study him, suddenly embarrassed. I have spent my career worrying so much about growth and profits and strategies and bottom lines that I sometimes forget that happiness is what really matters. Alex is reminding me of that. I nod. “Sorry. Old habits.”
He hands me his empty glass and squeezes my arm, looking around. “I’ll get the paint touched up in here before the tour.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Just let yourself in whenever. I might not be here.”
“So you won’t be walking around naked in the kitchen or anything?”
“Since the people in the houses on either side of me can see directly in the windows, I’d say that’s a safe bet.”
An hour later, Salt and I are in my grandparents’ bedroom. I sit down at the vanity—where the silver gleams, I might add—and take a deep breath.
I have just hung up with my brother, who hopes we sell the house quickly so I can get back to New York. “Then I won’t have to worry about you roaming around that house in our grandmother’s dresses,” he said. I’d laughed, but, sitting at Becks’s vanity, I can see his point. It has been easy to get sucked into her world.
I pull the little Victorian handle on the middle drawer. Inside is neat and organized, which is why it’s so easy to spot what is right smack in the middle: a huge diamond ring with rubies lining the top and bottom, and diamonds set in filigree all around the center stone. I gasp, and, ignoring the thought that maybe I am morphing into my grandmother, slip it on my finger. It’s the perfect fit.
Underneath, a yellowed envelope sits, bearing my mother’s name. I flip it over and see that the back is still sealed tight. I hold it up to the light to see if I can read through it, but I can’t quite bring myself to open it. It would be wrong, wouldn’t it? Still, this is the sign I needed to try to persuade my mom to come here, to unearth what is left in this house. This is her childhood, her history. There are things here that mean something to her that I will never understand.
As I hold my grandmother’s diamond out to admire, I say “Wow” as the light catches the ring. It is truly the most spectacular thing I have ever seen.
But didn’t the ladies say my grandmother never took it off? Chills run down my spine, and I suddenly get the creepiest feeling. Her diamond is here. Her notebook. I think of Anderson and the library. Why was there dried blood on that sword?
I open the left-hand bottom drawer, curious to see what’s inside. I am shocked to see that it’s cluttered with jewelry. I touch a double strand of pearls with a jeweled clasp, a simple single strand of bigger pearls, a sapphire cocktail ring, a pair of emerald earrings, and a tiny gold baby bracelet that I recognize as my mother’s. She’s wearing it in the framed picture of her and Lon as small children, which sits on the vanity.
These are valuable things, things that certainly would have been stolen if there was some sort of foul play involved, right? I resist the urge to play dress-up with my grandmother’s jewelry and open the top left drawer to do more exploring. Inside, makeup brushes sit in a straight line as if they were organized yesterday. The right-hand drawer reveals rouge, powder, lipstick, and mascara. I know I should throw them all out. What good is makeup from the seventies? But I can’t shake the feeling that maybe my mother should be the one to do that, that she should have one last moment in time at her mother’s vanity.
I decide that I should keep the ring on—for, you know, safe keeping. It is the perfect fit, after all. I decide I have to call my mother. I know it hurts, but this is her last chance to say goodbye to her parents. Not to mention the fact that there is a letter waiting for her.
I could call her on my cell, but for a reason I can’t quite explain, I feel like I want to call her from the kitchen phone—like somehow seeing her old phone number on the caller ID might convince her to come say goodbye. This is the closest to closure she is ever going to get, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.
As I make my way down the back stairs, I hear a voice saying, “Good boy, Salty! Good boy.”
Bowen.
I smell him before I see him. The distinctive odor of fish and saltwater seems to radiate from his general direction. His hair is disheveled, his clothes are damp, grime and what I assume is fish or shark blood is on his clothes and splattered a little on his legs. It appears he hasn’t even noticed.
“Do you smell the fish on me?” he asks Salt.
“I do,” I say, and they both look at me.
He smiles. “Sorry, I’m gross.”
I walk a couple steps toward him. “That’s okay.”
He walks toward me with purpose, and my face flushes with the remembrance of my conversation with the ladies this morning.
At that exact moment, there’s a banging at the front door followed by, “Keaton! If you’re naked in the kitchen, I’m coming in with the paint!”
Bowen looks horrified, and I laugh. “No! No!” I say. “It’s a joke. Because, you know, no privacy in Beaufort.”
“Tell me about it,” Bowen says under his breath as Alex enters the kitchen, once again in full pirate garb. “Oh, hey man.” He looks from me to Bowen and back to me, and, instinctively, I take a step back. “Am I interrupting something?” I hate the knowing way he says it and am immediately embarrassed. I feel like a teenager who has a crush on a boy and everyone knows it.
“Feel free to stay—I was just heading out, actually,” Bowen says. “Got to wash off these fish guts.”
He gives me a nod as Alex heads off to the library, and, just like that, I’m alone in the kitchen, alone with my thoughts, trying to decide if the spark I just felt with my neighbor is all in my head. And as I watch him out the window, as he makes his way into his house, I realize I decidedly hope not.