Chapter 4
Moira Allyson sat in a wooden chair beneath the live oak and watched her two white long-haired cats at the water’s edge. Their
green eyes tracked a dragonfly hovering over the surface of the lake, and their fluffy necks jerked in response to the bug’s
movements. Dove entered hunting mode, crouching down on her front legs like a tiger stalking a gazelle in the brush. Pearl
sat beside her, focused on the insect’s every move but not yet ready to pounce. In an instant, Dove leapt from her back paws,
reaching for the dragonfly with her long front leg. She missed, however, and the dragonfly quickly fluttered away. Pearl cut
her eyes toward her sister almost mockingly, then walked toward Moira.
“It was just too fast for you, old girl,” Moira said to her friend as the cat jumped from the soft grass into Moira’s lap.
Pearl remained at the water, watching intently for the flopping tail of a sunfish or the flicker of wings; whether a dragonfly
or an egret, it didn’t matter.
Moira stroked Dove’s fur and took a sip from her glass before placing it back on the wide arm of the chair.
She gazed at the dark, glassy water and reflected on her childhood on Lake Conasauga.
Her grandfather, Ernest, owned a nineteen-foot aluminum fishing boat in a hunter-green color.
She remembered how hot the green-and-white-striped vinyl seats became in the sun.
She would dig into the built-in ice chest, which was stocked with beer for her granddaddy and cans of orange soda for herself and her brothers.
She often tossed ice cubes onto the seats before sitting down in her shorts, only to burn her legs anyway.
Granddaddy Ernest had a battery-operated radio with a cassette deck sitting on the Astroturf carpet in the boat, blaring country classics by Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, or Charley Pride.
Her grandaddy sang along at the top of his lungs, not caring that his raspy voice carried across the water and scared most of the fish away.
Being out on that aluminum boat with his grandkids wasn’t about fishing anyway, not really.
Granddaddy Ernest passed away when Moira was in junior high, but her father kept his father’s old boat. Occasionally he would
take it out of the shed, hook it to his pickup truck, and drive out to Lake Conasauga. Moira’s older brothers were often too
busy to spend an afternoon at the lake, but Moira never declined the opportunity. She cherished every chance to be back on
that old boat with the only other man she loved as much as her granddaddy—and that was her dad, Albert.
Moira was the youngest of the Wallace siblings and the only girl, which meant she held a special place in her father’s heart.
He affectionately called her “Apple,” as she was truly the apple of his eye.
If she was with her dad, she never left a store without a piece of candy or a new toy.
When she was sixteen and went on her first date with Barrett Marcum, her intimidating father stood on the porch with his Winchester rifle.
While he partly did this as a joke, there was an underlying seriousness to his gesture.
His protective nature toward his blonde-haired, blue-eyed little Apple was unmistakable.
When Albert lost his long battle with lung cancer when Moira was a freshman at UGA, she didn’t think she’d make it through.
Pearl joined Moira and her littermate, Dove, on the Adirondack chair and purred with contentment. Mo welcomed the cat before
she took the last swallow from the glass and placed it back on the arm of the chair. She picked up the small yellow notepad
and pen on the other wide arm and used Pearl’s back as a desk. She started making notes for her birthday party coming up in
three weeks.
“What in the world will I wear on the sunset cruise?” she asked her best friends resting silently in her lap. “It might be
chilly. Or it might not. I can never tell this time of year. Maybe the navy jumpsuit? Or that floral maxi I haven’t worn in
forever? The black long-sleeved mini I ordered online?”
Dove responded to Moira by pawing at the frayed threads at the hole in the knee of her jeans.
“I haven’t worn the black mini yet. No place to wear it,” she said while tapping the end of the pen on the sheet of paper.
Moira was confident that she would look stunning no matter what she wore. She had been aware of her beauty from an early age,
partly due to the doting she received from Ernest and Albert. Although she knew she was beautiful, she remained coy and humble.
This modesty was a virtue taught to her by her mother, Louise. Not only was Louise Wallace strikingly beautiful, even into
her old age, but she possessed inner beauty and wisdom. Louise often reminded Moira with a gentle smile, “Vanity blossoms
but bears no fruit.”
When Louise passed away ten years ago, Moira stood beside her mother’s pearl-white casket, tears leaving black mascara streaks on her face.
She reached into the coffin and brushed her mother’s cold cheek, framed by her long silver hair, and she couldn’t help but think how lovely her mother still looked at seventy-five, even beneath layers of mortuary makeup.
An egret taking flight across the brackish water startled her from memories of her mama. The cats, however, were sleeping
and purring so deeply that they didn’t notice.
Moira reviewed her notes and thought about the guests she had invited. Among them were her sisters-in-law: Tabitha, Penny,
and even her oldest brother’s wife—always a source of her frustration—the overly talkative and negative MerryLee. Moira believed
that sending MerryLee an invitation was a waste of a stamp since MerryLee had always resented Mo’s wealth, beauty, and talent
for hosting fabulous parties, and therefore she was sure not to come. Moira decided to invite her anyway, hoping to please
her brother, whom she loved dearly.
Among Moira’s other guests were her childhood best friends, Celia Kate and Gemma. She had also invited a couple of her sorority
sisters: Carla, who had a talent for telling hilarious stories, and Jenna, who laughed heartily at them. Two friends from
church, Nell and Jess, were included as well, along with Erin, Moira’s housekeeper. Erin was more than just an employee; she
was like a friend who brought life and conversation to Moira’s big, quiet house several days a week. She had a knack for making
Moira smile with sweet compliments about her clothes and various things around the house, and those little gestures meant
a lot to Moira. Over the year they’d spent together, Erin had become the person Moira talked to most regularly.
She looked over at the matching Adirondack chair beside her, a layer of dust covering the dark wood.
She thought about the countless hours she’d spent right here with Jeffrey, with coffee mugs in hand.
Beneath that two-hundred-year-old tree canopied in Spanish moss, much like the white long-haired cats, they, too, had watched herons and egrets take flight over the Ogeechee River and its salt marshes.
It was in this spot on the banks of the water that Jeffrey had talked of retiring at sixty, by which time their oldest son would be thirty and ready to run the family business.
Moira and Jeffrey discussed one day sailing around the world on a forty-two-foot Delta Diamond yacht, complete with crew.
Talk about a contrast from that aluminum boat with vinyl seating! Conversations of their future, beneath that tree, made Jeffrey
and Moira Allyson giddy, like a young high-school couple. They often interlocked hands and rested them on the arms of those
slatted wood chairs, where her glass was now sitting. It was unique, still being so in love after over twenty-five years of
marriage.
Pearl and Dove both stretched and rolled onto their backs, exposing their fluffy white stomachs. Moira placed the notepad
and pen beside her and nuzzled the limp rag dolls, saying to them, “You all miss him too, don’t you?”
She thought back to that chilly spring day when she found her best furry friends, when the sun looked warm but the air was
sharp and cut through your sleeves. Moira remembered clearly how the wind tugged at her lavender scarf as she and Jeffrey
stepped out of the car onto gravel. They were somewhere out past Richmond Hill at a little rescue tucked behind a horse farm.
It was run by a retired schoolteacher named Fran who had long white hair and wore denim skirts and spoke to every animal like
it was her grandchild.
They’d only come to “look,” which was what Jeffrey always said, even though he knew good and well they were leaving with something furry. Both their golden retriever and Maine coon cat had passed the year before, and the house had been too quiet ever since.
Fran led them into a sunlit room filled with old wooden crates and dusty shelves. There in the corner were two long-haired
sisters curled up together, looking like a patch of snow. Both were white from whisker to tail, and each had striking emerald
eyes.
“They’re a bonded pair,” Fran had said. “Someone found them in a box off Highway 204.”
Moira crouched in front of them, and Dove—elegant, cautious—blinked slowly, then extended one paw to touch her knee. Pearl
yawned and stretched her full length. With a quick jump, she plopped into Jeffrey’s lap.
“She’s picked you.” Fran chuckled.
“I’m a dog person,” Jeffrey argued before he looked up at Moira and asked, “What do you think, Mo?”
“I think we’re not leaving one without the other,” she said.
He smiled, and that was that.
They rode home with the cats in a borrowed carrier on the back seat, meowing like tiny singers. Pearl became carsick halfway
through the ride, and Jeffrey, unfazed, pulled over and cleaned it up without complaint.
When they returned to Allyson Island, they surprised the boys with the little snowballs. Brent cuddled Pearl on the couch
while Bradford held Dove in the air like Simba from The Lion King. Moira recalled Jeffrey standing in the doorway, watching the scene unfold, with his arms crossed and a familiar glint in
his eyes.
Moira was sitting quietly now with the eight-year-old cats and watching as the late August sun sank lower on the horizon over the marsh, transforming the sky into beautiful colors of orange and pink.
She thought about the sunset cruise she had planned along the Atlantic, where she and her birthday guests would witness the same sky changing into a canvas of colors while gentle waves rocked the boat.
She was determined to make every moment of the weekend special.
Moira mulled over the ideas of having a bonfire, hosting a game night under the stars, or maybe painting canvases in the courtyard with Rober, her artist friend.
Drowsy, thirsty, and tired of brainstorming plans for the party, she gently nudged the cats off her lap, grabbed her empty
glass, pen, and notepad, and headed back toward the house. Her steps were unsteady at first, but she quickly regained her
balance as her bare feet sank into the soft, plush Bermuda grass, with Dove and Pearl frolicking behind her. The outdoor lights
surrounding the pool, courtyard, and back patios suddenly turned on, triggered by a timer, casting long shadows of the oaks,
palms, and palmettos across the lawn. It marked the end of another long, lonely day.
“Time to go in, girls,” Moira said to her feline friends as she stepped onto the cool cobblestone patio and entered the dark
house.
The palm’s fronds swayed in the wind, moving in and out like a steady, relentless breath outside the open window.
A salty breeze stirred the white linen curtains, sending them brushing against the darkened room like a ghost. Moira lay on top of the covers in the white robe she had put on after dinner, her body stretched across the wide bed that had once held two people.
Her fingers clutched the glass of wine resting on her stomach. It was her third one since her dinner of leftover lasagna,
maybe fourth, and the stem was smudged with fingerprints, the red liquid nearly gone. Her eyes, wide and sleepless, stared
up at the coffered ceiling where the moonlight traced patterns in the shadows. She could hear the curtains brushing against
the hardwood floor.
Jeffrey’s side of the bed was untouched. Still. Always still.
She exhaled sharply through her nose and said to the white cats purring on their backs at her feet, “You’d think I’d be better
at this by now.”
The clock ticked somewhere behind her, loudly, in the dark. She reached over and turned it to face the wall. She tried closing
her eyes, but that only made it worse. Some nights she swore she felt the warm weight of him there beside her—and then she’d
open her eyes and the room would be just as empty as her arms.
She sipped the last of the wine, then let the glass roll gently off her stomach onto the mattress. It didn’t break. It just
lay there, hollow and fragile. She turned to her side, wrapping the sheet around her like armor, trying to block out the chill
that had nothing to do with the wind flowing through the room.