Chapter Seventeen
I f the wind outside was 50 mph, then the old feelings were coming back at two hundred. The chill bumps, the fluttery tummy, his name swimming around in her head. She snuggled into him, and he rested his chin on the top of her head. Hopefully, the lights wouldn’t come back on. She kept flashing back to his face at camp, and it strengthened the connection between the boy she once knew and the man here now. This time, she knew more about life and how rare it was to find passion and connection, especially with someone with whom she shared a history.
“Oh my dear holy God,” a voice bellowed from inside the room as the wide beam of a flashlight hit them.
Brooke jumped away from the safe embrace of Nate’s arms. She hadn’t even heard the door open.
“Y’all know this place is closed, right?” It was spoken in the most judgmental and salacious tone, but the excited look on Libby Trotter’s face was pure joy. “Do I need to call Duke on y’all?”
“I work here, Libby,” Brooke said, once again wishing her monogrammed tormentor would spontaneously combust. “And I have the keys to lock up.”
“You call this working? You and Zippy, breaking the rules, just like old times,” she sneered.
Nate stood and physically put himself between the two women, shielding Brooke against her. “Nice to see you again, Libby,” he said. “We can take things from here.” He forced her to back up just by kindly moving toward her.
Libby aimed the flashlight directly in his face. “I believe it is my duty to inform Mr. Bradley of these goings-on.”
“Don’t be stupid, Libby,” Brooke said, wanting nothing more than to throw the half-full bottle of wine directly at her head. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
Libby pulled out her cell phone, brazenly held it up, and snapped a blinding picture of the two of them.
“You do not have our permission to take a picture!”
“Don’t need it. Now I have proof of your fraternization. And I should probably send it to your boyfriend, Gates. Do you think he’d be interested?” Her voice was as sweet and saccharin as fake sugar.
“You do realize that we’re not in high school anymore, right?” Brooke said, feeling the adult in her gain strength over the bullied teenager still living in her bones. “You can stop this now.”
“I am not the one caught grubbin’ all over Zippy when I’m supposed to be working.”
“Like you said, the winery is closed.”
“Yeah, well, your legs should be too.”
“That’s it,” Nate said. He walked confidently past Libby and opened the interior door. “Goodbye, Libby. You’re leaving. We’ll lock up.”
Thankfully, she walked through the door with nothing more than a huff. Nate closed and locked it behind her.
“It’s okay,” he said, rushing back to Brooke. He took her in his arms again, his strength and the steady beat of his heart working to calm her. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I hate her,” Brooke said, so angry that she was shaking. She held up the ring of keys. “Let’s go.”
Her car was the closest to the building, so after locking the exterior door to the tasting room, they ran through the rain and jumped in.
Despite the downpour beating against the vehicle and rushing down the windows in sheets, it was still somewhat warm outside. A flash of white in the distance caught Brooke’s eye. “Did you see that?”
Nate leaned forward, straining to see through the water on the windshield. Brooke turned on the car and the windshield wipers so they could both get a better look.
“There!” she called. “Someone’s in Amelia’s garden.” Inside the short picket fence between the crepe myrtles and tall flowering shrubs, a white-haired head bobbed around. “I think it’s my nana.”
Brooke put the car in Drive and pulled as close to the garden as she could, shining her headlights into the foliage. Sure enough, Nana appeared to be miles from home, in someone else’s garden, dancing and spinning in the rain. Her hair wasn’t in her signature black-ribboned ponytail but instead hung straight down to her shoulders, as thoroughly soaked as the bright floral muumuu that clung to her bony frame. “I need to go get her.”
“Give her a second,” Nate said. “She looks happy.”
They both watched as Nana ignored the headlights and danced to whatever music played in her head. Brooke squinted when another person came into view. “Who is that?” It was Duke Bradley in a soaked white shirt. He had a black ribbon tied around his neck like Colonel Sanders. Nana’s black ribbon. He twirled her and laughed as the rain dripped from his face. They were elderly children playing in the rain.
“We should be like that someday,” Nate said.
She didn’t know if he meant individually or together. But she agreed either way. As much as Nana was a little eccentric, she was also utterly dazzling.
Brooke put the car in Reverse and backed up slowly. She didn’t want to ruin the moment for either of them. So…Nana and Duke. Was it romance? Weren’t they too old?
“None of this was what I thought would happen when I came out here today,” Nate said.
“What did you expect?” Brooke drove slowly out of the winery parking lot, leaving Nate’s car behind.
“I guess I’ve learned not to have expectations,” he said. “I just wanted to see you again before I left. After you remembered me at lunch, I guess I had hope.”
The road had puddles but wasn’t flooded out, so she kept driving down the length of Goose Island. Wind gusts shimmied the car, but her main worry was a tree falling. She drove carefully to avoid scattered limbs but felt compelled to keep going.
Nate never once asked where they were headed, but as they crossed one bridge and the next, it became obvious that she was heading to Camp Dogwood. “There’s no electricity, of course,” Brooke said, “but the side door is open. One of the cabins is unlocked too. I stayed there a couple of weeks ago.”
“By yourself?”
She nodded. “After the breakup, I needed some time alone. So I went to the only place I could think of.”
Nate didn’t seem bothered at all. As a matter of fact, he acted like it was perfectly normal for a girl to head alone to a dilapidated ghost camp for some thinking time. Just like going there now in the middle of a severe thunderstorm had been a forgone conclusion.
“There’s a Piggly Wiggly coming up,” he said. “Food, wine, and indoor camping sound okay?”
“Hot dogs and s’mores?”
“Perfect.”
Half an hour later, they pulled into the overgrown and abandoned grounds of the former Camp Dogwood.
She pulled up next to the old clubhouse building and the carved wooden sign still hung over the double doors: The Doghouse . Brooke put the car in Park.
The place felt like it belonged to them.
They sat in the car taking in the scene. It was eerie and gray. Trees swayed with the rain, their branches low and darkly wet, and the old brown structures appeared less sound, like the wind was causing them strain. In all the years Brooke had come to camp, they’d had many pop-up thunderstorms but rarely a day that was consistently as dark and ominous as this one. She and Nate were quiet, consumed with memories and mesmerized by the metronome-like intervals of the windshield wipers swiping back and forth, back and forth. They both stared off into the distance, down the hill to the half-sunk floating dock in the old swimmin’ hole.
“Do you remember your parents well?” she asked.
“Sometimes I wish I didn’t.” The wipers whooshed across the windshield two more times, and she turned them off when the rain momentarily stopped. “I was happy with them.”
Brooke didn’t know what to say. She desperately wanted to help, to make him feel like the world was good and there were people who cared.
He had to know that she was listening intently, that she wanted to know more, but he chose to say, “Let’s eat,” instead. “While there’s a break in the rain.”
They carried two thin plastic bags of groceries, a small pack of firewood, and a gallon of water into the building as the sky reflected bright red onto the fast-moving clouds. Inside, The Doghouse was dirty and spider-infested, but overall uncannily familiar. The old cafeteria tables were still there with their attached circular seats and laminate tops. Even the corkboard with old photos and a printed list of teams remained on the entry wall. Whoever tried to sell the place must have had trouble, considering the island was a preserve and the property was limited as to what it could be used for. It was deserted now, stuck in a time gone by.
Cell phone coverage was spotty, which was probably good considering they drove out of range just as she texted her mother that she wouldn’t be home for dinner that night and not to worry. She didn’t say where she’d be, so there were sure to be follow-up questions. It felt like a benevolent act of God when a text from Duke came through informing her that they were hiring a cleanup service to deal with the aftermath of the storm and the winery would be closed for the next two days. Maybe, just maybe, she and Nate would stay there together.
Nate was unloading the groceries onto the kitchen counter when she held up her phone for him to read the message. He smiled like he, too, was privately thanking God for the extra time.
“What’s your schedule?” she asked.
“I set my own hours.” He held up the package of hot dogs. “Hungry?”
“Starved.” She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. And, if anything in the world should make sense, it would be that intense emotions burned the equivalent of a feast’s worth of calories. She deserved at least two hot dogs.
“I have a better idea,” he said. “Are you willing to risk getting wet?”
“As long as I can dry off.”
He put the items back into the bags and hung both over one arm. Then he grabbed the jug of water and said, “Follow me.”
They fast-walked down the slope ending at the water, then turned left toward the bridge and the jumping rock. Water flowed quickly down what was usually a summertime-dry creek bed. Nate led her along the wooded path, and she knew they’d come out on the other side of the island—the beach side, by the lighthouse. She couldn’t think of any shelter out there, any overhangs or structures where they might have a chance of getting a fire started in the rain. Even though the rain was just a sprinkle at the moment, her hair was saturated from water trickling off the pine needles overhead. Wetness flowed from her head, inside her shirt, and all the way down to her muddy tennis shoes. Every now and then, a wind gust blew a chunk of slick hair onto her face, where it stuck until she pulled it off. Nate had promised she’d be able to dry off, and she trusted him.
The way the woods opened up to the beach with the lighthouse had always been her favorite. The tall concrete and brick structure stood staunchly at the end of the peninsula like the lifeguard of the sea. Even though the light had never shone all the years she’d lived nearby, it still felt like a beacon of hope and safety.
The sand was packed and wet with rain, making it easy to walk on. When they reached the lighthouse, Nate went straight to the thick gray metal door in the middle of the concrete platform. The door handle looked like a steering wheel, or the entry to some sort of jewelry safe or submarine. Rainwater dripped off the front of his hair, and he shook his head like a dog before spinning the wheel to the right three times, stopping it carefully, then once to the left, to the right again twice, and finally settling a quarter turn to the left. Then he pulled, and the door popped open with a metal-on-metal creak. Brooke audibly gasped.
He grinned proudly. “You remember when I said I would live alone until the end of camp?” he said. “I was here.”
“What?”
“My granddad bought this way back when it was decommissioned. This was our vacation home.”
“There’s a house in there?”
“It’s a mess,” he said. “The windows have been broken out and nothing’s been kept up.” They stepped up into a large square room. “My granddad sold this place to Camp Dogwood after my folks died. He couldn’t stomach being here anymore. The new owners didn’t care much about the old lighthouse. There’s a lot of damage, and not much left inside. But the little woodstove is still on the second floor where the light keeper used to live.”
It all felt like such an adventure. She followed Nate around the brick room where plaster fell off the walls in chunks. “This was the bunk room.” He pointed out two sets of old metal bunk beds with black-and-white-striped mattresses. In the middle of the room was a twisty black cast-iron staircase. “There are 114 steps that lead to the top.”
She held on tight to the handrail and followed him up to a round wooden-floored bedroom. A small kitchen was separated only by the white hexagonal tile floor. “The bathroom is there,” he said, pointing to a wooden door. “Next floor is the service room, which used to be where the Coast Guard would keep the light running, but later it was where Granddad put the electrical and water treatment units. Above that is the beacon and the widow’s walk.” He was already kneeling in front of the small cast-iron stove, putting the firewood they’d bought at the Piggly Wiggly inside. He struck a match, and in an instant, the place felt downright homey. It was nice to have the extra light instead of relying on their cell phones. It didn’t matter that there was no furniture.
Brooke opened a bottle of wine and poured it into two plastic cups. They punctured their hot dogs with skewers and held them over the flames until they sizzled and glistened. After stuffing them into a bun and adding ketchup for Brooke and mustard for Nate, they both took a bite. “I wish I’d known about this a couple of weeks ago.”
“How long were you here alone?” he asked.
“I made it a full week. And I’m surprised I lasted that long. I thought about you living in the woods, and figured if you could do it, I could do it.” She laughed. “Little did I know.”
“Were you scared?”
“A little.” The truth was, she’d been terrified. “Full disclosure? I slept in my car. And I went to Walmart and got bear spray and window coverings. But at least I knew enough to use buckets of water to flush the toilet.”
“You’d be surprised at how many people don’t know that little trick.” She loved how straight and white his teeth were when he smiled.
She pointed at herself. “Southern girl right here.”
The only reason she knew anything about survival, and broken toilets, was thanks to Dottie. If it had been left up to her parents, she still wouldn’t know how to do laundry.
“As friends, Brooke. And I mean that. No pressure. No ulterior motives.” His voice sank deeper than she’d ever heard it before. “Would you stay here with me tonight?”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to just be friends. She wanted to languish in his arms, snuggle into his chest whether it was in the car or on a moldy mattress in an old lighthouse. She wanted to kiss him at least one more time in her life.
“I don’t want either of us to get hurt,” he said.
She knew exactly what he meant. “Because you’re leaving.”
“Yes.”
He was right in some ways, but wrong in others. If they stayed together, her heart would open up to him. It didn’t matter if they talked all night or jumped into the sack like honeymooners. Her heart was already softening, remembering, wanting.
“Let’s stay,” she said. Three weeks ago when she fled to Camp Dogwood, she thought she was saying goodbye to it for good—that it would eventually be torn down and all of the memories she’d made with Nate would be lost.
Yet there they were, making more.