Chapter Thirteen #3
By the time they reached Sea Breeze and climbed onto the lower dock, he was sweating inside his wet suit.
He wasn’t too proud to admit he was glad to see that Carson was winded, too.
He helped her pull the eleven-foot boards from the water and carried both of them to the upper dock.
They set them in a safe spot, then grabbed towels.
Carson’s long braid fell over her shoulder as she bent to unzip the wet-suit jacket.
She dried her face, then let the towel drop to a bench.
“So, tell me about what happened to Delphine,” Atticus said, drying his head with the towel. “How she got those scars.”
Carson turned to look out over the Cove for a moment before she said, “That dolphin saved my life. I was surfing and that girl T-boned a shark that was after me. Delphine saved me from a shark attack. I’d heard of things like that happening, but it suddenly became real for me.
” Carson’s voice revealed her affection for the dolphin.
“Later, she recognized me out here in the Cove while I was paddleboarding. She’s that kind of smart.
We bonded.” Carson raised her hand over her eyes.
“Oh, Atticus, I did everything wrong. I named her, fed her at the dock, swam with her. I had fun—but Delphine suffered the consequences. There was a huge accident last summer. Delphine got caught in fishing lines. It was awful.”
“That’s how she got the scars?”
Carson nodded, her face bleak at the memory. “Yeah. Blake flew her to Florida for rehabilitation. He saved her life. Anyway, that explains the scars you saw. Blake and I nearly broke up over it. He was so angry at me. Disappointed. Rightfully so.”
“Is that why you didn’t want him to know about you coming out to see her?”
“No. I wanted to see Delphine again for the first time without Blake watching. I needed to know if I was strong enough to do the right thing.” She laughed harshly. “I didn’t quite make it, did I?”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. I think you did.”
“Do you think I broke my word to Blake?”
“That’s between you and Blake. What I think doesn’t matter.”
“Why should I tell him?” She looked away. “What would I gain? I don’t want trouble between us. I know what I have to do now and that I’m strong enough to do it.”
“So why not tell him that?”
She looked at Atticus. “Haven’t you ever kept a small secret to yourself? For the good of someone you loved?”
Atticus blanched and looked out over the water.
In keeping his own secret, he felt like a hypocrite.
“Many times,” he confessed. “To my mother, mostly. When I was in high school I lied to her whenever I went out drinking with friends and I told her I was out studying. Or the times I told her I didn’t know what happened to missing bottles of alcohol.
” He laughed without humor. “Once I replaced her bottle of gin with water. She found out during a party when she served very weak martinis.”
Carson laughed. “You did not.”
“I did.” His smiled faded. “And those were the easy lies. The later ones were harder. More serious. Though at the time I blew them off. Trips to the police station for underage drinking. A few fender benders. My father bailed me out, punished me. We decided to keep the truth from her. For her sake.”
“That was wrong.”
Atticus looked into Carson’s blue eyes and saw the truth in her statement. “Yeah.” He looked down, feeling shame burn his cheeks. “It was. I see that now.” He paused. “Lies are never a good idea. Trust me.” He looked at her. “Trust him.”
Carson listened. She held Atticus’s gaze a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I will.”
After Atticus left, Carson headed back down the dock to collect the boards. As she walked back, from the corner of her eye she saw a movement at Girard Bellows’s house. She stopped short to peer at the house next door. Someone was coming out from the house. No, two people.
She could hear voices now, not loud enough to understand the words.
But she recognized one of the voices as Mamaw’s.
Carson raced off the dock, set the boards on the ground, and hid behind the wide fans of a sago palm.
Stealthily, Carson peered out from her hiding spot and saw Mamaw and Girard walk out on the patio carrying plates and mugs. Mamaw was wearing her blue bathrobe.
Carson let the palm fan go. It snapped back with a noisy rustle. She turned and walked back up the slope to the deck stairs, one foot in front of the other, her mind in a quandary. It was one thing to see a friend—a contemporary—sleeping at her boyfriend’s house. No big deal. But one’s grandmother?
At the door of the kitchen, Carson turned to look out once more toward Girard’s house. The man they used to call Old Man Bellows until Mamaw made them stop. From here on the porch she couldn’t see anything behind the carefully landscaped border of shrubs that was planted just to block the view.
“I guess someone else is keeping a little secret,” she muttered to herself. Then she released a short laugh. She couldn’t wait to tell her sisters.