Chapter Four
FOUR
brIAN stood in the doorway of the west terrace and studied his sister.
She looked frail, he noted, skittish. Lost somehow, he thought, amid the sunlight and flowers.
She still wore the baggy trousers and oversized lightweight sweater that she’d arrived in, and had added a pair of round wire-framed sunglasses.
Brian imagined that Jo wore just such a uniform when she hunted her photographs, but at the moment it served only to add to the overall impression of an invalid.
Yet she’d always been the tough one, he remembered. Even as a child she’d insisted on doing everything herself, on finding the answers, solving the puzzles, fighting the fights.
She’d been fearless, climbing higher in any tree, swimming farther beyond the waves, running faster through the forest. Just to prove she could, Brian mused. It seemed to him Jo Ellen had always had something to prove.
And after their mother had gone, Jo had seemed hell-bent on proving she needed no one and nothing but herself.
Well, Brian decided, she needed something now. He stepped out, saying nothing as she turned her head and looked at him from behind the tinted lenses. Then he sat down on the glider beside her and put the plate he’d brought out in her lap.
“Eat,” was all he said.
Jo looked down at the fried chicken, the fresh slaw, the golden biscuit. “Is this the lunch special?”
“Most of the guests went for the box lunch today. Too nice to eat inside.”
“Cousin Kate said you’ve been busy.”
“Busy enough.” Out of habit, he pushed off with his foot and set the glider in motion. “What are you doing here, Jo?”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.” She lifted a drumstick, bit in. Her stomach did a quick pitch and roll as if debating whether to accept food. Jo persisted and swallowed. “I’ll do my share, and I won’t get in your way.”
Brian listened to the squeak of the glider for a moment, thought about oiling the hinges. “I haven’t said you were in my way, as I recollect,” he said mildly.
“In Lexy’s way, then.” Jo took another bite of chicken, scowled at the soft-pink ivy geraniums spilling over the edges of a concrete jardiniere carved with chubby cherubs. “You can tell her I’m not here to cramp her style.”
“Tell her yourself.” Brian opened the thermos he’d brought along and poured freshly squeezed lemonade into the lid. “I’m not stepping between the two of you so I can get my ass kicked from both sides.”
“Fine, stay out of it, then.” Her head was beginning to ache, but she took the cup and sipped. “I don’t know why the hell she resents me so much.”
“Can’t imagine.” Brian drawled it before he lifted the thermos and drank straight from the lip.
“You’re successful, famous, financially independent, a rising star in your field.
All the things she wants for herself.” He picked up the biscuit and broke it in half, handing a portion to Jo as the steam burst out.
“I can’t think why that’d put her nose out of joint. ”
“I did it by myself for myself. I didn’t work my butt off to get to this point to show her up.” Without thinking, she stuffed a bite of biscuit in her mouth. “It’s not my fault she’s got some childish fantasy about seeing her name in lights and having people throw roses at her feet.”
“Your seeing it as childish doesn’t make the desire any less real for her.
” He held up a hand before Jo could speak.
“And I’m not getting in the middle. The two of you are welcome to rip the hide off each other in your own good time.
But I’d say right now she could take you without breaking a sweat. ”
“I don’t want to fight with her,” Jo said wearily. She could smell the wisteria that rioted over the nearby arched iron trellis—another vivid memory of childhood. “I didn’t come here to fight with anyone.”
“That’ll be a change.”
That lured a ghost of a smile to her lips. “Maybe I’ve mellowed.”
“Miracles happen. Eat your slaw.”
“I don’t remember you being so bossy.”
“I’ve cut back on mellow.”
With what passed as a chuckle, Jo picked up her fork and poked at the slaw. “Tell me what’s new around here, Bri, and what’s the same.” Bring me home, she thought, but couldn’t say it. Bring me back.
“Let’s see, Giff Verdon built on another room to the Verdon cottage.”
“Stop the presses.” Then Jo’s brow furrowed. “Young Giff, the scrawny kid with the cowlick. The one who was always mooning over Lex?”
“That’s the one. Filled out some, Giff has, and he’s right handy with a hammer and saw. Does all our repair work now. Still moons over Lexy, but I’d say he knows what he wants to do about it now.”
Jo snorted and, without thinking, shoveled in more slaw. “She’ll eat him alive.”
Brian shrugged. “Maybe, but I think she’ll find him tougher to chew up than she might expect. The Sanders girl, Rachel, she got herself engaged to some college boy in Atlanta. Going to move there come September.”
“Rachel Sanders.” Jo tried to conjure up a mental image. “Was she the one with the lisp or the one with the giggle?”
“The giggle—sharp enough to make the ears bleed.” Satisfied that Jo was eating, Brian stretched an arm over the back of the glider and relaxed. “Old Mrs. Fitzsimmons passed on more than a year back.”
“Old Mrs. Fitzsimmons,” Jo murmured. “She used to shuck oysters on her porch, with that lazy hound of hers sleeping at her feet beside the rocker.”
“The hound passed, too, right after. Guess he didn’t see much point in living without her.”
“She let me take pictures of her,” Jo remembered. “When I was a kid, just learning. I still have them. A couple weren’t bad. Mr. David helped me develop them. I must have been such a pest, but she just sat there in her rocker and let me practice on her.”
Sitting back, Jo fell into the rhythm of the glider, as slow and monotonous as the rhythm of the island. “I hope it was quick and painless.”
“She died in her sleep at the ripe old age of ninety-six. Can’t do much better than that.”
“No.” Jo closed her eyes, the food forgotten. “What was done with her cottage?”
“Passed down. The Pendletons bought most of the Fitzsimmons land back in 1923, but she owned her house and the little spit of land it sits on. Went to her granddaughter.” Brian lifted the thermos again, drank deeply this time. “A doctor. She’s set up a practice here on the island.”
“We have a doctor on Desire?” Jo opened her eyes, lifted her brows. “Well, well. How civilized. Are people actually going to her?”
“Seems they are, little by little, anyway. She’s dug her toes in.”
“She must be the first new permanent resident here in what, ten years?”
“Thereabouts.”
“I can’t imagine why ...” Jo trailed off as it struck her. “It’s not Kirby, is it? Kirby Fitzsimmons? She spent summers here a couple of years running when we were kids.”
“I guess she liked it well enough to come back.”
“I’ll be damned. Kirby Fitzsimmons, and a doctor, of all things.” Pleasure bloomed, a surprising sensation she nearly didn’t recognize. “We used to pal around together some. I remember the summer Mr. David came to take photographs of the island and brought his family.”
It cheered her to think of it, the young friend with the quick northern voice, the adventures they’d shared or imagined together.
“You would run off with his boys and wouldn’t give me the time of day,” Jo continued.
“When I wasn’t pestering Mr. David to let me take pictures with his camera, I’d go off with Kirby and look for trouble.
Christ, that was twenty years ago if it was a day. It was the summer that . . .”
Brian nodded, then finished the thought. “The summer that Mama left.”
“It’s all out of focus,” Jo murmured, and the pleasure died out of her voice.
“Hot sun, long days, steamy nights so full of sound. All the faces.” She slipped her fingers under her glasses to rub at her eyes.
“Getting up at sunrise so I could follow Mr. David around. Bolting down cold ham sandwiches and cooling off in the river. Mama dug out that old camera for me—that ancient box Brownie—and I would run over to the Fitzsimmons cottage and take pictures until Mrs. Fitzsimmons told Kirby and me to scoot. There were hours and hours, so many hours, until the sun went down and Mama called us home for supper.”
She closed her eyes tight. “So much, so many images, yet I can’t bring any one of them really clear. Then she was gone. One morning I woke up ready to do all the things a long summer day called for, and she was just gone. And there was nothing to do at all.”
“Summer was over,” Brian said quietly. “For all of us.”
“Yeah.” Her hands had gone trembly again. Jo reached in her pockets for cigarettes. “Do you ever think about her?”
“Why would I?”
“Don’t you ever wonder where she went? What she did?” Jo took a jerky drag. In her mind she saw long-lidded eyes empty of life. “Or why?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with me.” Brian rose, took the plate. “Or you. Or any of us anymore. It’s twenty years past that summer, Jo Ellen, and a little late to worry about it now.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again when Brian turned and walked back into the house. But she was worried about it, she thought. And she was terrified.
* * *
LEXY was still steaming as she climbed over the dunes toward the beach. Jo had come back, she was sure, to flaunt her success and her snazzy life. And the fact that she’d arrived at Sanctuary hard on the heels of Lexy’s own failure didn’t strike Lexy as coincidence.
Jo would flap her wings and crow in triumph, while Lexy would have to settle for eating crow. The thought of it made her blood boil as she raced along the tramped-down sand through the dunes, sending sand flying from her sandals.