Chapter Eleven
N ana made herself a nametag. She was not on the payroll or the schedule, but it appeared as if no one was going to inform her that she did not actually work at the Saltwater Winery. Grace, it said, Miss South Carolina, 1959.
“Nana!” Brooke said. “You were Miss South Carolina? How did I not know that?”
“Don’t be silly,” Nana said. “I would never.”
“But your tag!”
“I am simply being interesting, my dear. It was either this or Nobel Prize winner, but I didn’t want to deal with all of the questions.”
Brooke laughed. “Nana, you are interesting enough without pretending.”
Nana’s eyes wrinkled into puffy creases with her smile. “Why, thank you, darling. That is just the sweetest thing to say.”
Sweet. The word felt hopeful.
All day Brooke wondered if Nate would show up at the winery. He knew where she worked now. Maybe he wanted to catch up as much as she did. They had things to talk about. Well, at least one main thing: why she never reached out to him all those years ago.
Each hour ticked by slowly, carrying with it so much hope and anticipation that she could barely communicate with her customers. She kept forgetting words like mouthfeel and astringent. She even called their King Tide blend dry when it was definitely sweet and fruit-forward. Her cash tips would suffer for sure.
By closing time, Nana had disappeared and Libby had popped in three times looking smug and snooty with a phony smile and a pencil skirt that hugged her thighs and perky behind so tightly she had to take baby steps to get across the room. Allie was head down in her office all day, Jessa flitted around like Tinker Bell sprinkling happy, magical pixie dust on everyone, and Nathan Daugherty never showed up.
Brooke drove home feeling dejected, which was ridiculous because she was the one who had ghosted him all those years ago. She was the one who dated and eventually moved in with Gates Lancaster. She was the one who barely said a word to Nate at the restaurant. What did she expect? That he was going to throw himself at her? That he was going to show up at the place of employment of a girl who kissed him back in high school? People didn’t do those kinds of things in real life.
Cornelia was setting the table as Brooke drove up to her imposing family home. Through the large front window, she watched her mother placing dessert forks on the left side of her good dishes. Cornelia was wearing heels, as she always did, putting them on before the meal and taking them off afterward. The woman was deeply committed to the show. Yet she’d been out to dinner just two days prior with some other man. Brooke and Jessa had waited until she came out of the restaurant. They watched the two embrace on the sidewalk—with Brooke holding her breath for every second of their minutes-long hug—and saw clearly that when they pulled apart, Cornelia was crying. The man looked down at her with the tenderness of a lover. He put a hand to her cheek and asked her a question.
That was when Mrs. Cornelia Warter, wife of Trigger Warter, tilted her head back, lifted her chin up, and kissed another man.
Brooke wanted to turn the car around and instead go straight to Dottie’s. Her head was still spinning; her mother felt as unknown to her as outer space. She put the car in Park and walked inside. This was how life would be for a while. Complicated and unfulfilling, like she was living her parents’ lives instead of her own. Only now there was the added anxiety of a high probability that her parents’ lives were also about to change. Her soft place to fall was about to explode like a match in a gas can. Especially if she told Trig what she saw.
“I’m home!” she called, leaving her shoes at the front door and jogging up the stairs.
“Dinner in thirty minutes,” Cornelia answered.
From her room, she watched Nana leave her cottage and head toward the main house. It looked like she would be having dinner with them after all. In her hand was a large bucket.
Brooke unlatched her window and threw it open. “Hey, Nana!”
Nana stopped and shielded her eyes from the setting sun. “Hello, love.”
“Whatcha got in the bucket?”
“My share of the shrimp.”
“What shrimp?”
“From my night shrimping.”
“You went night shrimping? Out on the water?”
Nana ignored the question and walked forward, swinging the bucket like it was perfectly normal for an eighty-year-old to randomly go shrimping in the dark of night.
“Nana!”
“What?” Now she was annoyed.
“Who’d you go with?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said, making her way up the back porch steps and out of Brooke’s line of vision.
“It was Duke, wasn’t it?!”
“I’m not telling!” Nana let the door slam shut behind her.
That was as good as a yes for Brooke. What in the heck? Nana and the old man who tended to his dead wife’s garden? The strange boss who hid from everyone?
Ever since she’d gotten back to Goose Island, it’d been one thing after another. Her mother had a boyfriend in Charleston. Her grandmother had a boyfriend on Goose Island. And Brooke was completely alone. It was time to focus extra hard on saving her money. She needed to go someplace else. Anywhere else.
The ruckus of Nana entering the kitchen where Cornelia was preparing the meal could probably be heard by the fishermen all the way out on the marsh.
“Trigger!” Cornelia used her outdoor voice. “Come here this instant!”
“What?” he answered from his dark-paneled office on the other side of the house.
“Why does your mother have a bucket full of shrimp?”
Nana’s voice was just as elevated. “Just cook them, Cornelia! All you’ve got to do is throw them in some boiling water.”
“I have already prepared a meal for us this evening, and I will not be starting over.”
“Then put them in the gall-danged freezer!” Nana yelled.
“Grace! You will not tell me what to do. Do you hear me?” Cornelia said. “I have had enough of you and your antics. Your disappearing. Your stupid banana costume. I cannot be expected to tolerate your treatment of me another instant. It is too much for one woman to bear.”
“Well, you’re sure on edge, little miss priss,” Nana said.
From her bedroom, Brooke heard Trig’s footsteps on his way to the kitchen. Finally, his deep voice cut through the chaos. “Come on now, you two.”
“Don’t you talk down to me, Trigger Warter,” Cornelia said. “I have had it!”
Wisely, he aimed his next statement at Nana. “Mama, I need you to treat my wife with respect.”
“Her? I am supposed to respect her ?” Brooke imagined Nana sneering and pointing an arthritic finger at Cornelia.
Cornelia gasped, and in that one little noise, Brooke heard exasperation, anger, surprise, and a very real chance that she might storm out the front door and never return.
Trigger jumped to her defense. “Cornelia works hard for this family, Mother. She feeds you, she drives you to your appointments, she puts up with your”—he paused—“eccentricities. She deserves your gratitude.”
“And you’re so grateful?” Nana bit back. “I don’t see you telling her how great she is all the time. Maybe I’m just following your lead. Huh? Did you ever think about that?”
“Mama, I love my wife.”
“Mm-hmm. Does she know that?”
“Of course she does,” he said.
“Do you?” Nana asked Cornelia.
Brooke couldn’t hear her mother’s response.
“Cornelia,” Trig said, clearly surprised. “You know you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“It’s about time you grew a sack of balls,” Nana said. “How long were you going to let me treat her like a mule before you said something?”
Brooke moved to stand in her doorway, listening through the sound tunnel of the stairs. As much as she was furious with her mother for what she’d seen in Charleston, maybe it wasn’t unpredictable. Nana clearly saw it too. Trig needed a good talking to, but not about the other man.