The Beach House. Mary Monroe Alice
the winding gravel driveway, careful when the wheels dug past the thin layer of gravel to hit sand. She released a short laugh to see the old, shiny gold VW convertible parked beneath the porch. Mama was still driving The Gold Bug? That old ragtop was like a flag. Everyone knew if The Gold Bug was in the driveway, Olivia Rutledge was in residence and ready for visitors.
Coming to a stop, Cara could feel the miles still moving in her veins. She stared out the windshield at what had always been home and wondered if she was now a visitor at Primrose Cottage, too. Did blood alone earn her the right to call it home? Did hours of pulling weeds from the flower beds and boarding up windows against storms, or years of swinging on the front porch count for anything? She sighed and pulled up the parking brake. Probably not. Besides, she remembered how, in a fit of youthful passion, she’d made a point of shouting to her mother that she wanted nothing at all to do with her, her damn father or anything connected to them.
Yet the connection tugged, pulling her out from the stale confines of the car into the cool offshore breezes spiked with the heady scent of honeysuckle. She stood, one foot on the sand, the other perched on the car, feeling the undertow sweep her back, back from the shoreline of the world she’d left behind.
Her memories were crowding her now and she anxiously eyed the remaining feet to her mother’s door. She wanted to go in but years of anger rooted her to the spot. So she leaned against the car, formulating what she would say that could break the ice yet still allow her to keep a modicum of self-respect. She’d stay one week, she told herself, gathering courage. Maybe ten days. Any more than that and her mother would drive her crazy and they’d fall back into that pattern of bickering and harsh words followed by long, sulking silences. Oh, God, she thought, rubbing her forehead. Was it a mistake to come back at all?
All around her the sky darkened to dusky purples and blues and the birds called out their final warnings to go home. A dog howled somewhere in the distance. Then, from around the house, she heard the high melodic hum of a woman’s voice.
Cara moved to peek around the corner. Ambling up the sandy ocean path she saw a diminutive woman in a big, floppy straw hat, a long, faded denim skirt and bright-red Keds. Bits of the tune she was humming carried in the breeze, nothing recognizable. In one arm she lugged a red plastic bucket, a telltale sign of one of the island’s Turtle Ladies. Cara’s heart beat wildly but she remained silent, watching. From this distance she might have mistaken the woman for a young girl. She seemed utterly carefree and oblivious to anything save for the field of wildflowers she passed. She paused en route to stoop and snip a flower, then, resuming her hum, she continued up the path toward Primrose Cottage.
A million things that Cara had meant to say, a thousand postures she’d meant to strike, evaporated as quickly as sea foam once it hits the shore.
“Mama!” she called out.
Her mother stopped short and swung her head in her direction. Bright-blue eyes sparkled from under the broad rim of the hat and her mouth opened in a gasp of genuine pleasure. Dropping her bucket, she held out her arms in a joyous welcome.
“Caretta!”
Cara cringed at hearing the name she despised, but closed the distance quickly, following the age-old path of a child to her mother’s embrace. Taller by a head, she bent her knees and felt like she always did beside Olivia Rutledge—like a clambering bull next to a porcelain doll. Yet when her mother’s arms flung around her and squeezed tightly, Cara felt a sweeping flush of childlike pleasure.
“I’ve missed you,” her mother said softly against her cheek. “You’re home again. At last.”
Cara squeezed back but too many years of silence choked all words. She released her hold and, stepping back, it struck her like a fist’s blow how much her mother had changed. Olivia Rutledge had become an old woman. Beneath the cheery straw hat her skin was pale and seemed to hang from her prominent cheekbones. The brightness of her blue eyes had dimmed, and though always small and trim, she was now painfully thin.
How could it have happened so quickly, Cara wondered? Only eighteen months ago at her father’s funeral Olivia still retained that timeless quality to her beauty and grace. At sixty-nine she wasn’t young, of course, but Cara couldn’t think of her mother as old. She was one of those lucky women born with a girlish, slender body and a face that was as scrubbed fresh and naturally pretty as the wildflowers she adored. Her father used to say that he married Olivia because she was as sweet as she looked—and it was true. Everyone loved Olivia Rutledge, “Lovie” to those who knew her well. But her daughter knew the price that ready smile had cost her mother over the years.
“How are you?” Cara asked, searching her face. “Are you well?”
“Oh, I’m fine, fine,” she said, dismissing Cara’s tone of concern with a flip of her hand. “Nothing much one can do to stop the ruins of Rome. I’ve given up trying.” Her eyes brightened as she looked up at her daughter. “But look at you. Don’t you look wonderful!”
Cara looked down at her rumpled white shirt and dark jeans that pinched her waist. She’d woken before dawn that morning, splashed cold water on her face and dressed in a hurry, not taking the time for makeup and allowing her dark hair to hang in disarray to her shoulders.
“I do not. My clothes are a wreck and I smell of fast food.”
“You look wonderful to me. I can’t get over it. You’re here! I about fainted when you called to say you were coming. Thank the Lord.”
“Mama, the Lord had nothing to do with it. You wrote me a letter asking me to come and I came.”
“That’s what you think. I’m old enough to know better. Now let’s not argue,” she chided, linking arms, squeezing gently. “I’ve prayed that you’d come back home and now my prayers have been answered.” They began to walk slowly toward the house. Lovie turned her head to peer into Cara’s face. “Why do you look at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re in shock.”
“I don’t know. You seem different. So…happy.”
“Why, of course I’m happy! Why shouldn’t I be?”
Cara shrugged. “I dunno…I guess from your letter I expected you to be rather lonely. Maybe a little depressed. It hasn’t been that long since Daddy died.”
Lovie’s expression shifted and, as usual, Cara couldn’t read the emotion behind her smile.
“I didn’t mean for my letter to sound sad. Wistful, perhaps.”
“Do you miss him?”
She brought her hand to Cara’s cheek. “I miss you. Especially here. We had good times on the island, didn’t we?”
Cara nodded, touched by the emotion in her mother’s voice. “We did. You and me. And Palmer.” She refrained from adding her father’s name. He’d rarely come to the beach house, preferring to stay in the city or to travel. And though it was never discussed among them, it was quietly understood that the summers were all the better for the arrangement.
“Oh, yes,” Lovie said with a light chuckle. “And Palmer, too.”
“How is my wild and crazy brother?”
“Neither wild nor crazy. More’s the pity.”
Cara’s brows rose. “Well, that’s a bit out of character for you. I seem to remember you and Daddy holding tight the reins whenever Palmer rode the wild roads and waves of his youth. I’ll have to mull that one over—once I get over the shock of you criticizing the royal heir.”
Her mother only laughed. “How long can you stay?”
“A week.”
“Is that all? Cara, dear, you’re always so busy. Please stay a bit longer.”
Cara slowed down to consider. She really had no deadline and her