Lessons of a Lowcountry Summer Read online

  A muscle in his lean jaw twitched. “I’ll talk to her. I’d called her to let her know that you were going away for the summer. I never imagined she would come here and say those hateful things to you.”

  “There’s no need to say anything to her, because it’s not going to change her opinion of me.”

  Cradling her face between his hands, Lee stared deeply into Rebecca’s eyes. “Wrong, darling. My mother is still angry because I did not marry the girl she wanted me to, but you are the woman I fell in love with and married. I will not put up with her insulting you.”

  “Let it go, Lee.”

  He shook his head. “No, Rebecca, I won’t.”

  She placed her fingertips over his mouth. “I’m begging you to let it go.”

  Closing his eyes, Lee nodded. “Okay, baby.”

  Rebecca traced the outline of his sensual mouth with her fingertips, then kissed him. It wasn’t the burning, passionate kisses they’d exchanged in the past, but one that was soft and healing.

  Gathering her into his arms, Lee shifted and positioned her to sit between his outstretched legs. He rested his hands over her flat middle. “When are you going to tell the kids?”

  “When they get back tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Do you want me with you when you tell them?”

  “No. I want them to know that this is my decision, not yours.”

  “Have you decided where you want to go?”

  Tilting her chin, Rebecca smiled over her shoulder at Lee. “McKinnon Island.”

  His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “McKinnon. I’ve heard it’s little more than a swamp.”

  “So was Hilton Head, Kiawah, and the others before greedy, unscrupulous developers took over and displaced our people.”

  Lee drew his lips in thoughtfully. He knew Rebecca was right about the developers descending on the unsuspecting longtime inhabitants of the Sea Islands to buy up property and force them off lands that had been cultivated by their ancestors.

  “Have you made any reservations?”

  “Not yet. I’ll do that on Monday.”

  Reclining in his protective embrace, she told him her parents had agreed to come to Charleston to look after Ashlee and Kyle. They talked about Ashlee starting high school in the fall and Kyle wanting to try out for his school’s football team. They talked about their children, parents, and Lee’s estranged sister. They talked about everything except what would happen at the end of the summer when she returned from McKinnon Island.

  “What do you say we go out for dinner tonight?” he whispered close to her ear.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Someplace real nice where I can show Charlestonians that I’m married to the most beautiful woman in the whole damn city.”

  Rebecca giggled like a little girl. “When are you ever going to stop talking trash, banker man?”

  “Never.”

  Rebecca shifted her gaze from her son to her daughter as they flanked her on the love seat. Neither of them had inherited her physical characteristics. It was as if she had had nothing to do with their conception except carrying them beneath her heart for nine months. Both of them claimed Lee’s coloring, features, and his height and lankiness. The only obvious trait that indicated she had been a contributor to their gene pool was her curly hair. Her children had returned from their weekend outings, and she had asked them to meet with her in the parlor before they retreated to their bedrooms to prepare for the last three days of the school year.

  “What’s up, Mama?” Ashlee asked.

  Rebecca could always count on her daughter’s outspokenness. Ashlee was so different than Rebecca had been at fourteen. “I’m going away this summer,” Rebecca replied. She knew there was no other way but to be direct with her children.

  Kyle stared, unblinking. “What do you mean, going away?”

  “Your grandmother and grandfather are coming from Massachusetts to stay with you for the summer.”

  Ashlee stared at her with wide eyes. “Why?”

  “I’m going away by myself, and they’ve agreed to look after you until I return.”

  Her daughter’s eyes welled up with tears. “Are you and Daddy getting a divorce?”

  Rebecca dropped an arm over Ashlee’s and Kyle’s shoulders, pulling them close to her body. She and Lee had tried not to involve their son and daughter in their marital affairs, but they hadn’t been totally successful once their children had discovered their father had become involved with another woman.

  “No, baby.” She dropped a kiss on their heads.

  “Then why, Mama?” Ashlee’s voice was soft and trembling.

  “I’m tired, my darlings.”

  “Why don’t you go to bed and sleep?” Kyle asked.

  Rebecca smiled. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why not?” questioned Ashlee.

  “I get up every day and do the same thing over and over. I prepare breakfast, make lunch for you and Kyle, then I make beds, dust, vacuum, put up several loads of wash, shop for groceries, and cook dinner. After chauffeuring the both of you to softball and football practice and sleepovers, I’m too tired to even think straight.”

  “What if Daddy got you a maid,” Kyle quipped, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Would the maid be expected to act like a referee when you invade your sister’s privacy?” She gave her son a level look. “You’ve been told about going into Ashlee’s room and searching through her things.” Ashlee stuck her tongue out at her brother.

  “And you’re not exempt from adding to the chaos, young lady,” Rebecca continued, cutting her eyes at Ashlee. “I’d like to have a dollar every time you come home crying and slamming doors because you’ve seen Bobby Jackson with another girl. It’s normal for you to have a crush on a boy, but it’s unrealistic to think an eighteen-year-old would be interested in someone fourteen.”

  Ashlee gritted her teeth. “He’s an idiot.”

  Rebecca smiled. “He may be an idiot, but he’s still too old for you.”

  Kyle patted his mother’s arm to get her attention. “Are you going away to die, Mom?”

  “Why would you say that, Kyle?”

  “Andrew’s mother was sick and tired, so his daddy sent her away, and she never came back.”

  “Andrew’s mother had cancer. Even if she hadn’t gone away, she still would’ve died.”

  “So, you’re not going to die?”

  “No, Kyle. At least I hope not for a long, long time.”

  “I like Gram and Gramps,” Ashlee said. “Especially when they take us fishing.”

  Rebecca was surprised. “But don’t you fish when you go to the lake house?” The Owenses had built a vacation home close to Lake Marion.

  “Nope,” Kyle quipped. “Grandma Owens won’t let us bring fish in the house because she says it stinks up everything. So, we have to throw them back. But Gramps lets us keep the fish, and Gram cooks it.”

  “Gram and Gramps, along with your father, will be responsible for you while I’m away.”

  “Can we come and visit you?”

  Rebecca pondered her daughter’s question. She hadn’t thought they would miss her enough to want to come and see her. Last year they’d spent their entire summer vacation at Lake Marion with Lee’s parents, and when she’d come up to visit with them, they had hardly given her a glance or spoken to her.

  “I don’t see why not. I’ll rent a place with enough room so we won’t be all over one another.”

  Ashlee hugged her mother. “Cool.”

  Hard-pressed not to let out an audible sigh, Rebecca smiled. It had gone better than she’d thought it would. Both Lee and their children were resigned to her leaving them for the summer.

  Twin emotions of elation and fear attacked her. In another two months she would celebrate her fortieth birthday, and she planned to go to a strange place to discover what Rebecca Leighton-Owens wanted.

  Part Three

  THEODORE HOWELL

  somewhere i hav
e never traveled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence.

  —e. e. cummings

  Seven

  I know everything, don’t argue with me!

  —Marina Tsvetaeva

  “Theo, I think you’d better come downstairs.”

  Helen Bryant’s soft voice broke the silence of the large, glass-walled room.

  Theodore Howell ran a large hand over his close-cropped hair and rolled his head from side to side, attempting to ease the tight muscles in his neck and shoulders. He glanced at the clock. It was ten-forty. He had been writing nonstop for the past two hours.

  “Didn’t I tell you I did not want to be disturbed?”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll just tell the police officers to take your brothers down to the station house for processing.”

  Theo jumped up, his chair tipping over and falling to the floor with a loud clatter. He stared at his housekeeper. “What did you say?”

  Folding her arms under her breasts, Helen snorted under her breath. “Christian and Brandon are in some kind of trouble.” She stepped out of the doorway just in time to avoid being run over as Theo ran down the staircase, taking two steps at a time.

  “Damn them!” The two words were squeezed from between teeth clenched so tightly that his jaw ached.

  He had become legal guardian to his two half brothers and sister after their mother and father died in a commuter plane crash. The tragedy had turned theirs and Theo’s daily existence upside down. He had been on his own since he’d turned twenty-one, and now, at forty, he did not want to be responsible for anyone but himself. However, he wasn’t given a choice, once calls from a social worker and his mother’s lawyer informed him that he had to take care of three grieving adolescents he hardly knew.

  Standing in the middle of his living room were two tall, muscular, uniformed black LAPD officers and his teenage siblings. Brandon’s chin rested on his chest, while Christian held his head at a cocky angle.

  Theo blew out his breath. He was in luck. He knew one of the two officers. “What happened, Russell?”

  “We were called in to break up a party that had gotten out of control. I found this one having sex.” Theo could see his large hand tighten on Christian’s neck. “I doubt if she’s more than thirteen.” He glared at Brandon. “And mister life of the party was having a good old time taking stokes off a blunt in between shots of tequila.”

  “I was for taking them in, but my partner said you would take care of them,” the other officer snarled.

  Theo’s hands curled into tight fists. “He’s right. I will take care of them.” He walked over to his brothers, who had taken a sudden interest in their shoes. He grabbed each by their T-shirts, pulling them up close to his chest. They stank.

  “Thank you, Officers. I can assure you that there will not be a repeat of what occurred tonight as long as they live under my roof.”

  After the officers drove away, Theo hauled the two boys across the living room and into the family room. He shoved them down into a leather love seat.

  Light from table lamps illuminated the fear radiating from sixteen-year-old Brandon’s eyes, but not so with Christian. At seventeen, Christian stood an even six foot and had begun adding muscle and bulk to his lanky frame from a daily weight-lifting regimen.

  Even though they’d had different fathers, and there was an age difference of twenty-three and twenty-two years, respectively, the physical resemblance between the three was remarkable. People often took Theo for their father instead of their older brother. They shared the same lean face, large dark-brown eyes, and high, flat cheekbones. Even their coloring was the same—a warm cinnamon-brown.

  Sitting down on a chair opposite them, Theo gave each a long, penetrating stare. “This is the first and the last time the police will show up at my door because of your stupidity.” He turned his angry gaze on Christian. “Have you gone and lost your damn mind? You don’t need to be having sex, especially with an underage girl.”

  Christian cocked his head as he gave Theo a half-smile. “You’re just jealous, because no one wants to fuck you because—” Whatever else he was going to say died on his lips when he felt the sting of Theo’s open hand on his left cheek. Before he could catch his breath, he caught another hard slap on the other cheek. He was too stunned and in too much pain to react. Blood spurted from his nose, flowed into his mouth, and onto his T-shirt.

  Brandon jumped up.

  “Where the hell are you going?”

  Theo’s shout halted him in his tracks. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Stay!” The single word was enough to make him sit down again.

  Christian’s T-shirt ripped as Theo held him in a punishing, viselike grip. “If you ever use that language in this house again, someone will have to call nine-eleven to keep me from taking you out.” He shook him several times before releasing him. “Go clean yourself up, then get into bed. Don’t you dare ask me to go anywhere for the rest of the summer.”

  Christian wiped his arm across his nose. “You can’t hit me.”

  “I didn’t hit you,” Theo countered. “I slapped you, little brother. Perhaps you would like me to hit you?”

  Christian sniffled, holding the hem of his shirt to his nose. “You’re not my father.”

  “You’ve got that right, because if I’d been your father you’d have more respect for yourself. Now, get out of my sight!”

  Christian turned and walked out of the room.

  Towering over Brandon, Theo stared down at his bowed head. “What happened to your common sense?”

  Brandon tried blinking back tears but was unsuccessful. “I’m sorry, Theo.”

  “Sorry doesn’t cut it, Brandon. Binge drinking and drugs will put you in an early grave. What if someone had laced that joint with crack or angel dust?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said over and over as mucous streamed from his nose.

  Theo threw up a hand. “Clean yourself up. And the same goes for you as Christian. Don’t ask me to go anywhere. Not even to the corner. You’ll come home from school and stay in. Are you sober enough to understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes. May I go now?”

  “Yeah, go.”

  Brandon ran, holding his hand over his mouth as he headed for the nearest bathroom.

  “What happened to Chris?”

  Theo turned to look at Helen. “What do you mean what happened to him?”

  “He’s bleeding.”

  “I slapped him. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

  Helen stared at her employer, measuring her words carefully. Since she had come to work for Theodore Howell, he had never exchanged a cross word with her. But all of that had changed once his siblings had come to live with him. He did not seem to understand that the children were grieving the loss of their mother and father.

  “May I tend to his injuries?”

  “There are no injuries, Helen. He has a bloody nose.”

  “It looks like more than a bloody nose.”

  “If he had been locked up tonight he’d have more than a bloody nose. And he’s lucky the officer who brought him home is a friend. Either I bloody his nose for mouthing off at me, or some rogue cop will beat him senseless because he’s a young black male.”

  Helen’s faced turned a deep pink with the mention of “young black male.” “But—”

  “But nothing, Miss Bryant ,” Theo said, cutting her off. “I pay you to cook and to keep my house clean, not to give me advice on how to deal with my brothers and sister.”

  “And I can quit, too.”

  He stared at the petite woman, whom he had hired as a live-in housekeeper a week after he had moved from northern to southern California. Never married and childless, sixty-year-old Helen had gathered Brandon, Christian and Noelle to her bosom like a mother hen protecting her brood. She spoiled and pampered them shamelessly, thereby undermining his role as their guardian and authority figure.

  “Then quit!”
<
br />   She shook her head. “No, Theo. I’m not going to quit and leave those motherless children alone with a monster like you.”

  “Oh, I’m a monster? I rearrange my life to take in three angry, defiant, and rebellious teenagers, and you call me a monster. I think not.”

  The sparkle went out of her blue eyes. “I know you’re doing the best you can, but they’re still hurting.”

  “They’re hurting because they don’t want to accept the fact that their parents aren’t coming back.”

  Although he shared the same mother with Christian, Brandon and Noelle, his relationship with Mary Howell-Anderson had not been that of a mother and her son. Mary had gotten pregnant at fifteen and moved to Los Angeles to live with an older cousin until she’d delivered her baby. Mary had never revealed the identity of Theo’s father. She’d returned to San Francisco for a week, long enough to leave her three-week old son with her own mother. It had been his grandmother, Esther Howell, whom Theo had called Mama. And it wasn’t until Mary had married Hollywood still photographer James Anderson and given birth to her second child that she’d returned to San Francisco to introduce her infant son to his older brother. Theo had been twenty-one years old when he’d been introduced to his mother, her husband, and Christian for the first time.

  Helen managed to look contrite. “I know I was out of line for calling you a monster.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  She ignored his retort. “And I know it has been hard on you, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to help you care for them.”

  “You’ve done enough.”

  He wanted to tell Helen that Mary had done her children a disservice by indulging their every whim. It was as if she’d sought to give them what she hadn’t given her firstborn. What Mary did not know was that his grandmother had given him all of the love he would ever need. Esther had protected and nurtured him until he had been able to take care of himself. And once he had sold his first script to a major movie studio, he’d assumed total responsibility for supporting his grandmother. She had died in his arms, and there was never a day when he did not think of her.