Beach House Memories Read Free Page A

side where mother and daughter sat most nights to enjoy the Lowcountry sunset. The recent category one hurricane had destroyed her pergola, and the new screens Cara had just installed hung in tattered shreds, waving uselessly in the offshore breezes. She heard the teasing hum of a mosquito in her ear.
    Her little house on Ocean Boulevard had always been a place of refuge for Lovie, a sanctuary through good times and bad, ever since childhood. In the twilight, the quaint and tidy lines of her 1930s beach cottage appeared part of the indigenous landscape beside the tall palms, the raucous wildflowers, and the clumps of sea oats on the dunes. From her seat on the porch, she could see straight out to the Atlantic Ocean without the obstruction of one of those enormous houses that bordered the island’s coastline. It was the same view she’d always had, all these many years. When the wind gusted, it rippled across the tall, soft grass like rosy waves and carried her back to happier days when the island was a remote outpost.
    Lovie’s parents had given the modest prewar cottage to her when she’d married, and she, in turn, would leave it to her daughter. Her house on Tradd Street in Charleston with the heirloom furniture and silver she had already handed down to her son, Palmer. Once upon a time she’d loved that house with a grand passion, yet never as steadfastly as she’d loved Primrose Cottage. She’d created wonderful memories here. The best . . .
    But her days were fading as quickly and surely as the sun. In these final precious moments, Lovie sought to divest herself ofthe encumbrances that held her to the present, tugging at her attention, diverting her from the path her heart wanted to follow.
    As the sun lowered in the west and purpling sea met the horizon to blend into one vast vista, Lovie felt the line between the past and the present blur as well. She allowed her thoughts to turn, as they often did at this moody hour, to Russell Bennett.
    He was waiting for her. Somewhere out in the vast purpling expanse of water, Russell was biding his time. She sensed this with every fiber in her being. Russell had been the love of her life. She’d lived long enough to say so, though one summer was all they’d had. In retrospect, with the passage of time and grace, Lovie understood that she’d been pulled toward her fate as surely as the tides were pulled by the moon.
    She felt it now. She could sense herself slipping again in the insistent undertow of the past, calling her back. There was no use fighting it. It was so easy to simply close her eyes.
    And relinquish.

Two

    June 1, 1974
    L ovie was thirty-eight years of age. “In her prime,” her mother had declared. Her mama liked pat phrases. She spoke them with authority, as though she’d just made up the clever phrases herself. No matter how described, it was true that Lovie’s looks had at last blossomed from the sweetness of her youth into a more mature beauty. Or as her mother had pronounced, “From a sweet blossom to a fine example of the flower of Southern womanhood.”
    Lovie could smile at that description now, but at the time it had filled her with wonder and even pride. She was the wife of a successful Charleston businessman, the mother of two beautiful children, and the mistress of a beautiful house in the golden area of Charleston known to the locals as South of Broad.
    Lovie’s life circled around her husband, her children, her home, her church, and the endless, myriad responsibilities and obligations each entailed. She didn’t complain. Rather, she gave of herself with an open heart and mind, to her fullest. She’d been raised in a proper Southern household and appreciated the importance placed on a well-run home. Her mama had told her again and again that “the woman was at the heart of every home.”
    Yet, at the onset of every summer, Lovie crossed off the days on the calendar, feeling a growing desperation to shed the demands and expectations of