Beach House Memories Read Free Page B

her role in the city and run, feet bare and hair streaming, to her beach house.
    And now, at last, she was ready to go. Lovie slammed the hatchback of her Buick station wagon and slapped the dust off her hands with satisfaction. Her final social duty of the season was a dinner party for Stratton’s business tonight. Tomorrow she would escape across the Cooper River Bridge on a beeline to the Isle of Palms.
    “I’m all packed,” she said. “We’re off to the beach house first thing tomorrow morning.”
    “That’d best be everything, Miz Lovie, ’cause I don’t think you can squeeze one more thing in,” Vivian said. She stood beside Lovie with her arms crossed, shaking her head in doubt as she surveyed the big car with its faux wood siding. “That car look like a suitcase bulgin’ at the seams.”
    Vivian Manigault had been employed as the Rutledge maid since Lovie first set up house in Charleston as a young mother fifteen years earlier. Vivian’s primary task was to mind the two Rutledge children, Palmer and Cara, but she also tidied the house, did some laundry, prepared lunch, and, when Lovie was out, started the occasional dinner. For this she was paid a standard wage, had weekends off, and earned an extra fee for working evenings, such as tonight’s party. But Lovie felt there was no amount of money that could equal Vivian’s worth as a trusted ally.
    “How’re you gonna squeeze Palmer and Cara in that car?” Vivian continued. “Better not feed ’em too much tonight.”
    Lovie chuckled. “Every summer I tell myself that I don’t need to cram everything in the day I leave. That if I need something I can always just drive back to the city to pick it up from the house. But once I’m at the beach house, it’s like I’m a millionmiles away. I can’t bear to leave. So I can’t really blame the children for packing everything they own.” Her gaze lifted to sweep across the backyard. “Where are those two? They should be home by now for dinner.”
    “Palmer’s back. That boy came saunterin’ in an hour ago smelling like one of those boars he’s so fond of huntin’.”
    “And Cara?”
    “She’ll be here.”
    Lovie caught the quick defense in Vivian’s voice. There was a bond between those two that Lovie was sometimes a little jealous of. “Well, she’d better. She knows I have an important dinner party tonight. And I’ll be waking her early in the morning.”
    “Yes’m. But that’s tomorrow . Tonight you best be watchin’ the clock. Your guests will be here ’fore you know it. You don’t want to be greetin’ them in your work clothes.” Vivian reached up to adjust her own pristine starched white collar.
    Lovie thought Vivian looked positively regal in her formal gray uniform with the crisp white facing at the collar and cuffs. Tall and as slender as a reed, Vivian liked to say she had the bones of a sparrow and the strength of an eagle. She also had the binocular vision of an eagle, Lovie thought. Nothing happened in the Rutledge household that Vivian didn’t know about.
    Lovie looked down at her jeans and the frayed white long-sleeved man’s shirt rolled up along her slender arms. Both were streaked with dirt from all the packing. She tugged off the cotton scarf from her head and shook out her hair as she mentally switched gears.
    “Lord, it is getting late. You know how I hate to stop before I finish something. I’m going right up to change. Could you—”
    She was interrupted by a short blast from a car horn.
    “Yoo-hoo! I’m here at last!”
    Turning, she saw her mother’s pale blue Cadillac convertible roll into the driveway. Lovie released a short puff of anticipationas she took off across the garden to the car. She arrived as her mother climbed from the white leather seats. Diana Simmons, Dee Dee to most, appeared as she usually did, trim and neatly dressed. Today she wore a pale beige linen dress with a strand of pearls at the neck and beige sling-back pumps. Not a