Brooke stood and walked over to the secretary. She might as well start trying to find contact information for Ruth’s heirs and for Varina. She yawned involuntarily. What she wouldn’t give for a few stolen hours of sleep. Her son had climbed into bed with her sometime after midnight, nestling against her back, his sweet, warm breath close against her neck. And sometime after that, he’d wet the bed, and they’d both ended up sleeping on the lumpy sofa in the living room.
She heard a hesitant knock at the door, and Louette entered, carrying a silver tray with a plate of sandwiches, a bowl of potato chips, and a silver pitcher beaded with condensation. She cleared some magazines from a tabletop and set the tray down, glancing over at her employer.
“I was hoping she’d eat something,” Louette said, shaking her head. “The doctor says she needs to gain weight, but I can’t hardly get her to eat anything. I made her favorite—egg salad on toast, and there’s a pitcher of iced coffee too. Does that sound okay? I could fix something else if you want.”
“Actually, that sounds perfect. My son was a little fussy this morning, so I didn’t have time to grab breakfast and I’m starving.”
“You need anything else before I run down to the dock to meet Shug? He’s bringing our groceries, and I don’t want my milk to sour in this heat.”
“No, thanks. I’m going to eat this lunch, then go through Josephine’s address book for some folks she wants me to contact.”
Louette nodded and started to leave the room, but then she turned and came back. “I’m not trying to pry into Miss Josephine’s business,” she said, her voice low. “But I do know she’s not sleeping well or eating, and she’s all upset about those state folks coming around, trying to make her sell the island to them. Is that why she wanted to see you?”
Brooke hesitated. “I’m sorry. My business with Josephine is confidential. She specifically asked me not to tell anybody about our discussion.”
“Okay,” Louette said. “I figured you couldn’t say anything. It’s just, Shug and me and the rest of us, we’re worried about what will happen. You know … after.” Her dark eyes rested on Josephine, asleep in her chair. She smoothed her hands over her hips. “If the state takes the rest of Talisa, what’ll happen to Oyster Bluff? Where’ll we go? Shug wasn’t crazy about moving over here, at first, but now, he’s turned into a real Geechee. He hates the idea of going back to the city. And so do I.”
“I don’t blame you,” Brooke said. “This island. There’s something special about it that I can’t describe. It’s like the last wild place.”
“It is that,” Louette said. “You know, when I was coming up, I couldn’t wait to get off this island. The day I got done with high school, I told my mama I was getting me a job in town and finding me a man from away, and then I wasn’t ever coming back here again.”
“I felt the same way about Savannah, where I grew up,” Brooke agreed. “I didn’t even want to go to college in Georgia. And then I ended up moving right back home after law school. So what did your mother say when you told her you never planned on coming back here?”
“She just laughed and told me to go on and get all that running around out of my system,” Louette said. “But she always said she knew someday I’d end up right back here on Talisa. And she was right. My mama was nobody’s fool.”
8
The secretary was enormous, with seeded glass doors behind elaborate fretwork, and a drop-front desk with a dozen small cubbies and drawers. Each slot was crammed with yellowing stationery, envelopes, pencil stubs, and notebooks. Behind the glass doors, leather-bound books with stamped gold lettering were shoved up against Chinese export blue-and-white porcelain vases and bowls. The top shelf of the bookcase held a turtle shell, an old mayonnaise jar full of beach glass, and a stuffed squirrel with lifeless brown glass eyes and a tail that seemed to have lost most of its fur.
Brooke tried to open the top drawer. Stuck.
Finally, after prolonged jiggling, one side of the drawer loosened, and as she inched it open, she could see stacks of papers and notebooks inside. She worked on the other side, and after five minutes of tugging and cussing, the whole drawer pulled free of the cabinet, landing on the rug with a dull thud.
“Damn,” she whispered.
The drawer was about eighteen inches deep and was as crammed with papers as the bookcase above it. There were stacks of rubber band–bound canceled checks and bills, spiral-bound notebooks and black-and-white composition books, and bundles of letters and cards tied together with faded blue ribbons.
Brooke dug around in the drawer until her fingers closed on something that felt like leather. As she lifted the address book from the drawer, shards of the palest pink rose petals showered down on the faded rug, releasing their faint, musky scent.
*
She sat cross-legged on the floor and lifted out a rubber band–wrapped bundle of likely looking correspondence, each with the same handwriting on the envelope. Opening one, she saw that it was an anniversary card.
“To My One True Love” was written in thick gold script on the outside of the card, beneath an image of red roses. The inside right side of the card had a treacly Hallmark verse, beneath which the sender had written in a strong, slanting script: “My darling Jo, with love from Preiss.” On the opposite side, the sender had copied a poem called “Always Marry an April Girl.”
Praise the spells and bless the charms, I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger.
Ever changing, ever true—
I love April, I love you.
—OGDEN NASH
“Ohhh.” Brooke let out a long, involuntary sigh and looked again at her would-be employer, her crepe-like eyelids closed, nearly bald head slumped sideways, a tiny bead of saliva trickling from narrow, colorless lips. Of course, Josephine Warrick had been young once, with slender limbs and a laughing smile. She had won the love of a much-younger man, this Preiss Warrick, who called her his April Girl.
9
An hour later, she’d finished her sandwich and chips and made what she thought was a decent start on completing the old woman’s assignment.
“Well?” Josephine was awake again. Her dark eyes glared accusingly. “What did you find?”
Brooke looked down at the notes she’d scrawled on her yellow legal pad. She’d drawn circles around the names Varina Shaddix and Ruth Quinlan.
“Josephine, if I find Ruth’s relatives and Varina, what do you want me to tell them?”
“When you find them, I want them to come to Talisa,” Josephine said. “I want to see them. Your mother too, of course. She was Millie’s only child, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” Brooke said cautiously. “And what will you tell them—if they agree to come here to see you?”
“I want to leave this island to them—in a trust,” Josephine said promptly. “And I want you to set up the trust and administer it.”
“But that’s impossible,” Brooke said quickly. “If my mother is to be included in the trust, that would present a clear conflict of interest.” She shook her head sadly. “I wish you’d told me that from the beginning. I can’t represent you, Josephine. It’s a matter of ethics.”
“Ridiculous,” the old lady snapped. “I can hire whomever I want to help me dispose of my property.”
“You can, but that person cannot legally benefit in any way from such a relationship,” Brooke said. She was already thinking of the $25,000 check. She was going to have to give it back.
So, goodbye to paying down her Amex bill. Goodbye to replacing the bald tires on the Volvo, and goodbye to making a dent in Henry’s hospital bills.
“If you really don’t trust your Atlanta lawyers, I can help you find an attorney to set up the trust, and contact the others in the High Tide Club,” Brooke offered. “It would probably be better anyway, since I have absolutely no experience with estate law.”
“You’re not listening,” Josephine said. “I want you. Only you. Millie’s granddaughter.”
“That’s a lovely sentiment, but I can’t ethically do the job,” Brooke said. “It’s not just a whim of mine. It’s the law.”