To Fall in Love Again Page 9

  Drew sat for several minutes, allowing his thoughts to wander. In his mind, he saw Di, bumping into him in the hall of the biology building on her first day at the university. She was lost, and she was going to be late, and she was beginning to cry. Drew guided her to her class, even though it was in another building, one that was a half a block down the street. He’d almost missed lunch that day. Di had remembered him when they found themselves together again, in the back of the crowd, at the Friday night pep rally.

  He then pictured them on their wedding day, recalling the long service at the Greek Church, the crowns the priest had placed on their heads, her smile as she took him to be her husband for the rest of her life on earth. After the reception, they had dashed for the car as their brothers and sisters tossed rice over them. “A baby for each grain that hits you,” her sister had called out.

  He heard Di’s voice, unable to contain her excitement, when she’d called him one afternoon telling him she was expecting a child. “I was going to surprise you tonight,” she had almost screamed, “but I just couldn’t wait.” He could envision her jumping up and down in the kitchen of their house as she talked. She had tried to call him earlier, she had said, tried to call her mother, his mother. Unable to reach anyone, she had gone shopping. She wanted to meet him after work so he could look at the baby furniture she had selected.

  He could feel her hand as she lay in her hospital bed in January, her life slipping away. Even as she grew weak, she had thought of him, had written him one last time.

  Drew wiped his eyes again. Di wanted him to move on. She had told him so the night she died. He looked down at her note lying on the desk. She was right, though. Nothing could replace his love for her.

  He picked up the icon again and studied the picture. Then, he carried it across the room, hanging it carefully on the wall where it belonged. He would move on, but the icon would always be there to remind him of Di.

  Drew turned off the light, wondering when he had turned it on in the first place. Not that morning, he knew. Finally, he decided that the maid must have turned it on when she was there, and he just never noticed.

  He walked slowly down the hall, feeling an unfamiliar mixture of sadness and anticipation, wanting to cover his face and cry, wanting to laugh and break into dance. Di was gone, but something wonderful, he felt certain, lay ahead.

  His bedroom stretched across the back of the Charleston single house in which he lived. Single houses are called such because they are a single room wide, several rooms deep, and two- to three- stories high. The bedroom had been enlarged a number of years before—when Drew’s parents lived in the house. It was much too large for one person. He and Di had joked that it was large enough for four and that, should they ever fall on hard times, they could rent out half of the room and not miss the space.

  Drew changed clothes and sat in his recliner, facing the window overlooking the back yard, thinking.

  He had been trembling as he stood in the entrance hall at Amy’s house, not knowing what she wanted or expected, not knowing what he wanted or expected. He had felt as he had when he was sixteen—Alice Johnson had clearly wanted a goodnight kiss, but he had not been sure exactly how to do it. They had stood talking on her front porch for forty-five minutes before he had summoned the courage to kiss her before dashing to his car.

  When he and Amy had first kissed, nothing felt right. The shoulder on which his hand rested did not feel like Di’s. She did not hold him as he had expected. Her kiss was different too. Then, he relaxed, and the second kiss was…he didn’t want to put the feeling into words, but it had been good, definitely good. He wondered what she had felt.

  ***

  Amy arrived at work early on Monday. She expected the office to be empty, but even before she opened the door, the sound of voices floated into the hall. As she slipped through the door, the noise stopped. Eight women were standing in a tight circle in the middle of the office, and as she entered, each one turned in her direction.

  Amy looked down, expecting to see a stain on her skirt or a ripped seam, or something else that would have attracted their attention. She stepped forward tentatively, looking from face to face for some hint of what was happening. Several of the women covered their mouths with their hands, as if they were stifling laughter. Barb stood in the center of the group, a Cheshire-cat smile spread across her face.

  Her date with Drew. That was it.

  She sighed and walked across the office, her heels tapping as she took each step. She felt like a bad child who had been summoned to the principal’s office and all of the other students knew what she had done. As she sank into her chair, the conversation in the office resumed, the closed door doing little to muffle the sound.

  She picked up her schedule for the day, but the noise made it difficult to concentrate. She was saved from trying to by a knock on her door.

  “Come.”

  Ellen appeared, carrying two cups of coffee. Closing the door behind her, she handed one to Amy and sat across the desk from her.

  “Ran the gauntlet this morning, did you?”

  “Everyone knows that I had a date?”

  “Oh yes. Barb saw you at Starbucks. She texted Marie, who was in her car a couple of blocks away. She drove over, parked, and the two of them watched as you left Starbucks and drove away in his car. Or, so I hear.”

  Amy tipped her chair back and cast her eyes up. “Give me strength.”

  “Once Barb saw you,” Ellen laughed, “it would have been better if you’d made a video and posted it on YouTube, At least it would have dampened the speculation.”

  Amy didn’t move. “Speculation? What kind of speculation?”

  “Barb reports that he must be ten years younger than you are.”

  “My daughter said the same thing. Do I look old?”

  “Of course not. They know your age, and he looks young.”

  “He’s two years older.”

  “They want to know on what dating site you found him. Marie says that she will sign on immediately if the other guys look half as good.”

  “Marie is married.”

  “That speaks to his appearance.”

  Amy shook her head. “I told you about the man I sat next to, in July, on my flight to Denver?”

  “The one you baptized with coffee?”

  “Right. That is the man Barb saw me with on Saturday.”

  “I thought that he never called you.”

  “It’s a long story. We reconnected a short while ago.” Amy leaned forward, her arm on the desk. “So, sorry, no advice on dating sites.”

  “He held the car door open and helped you in.”

  “That’s worthy of note?” Amy shook her head. “Drew was a gentleman.”

  “A gentleman on a date.”

  Amy shrugged. “So? What else?”

  “You know.” Ellen blushed. “What…happened?”

  “We ate lunch, went shopping, had coffee.”

  “Not that.” Ellen put her cup on the desk, leaned forward, and lowered her voice. “What happened later?”

  Amy frowned. “I don’t follow.”

  Ellen rubbed her forehead and sighed. “Don’t be so…so…evasive. The office bookie is giving one-to-nine odds that you slept with him.”

  “One-to-nine? I don’t understand.”

  Ellen sighed. “She believes there is a ninety percent chance that you did.”

  Amy’s mouth dropped open and she burst out laughing. “Tell the bookie that I don’t play kiss-and-tell.”

  ***

  “Drew, what’s happening, man?” He heard Jody call his name as he unlocked his office door.

  “Not much, Jody. Monday morning. Hard to get going.”

  Jody followed him in and stood beside his desk while Drew turned on his desk lamp and booted his computer.

  “Do you need something, Jody?”

  “Yes, you know. Saturday. How did it go?”

  “You mean with Amy?” He looked up with an innocent exp
ression.

  “Of course I mean with Amy,” Jody exclaimed. He dropped into a chair across the desk. “What did you do after lunch? We saw you head toward the bookstore. Did you have a good time? Going to see her again?”

  Drew stared at him. “You sound like Sandra Goode—she was before your time, worked in orthopedics. Anyone had a date, staff or student, she would corner the person and demand to know all—and I mean all—of the details.”

  “Drew, you know that I would never pry. But Lee, she’s another matter. She wants everything. She’ll be calling me in half an hour for the news. Give me something.”

  Drew turned to his computer and logged on to his email. “You’re only asking for Lee? Right.”

  “You didn’t tell me that Amy was so attractive. I never thought of you as a cradle robber.”

  Drew finished reading one of his twenty messages and looked up. “You want to be Dean? Dr. Roberts is moving to California.”

  Jody nodded. “So I read. He didn’t stay long, did he? Why don’t you apply?”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “You used to be. You served on committees, courted donors, went to the receptions. You were good at it too”

  “Different priorities.”

  “Right.” Jody looked at Di’s picture on the credenza. “Anyway, tell me about Amy.”

  Drew sat back from his desk. “Amy is two years younger than I am. You are correct, she is beautiful. I had an exceptionally good time on Saturday, ending with supper.” He cocked his head to one side. “Enough to satisfy Lee?” he asked in a teasing voice.

  “Supper? You spent the entire day together?”

  He smiled. “Pretty much, Jody. Pretty much.” He closed his email. “Do you have a minute?”

  Jody pulled his chair closer to the desk.

  “When I reached home, I noticed a light on in Di’s office. There were a couple of boxes on the desk, things I brought home from the nursing home.”

  “They are still on her desk?”

  “Yes. I had intended to go through them, had intended to redecorate the office, in fact. Anyway…”

  He went on to tell Jody about finding Di’s note. “It’s weird, Jody. I packed that box twice. The morning after she died, I went to her room and piled everything into the boxes. I was in a hurry. I wanted to get out of the place.” He took a deep breath. “The things didn’t really fit, so I removed everything and put it back neatly. I dropped the icon while I repacked.” He shook his head. “I never saw that note.”

  Jody did not respond.

  “I know that Di’s ghost didn’t turn on the light, didn’t tape the note on the back of that picture, didn’t lure me into the room, but it was so coincidental that all of that would happen right after I saw Amy.”

  Again, Jody didn’t respond. Drew sighed in exasperation. “You get paid to help people solve their problems. You can’t say something?”

  “Don’t try to figure everything out, Drew. Di was a wise woman. She left you a message. You found it at the time you were meant to. Just accept it.” He stood and placed a hand on Drew’s shoulder. “Kiss her good night?”

  Drew looked up and smiled. “I don’t play kiss-and-tell.”

  “What I thought.” Jody chuckled. “Lee will be pleased.”

  Walk on the Battery

  Amy parked in front of Drew’s house—no mean feat on a two-way street that was really a lane-and-a-half wide. She had found the only vacant spot within four blocks and had delayed a line of over ten vehicles while she maneuvered into the tiny space.

  Drew lived below Broad, as they said in Charleston. The old city was built on a peninsula with the Cooper River on the east and the Ashley River on the west. Broad Street cut across the city, from one river to the other. Below Broad included anything between Broad Street and the tip of the peninsula.

  This was the historic section of the city and the houses dated from the early seventeen hundreds. Some of them had walls three feet thick and had survived wars, fires, and hurricanes. Many of them were owned by descendants of the original owners. Amy didn’t want to even think about how much it would cost to buy a house like Drew’s. She had read, a couple of years back, of one house—one of the smaller ones—which had sold for three million dollars. In comparison, her house across the Ashley had recently appraised for two hundred fifty thousand.

  She knew no one who lived in the neighborhood, and Jack had never been interested in the Preservation Society’s annual tour of homes, so Amy had never actually been inside one. Although, she and Cathy sometimes walked in the area after having had dinner in one of the nearby restaurants. They would gaze at the massive houses, built sideways to the street on narrow, deep lots, and speculate about how they must be furnished and how beautiful they must be inside—they were certainly so from the street.

  While she was pleased that Drew had called to ask her to come to dinner—their second date, Cathy insisted—she’d felt a bit intimidated when she had discovered where he lived. But she couldn’t avoid it any longer, so Amy took a deep breath, opened the car door and stepped onto the walkway, as a car rolled past, its tires bumping on the uneven brick pavement.

  She glanced up and down the street. The houses towered above her, most of them three stories high. All but two on this block were built of wood, painted white, with contrasting shutters in shades of colonial red, green, or brown. Most had been constructed with a short side facing the street, and steps that led up to massive oak doors. On the sides facing toward the harbor, porches stretched the lengths of the houses, attempting to catch the breezes wafting in from sea. A Lady Banks Rose cascaded over the wall that encircled the house across the street from Drew’s and, in behind, she saw a garden with red and pink roses in full bloom.

  She turned back and peered through Drew’s gate and noticed his car parked next to the long porch that stretched along the side. She could see a bit of grass behind the car, and from the street, two steps that led to the front door. Amy mounted the stairs and knocked, using the heavy brass knocker.

  “Come in.” Drew opened the door and looked at her car, parked on the street. “You found a space. Good job. I should have remembered to leave the gate open for you. I’ll do that next time.”

  Amy smiled. Next time.

  “Dinner is almost ready. Would you like some iced tea?”

  She nodded. “Yes, please.” That sounded heavenly to her. It was late September and was still hot and very humid.

  “There is a nice breeze on the porch if you’d like to sit out there.”

  Amy stood in the family room. It all came together so well—the rose color on the walls, the furniture, the painting of Drew’s house hanging above the fireplace. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Would you like a tour?”

  He led her from the family room through a formal dining room to the kitchen. Windows at the rear of the kitchen framed a breakfast area that looked out on a small formal garden in the back.

  Upstairs she saw Di’s office, Drew’s bedroom, and a guest room. “Jennifer and Matthew had rooms on the third floor. He stays there, of course, when he’s at home. Plenty of room for Jennifer’s family when they’re in town.”

  “Porches on every floor,” Amy said as they walked through the french doors leading to the second-story porch.

  “Well, you know how hot it can be in the summer. When they built these houses, they did everything possible to catch any breeze blowing off the water.”

  “It really feels good up here. Ten degrees cooler, I’ll bet.” Amy turned toward Drew. “I love your house, Drew. It’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you. I can’t take credit for the decor. Di did all of that.” He looked down at the garden. “She used to take care of the garden, too. That’s why it’s green this summer, rather than full of yellow day lilies and sunflowers.” He shrugged. “I never could get into gardening.”

  Amy walked to the edge of the porch and looked down at the street below. A line of cars crawled along the
road and groups of tourists filled the sidewalk. “Tourists drive you crazy?”

  “Not really. The traffic is pretty bad in the summer though.”

  She pulled up a chair and sat at a small table on the porch as she waited for Drew to bring their food upstairs. How lovely it would be to eat dinner out here every evening in the summer, she thought.

  He set the plates on the table and sank into the other chair. “When Jennifer was a child, she loved to have dinner out here in the summer. I often eat here myself.”

  The salad was a mixture of greens, cubed apples, and pecans. It was sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and tossed with a creamy dressing. “What is in the dressing?” Amy stared into the garden as she tried to tease out the different flavors.

  “It’s basically a mixture of Thousand Island and Russian.”

  “I love it.”

  After their salads, Drew replaced the small plates with large bowls, and spooned yellow grits into each, then ladled what appeared to be a stew on top. “This is my own recipe for shrimp and grits.”

  Amy tasted the steaming dish. She was impressed. “It tastes so good. Can you tell me the recipe?”

  Drew laughed. “I can tell you the ingredients—shrimp, of course, bacon and onions, parmesan cheese and chicken broth in the grits, spices—but there is no real recipe. It’s a bit different every time I make it. I loaded it with shrimp tonight.”

  “I wouldn’t dare try to cook anything without a recipe. I mean, I know how to cook routine meals like fried chicken without help, but something I don’t prepare frequently? No way.”

  “My mother never used recipes. I suppose I never learned to be dependent on them.”

  As she finished eating, Amy sat back. “I can’t believe I ate that entire bowlful. I kept telling myself just one more bite, and, well, look.” She pointed to the empty bowl.

  “I’m glad you liked it.” Drew cleared the table, putting the dishes on the tray he had used to carry them up the stairs. “How about a walk before dessert?”

  ***