The only glitch was Grampa Boone, who had been invited but didn’t want to come. He wasn’t feeling well, he said, which was unlike him, but he rarely came to the parties at the Wallace mansion anyway. He said they made him itchy. He said they used to make Sugar itchy too but she just laughed and told him Grady had cured her of that. Still, she felt bad about her granddaddy because he and her fiancé had never even met. Grady didn’t much care for the countryside, he said, but kept promising to go to Summerville with her as soon as they had a free weekend.
He looked so handsome the night of the party, and he was so gracious and charming. He paid as much attention to Sugar’s whiskery great-aunt Emmerline as he did to Meredith Burrows who was a model in New York and drop-dead gorgeous although, according to Grady, too bony for his liking.
They’d been to other balls and grand parties before, the two of them, during their brief courtship. Grady loved to socialize and on his arm Sugar truly didn’t find it quite the chore she always had before. But did he always drink that much? she wondered halfway through the night. She hadn’t noticed him being drunk any other time, and it wasn’t as though he was falling down or embarrassing himself or anything. Charleston men were known for being able to hold their liquor. But despite that grace and charm of his, she recalled afterward seeing a gleam in his eye that she hadn’t noticed before. She hadn’t thought at the time that it was dangerous but then why would she? She was at her engagement party with the man of her dreams.
But after their two proud daddies made their speeches and their two proud mamas cried delicate tears (Etta’s didn’t even smear her mascara), Grady pulled Sugar outside, down the stairs at the back of the house and into the room that her mother referred to as her “decoupage studio.”
“You are so beautiful,” Grady said, pressing her up against the wall. “You are so fucking beautiful. God, I love you. You’re amazing. Do you know that? I love you so much, so fucking much. You are perfect. Fucking perfect.”
He’d been such a gentleman up until then; she’d just assumed they would wait. She was embarrassingly old-fashioned like that, despite dreaming over and over of their first time together, the lingering kisses, the slow removal of clothes in the half-light of their first shared bedroom, the exquisite tenderness of two people exploring each other’s bodies, knowing they had a lifetime to get to know each other’s pleasures and pain. But hearing him say how much he loved her, as though he meant it so much it was tearing him in two, despite the cursing, which usually made her flinch, Sugar suddenly didn’t feel quite so old-fashioned after all.
She’d waited for this particular pleasure for long enough: every part of her cried out right now for every part of him.
She lifted up the layers of her skirt.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” Grady said, roughly kissing her neck, biting her ear, pushing his knee between her legs. “I mean it, CeeLee.” That was his pet name for her. “God, how I mean it.”
But before she could even offer him her plump and desperate lips to kiss, he had undone his pants and was thrusting into her, grunting, his eyes closed, his head down, his body heaving.
It was as though she wasn’t even there.
Then, one brief searing pain and it was all over. Grady fell back against the wall next to her, his eyes still closed, sweat pouring off him as he did up his zipper. “Talk about worth the fucking wait,” he said. “Come on, we should get back inside before they miss us.”
Sugar fixed her hair back up in its loosened pins with shaking hands, bewildered by what had just happened.
Grady saw her expression and mistook it for regret at caving in to her desire. “It’s OK, sweetheart,” he said. “I was going to pop your cherry anyhow. Does it really matter when?”
Inside, someone had turned up the music and she heard one of Grady’s friends calling his name. “I fucking love this song,” he said. “Come on, CeeLee. Let’s party.”
In the ballroom, the guests were too drunk or tired or both to notice that the bride-to-be had lost some of her glow. Her eyes still twinkled, but it was no longer the unbridled joy sort of twinkling.
On the night of her engagement party, Sugar saw something in Grady that didn’t fit her dream of the adoring husband-to-be, the charming son-in-law, the charismatic lawyer. She saw a sweaty drunk who popped her cherry. On the night of her engagement party, it occurred to Sugar that while there was no denying the powerful and intoxicating physical chemistry between them, there was also no denying that something else was missing.
20TH
The bluebird had hopped on top of an antique clock that hung from a tree bough, but was still looking at Sugar, its head cocked as if it too were listening.
“Love hurts, Miss Sugar,” George said. “Even more so when you’re young and don’t know that it can be any other way.”
“It was a long time ago,” Sugar said, her eyes following the bird as it moved to a higher branch of the oak. “And it’s not like I think about him much these days. I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying not to think of him at all, but then along comes Ruby, God bless what’s left of her, and she has this thing for romance. She acts like she hates it but the poor little thing is addicted to weddings and it seems to make her happy to talk about them but all the same, it has me churned up inside like you would not believe. Plus . . .”
“Plus what, Miss Sugar?”
“Well, it may have nothing to do with anything.”
“Or something to do with everything.”
“It’s what you said before about the fear of moving on. Oh, I can’t believe that I’m even contemplating such a thing!”
“Contemplating what, Miss Sugar?”
“I met someone, George.”
“You did?”
“I did.”
“And what all is happening there?”
“Nothing all is happening but I’m sick to my stomach just thinking about it.”
“Sounds like I’m onto something with this matter of the heart situation then.”
“I don’t even know him and he doesn’t know me and besides, he is a total fruit loop.”
“All the best people are total fruit loops, Miss Sugar. Didn’t you notice that yet?”
“The whole business just scares me half to death.”
“You need to get rid of all that scared.”
“I need to get rid of my past, is what I need to do.”
“That can’t be done. You must know that by now. But with a little help, you could most certainly reduce its influence.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Miss Sugar, I’m living proof of that.”
Grady was so sweet and charming after the engagement party that Sugar put her disappointment in the decoupage studio aside and with it any other doubts.
The first time was always a disaster, she knew that, and she was coming to it later than most. She knew a couple of other girls her age who were still saving themselves for their husbands, but most were carefully glossing over what they had carelessly already spent.
“Did you and Daddy, before you were married . . . ?” she asked Etta one morning, trying not to sound as awkward as she felt.
Etta was bent over her writing desk and Sugar saw a familiar blotchy rash creep up her neck. “Grady is a gentleman,” she said. “He wouldn’t ask for anything it’s not right to give.”
“Even if it’s—”
“Even nothing, Cherie-Lynn! Men have needs. It’s not just something people say; it’s true. Marrying Grady Parkes is the best thing that could ever possibly happen to you so please don’t do anything to ruin it or, so help me, Jesus, I will never forgive you, never. And neither will your father.”
And with that she started to talk about how to seat her old friend Louisa at the wedding so she couldn’t see or hear her exhusband Hank, which was going to be pretty hard since you could hear him from where they were sitting now and he lived in Texas.
There had been another encou
nter the week after the party, snatched in the car outside a clam shack on Folly Island. Again it had been over almost before it started. Again Grady had not even looked at her, let alone kissed her. Again, he had been nice as pie afterward.
She tried to suggest that they go to a hotel, or sneak into her room, or at least lead up to it nicely somehow but she was embarrassed and Grady was offended by the merest suggestion that his lovemaking—quick, rough and almost public—was anything other than ideal.
“Never had any complaints before,” he said. “And I’m not new to this, baby.”
It wasn’t as though Sugar thought for a moment that she was his first, but something about the way he smiled when he said that pulled at her heart. Privately she thought he could have spared her the obvious insinuation.
Then, after a couple more weeks of putting it off, he redeemed himself by keeping his promise to meet Grampa Boone. They arrived out at Summerville on a sunny Sunday afternoon just as he was taking the lid off the beehive at the side of the porch to check on his house supply of honey.
Sugar couldn’t wait to go help, but Grady grabbed her arm as she started to get out of the car. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s cleaning his beehive. Come on, Grady, let’s give him a hand.”
“To clean a beehive? I don’t think so.”
“Grady, honey, let go, you’re hurting my arm. I’ve been helping Grampa clean out his hives and raise his bees since I was a little girl. My very first memory is tasting honey fresh off the comb. Honestly. Whatever’s the matter?”
“With me? Absolutely nothing. It’s you I’m worried about. You’re the one who wants to go rooting around in some scrappy backyard with a bunch of insects like some second-rate farm hand.”
“It’s not scrappy, Grady. And Grampa expects me to help. I always do. It’s our thing.”
“Not anymore, it isn’t,” Grady said, but she pulled her arm out of his grasp, the red mark where he had gripped it burning her flesh as she walked toward the house.
Her grandfather watched this exchange from behind the veil of his bee helmet and to save his granddaughter any shame he just put the lid back on the hive, walked to the front of the porch and started to take off his suit, like he was finished with his chores already.
Sugar hugged him tight and if he felt thinner than usual or seemed frail or unwell in any way, she didn’t notice.
“Grady, I would like you to meet the other man in my life.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Grady said, holding out his hand for Grampa Boone to shake. But he wasn’t radiating his usual charm. “Mind if we move away from those bees?” he said, going to the opposite end of the porch. “Never did much care for the things.”
Sugar busied herself moving the chairs around and then chattered away as she fetched Grady and her grandfather a bourbon and got an iced tea for herself.
Her grandfather told them all about his day, keeping bee talk to a minimum out of courtesy to her fiancé, and asked politely about the family business and the engagement party and the wedding plans.
But when they went to leave, he held her back a moment and maneuvered her toward the bees while Grady kept heading for the car. “This queen has to be my best one yet, Sugar,” he said when they were standing next to the hive. “I call her Elizabeth and you should see the way she’s laying eggs, all neat and even and quicker than any other one I’ve had. Never seen a brood pattern like it. I reckon we’ll get more honey out of her than we’ve ever seen before.”
“She certainly has her workers going at fever pitch,” Sugar said, looking at the wild concentration of bees going in and out of the hive entrance. “I can’t believe I missed her arrival into the world.”
“You’ve been busy, Sugar Honey.”
“But I should never get too busy for you or the bees. You’re two of my favorite things. I sure hope Elizabeth forgives me.”
“There’s no need for that but if there was, she’d be up for it,” her grandfather said. “She’s real strong, Sugar. Just like you.”
“Me?” Sugar laughed. “What makes you think I’m strong?”
“Knowing you for the past twenty years,” he said. “You’re not a drone, Sugar. You’re a queen. Don’t you forget that.”
“Oh, Grampa, what a sweet thing to say.”
“I don’t mean for it to be sweet. I mean for it to help you if you need help.”
They looked at each other.
“You are strong, Sugar child,” he said again. “Never forget it. And never let anybody make you feel like you are not. Promise me?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Sugar said, but she blushed and couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Just promise me.”
“OK, OK, Grampa, if it makes you feel better, I promise, of course I do, but honestly . . .”
“You’re too good for him,” her grandfather said. “And not Charleston good either, just ordinary good.”
“You mean Grady?”
“Sugar Honey, the man doesn’t like bees.”
“A lot of people don’t like bees!”
“Yes, but you’re not one of them.”
She wanted to protest, to defend the man she loved and was about to marry, but instead glimpsed her opportunity to talk to the one person who most understood her about her creeping doubts. The truth was that the closer she got to the wedding, the less she felt like her old self. And in the absence of the romantic intimacy about which she had so often dreamed since falling under Grady’s spell, the novelty of fitting in was wearing thin.
He wanted her to get gold streaks put in her hair, he liked it worn down not up, he preferred her in heels even though he knew they hurt, and he called her CeeLee, which actually she did not care for. None of these things on their own amounted to much, she would feel silly even talking about them, but together they were combining to wake her up in the middle of the night with a panicky feeling that she was about to make a big mistake.
And now he didn’t want her to help out with her grandfather’s bees.
That amounted to something.
But then he tooted the horn and revved up the car and she thought of her parents and her brothers and the wedding plans and the house they were decorating on Church Street and the honeymoon in France and her doubts slithered away. “Don’t worry about me, Grampa,” she said, stepping in to give him a kiss goodbye, the bees buzzing around the two of them as she did. “I’m right as rain.”
“I love you, Sugar Honey,” he said, as she walked away from him.
“I know you do, Grampa,” she said, turning around to wave. “And I love you too.”
It was the last time she ever saw him.
Sugar’s grandfather died peacefully in his sleep four days after she and Grady visited him in Summerville, leaving her inconsolable.
“But he was old, CeeLee,” Grady said, quickly bored by her despair. “What were you expecting?”
A week after the funeral she still couldn’t keep from crying and her mother, tired of such “histrionics,” told her to pull herself together.
“Your eyes look like sea creatures,” she snapped. “Time to dry your tears, Cherie-Lynn. We have a wedding to plan.”
But it was Etta’s own eyes that bulged and blinked when her father’s will was read and Sugar was named the major beneficiary. It wasn’t that Etta cared about the money—thanks to Blake she hadn’t had to care about that in a long time—she was just astonished there was any. Thea and Jim Boone had always lived such a modest life, way too modest for her liking. She’d started plotting her escape from what she considered their rural backwater when she was just a little girl after seeing Grace Kelly on the cover of a magazine. Beautiful blondes deserved handsome princes and lavish palaces, Etta realized, and she was not going to find either in Summerville.
But her father had died a wealthy man. He had done well, the lawyer said, selling off bits of land Etta didn’t even know he had, and he’d been clever with his stocks and shares.
&n
bsp; “You’re a rich woman, honey,” Etta told Sugar when she got back from the lawyer’s office. “You and Grady will be able to do whatever you want, wherever you want. Although you could have anyway, but it doesn’t hurt to have a little nest egg of your own. Who knows when you might want to redecorate the carriage house or go shopping in London?”
“I don’t want to go shopping in London,” Sugar said, starting to cry again. “I don’t want his money, I want him.”
“Cherie-Lynn, listen to me, you have to snap out of this. You think he would want you acting so disgraceful? All upset and red-faced and driving everybody including your husband-to-be around the bend with your amateur dramatics?”
“But what will happen to the cabin? And who will look after his bees?”
“You don’t need to worry about any of that. That’s all taken care of. Your brothers will sort out the house and the land. And the bees are going to some friend of your grandfather,” her mother said. “He had it all organized. Apart from . . . oh, how infuriating that old man could be!”
“Apart from what?”
“I don’t want you to worry about it, honey. You have enough on your plate right now.”
“Apart from what, Mama?”
Her mother rolled her eyes. “Apart from one stupid hive that he left to you, crazy old coot. What he was thinking, I can’t imagine. You’re not going to be keeping bees over at the Church Street place—”
“Which hive, Mama?”
“Does it really matter? You won’t be taking those bees.”
“It matters! He left them to me. They’re mine.”
“Well, he left you that stinky old pickup truck too and you’re not going to take that, are you?”
“Is it the hive at the cabin? Did he leave me his house bees?”
“Yes, I believe he did. The lawyer said your granddaddy just added that to the will a few days before he died. Lord knows what for.”
Sugar and Grady argued that night about those bees. She wanted to go and get them and take them to the house they would move into after they were married. He would not hear of it.