The Stone Flower Garden

  It had taken twenty-five years of estrangement and another man’s execution to wring those words from my grandmother’s heart. I sat down on a couch as I pulled bubble wrap away from the heavy square of marble she’d sent. Its glossy, striated surface was the delicate color of a pink tea rose.

  “Your grandmother sent you a chunk of marble,” Solo said flatly, as if the irony in such a gift meant to something to him as well. He leaned against a wall in the shadows near an open sliding door, his hands sunk in his trouser pockets, his shoulders hunched, his expression dark.

  “My grandmother is seventy-seven years old but still definitely unbreakable, and she’s never given up on the idea that someday I’ll come back and take over the family business.” I flattened a hand on the cool marble. A strange reaction prickled my skin. Swan had sent a piece of us—who we were—to remind me that stone cracked at its weakest fissure. I stood, hugging the piece of marble in my arms. “I’m going to bed. Good night.”

  I walked past him without faltering, using all my willpower to glide bonelessly, head up, back straight, face smooth. Swan had built me on her own foundation and all the desperate pride hidden beneath it. I’d learned how to armor myself in thin air, just as she did. I didn’t need anyone, including Solo. It was safer that way. As I reached the bedroom door Solo spoke in a gruff voice that stopped me in my tracks. “Sounds like to me your grandmother wants you to think you’re made of stone. It’s up to you to prove her wrong.”

  “I can’t,” I said, and closed my door.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Throw that goddamned piece of Hardigree marble out a window before it poisons her. And goddammit, tell her who you are. Eli swam the next morning with angry fervor, feeling the web of complications closing around him. He’d go back to the beach house right now, dry off, get dressed, brew some coffee, then plan every word before Darl woke up. He’d keep it clean and quick. He knew now that she didn’t hate the memory of him, despite Pa’s murderous legacy in her family. She’d told him things about himself as he’d never imagined she remembered him. He’d learned what he needed to know. That was all that mattered.

  Eli dug his head deeper into the briny ocean water, sweeping his arms in high arcs that cut through the swells out beyond the surf. He couldn’t change the accusation against Pa or the possibility that Pa deserved it. No matter what solace Bell craved, they weren’t going to answer that question by digging for ghosts in Burnt Stand. But now he knew how Darl might react to the idea of searching, at least. She believed in fair judgments. She would give Pa’s innocence a chance.

  She’ll give mine a chance, too, Eli decided.

  He swam for the shore. Just as he took his footing on the island’s sandy tidal shelf a wave rocked him and something thumped his left arm below the elbow. Even as years of experience swimming in the Caribbean jelled into a single warning thought, he jerked his arm up violently.

  He’d been bitten by a small shark, probably a black tip chasing baitfish. The shark had clamped down on him by mistake. Blood gushed from a deep, crescent-shaped gash that circled half the muscle of his upper forearm. Eli lunged to dry land, holding his arm out from his body, dripping blood on the white sand. He stared at the wound, cursing softly when he realized how bad it was, then overcome by a surge of nausea and dizziness.

  Bad luck, he couldn’t help thinking. Bad timing.

  Truth and opportunities were washed away in bad blood.

  “You saved my ass, boy,” someone bellowed in his ear. It was a hefty, bald, tobacco-spitting redneck named Jernigan, at the trucking company job where Eli had just been knocked five feet by a sliding forklift as he pushed Jernigan out of the way. Eli looked down at the broken forefinger on his right hand. The bone protruded and blood slithered everywhere. It was January, freezing cold, and steam rose off his blood. His stomach roiled. He was only fourteen and had lied about his age to get the job. They’d find out now, someway, and he’d lose the paycheck. Mama’s job clerking groceries didn’t pay much. They needed every penny.

  Blood, Pa’s blood. Failure and shame. He saw it on his hand. His legs buckled. Jernigan caught him by the collar of his sweat-stained thermal shirt and blew a gust of fetid silver breath on Eli’s face, as if dusting him off. “Don’t pass out on me, boy, you’re my new favorite employee of the fuckin’ month.” And Jernigan, a big tough middle-Tennessee bastard of a dock foreman, dragged him to the company nurse.

  Two days later, when Eli came back to work with his finger splinted and his hand swollen like a fat glove, Jernigan’s new liking for him continued. “Com’ here, you tall skinny shit,” he ordered affectionately, and shoved Eli into a dingy storage room near the main docks. Eli stared at a dirty wooden table and the men around it. Piles of cards, poker chips, and dollar bills covered the table’s center. “This young gentleman—” Jernigan guffawed—“has a way with numbers. I don’t want him to be a dumb-ass truck loader all his life. Let’s teach the boy a skill.”

  He slung out a chair, and Eli joined the men at the poker table. “You got any problem playin’ with a colored man?” Jernigan grunted, pointing a stained finger at a beefy black trucker at the table. Eli met the trucker’s cool, dark eyes. “No, sir, I got no problem at all,” he said to the trucker, not Jernigan. The trucker nodded. “Then take a drink, white boy.” The trucker slid a pint bottle of gin Eli’s way.

  Eli sipped the gin and nearly vomited, but managed to keep a blank face. He stared at the cards as another man gathered them, shuffled and reshuffled them, tracked them with grimy thumbs, then tossed them Eli’s way. “Learn to shuffle,” the man ordered.

  Eli maneuvered the deck awkwardly with his splinted finger, spilling cards, his face burning with embarrassment, his wounded hand throbbing, but a strange confidence grew in him each time he raked the deck. Fifty-two cards, set in precise and logical arrangements, easy to remember. He looked down at them and saw his primitive shuffling efforts had scraped a soft scab on the palm of his hand, and a few dots of blood speckled his chapped winter skin. His head reeled, and he nearly passed out. But he held onto the cards, the future, the soothing count. Pa couldn’t ruin this for him.

  He was already feeling the numbers in his skin.

  Just count the cards. Count them in your head, Eli told himself to keep from fainting. He stood over the beach house’s white kitchen sink, pressing mounds of ice wrapped in paper towels to his arm and trying not to watch his own blood dribbling down the drain. He heard the door of the master bedroom open. Eli leaned heavily on the sink, light-headed and sweating. Blood had spattered on the tail of the striped dress shirt he’d managed to pull on over his wet swim trunks. He pressed his thighs to the sink cabinet. He hated his body’s overreaction to the smell and sight of blood, to the old trauma, but he couldn’t control it. He saw Pa dying, every time. He tried to focus on Darl’s footsteps crossing the living room. They sounded heavy, but then his senses were distorted.

  He hid his bleeding forearm below the rim of the sink as Darl walked up to the kitchen’s breakfast bar. She looked severe and elegant in tailored beige trousers and a crisply matching jacket. The Hardigree pendant hung in the center of a soft white top beneath the jacket. She’d wound her luxurious brunette hair up in a twist. Sunglasses covered her eyes. She was in her uniform, her armor.

  And she was carrying her suitcases. Eli gripped the sink’s edge tightly. Dammit, he’d played these odds all wrong. She was leaving.

  She halted, frowning. “Are you sick? Your color is—you have no color.”

  “Can you get the first-aid kit out of the cabinet over the microwave?” Her gaze went to the white tiled floor. She froze. Large splotches of blood trailed all the way across from the sliding glass doors to the deck. “What in the—” She walked around the end of the breakfast bar, saw his arm, and halted.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “A little shark snapped at me while I was—”

&n
bsp; She tossed her sunglasses aside, snatched a clean dishcloth from a hanger and whipped it around his forearm, wrapping it tightly, then grabbed another one from a rack beneath the sink. As she bound the second towel his blood dabbled her hands and smeared the edges of her suit sleeves. The gore had no visible effect on her. He swayed a little, and she steadied him with an arm around his waist. Eli gritted his teeth. “Goddammit. I can’t dance, and I nearly pass out at the sight of my own blood.”

  She glanced up at him, and for just a moment he saw fierce, undeniable affection in the cool landscape of her face. “Two left feet and a weak stomach,” she accused. “And you’re going to make me miss my plane in Tallahassee.”

  He calculated his odds and called her bluff.

  “Good,” he said.

  “Wife? Girlfriend?” a nurse asked her at the small hospital on the mainland.

  “His lawyer,” Darl replied without a trace of humor.

  Eli’s head cleared enough to appreciate that. He’d managed to fill out the emergency room paperwork without Darl discovering his real name. He was glad when she insisted on following him into the cubicle where a doctor put several dozen stitches in his arm. She sat beside him on a metal stool, saying nothing, her eyes trained with hawkish intensity on the doctor’s meticulous stitchery. The chatty young physician told them he was the son of a shrimper and had gone to medical school rather than face a lifetime out in Apalachicola Bay, working the nets. He kept glancing at Darl shyly—not an odd thing for any man to do—but her gaze remained riveted to Eli’s arm. Abruptly she said to Eli, her voice hollow, “You could have bled to death.”

  “Not hardly,” the young doctor interjected.

  She lifted her gaze and lasered the physician. “I disagree. And don’t patronize me with vague assurances.”

  The doctor gaped at her and blushed. Eli suddenly realized her face was pinched and ashen; a fine sheen of sweat covered her forehead. He grabbed her wrist with his free hand and fingered a racing pulse in the soft underside. “The Doc knows what he’s sayin’. He’s right.” Eli craned his head to study her. “You look like a vampire got all your color. First I try to pass out, and now you. If we were wrestlers we could be a tag team.”

  “You should have called out for me the instant you walked in the house bleeding.”

  “Look, I may be a sissy, but at least I try not to keel over in front of women. Besides, it’s not that bad.”

  “Yes, it is,” she said loudly. She leaned away from him, swaying a little. Pink splotches stained her cheeks. A rush of emotion broadsided Eli. She doesn’t deal with blood any better than I do. Several people craned their heads in the adjacent cubicles. The young doctor stared at Darl and blushed harder. A heavyset nurse in pink scrubs lumbered up. “Got a problem here, lady?” she demanded.

  Darl stood. “Yes, we have a problem. And don’t stand there like a pink drill sergeant speaking to me in that tone of voice.” She jerked her head toward Eli. “This man had to wait twenty minutes before his injury was treated. God knows how much more blood he lost in that time. So don’t stand there in your pink marble outfit and speak to me as if I’m the problem.”

  The nurse gave her a lethal, placid stare. “Marble? What’re you talkin’ about?”

  Darl swayed on the last word, clearly realizing how little sense she made. Eli was on his feet by then, the doctor yelping as he leaned after him with the needle held at the end of a long surgical suture attached to Eli’s skin. Eli snagged Darl around the shoulders with his good arm. “She apologizes,” he told the nurse. “Now leave her alone, please, ma’am.”

  The nurse stalked away. Eli sat down and pulled Darl back onto the stool next to his. She steepled her hand over her closed eyes and shivered. He was trembling a little, himself. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. He tightened his arm around her so fiercely she took a deep breath in self-defense, then gave up and turned her face into his shoulder. The young doctor gaped at them with a look that said a woman so high-strung had better be worth the trouble in bed.

  “Let’s get this done,” Eli said. His tone made the doctor hurry back to his stitching. Eli cupped a hand to the back of Darl’s head.

  I understand, he wanted to tell her. I know what you remember.

  My face tight with humiliation, I stared at the small fishing boats and cabin cruisers of a weathered marina on the bay in Apalachicola. The old fishing town was shabby and scenic, historic and laid-back. There were none of the ubiquitous miniature golf courses or water-ride parks, chain seafood restaurants, behemoth condo developments or souvenir shops that had overtaken most of the Florida coast. Eli nursed a cold beer and watched me like a hawk. We sat side by side at a scarred picnic table on the weathered screened deck of The Wild Oyster, a local restaurant. Around us, tourists and fishermen downed huge luncheon platters of fried seafood or slurped raw oysters doused in cocktail sauce. People cast curious glances our way. We made an odd couple, me in my beige silk, blood-speckled business suit, him in a blood-spattered dress shirt, swim trunks, and loafers.

  “I don’t know what came over me at the hospital,” I said, still facing forward and refusing to meet his eyes. “I made a fool of myself. I seem to be doing a lot of that, lately. I do apologize.”

  “Hey.” The word was a gentle command. I hesitated, then swiveled reluctantly and met his scrutiny. “I say you’ve got nothin’ to be ashamed of.”

  I nodded at the wide white bandage that encircled his left forearm. “How do you feel?”

  He finished the beer in one long swallow. “Fine. My painkiller just kicked in.”

  “Good.” I looked at the small fishing boats in the marina. “Then let’s rent a boat and go out in the bay. Let’s race over the water and inhale the wind. I’ll pay.”

  “You just want to harass the sharks on my account.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m a good lawyer.” My tone was sarcastic. I got to my feet with a flurry of motion. “I want to go where I can breathe.”

  “All right.” He rose and tossed some money on the table. “I’ll walk over to the marina office and see if somebody can take us. And I’ll pay. Don’t argue.”

  I stared at him. He had a stubborn look I’d begun to recognize. “That will be totally out of character for me.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll change clothes.”

  “Where? How?”

  I pointed to a corner bar where a bartender sold blue cotton t-shirts and short cotton shorts with the restaurant’s logo. Come Out Of Your Shell At The Wild Oyster, a slogan beamed in neon orange lettering.

  “You’re takin’ a big leap off a short fashion dock,” Eli said, looking as if he’d like to picture me in thin, soft cotton. “How fast can you do it?”

  I gave him a cynical smile. “I’m ready to jump right now.”

  The bay was miles wide, shallow, and as smooth as glass. In the distance, modern bridges and causeways girdled its horizon like white stone islands in the sun. A small flotilla of shrimpers and oyster boats crisscrossed the waterways as easily as gulls. But close to the mainland shore, where Eli geared a large speedboat at a lazy pace, the bay belonged only to him and Darl. She sat on the bow with her bare feet curled under her and both hands draped over the deck rail. Her face was turned in profile to Eli, her eyes drinking in a world of pine woods, marshes, and sand bars. She’d taken her hair out of its braid. The wind tossed the mink-brown waves around her shoulders and plastered the thin blue t-shirt and shorts to her body. The shorts clung to tops of her thighs, freeing long, sculpted legs. Her hips flared voluptuously from a small waist, and her breasts showed in beautiful outline. He recalled her mentioning that she was an avid walker, sometimes covering five miles a day on a track near her Washington, D.C., apartment. But she was no athlete, she said. She just had to keep moving.

  Now, in a rare mood because of him, she had become still. She
watched the scenery, and Eli watched her.

  The bay’s dark water slapped rhythmically against the speedboat’s hull. Cool, damp air rushed over their faces. She tilted her head back, shut her eyes and inhaled, then looked at him. “The bay smells like fresh watermelon,” she called. He nodded, mesmerized by the sight she made. Blue sky, blue eyes, ripe blue body. She pointed at the bow. “Do you want to sit up here and let me drive awhile?”

  “Steer,” he corrected mildly. “Not drive.”

  “I grew up in the mountains, not around water. You know boats, obviously.”

  “I’ve owned a few.”

  “On lakes?”

  “On the ocean.”

  She regarded this new bit of information with her head tilted and her eyes thoughtful, as if adjusting his place in her files. “How much did you pay to rent this boat without the owner coming along to drive—steer—it?”

  “Enough to make him dance when he ran off to count my money.”

  “Thank you. Thank you for doing that.”

  “No problem. I’m enjoyin’ the view.” He looked at her without skimming the meaning, and she didn’t turn away. When she finally pulled her gaze to the water again, it seemed a guilty gesture. She stood, looking forward, she reached into a pocket of her shorts. Eli frowned at the unknown talisman she plucked out. She rubbed her fingers over it.

  The water suddenly shimmered and came alive. She frowned at the sight and looked back at him in question. Eli quickly brought the boat to an idling stop and made his way to her side. She pointed. A huge school of tiny fish flashed silver and white as they swirled in perfect unison. “Baitfish,” Eli explained. “Around here they call ’em Poggies.”

  Darl held the mysterious pocket item close to her side but reached out over the water with her other hand. “Hello, Poggies. I bring you greetings from the world of air.”

  Greetings. Eli looked at her with his heart aching. Her childhood catch phrase tore into him like a fine wire, cutting the connection between conscience and clear thought, leaving only nostalgia and desire. “Greetings, they say back,” he returned gruffly. “Greetings, Darl.”