The Stone Flower Garden

  She straightened slowly, staring at him. Eli stepped so close to her he could see the swift pulse of her heart where the t-shirt clung to her left breast. His own heart was pounding, too. He looked at the Hardigree pendant hanging against her chest. “You wear one totem and carry another.” He gestured toward her clenched hand. “Would you tell me about ’em?”

  For a moment he feared she’d shake her head. The look in her eyes was fragile. But then she slowly raised her fist to the necklace. “This is for family.” She paused. “It reminds me that I’m capable of . . . anything.” She curled the last word on her tongue as if it were acid. Slowly, she held out her fist and unfurled it, palm up. “And this is for inspiration.” She paused again. Her throat worked. Then, softly, “For the love and hope you talked about the other night.”

  Eli looked down at her hand. In it lay the smooth chip of marble he’d made for her twenty-five years earlier. She’d burnished the infinity symbol to a smooth trace in the stone. He couldn’t speak. She searched his face worriedly. “Don’t try to understand me, Mr. Solo.”

  “Too late.” Eli raised his hand slowly, then slid his fingers into her hair at the spot where it cascaded behind one ear. She didn’t move away. Her troubled gaze flickered from his eyes to his mouth, and back. “Greetings,” he said again. The breath soughed from her. “Greetings.” He bent a little and fitted his mouth to her lips. A sweet, easy kiss. The sensation made him sigh, and she answered it. On his next breath he slid his arm around her back and kissed her more deeply. Darl opened her mouth, but didn’t put her arms around him. He touched the tip of his tongue to hers and she reciprocated, then shivered. “Stop,” she whispered.

  Trembling himself, Eli stepped back. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, her eyes never leaving him. She seemed to vibrate with restraint and a certain ferocious melancholy. Eli returned to the cockpit and slid the boat into gear. She watched him the whole time, her eyes troubled as she clenched the gift he’d given her when they were children, her knotted hand held low over her body. Eli’s heart hammered and he prayed silently.

  Please, let her know it’s me.

  I had kissed a man I barely knew and fitted Eli’s soul to him. Solo owned me from that second on. All he wanted from me was myself, and I could give him that. I’d had his blood on my hands. His affection was the only pretense of redemption I had won fairly.

  That evening we returned to the beach house, built a small driftwood fire between the sand dunes, and shared a blanket, watching the sunset. We traded sips from a bottle of pinot grigio and ate cold boiled shrimp from a bowl laced with lemon juice and cocktail sauce. The pale sand crabs skittered around us. Solo tossed them tiny bits of food and made bets on which crab would be bold enough to snatch the offerings first. “A dollar on that little guy by the sea oats,” he said. “He’ll go the distance.”

  “No, that pony will fade in the stretch. He’ll never make it past the pile of clam shells. I’m putting my dollar on the big one crouched near the gull feather.”

  “Nope. Too slow for the field. He’s a plow-crab, not a race-crab.”

  I smiled, and he returned it. By the time we finished the wine and the shrimp, it was dark and I owed Solo seventeen dollars. “I’ll give you my marker,” I said, and drew my name in the sand behind us.

  He squinted at the signature, then at me. “I better call it in right now, before the tide rises.”

  We’d been waiting for any excuse, the air electric between us, the humor soft-spoken and tender, the night completely arrived. In the shadows and flickering firelight I took his hand. Eli. I saw what I wanted to see. I kissed him. Just as on the boat, that first contact was sweet, a polite greeting. But the second kiss sent us down on the blanket, arms curling around each other, our soft sounds mingling with the rush of the surf.

  He was everything I wanted him to be, and more. Once we were standing naked in my moonlit bedroom, with the balcony doors open and the ocean’s night sounds cascading over us, he put his hands under my thighs and lifted me off the floor. I gasped and angled my legs around his hips as he pressed my back against a cool, pale wall. He levered his body against mine, with the hard tip of his erection couched against my stomach. I had never felt so molded to another human being, so intricately open to sensation. We tore at each other’s mouths and arched together, holding on for dear life. Darl, he whispered, but I couldn’t call him by name—I was afraid I’d call him Eli and break the spell. I kissed him roughly, Eli’s unspoken ghost hidden in my throat. “Lay me down, now. I’m not really made of stone.”

  “You never were,” he said, and burying his face in my hair as if I were a soft blanket enfolding him, he carried me to bed.

  I woke on my side in soft morning sunshine, facing him just an arm’s length away. I inhaled his breath, warm and musky but pleasant, the essence of this good, strong stranger who covered my skin, inside and out. We’d fallen asleep finally, just before dawn, and this was the furthest apart we’d been all night. My right hand lay cradled inside his on the pillow between our heads. His thick fingers arched over my hand protectively, just as I continued to welcome him with one outstretched foot tucked between his ankles. We couldn’t stop touching each other, even when we slept. I slowly turned his broad hand in mine, looking at its weathered skin and broad calluses. What had this techno wizard done to earn a workingman’s palms?

  I studied his plain, rugged face, the deep sweep of his dark lashes on his angular cheekbones, his beard shadow, the boyish fan of coarse, dark hair over his high forehead. During the night I had seen him in unguarded moments, glimpses in moonlight, pain and hunger and devotion. He had given me what I’d given him—desperate mysteries. Just looking at him made me bite back a moan. I was damp and tender and disheveled, the night like hot, sweet wax inside me, coating old fears, clouding old shames. I’d always held back from loving any man. Honest love demanded full trust, and I would never share my childhood secret with anyone.

  Not even this one.

  I slipped away from him by slow degrees, holding my breath to keep him asleep, then stood at the foot of the bed, hypnotized by his tall body’s outline beneath the bed’s soft gray sheet. Packages of unopened condoms were scattered on the covers, waiting like opportunities. He had been prepared for me, and I didn’t know what to think of that, either. I dug my bare toes into the carpeted floor among our strewn clothes. Move. Go. Stop trying to understand him or yourself. I hurried to the suite’s large bathroom and stared at myself naked in a huge mirror embellished with a frame of white seashells. What kind of careless mermaid was I? I saw blue eyes fevered with emotion, my face gaunt, my brunette hair in tangles around my shoulders, my body flushed and glistening with sweat, his and mine. Three days ago I’d watched Frog Marvin die. I’d been devastated, numb, suicidal. No one could have made me believe what had happened since then.

  Now I knew who I was. I was a survivor at all costs. I had the Hardigree strength, but also the Hardigree weakness for men. I turned and staggered into the shower, slamming my palms into the faucet controls until ice-cold water gushed down on my upturned face and gritted teeth. It washed away Solo’s sweet taste with the acrid flavor of coastal wells.

  I shivered as I toweled myself and belted a thin white robe around my waist. For all I knew I’d walk out of the bathroom, dress, pack, and tell him good-bye. I couldn’t begin to share the truth about the peculiar motivations of my dirty soul. When I stepped into the bedroom with my hands knotted by my sides I halted abruptly. He stood with his back to me, looking out toward the ocean on the balcony beyond the bedroom’s open glass doors. He had pulled on his rumpled khaki trousers. He smoked another of his small cigars. I inhaled its woodsy aroma in the salt air. As I watched he rolled his broad, bare shoulders, the muscles taut enough to snap. The broad white bandage on his injured forearm was speckled with blood at the center. We’d been too rough at times during the night,
but never noticed. One hand pinched the cigar tightly as he pulled it from his lips. He raised the other to his tossled hair and clawed his fingers to the nape of his neck, the gesture seething with frustration.

  I froze there, watching him, suddenly realizing he might have something worse to tell me than I could tell him. I didn’t want to lose him that way, didn’t want to ruin our brief time together. He pivoted as if sensing me. He held my stark gaze, then went down my robed body and back to my face. He tossed the cigar’s remnant into the dunes beneath the balcony, then walked inside the room. “We have to talk,” he said.

  “I agree. Maybe it’s a little late to be old-fashioned, but I’d like to know your full name. I’d like to know where you live, and what kind of family you have, and what you really do for a living. And I’d like to know what you’ve been trying to tell me for the past three days, because I see a lot of regret in your eyes.”

  “Don’t mistake that for a change of heart. Whatever I’ve done here, I wanted it to happen. And I’ll always want you. I don’t have the words to tell you how much.”

  I held out my hands. “Then what you have to say can wait a little while longer.” His face convulsed in a smile, a rebuke, surrender. We were lost. He pulled me to him then picked me up off the floor. We kissed like lovers after a long separation. I dug my fingers into his back and arched against him. Instantly we were on the bed again, him twisting sideways and jerking my robe open, his mouth on my breasts and stomach and lower, then holding my face and kissing me on the lips as I cried out along with him.

  I loved him, whoever he was. I simply did.

  The phone rang as we held each other afterwards. I had my back to him, and he’d fitted his body to me, wrapped me in his arms, fully naked, as he was. The breeze was only beginning to cool the sheen of sweat on us, and I hadn’t begun to breathe normally. I was frozen inside my dilemmas, but couldn’t stop stroking his hands. “Let it go,” he asked, as the phone shrilled in the living room. I flinched.

  Through the open bedroom door we heard an answering machine click on. An aged, elegant Southern voice introduced one of Swan’s matronly Asheville friends. “Honey,” the woman said, “It’s an emergency.” That made me lunge up to my elbows, with Solo rising behind me. “Your grandmother and Miss Matilda,” she went on, “are in the hospital.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Swan had suffered a heart attack during the night. Matilda, after rushing to the hospital to be with her, had collapsed in a waiting room. She’d had a mild stroke. In the rush to pack and leave St. George Island I did little more than nod when Solo said, “You care for your grandma and her friend, I can see that.” He withdrew from me, grew very quiet and seemed burdened, then said simply, “Of course I’ll take you right to them.”

  “Thank you.”

  Please don’t die, Grandmother.

  That was my first thought, an honest bellwether that curdled me inside. I’d fantasized about Swan’s death for years, back when I deluded myself into thinking I’d find Eli someday and tell him the truth. I loved Swan Hardigree Samples, my grandmother, my nemesis. It was a helpless devotion, as strong as the hate I also felt, as complex as the bitterness I held toward her. I didn’t know what to do with the emotion, anymore than I’d known as a child.

  By afternoon we’d left the Gulf behind and followed the continent inward. Solo guided his small plane over the rich cotton and peanut plains of south Georgia, then the forested hills and sprawling suburbs of Atlanta, rising higher as the rounded, blue-green Appalachians climbed to meet us. On the cusp of entering the skies over western North Carolina I broke my moody silence. “Almost there,” I said. As the steep wilderness and small towns of my homeland crept under us, I looked at Solo’s profile. His mouth was set in a grim line. His hands lightly clenched the controls. He’d dressed in a soft white pullover, gray trousers, and hiking boots, while I’d naturally returned to a blue business suit. We looked so different, now. He was a study in concentration, as reserved as myself. I called out to him over the roar of the plane’s engines. “Have you ever been to these mountains, before?”

  After a stretch of silence he nodded. “As a kid.”

  “We have a small hospital in my hometown now, and it’s not far from the new airport. A small airport, but still. Once we land I’ll call my grandmother’s business manager and he’ll send a car.” Solo nodded but said nothing. I went on carefully. “You’ll be welcome to stay at my grandmother’s estate.”

  He glanced at me with poker-faced calm, but I noticed his hands clenching harder, going white-knuckled on the controls. “I’ll find myself a place, don’t worry.”

  “I’m not just being polite. I’d like to have you nearby.” I hesitated. “I know your job is finished, but—”

  “You think you’re just a job to me?”

  I struggled with my voice, made a pretense of looking out the window, then back at him. “I’m trying to make it easy, if you want to leave.”

  He put a hand on mine briefly, and stroked my palm with his thumb. “I’m in this for the long haul,” he said. “I’m here because I care about you. Remember that.”

  After a moment he banked the plane and we curved down over the tops of the mountains, gliding lower as the old granite balds and fir-shrouded ridges opened into the small valley that made my heart twist with memories. Below us, the white-pink marble homes and stores of Burnt Stand appeared among the trees, majestic and unchanged.

  “Home,” I said grimly. I slid one hand into my slender leather purse and cupped the infinity stone Eli had chipped from the bedrock beneath our lives there.

  Even the stone knew where it belonged.

  Cool autumn weather had already descended on the valley, and the dogwoods—almost always the first trees to turn—had taken on the first tinge of red. Solo taxied his plane to a halt at the county airport in a whirl of brisk air and red-green forest. As soon as the plane came to a full stop a tall, rangy black man walked toward us from the airport’s one-room office. A dusty SUV waited behind him. He was about forty years old, with close-cropped hair and a thin white scar across his right jaw. His dark corduroys, pin-striped shirt, leather suspenders and silk tie moderated some of the edge in his eyes. Marble dust clung to his heavy-soled work shoes, and he had the large, sinewed hands of a stonecutter. He was Leon Forrest.

  “Leon,” I said, and went to him with both hands out. “Talk to me.”

  He grasped my hands firmly in his. “You know that grandma of yours is not goin’ to break. The doctors told us she’s doing all right. They call it a mild heart attack. And Miss Matilda’s all right. Just got a little slur to her words and can’t see quite right.”

  Relief felt like lemons squeezing behind my eyes. I turned to Solo and made the introductions. “Mr. Forrest is executive manager at the quarry. Leon, Mr. Solo is a friend of mine, and a security consultant at Phoenix.” Solo was looking at Leon with a gleam in his eyes—I would have called it surprise and affection, but that made no sense about two strangers. For his part, Leon frowned as he and Solo shook hands. “Man, there’s something familiar about you.”

  Solo said quietly, “It’s good to see you. That is, good to meet you.” He paused, his jaw working. “Even under the circumstances.”

  As the three of us walked to the SUV I looked at Leon somberly. “Did my grandmother say anything when she heard I was coming?”

  He looked at me apologetically, then sighed. “She told Miss Matilda you were probably surprised to hear she has a heart.”

  The new county hospital, situated on a small knoll north of town, reflected the afternoon sunshine from its pink marble façade. I left Solo and Leon in a lobby that included Swan and Matilda’s elegant portraits as members of the hospital board, and headed for an elevator to the fourth-story cardiac unit. On the way I passed a directory listing the second-floor wing dedicated to Julia Samples Union, my mo
ther. A few years earlier I’d come home briefly for the dedication ceremony, made a small speech in my mother’s honor, and asked Swan flatly why she’d pushed for a public memorial to a daughter she’d rejected.

  “I never rejected her, only her choices,” Swan replied.

  “I grew up thinking she deserted me.”

  “Anyone who told you that was cruel and sadly mistaken.”

  “You let me believe it.”

  “I wanted to believe it myself. It was much less painful than admitting I drove her away and caused her death.” With that astonishing and brutal honesty she ended the conversation and refused to discuss my mother again. I was still working as a public defender in Atlanta then, and I cried during the entire four-hour drive from North Carolina.

  Now I rode the elevator past my mother’s crisply clinical memorial floor with my foot making a nervous tap and my hands wound in the strap of my shoulder purse. I had myself under control by the time I exited into a hallway. A sign pointed me to ICU. And there, sitting in a hallway wheelchair, a flowing blue robe covering her hospital gown, was Matilda.

  “My God,” I said under my breath. I rushed to her. “Darl,” she whispered, wrapping my slurred name in the damaged silk of her voice.

  “What are you doing out of bed?”

  “Waiting for you. And staying near her.”

  I got down on one knee and hugged her. She felt so frail. She was thin, with stark white hair and skin as easily torn as golden-brown tissue paper. “Where’s your room?” I demanded. “I’ll take you back right now.”

  “You will not. I promised her I’d come in with you. She’s been napping.” Every word was slow and tortured, but she looked determined. “They have her in one of those just-awful cubicles. She hates it. You know how dearly she loves her privacy. Let’s go see her. She’s been so worried about you.”