Carolina Mist Read online

  Knowing how you loved this house, it is fitting that it should pass from my hands into yours. I know I can rest in the peaceful assurance that you will care for it—and for any dear and gentle spirit you may encounter here—as best you can, as I have done.

  I remain, as always, your loving Aunt Leila

  Abby’s eyes stung as she understood for the first time how much her visits to Cove Road had meant to Aunt Leila. They had not shared tea on a Sunday afternoon since the year Abby graduated from college. For five years, the old woman had waited for her to return, and in each of those five years, Abby had disappointed her.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Leila, I’m so very sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t think I realized how much you loved me.”

  3

  “How much do you want for everything?” the young woman repeated.

  Abby hesitated. It had cost twenty-five hundred dollars, this stylish piece of nubby white upholstery. And the round glass tables had cost half that. Extravagances she had, once upon a time, been able to afford. The prints on the wall—some of them originals purchased from students at the Philadelphia College of Art—had been indulgences. Should she include them as well?

  “Four thousand dollars,” Abby looked at the woman who would sublet her apartment and tried not to blink. You had to start someplace.

  “Does that include the artwork?”

  “Yes.” Abby wouldn’t have included it if the woman hadn’t asked.

  “And the bedroom furniture as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know.” The woman strolled around the apartment as if taking inventory. “Four thousand dollars…”

  “Nothing is more than two years old,” Abby pointed out, “and, as you can see, everything is in pristine condition.”

  “Okay. I’ll bring you a check the morning I move in,” the woman said as she headed toward the door.

  “Which will be…?” Abby was pleased. She had expected to negotiate.

  “The fifteenth of November.”

  “Not good.” Abby shook her head. “I have to be out on the first.”

  “Can I drop off a check that morning, then? On my way to my office?”

  Abby winced. The woman spoke with the same air of confidence she herself, until recently, had once had.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask for cash.” Abby realized she would have closed out her bank accounts by the first of November.

  “Fine.” The woman took one last look around at the apartment and its furnishings.

  As soon as the door closed between them, Abby danced a silent arabesque across the living room before grabbing the morning paper and dialing the phone number she had earlier circled in red.

  “Hello… I’m calling about the ad you had in this morning’s Inquirer? For the Subaru station wagon? How many miles does it have?” She sat on the floor and made notes on the back of an envelope. “And how much were you asking? Yes, I am interested. Where is the car? Oh. No, I’m sorry, I have no way to get there… you would? Great. Yes. This afternoon would be fine.”

  She doodled on the envelope for a few minutes, contemplating the steps she had taken. With the contents of her apartment sold, she would be free to take a job anywhere, once she had tended to her affairs in Primrose. With the money from her furniture, she could buy a small car to take her where she had to go. A station wagon would permit her to take her clothes and the few personal belongings she would keep. After she sold Aunt Leila’s house and its contents, she’d have more than enough money to take her time finding the right position, and then some. She stood and stretched, buoyed by her prospects. Feeling more content than she had in a long time, she decided to follow an impulse and venture out for a rare afternoon walk.

  Abby stopped to purchase an ice cream cone from a sidewalk vendor before idly wandering with no particular destination in mind. It had been days since she had left her apartment, and she savored the fresh air, filled with the crisp promise of deepening autumn. The leaves that peppered the sidewalks leading through Rittenhouse Square rustled in the light October breeze and crunched beneath her feet. She sat on a bench in the sun to lick at the strawberry streams that slid down the sides of the cone.

  She had never, she suddenly realized, really known this city she had called home for the past nine years. In four years of college and five years of working and living on her own, she had never made the time to explore its haunts or its historical treasures, had never found its heart. Abby’s sole focus had been her career. Period. She had never developed friendships, had never made a social life to speak of. There was no one even to say good-bye to, no one to care that she was leaving. She had had few women friends in college, fewer still at the office. Those she had known at White-Edwards always seemed to view her as an oddity. She was the one who always worked late and took unfinished items home to work on even later. She would work on weekends, rarely sparing time for a night out except for those few occasions when one man or another had managed to get close enough to ask her out. No one had interested her enough for her to see more than a few times. Certainly, none of them had lit so much as a spark in her.

  Memories of her sixteenth summer tugged playfully to be recalled. As if she had forgotten the summer she and Alex Kane had discovered each other as more than childhood playmates. They had spent hours biking along the back roads, winding slowly through the fields and woodlands, taking their time, talking about school, their dreams, their futures. Alex would be a lawyer, a criminal defense lawyer, a true Perry Mason. Abby would be an artist, painting the Carolina countryside and finding fame and fortune in the pricey galleries in New York City. And always they would return to Primrose—and each other. They had taken long walks along the river, holding hands and learning how to kiss. They had acknowledged their everlasting love for each other that summer and had experimented with more than kissing before the second week in August arrived and, with it, Abby’s parents.

  Abby dragged the toe of one shoe through the hard dust in front of the park bench. That was the last truly happy time of my life, she thought.

  She tried to recall which of them had been the first to stop writing, but she could not be certain. She had auditioned for and won the lead in the junior play that fall, and Alex, as starting quarterback for his high school football team, had had a busy season. Before too long, it was June, and she had anxiously counted the days until they would meet in Primrose. It had never occurred to her that a time would come when he would not be there for her in summer.

  How bizarre, she thought with a wry smile. Alex set the standard by which I’ve judged kissing since I was sixteen, and he’s never been bested.

  Not that I’ve had much time for such things, she reminded herself as she stood and started across the square. I imagine that romance can take one’s focus from one’s goal. Working hard, getting ahead, is the only way to attain security. If my father had worked more and played less, things would have been different.

  But, ever the gambler, Harold McKenna had played fast and loose with the market for eighteen months. Confident that his latest little deal would turn a huge and speedy profit, he had invested every dime he had, as well as far too many he’d borrowed, and had lost everything. On the heels of Harold’s sudden financial decline—the news of which Harold had not yet shared with his wife and daughter— death had cheated him of the opportunity to try to recoup his former wealth. And so, in the blink of an eye, Abby had gone from being the beloved daughter of a wealthy investor to being a penniless orphan.

  She had sometimes wondered how her father, who so doted on her, who provided her with every luxury, would have felt had he known what his gamble had cost her. Each time, she had all but felt his pain.

  Harold may have made some foolish decisions where his finances were concerned, but he never, never would have knowingly placed Abby in such a predicament. He simply had not expected to die.

  She poked along solemnly, all too well aware that her own hard work, single-minded as it had b
een, had not insulated her from financial disaster.

  That’s different, she argued with herself. I didn’t fritter away what I had. Okay, I could have saved more, hut if you want to move in executive circles, you need to dress like an executive. And besides, I didn’t expect to lose my job.

  And my father hadn't expected to die.

  Still pondering the quirks of fate, she failed to notice the woman who stood in front of her building until she had all but walked over her.

  “Oh… I’m sorry,” Abby mumbled, walking around the woman and heading for the steps.

  “Excuse me.” The woman held out her arm. “Do you live here?”

  “Yes,” Abby replied.

  “I’m looking for…” She fumbled with a piece of paper. “Abby McKenna.”

  “I’m Abby McKenna.” Abby eyed her suspiciously.

  “I’m Debbie. You called earlier about my car.”

  “Oh, yes. I’m so sorry.” Abby apologized for her tardiness. She had lost all track of time.

  “Well, that’s it, across the street.” Debbie pointed somewhere down the block.

  “Which one… the red one?”

  “Yes.” The woman nodded, and they dodged cars as they crossed the street to take a look.

  Cherry red, five years old, gray cloth interior. It looked fine.

  Debbie handed her the keys. “Take it for a ride.”

  “You do drive stick, don’t you?” Debbie asked as Abby started the engine.

  “Stick?”

  “Manual transmission… the kind with a…”

  Abby hit the gas pedal, sending the car into a sort of forward lurch. The engine promptly died.

  “…clutch.”

  “Oh. Right. Of course. Stick shift,” Abby said dumbly. “Sorry. I used to know how to do this…”

  She restarted the engine and tried again, this time making it to the corner before the car stalled again.

  “Sorry. I, ah, haven’t driven in a few years.”

  “You do have a license?” Debbie asked nervously.

  “Yes. I kept renewing it, thinking someday I’d have a car again. I just haven’t needed one, living in the city. I walk to work.” Abby was more nervous than she’d expected. “At least, I used to walk to work… damn, I keep forgetting about the clutch…”

  Abby pulled into a parking spot in front of her building after an excruciatingly long five-minute drive around the block.

  “I’ll take it,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” Debbie’s eyebrows rose halfway up her forehead.

  “Yes. It’s just what I need.” Abby returned the keys with a grin.

  “Aren’t you going to ask about the mechanics?”

  “Well, it seems to be in good shape. I mean, anyone could tell it’s been cared for,” Abby said quickly. And the price is right. All this sucker has to do is get me to North Carolina. One way. I can sell it down there and fly to wherever I decide to go from there.

  It would take most of the remains of her savings, but she’d make that up when Jane, the new tenant, paid her for her furniture. She and Debbie came to an agreement quickly. The car would be brought back to her on Friday, when they would transfer the title. Abby skipped up the steps.

  Her course now set, Abby spent the evening going through her closet to pack up clothes that no longer fit. She’d lost weight since last winter, she realized, holding up a blue pin-striped suit she’d purchased in January. She caught her reflection in the mirror. Her face was gaunt and her color more pale than usual. Too much stress, she told herself.

  Abby finished cleaning out her closet, carefully hanging in quilted garment bags those few suits and dresses and good slacks and blouses that still fit. Her few casual outfits—sweat clothes and two pairs of jeans—would travel south in her suitcase. She had boxes for other items, and she fervently hoped all—her Calphalon cookware, her collections of old perfume bottles and cookbooks, and two small boxes of well-played Motown tapes—would fit in the back of the small car along with her PC, her 20-inch television, VCR, and small CD player. She bagged her discards for the homeless shelter six blocks away. Highly pleased with her efforts, she stood back and surveyed the stack of boxes.

  “Thank you, Aunt Leila, for loving me.” She spoke aloud with all the reverence some might reserve for prayer. “Thank you for remembering me in so generous a fashion. Thank you for giving me options. Thank you for forgiving me for having stayed away so long.”

  4

  The first of November could not have been more gray. The sun struggled to break through sullen clouds—themselves gunmetal gray in a bleak sky—barely dispelling the fog which wrapped around the city in an insistent tangle of wispy arms. Abby finished loading boxes into the car, having dropped the backseat to double her cargo space, carefully fitting her clothes and the boxes between the electronics before tucking the envelope filled with cash from the sale of her furniture into the glove compartment. She leaned over the front seat to root through a box, looking for some tapes of old favorites to keep her company as she drove.

  After popping the Four Tops into the tape player on the dash, Abby started the engine and, without a backward glance, pulled into the morning traffic and headed for the interstate. Once she was on I-95, the city’s skyline rose, shaded in mist, on her right. To her left, the Delaware River flowed choppy and muddy green. She drove past the exits to Veterans Stadium and the Spectrum, neither of which she had ever visited. Just beyond, the flat-roofed warehouses of the food distribution center opened their wide doors to the truckers who would transport produce all across the metropolitan area. A few of those trucks were already competing for her lane of traffic. She pulled to her right as the first of the tractor-trailers sped past on the approach to the huge double-decked bridge that spanned the Schuylkill River. Planes almost close enough to touch seemed to float past on their way to the airport just to her left.

  Beyond the city limits now, Abby accelerated and moved into the passing lane to go around a small red pickup with Delaware plates. The City of Brotherly Love, along with all her dreams of corporate bliss, was lost in her rearview mirror, shrouded in the haze of a misty early-autumn morning.

  She stopped in Delaware for breakfast and, later, had a leisurely lunch in Virginia. She’d expected to be in Primrose by dinner but zigged into North Carolina where she should have zagged, somewhere in the vicinity of the Great Dismal Swamp, and wasted an hour trying to get back onto the right road. A friendly restaurant across the street from the county courthouse in Elizabeth City served up wonderful crab cakes, a fresh salad, and a warming cup of coffee. Fortified, she set off on the last leg of her journey.

  It was shortly after nine when she exited the highway, following, with a certain caution, the signs to the darkened road that led to Primrose. Though in her youth she’d known every bump on every road for ten miles in any direction, years had passed, and she was no longer definite. Overhead lighting was virtually nonexistent on this approach to the small town, and memory told her that there were at least two sharp curves somewhere ahead. The acres of dense woodland on either side of the narrow road seemed to close in on her, and she momentarily wished she had waited until the following day to make this last leg of her trip.

  The first curve was upon her before she had time to brake for it, sending the Subaru into the opposing lane, which, fortunately, was unoccupied. She returned to her side of the road and slowed to a crawl, recalling that the next curve would be almost ninety degrees to the right. She all but crept into it, then sped up, knowing it would be a straightaway into the center of town from that point on.

  Driving into a small town after it has closed for the night gives you the oddest feeling, she thought as she passed through Primrose proper. The sidewalks were long deserted, the stores long darkened, their proprietors having gone to their homes hours earlier. The old-fashioned street lights which hung from poles every thirty feet or so on either side cast an eerie glow on the shop fronts.

  “Rolled back the side
walks at dusk” was coined to describe Primrose, Abby mused as she passed the silent storefronts. Slowing slightly, she peered through the darkness at Mr. Foster’s General Store, which appeared just as she remembered it. On past the Primrose Cafe, where the townfolk traditionally gathered for their early-morning coffee, and the hardware store, where one could purchase everything from string and thumbtacks to lawn mowers. And that was Primrose proper.

  Or was, when I was a girl. Looks like maybe a few more shops than what I recall.

  The new gas station at the corner of Harper and Cove Road took her by surprise, and she almost missed the turn. Ever more slowly, she crept down Cove Road, past the house where Aunt Leila’s friend, Mrs. Lawrence, once lived, past the old Matthews place, where Aunt Leila’s best friend, Belle, had lived.

  Guess she’s gone now, too, judging by the tricycles there by the front porch.

  Abby pulled to the side of the road and parked in front of a structure that, in the darkened hush, appeared less than hospitable. She turned off the motor and the headlights, took a deep breath, and opened the car door. Standing in the middle of the road, Abby focused on the magnificent building that loomed before her.

  Aunt Leila’s house, built by Thomas Cassidy’s grandparents in the 1830s and subjected to expansion and renovation by successive generations, rose imposingly from behind overgrown rhododendron which obscured the entire front porch and vast portions of the second floor as well. Only the wide front steps, which seemed to stick out from the porch like the tongue of a sassy child, emerged from the darkened facade. The entire house huddled in a dreary silence, the windows of the top two floors shuttered tightly against the world without. It was—had always been—an imposing sight. Now, wrapped in the opalescent glow of mist from the river that flowed behind and beyond, the house was downright spooky.

  Abby approached the long path that led to the porch with a certain amount of circumspection. As quietly as the night had settled around her, she followed the path to its end, then tentatively planted one foot on the first step, which sagged with a faint whoosh, no louder than an exhale, beneath her weight. The handrail was wobbly when she reached out for it, and the floorboards creaked as if in pain as she tiptoed toward the front door, where she stood almost expectantly before reaching for the knob.