FIVE.

THE SANDS OF PAWLEYS.

ALL through the night, the air in my bedroom nearly crackled with my annoyance. It was as though my body was producing its own heat lightning, flashes of warmth and the heavy stillness that followed. The hours passed as I tangled and smoothed out my sheets. The ceiling fan clicked, feeding my mood with each rotation. The pillows radiated under my neck; the hair at the nape of my neck was damp with perspiration, and no matter how I rearranged and replumped the pillows, I couldn't get comfortable. I was having a rough night.

If Rebecca's situation was what I thought it was, my fury was going to torment me into the next century if I couldn't do something about it. And why? Why did I care? I thought about it for a while. What had I been doing with my life? Becoming more and more useless to anyone, that's what. Hedonistic. Self-serving. In perpetual denial. Cowardly. What happens to a woman with infinite blessings-good health, plenty of resources, a reasonably sharp mind, decent looks-what happens when she drops off the face of the earth to her entire past and begins again in a tiny magical kingdom like Pawleys with no demands on her time other than the ones she arranges herself? When she has no responsibilities other than to feed herself, dress herself, be witty and pleasant and pretend that her friendship with an aging gay man who owns a gallery is enough to sustain her? When she has no challenges other than improving her handicap?

I'll tell you what happens. She gets bitter. Dull. She smolders in her self-inflicted pit of insignificance. Smiles for the outside world and is miserable inside-that's what she is. A phony. And then one day, along comes another dumb-ass like herself and she sees herself in the dumb-ass's face. She's not Narcissus admiring her own reflection in the water. No, the recognition she has fills her with self-loathing, and she is compelled to save the other from drowning.

Rebecca was unaware of the nearly insurmountable despair that would follow her to the end of her days if she allowed herself to comply with her expulsion from her home and her children's lives. It was the only thing about which I was certain. Life has a way of wrenching your heart. No one escapes trials. Rebecca didn't understand the weight of accepting this wretched fate imposed on her and that it could ruin her soul beyond recognition.

Indeed, these days I hardly recognized myself.

Rebecca was a nice woman-I was pretty sure about that. Her husband was a philandering, lying, abusive, manipulative, asshole-I was pretty sure about that too. But her timidity and insecurities were going to leave her in extraordinary pain for the rest of her life because nobody, including her, had been brave enough, and certainly not noble enough, to see the truth.

A man wants a divorce? Big deal. It happened every day of the week. I say, go have your divorce, but for the love of God please try and be a gentleman about it? Please? Don't manipulate the children like a puppet master and turn them against their own mother. Don't make them sign papers and scoot them off to camp without the mother even knowing what transpired.

I called Rebecca the next morning at eight o'clock, which seemed to be the earliest you could call someone when you wanted to chat over mounting an offensive.

"Hey! You up?"

"Yeah, I was just getting ready to go walk on the beach."

"Want company?"

Rebecca paused and then said, "Sure. Why not?"

"I'll be there in ten."

I drove to Litchfield thinking about my own heavy rocks in my sack. That was the worst feature of getting involved with Rebecca's mess. Dealing with hers might force me to face mine. I wanted to avoid that in the worst possible way. Whenever I felt a little introspection coming on, I just whacked thousands of tennis balls and golf balls, trying to forget.

My cell phone rang. It was Huey.

"Morning! Where are you?"

"Actually, I'm on the way to Rebecca's to take a walk on the beach. Want to join us?"

"Me? Exercise? Do you want me to ruin my reputation? No, but thank you. Listen. Do you have a moment?"

"Just about one. I'm pulling into Litchfield right now."

"Well, Abigail. I've been up all night worrying about that child. You know we have to do something, don't you?"

"Who?"

"Well, obviously it's you."

"Huey, I was up most of the night as well. I don't want to get involved in this, this awful business. I'm retired."

"It scares you, doesn't it?"

"Hell, no. Nothing could scare me after what I've seen in this world."

"Humph. You can say whatever you want, but I think her trouble falls under the headline of man's inhumanity to man."

"When a couple wants out of a marriage, they can do terrible things to each other."

"When you know someone's being hoodwinked, you are just as guilty if you don't say something about it."

"We'll see. I don't have enough information yet, Huey. And it's not like she's asked us for help. If anything, our little questions annoy the daylights out of her."

"I suppose. You coming in this morning?"

I knew what that meant.

"Want a Coke?"

"And a sausage biscuit?"

"I'll see you around ten."

"You're an angel, Abigail. An absolute angel."

I didn't feel like an angel at all as I pulled into the parking lot of Rebecca's building and got out. She was sitting on the bottom step, tying her sneakers.

"Let's go," she said.

"Okay."

We crossed the dunes, and as always the spectacular sight of the wide and long stretch of beach made my heartbeat quicken. The blue sky was clear with the tiniest shreds of white clouds stretching out just above the horizon. Flocks of seagulls flew in formation overhead, and scattered pelicans slowly circled and then dive-bombed into the waters, catching sushi. Hundreds of little sandpipers darted to the edge of the shore, digging for periwinkles, and scurried away on the arrival of each foamy wave. The water sparkled under the rising sun and the salt-scented eastern breeze blew our hair away from our faces.

We began to walk in earnest and talked now and then about safe topics-the day, the view and so on. She told me about Claudia Kelly, her plastic surgeon friend from Atlanta. This led us to discuss the many sins of the media and how it hyped public opinion that women over forty were finished unless they got a surgical overhaul.

"The number one reason men leave their wives is for a younger woman."

"How come you know so much about divorce?"

It seemed like the moment to give her some background information on myself, hoping she would feel more comfortable to talk about her disaster.

"I'm an attorney," I said. "I was a senior partner in the largest matrimonial practice in South Carolina. Until I quit."

"Oh? Why did you quit?"

I stopped, leaned to put my hands on my knees and breathed deeply. Rebecca stopped too, waiting for me to answer. If I thought I had the right to grill her about her private life, then was she not entitled to the same privilege? I considered it and then decided I would tell her.

"My son died. My husband died two years later. I needed to reorder my life. It was a lot to take. It still is."

"Oh! My god, Abigail! I am so, so sorry. Can I ask what happened?"

"Sure. My husband went into the hospital for knee replacement surgery. When he was in college, he played football for Carolina and tore up his knees so many times that he had to...Well, we're all familiar with the agony and the ecstasy and so forth. Anyway, he was too heavy, and while he was under the anesthesia, he had a heart attack. They couldn't revive him. He was only forty-seven."

"Good Lord! That's awful! And your son?"

"Car accident. He was twenty. That's the worst. Yeah. Ashley was just twenty. My beautiful boy. My only child."

I choked up and struggled to regain my composure. Rebecca didn't know what to say. What could she say? Only what everyone usually managed to sputter...

"Oh, Abigail! I am so sorry!"

"Yeah, well, thanks. That's the story. I can't stand around and see people I like be taken advantage of. It's my perpetual lawyer gene or something. I'd give anything to have my husband and son back. Anything. So I'm thinking that if I can't have mine, maybe I can at least see if it's possible to do something about what's happened to you. That's why I have been asking so many questions, I guess. Besides that, I guess Huey and I probably are a couple of busybodies."

I started walking again. Rebecca followed, working to keep up pace. I took a number of deep breaths. I hated to talk about Ashley. If I just kept the story to myself, if I didn't say the words, then maybe it wasn't true. Maybe it had not all really happened. Maybe Ashley was home with John, watching a ball game. Maybe I was just on vacation at Pawleys for a few weeks or months, in some kind of limbo that would keep me from the reality of my horror. Stolen lives. Death. So final and unbelievable that it was impossible to accept. If I didn't look at it, think about it, talk about it...I could stay sane. I worried that if I lingered around it too much, I might be in danger of something happening to me. Something just as final, to relieve my pain.

Over the last three years, there had been so many winter nights at Pawleys when, surrounded by darkened houses, I would go to the dunes in my bathrobe, stand under the milky moon, under the wild stark sky of deep night, and scream like an animal until my throat was raw. There was no one to hear me over the roar of the waves and no one to stop me. I had begged God to help me, with no response. I begged night after night until I came to understand that what had been taken from me was permanent and there was nothing to be done about it.

It was my therapy. If the remembering in the day was too hard, I could promise myself the reward of a night of releasing screams. I finally realized that it was how I spent the rest of my life that mattered now. You can't bring back the dead-unless it's Alice Flagg. The days and nights that numbered the rest of my life were laid out before me like steppingstones, a path to where? More sorrow? It didn't matter I had to just keep going. All those realizations put on a plate in front of me to inspect, and I believed they were true, I still carried unbearable sorrow. Truth did not heal, and to date, neither did time.

Rebecca had been done a bad turn but at least her family was still alive.

So I walked on, my pace harder and my feet sinking deeper with each step. My breathing was uneven, and I knew I was on the edge of falling apart in broad daylight, right there on the beach. If I did, there was no reason for her to have any faith in me or my ability to help. I felt her hand on my arm and I slowed down and stopped, looking down at my sneakers. One of them was untied and I knelt to retie it.

"Abigail?"

"What?"

"I don't think you're a busybody. Or Huey."

"Thanks."

The ocean was at half tide and rising. Soon there would not be enough beach for us to walk. If I didn't move, my running shoes would be soaked in salt water by the small but threatening waves that raced ahead of the tide. Warnings. I had ignored too many all my life. I stood to face Rebecca.

"Let's go get Huey his Cokes and sausage biscuits."

"Okay."

I knew she thought I was a little manic. First, I had called to see if she wanted a walking buddy, and within minutes of beginning that walk I had begun to skirt that dangerous part of my psyche. My mood changed so dramatically that I frightened myself. It was time to put my monsters back in their closet. No one wanted to see them.

I waited while she changed clothes, and then she followed me to Sam's Corner. I ordered six bottled Cokes and four sausage biscuits-one for her, two for Huey and one for myself.

I followed her to the gallery. Just the short distance from the car to inside where Huey waited was enough to break a sweat. In the span of time it took us to drive from the beach to Huey's, the temperature and humidity climbed so much that the thick air was wet like a sauna. If I had known the name of the person who invented air-conditioning, I would have sent the genius the most outrageous and spectacular orchid in captivity.

"Huey? Breakfast is here!"

"Bless you! How are we this gloriously tropical morn?"

"Practically growing moss under my fingernails," I said. "Other than that, I'm great." I opened the bag and Huey opened the Cokes.

"Morning, Huey," Rebecca said.

"Morning, sweetheart." He handed her a Coke, and she said, "No, thanks. Refined sugar. But thanks."

Huey clutched his heart and gasped. "Mah dee-ah! Surely you are merely lacking in understanding of what food of the Gods truly means! Besides, you're too skinny."

"I even got one for myself," I said when I saw Rebecca's face pleading for a bailout. "Eat."

"Oh, fine," Rebecca said. "Fine."

Rebecca ate in silence, picking up errant crumbs with the tip of her unmanicured fingers and depositing them back on the waxed-paper wrappers. Huey and I chatted about the inane-how delicious dinner had been the previous night, how well Miss Olivia seemed and once again about how successful the opening had been. I watched Rebecca from the corner of my eye. She was having trouble swallowing, but then that had always been the problem with biscuits and sausage. Thick, hot, crusted dough and a greasy, tough sausage patty-delicious, but a difficult combination to work through, even when life was perfect. Poor Rebecca, I thought as Huey went on and on about the daily grind of running a chic art gallery. She took a sip of her Coke, and Huey stopped her.

"Rebecca? Co-Colas are intended to be chugged, not sipped like Madeira. Ah, Lord! When I was a young rascal, my father would pile me in the car and take me to Marlow's store. Now it's Frank's Restaurant. And in those days, it was really something. Marlow's had a great red cooler filled with freezing-cold bottles, all hung inside by their necks, like the doomed, on this little metal track. The bottom of the cooler was filled with ice water. Anyway, Mr. Marlow would say to my father, I see you've come for your Coke! He would push back the top, slide two bottles along the track, liberate them and pop the tops with the church key he kept attached to the cooler with a piece of string. My daddy would throw back his head and drain the Coke without a breath."

"Chugging anything is considered an art form by most Southern gentlemen," I said.

Rebecca giggled and continued picking up bits of crust and biscuit. Then she wiped her hands, picked up her bottle and took two large swigs. "Satisfied?" she said.

"It's a start," I said. "Frankly, except for these early-morning chugalug fests, I usually have mine in a glass over ice. My mother would roll over in her grave if she could see me consume anything straight from a bottle. Historically, Southern ladies don't do this kind of thing."

"Well, Miss Abigail, I'll have you know that this little bottle has more than a footnote in history. Did you know it was invented in 1915? It was made this way for several seriously artistic reasons. First, the grooves on the sides are supposed to resemble a cacao pod. And its color..."

"Get comfortable, honey," I said to Rebecca, well within Huey's hearing. "His sermons can go on for days."

"Shush!" Huey said, mildly irritated. "Its color was meant to enhance the brownish liquid to make it appear black like coffee, thereby broadening the market appeal to adults and children alike."

"Most days I prefer an espresso," I said, "but when it's this hot..."

"It becomes the perfect coffee substitute!" Huey said, beaming. "I must say, though, there is no substitute for how the bottle feels. I mean, seriously, ladies, would you prefer this lovely little perfectly balanced jewel against your lips, or one of those nasty ragged plastic bottles?"

"Well, that is a good poi-"

"It's rhetorical, dear," I said to Rebecca and rolled my eyes. Honestly! Sometimes she was exasperating. All that naivete? "Yes, Huey darling, it's like drinking from Stueben."

"Oh, go kiss a goat's fanny," Huey said. He blushed and turned to Rebecca. "Forgive me, Rebecca, but sometimes our Miss Thurmond gets up on the wrong side of her duvet."

"Sorry."

Huey puffed himself up. "That's not the issue. The issue is chicken walking."

"What? What's that?" Rebecca was mystified once more.

One more puff and he said, "Chicken walking is what hens do in a chicken yard-they peck around and around. That's what we're doing here. I've known Abigail Thurmond long enough to know when she's upset. So, before the entire morning slips into the hands of the Lily Pulitzered decorators searching for the perfect painting to match a divine blue and yellow plaid couch, may we please-just us three-may we have a word about Rebecca's situation?"

"What is there to say?" Rebecca said, shifting her weight and wrapping her arms around herself.

"I could make a phone call," I said, wondering again if I really wanted to get involved, much in the same way a diver changes his mind in a midair jackknife.