10 comments/ 12680 views/ 1 favorites Fiddler's Rest By: olivias "What is it? What's the matter, Meghan?" "That's a strange question to ask right after we've returned from Sal's funeral," I answered. "It's not Sal I'm asking about," Taylor answered. "Sal lived nearly a year longer than the doctor's gave him. He'd been reconciled with the inevitable and prepared for months." No, Taylor was right. I didn't mourn Sal Singleton, my literary agent. I'd talked with him several times in the last two months. I knew that this was a release for him—that he had been more than ready to pass on. So why was I so melancholy? It hadn't really occurred to me that I was—certainly that anyone else could perceive that I was. I was searching for an answer when Taylor distracted me with a flash of vermilion-red nail polish when she stood up and turned and leaned against the thin metal pillar between the two floor-to-ceiling windows of her office at Fabian Publishers. We were both left to our own thoughts momentarily as she gazed down seventeen floors to New York's Park Avenue. What I was thinking was how good Taylor looked in comparison to me. Her arm looked so thin as she raised it to her head and ran her fingers through her soft, but severely short, hair. She wasn't standing straight, but at a model's pose angle, all slimness and sharp angles in her tailored black business suit. I didn't hate her for it, but I resented the heck out of fate. I suddenly felt decidedly large and frumpy in my crumpled dark-gray Palazzo pants and black jacket over a black knit shell. Of course it hadn't been fair that this was essentially the only outfit in somber colors I owned and that I'd gone straight to the funeral home after an early-morning flight up from New Orleans, where I'd been researching my next book. I knew that pose; it was Taylor's "I have bad news to deliver" pose. And, so, I wasn't really surprised when she turned and picked up the manuscript—my latest submitted manuscript, the draft of my latest novel—and held it up with as few of her vermilion-tipped fingers as she could manage. "I don't mean Sal. I mean your latest offering, Meghan. My heart skipped a beat when I read the title, 'Misery Creek,' but I'm afraid it went a little cold when I discovered that the title quite fairly described the storyline." "Taylor—" I started to say. I'd dreaded this moment. I felt like I needed something new, something more serious and real—something not as shallow and happy go lucky as I had been writing. Something that didn't pretend. I was tired of writing about happy-go-lucky woman who were like me. It wasn't all that happy-go-lucky in real life. "This isn't you, Meghan," Taylor broke in. "I've been your editor through five best-sellers, and this isn't the Meghan your readers want. You are the author of hope for young women. You write Romance—books that give hope to women who feel they are being overlooked by love. Romance has happy endings. So, again, I ask what is the matter? It can't be Sal. The change here isn't just a lack of optimism. It's something fundamental to romance. Tell me, Meghan, how is the young man you've been writing me about—Bill Hamilton? I would have thought he would have come up to the city with you." Bingo. She had got it in one. She knew me better than I did. I hadn't let myself think of it to the depth she was, and I could not, in a million years tell her about it. Images of Bill on the front porch of his family's old Beaufort mansion that evening—the moss-covered southern colonial on the street named for his family in the oldest part of Beaufort, South Carolina, came to mind. I hadn't been expected. But I'd baked up several pans of blueberry muffins and then made the mistake of passing by a mirror—and suddenly I knew I wouldn't be eating these muffins and was trying to think of who would appreciate fresh muffins for their breakfast. That's how I found myself driving around the harbor from Fiddler's Cove to the old town. They hadn't seen me through the heavy foliage between the porch and the street, and I withdrew—in shock and despair—as soon as I simultaneously heard and saw them—both nearly naked, he on top of her in the porch swing, her slim, white legs wrapped around the small of his back, the muscles of his buttocks expanding and contracting to the rhythm of her moans. I didn't realize then who she was, but I worked it out on the numb drive home. Sondra Laurens, the owner of Sondra's Grille on Bay Street, facing the harbor park, was a beauty—and so slim and trim. I didn't stand a chance against her. I probably never had. I found through the pain of the memory, back to Taylor's office, where she was addressing the failings she saw in my book. "The manuscript starts off fine, but somewhere here, about page 230, there's a change. But it can be fixed." Taylor, good old, model-thin, perceptive Taylor, had obviously realized she'd put her slender, vermilion-red thumb nail on the problem of my life and of my manuscript and had continued on, not pausing for me to tell her how frigging perceptive she'd been. She was so perceptive that she knew the precise page I was working on when I'd baked those blueberry muffins. I looked on dully as she put the manuscript down and raised the trim black jacket from the back of her chair and began to put it on. "Changes?" I asked. "Yes, yes, of course. I can do changes—but Sal . . . I'll need to start making arrangements on new representation." "Oh, I don't see that you really need a literary agent anymore, Meghan," Taylor said with a breezy wave of her arm, as she moved around the desk, my manuscript now cradled in her arms. "You're part of the Fabian family now. We'll take care of you." She leaned down to my chair and put an arm around me and patted me on the shoulder with her hand and gave me what passed from Taylor as an encouraging smile. Then she stood and moved to the door of her office. "And now to lunch. I thought the Four Seasons—it's here in the Seagram's Building. And, of course, Fabian will pay. It's the least we can do for you being willing to drop by here when coming up for Sal's funeral on short notice." We were eating a lunch—a far more fancy lunch than I was used to in my hidey hole writer's retreat in the low country bungalow on Fiddler's Creek, and I'd been a good girl and stuck with a shrimp salad—when Taylor looked up and I saw the iciness in her stare and heard it in her voice as she answered the greeting of the man who was gliding across the restaurant floor to our table. "Hello, Taylor, you sleek panther. On the prowl again? And can this be a prospective lamb for you?" He barely brushed his hand by Taylor's, which seemed quite acceptable to her, and was sitting down next to me and turning all of his attention my way. It might have just been a designed ploy, but it worked a charm. I think I was lost to Donald Drake from the moment I saw him. "Ah, no, it isn't. I actually look at those jacket photos," he said smoothly, trapping my eyes with his. I'd had time, though, to take in his handsome, tanned face and that marvelous gray-white shock of studiously unkempt hair. He was a large man, but in height and solidity rather than weight. A fawn-colored jacket and a subtle, expensive-looking tie. A beautiful smile married to a square jaw and laugh lines. He must have been twenty years my senior, but he wore his years very well. "This can only be the elusive, intriguing Meghan Mason," he announced, using a tone that made me feel that all of the diners should be stopping their conversations and bowing to me in reverence. "Laying it on a bit thick, aren't we, Donald?" Taylor said, her tone even icier than before, if that was possible. "And Sal Singleton barely in his grave. But yes," she continued with a heavy sigh, "This is Meghan Mason. Meghan, may I introduce Donald Drake. He's a literary agent to a legion of midlisters. You may certainly listen to his flowery compliments, but do not mistake what he is after." Although she looked at me hard when she said the word midlister, I would have gotten the derision in her warning and the distaste in her attitude just by the way she said it. Drake didn't stay at the table long, but in the short time he was there, he was able to extract from me which hotel I was staying in and the fact that I didn't plan to return to South Carolina for another week or so—that I, in fact, still had some more work to do in New Orleans before I went home. And he did this so smoothly that it was only later that evening that I realized it had happened. When we were finished with lunch, Taylor suggested that we return to her apartment at the Lexington rather than go back to the office and that we begin hashing over her suggestions for a redirection of the ending of "Misery Creek"—immediately starting a brainstorming session on a change of title, which she declared was just too, too dreary. I have never had much of a head for liquor, and I didn't even ask what was in the drinks Taylor kept placing before me as we sat side by side on her settee in her postage stamp--sized living room and discussed the manuscript. It was only after I'd downed the third one and it was getting dark outside and I was having trouble focusing on the window where the lights of the building opposite were beginning to twinkle on one by one that I realized I was slightly tipsy. It was also at this point that I realized Taylor was sitting very close to me, very close indeed, and was smiling a wicked, vermilion-slashed smile and had a hand resting high on my thigh. She laughed a throaty laugh as I extricated myself in as graceful a fashion as I could—which I'm sure was country-bumpkin clumsy to the sophisticated New York City stick model that was the senior Fabian editor Taylor Winthrop—and fled, embarrassed and confused, from her apartment. When I entered my hotel room, the first things I saw were a bouquet of two-dozen yellow roses in a crystal vase and the blinking message light on my telephone. Don Drake and I were married in the small chapel of a Manhattan church I couldn't find now if my life depended on it a little more than three weeks later. I knew even then that I was escaping from something rather than to something—but I didn't know if it was from the heart Bill Hamilton had broken back on the Beaufort mansion porch or the insinuation of what Taylor had implied when she moved close to me in her apartment—and that I hadn't found that nearly as repulsive as I should have. * * * * I don't know why I was so apprehensive about bringing my new husband home to Beaufort, but I was, and I put that off. After a whirlwind honeymoon in New Orleans, where we stayed for three week, with Don insisting that I finish my research on the next book, we returned to New York and stayed in his small apartment. But it didn't take very long until I couldn't take the noise and bustle of city life any longer and had to get back to where I could write. My own New York apartment was on a quiet side of the building on street well away from Central Park. But Don had to be closer to hustle and bustle, so I rented out my apartment and tried my best—unsuccessfully—to do my writing in his. Taylor Winthrop had become cold to me and demanding for rewrites on a tight schedule when I had gotten married. Although I don't think it was the marriage that had hardened her as much as Don's insistence to take on my agent representation. Thinking back on it, I could readily see that Taylor was more interested in control and responding to Fabian's needs than in my interests and needs. I was happy, of course, that she had lost a more personal interest in me—but, even there, I couldn't help feeling like some door of opportunity had slammed shut on my life. Don wasn't much help to me, either. He wanted the rewrites done as well, and he spent little time in the apartment, saying he was leaving me alone to complete the work. But this just made matters worse. We were nothing like the happy, mutually amoured newlyweds I wrote about in my books and I held in my imagination. The sex, even on the first night, had been perfunctory, and although Don said nice things to me, I felt a distance between us from the very beginning. I began to worry that he didn't want me in that way—that I somehow had not provided what he had expected. But I hadn't hidden anything from him. I wasn't any more the plus-sized woman on the up side of her twenty-fifth birthday now than when he had courted me so lavishly and attentively. I was beginning to feel self-conscious and unworthy—no, I was beginning to feel more self-conscious and unworthy than I had felt before my marriage—and this, combined with the distractions of the city, was playing havoc with my writing. What I needed was my one unfailing, true love. I needed the steadfast part of my life that had cocooned me through best-seller after best-seller so that I now had no financial worries. I needed Fiddler's Rest. Fiddler's Rest was my pride and joy, and the advance from my first best-seller had more than been swallowed up in buying it. And the bulk of my second, meatier, advance had gone into renovations. I had visited Beaufort on a lark while traveling with a friend from Charleston, South Carolina, where we'd taken in the Spoleto music festival one spring, and Savannah, where I was looking for a location for a historical Romance I wanted to write. Julie had been one of my roommates in college. She was one of my steadier friends, and she'd come quickly to mind when I wanted to go on a sort of mutual "wipe him out of my system" open vacation down the southern Eastern seaboard. Both Julie and I had been unceremoniously dumped by our respective boyfriends, left over from our college days, and, by mutual consent, we were drowning our sorrows in shared misery, ice cream, and mind-numbing activities we could pretend were developing our cultural sensibilities. Thus, we had subscribed to the city-wide musical and theater festival in Charleston and immersed ourselves in culture for a full week. From there, we were spending a week in a waterfront condo on Hilton Head Island, where we'd overload on more ice cream and self-pity, and then on to Savannah, where I had rented a small apartment on one of the squares the city was famous for on a three-month lease. We weren't traveling just to forget the loss of male companionship—which in my case had never really blossomed into anything serious. I suspected that Julie had more to mourn in the department than I did. My boyfriend had ridden me so hard about my weight that by the time he told me he was moving on, I already had all of his things packed up and out on the doorstep in my mind. I was also on pins and needles about the "maybe" sale of a manuscript my literary agent, Sal Singleton, claimed he was about to land with a dream publisher. This was the third "maybe" for this manuscript, and I knew if I didn't get out of New York and do something to occupy my mind, I'd go crazy. Julie and I had taken the route from Charleston and Hilton Head that ran through the little waterside town of Beaufort, South Carolina, a sleepy antebellum village that had been the venue of more than one major movie filmed with the south as a backdrop. We stopped there for lunch, which we reveled in on the back deck of one of the main street (in this case, Bay Street) restaurants overlooking the harbor wall and the town's marina. Pizza and wine. Sunshine and water. Sailboats and small fishing trawlers gliding in and out of the harbor created by the bend in the Beaufort River. And slow, gracious southern hospitality. So we were beyond mellow already when the call came through on my cell phone from Sal. Fiddler's Delight had been sold, and the advance, at least in my mind, was astronomical. I was burbling my bonanza to Julie in unrestrained tones, when the waitress came by with our desserts. She had misheard what I was saying and said, "You needin' directions out to Fiddler's Rest, are you?" "No, sorry," I answered. "Fiddler's Delight. That's what I was saying. It's the name of the book I just sold." "Oh, sorry, honey," she said. "I thought maybe you were here to look at the old fiddler guy's house that's been for sale out on the cove." Just a misheard phrase. That's all it was. But that's all it took. While we celebrated with double-decadence chocolate desserts, the coincidence of names rolled around in my head. I liked coincidences. I followed the lead of a coincidence whenever I could, and I was bothered by a sense of uncompleted business when we left Beaufort. We drove on to Hilton Head with the old Mustang's top down under dappled sunlight glinting through the tree branches overhead on the sleepy coastal, but I couldn't forget the town of Beaufort and its connection to my good fortune. The thought kept surfacing that I usually didn't turn my back on coincidences. I believed in the power of coincidence, and in fate. I was an unredeemable romantic. I wrote historical Romances after all. Julie and I had walked the town of Beaufort after lunch, and the more we moved away from the waterfront, the more we were lost in the history of old Victorian and antebellum mansions on quiet streets lined with old oaks dripping in Spanish moss. This was a town of my dreams, and from the first night in Hilton Head, Beaufort was what I dreamed about. In particular, I dreamed of a specific massive southern mansion we'd seen on Hamilton Street. As Julie and I had walked, we had bantered make-believe histories back and forth of the intriguing houses we passed—a little game we'd played in college and that had helped me to move into writing novels. In the story we wove about the house on Hamilton Street, it had been the first one built there, the original plantation house that had slowly developed toward the river into the town of Beaufort. When we had passed that house, I had caught only a glimpse of a handsome young man standing on the porch of the house, and Julie and I had incorporated him into our story as the handsome young man with a tragic secret. The image of the young man didn't fade from memory as the stories we wove did. Later, in Hilton Head, he was there in my dreams—and so was a concept of a house on the river, a house called Fiddler's Rest. By Tuesday night, I couldn't take it anymore. On Wednesday I pushed a confused and mouthy Julie into my Mustang convertible and we were headed back to Beaufort. I'd looked up Fiddler's Rest on the Internet, so I knew exactly what Realtor to go to. I gulped at the asking price, but it was waterfront property, and my practical side, such as it was, had assumed it would be more. My advance, added to what I thought I could get from my postage-sized apartment in New York in a depressed economy, would just about cover it. The house itself was a big disappointment—at least from the outside. It was on a longish dirt and gravel drive off route 802 running south out of Beaufort and through the Port Royal Peninsula toward the remote Marine training base at Parris Island. The house was isolated and almost right up against a bend in the Beaufort River, looking back at the Beaufort waterfront. An unkempt lawn surrounding the house ended on two sides as a marshy fringe on the river and on the other two sides in sand-based scrub and straggly pines running back inland to and masking the main road. It was an old, squat, rectangular bungalow, sitting a couple of feet off the mossy ground on cinderblocks. The front porch was rickety, and my first thought was that it would have to be taken off the house by the next owner. The main structure was sheathed in old weather-beaten wooden siding that once had been white, and it had a rusting copper-green metal hip roof. The short side of the house faced the circular drive, with the longest side of the house, represented by a rusted and torn-screened porch, running the whole length of the house and facing north on the river. Fiddler's Rest I couldn't be sure, even in standing and staring at the house, whether it sat straight or listed a bit to the south. When the Realtor opened the door and let us in, the inside was a surprise. Most of the rooms were wood-paneled, dressed out like a more expensive house would be. And the house was bigger on the inside than it seemed on the outside. A front parlor flowing into a large living room through pocket doors, a separate dining room, and an add-on wing with a den at the end, with windows on three sides, all facing water. A kitchen and four bedrooms ran along the southern wall. There was only one, big bath, with ancient fixtures that would have to go—except maybe the claw-footed bathtub, if a separate shower stall also could be worked in—but my mind was already subdividing one of the bedrooms into a laundry room and a bath and walk-in closet for the master bedroom, which took up the southeastern corner of the building and had two window walls facing water. "I can't believe you are contemplating what you would do with this dump," Julie huffed when I let my thoughts of renovations of the fourth bedroom out of my mouth. "I know, I know, it's creepy, isn't it?" I said with a laugh. "I just always find myself fantasizing like that. I agree that it's impossible. It would take almost as much to fix this up—if it can be fixed up—as the purchase price. It was just a fantasy I was having, because of, you know, the name and the title of my book and all." "There's still time to get back to Hilton Head to make those dinner reservations at the Captain's Deck," Julie said, as she tugged at my arm, drawing me toward the front door. "Oh, you're interested in the name," the Realtor said. That stopped me. Yes, in fact the name was everything to me. The house itself was a disappointment. I wasn't even sure it could be saved. But as derelict as it was, I couldn't bring myself to thinking of tearing it down and putting a new house here. This one seemed too settled on the site. "The house sits on Fiddler's Cove out there," the Realtor said as she moved out on the deep, screened porch and drew me with her. "But both the cove and the house were named after a man who actually was named Fiddler rather than being a fiddler and who moved here from Beaufort and built this house after what they said was an ill-fated affair with a married woman. The woman was one of the Hamiltons from up at Beaufort. The man remained a recluse here, putting all of his effort into work on the house. It's rather a pity, I think, that the house has gone empty and unattended all this long. It has good bones." I knew the Realtor was only trying to make a house sale, but the house was getting under my skin anyway. However, I just could not afford to fix it up. True, that den at the end could be made into a perfect room for my writing. But I just could not afford the work that was required here. "Yes, it's a pity," I said. "I think it's just too far gone." "Good," Julie said. "Let's get back in the car and hightail it back to Hilton Head. I'm dying to tie into some crab cakes and marinate myself in a gallon of mint juleps." We made it as far as the front door, when we were caught up short by the appearance of a scene straight out of one my books. The hero had arrived on the scene. Or at least that would have been the way I would have written it up in one of my Romances. And quite a typical hero he was too. Long and lanky, with bedroom eyes and a sensuous smile. Dressed out casually in jeans and a pristine-white polo shirt, he was lounging languidly against the fender of a hunter-green Jaguar sedan. And the way he was lounging brought images flashing through my mind of the young man Julie and I had spotted on the front porch of the mansion in old Beaufort, and the man of my recent dreams. He was wearing casual loafers without socks, which made me fanaticize him undressed and sent chills down my arms. In my books he would have been consulting a map and looking lost, but in reality he was just leaning there, his hands neatly folded before him. "Hi, Bill," the Realtor called out in a voice that was dripping with honeyed wishful thinking. "So, you got my message." "Yeah, I got the message, thanks," he said. But intriguingly, he wasn't looking at the Realtor. He was looking at me—and with interest in his eyes. I was nonplussed by this. I wasn't accustomed to this. He was looking into my eyes rather than where I was accustomed to guys looking. I blushed and became disconcerted. I was the kind of girl guys ogled at chest height and then moved right on to liking me for my mind or simply to get their hands on a set of big bazooms if they grew to liking me at all. "Ms. Mason, this is Bill Hamilton, a Beaufort contractor," the Realtor continued. "I took the liberty of asking him to come over and give you some assessment on the house. He's quite familiar with the place. I know you're just here for the afternoon, and I thought it would save some time and effort on your part." "Um, thanks," I answered dubiously. "I'm sorry you had to come this far out of town, though, Mr. . . . it's Mr. Hamilton, isn't it?" I wasn't sure, as it seemed like I'd just heard that name in some other context. "It looks like the place is too far gone for my pocketbook. It's a pity, though, the setting is delightful." "Did you know you could see the lights of Beaufort from the porch here at night?" Hamilton asked. The voice went with the rest of the package, a smooth, confident baritone. And it revealed a good college education, probably someplace up north. This young Mr. Hamilton was intriguing indeed. And I wondered if I thought so only from the standpoint of a model for a character in one of my Romances or because my mind kept wanting to connect him to the dream I'd been having. "Does it?" I asked. "And good bones. It's got really good bones. I'd hate to see it slide any further—or to see it demolished. My grandmother told me that the original builder put his entire life into it." Hamilton. His grandmother. Ah so. I could see a storyline forming. And it made me turn and look at the house again with a good deal of interest and regret. If only it wasn't so run down. But as entranced as I was, hearing "good bones" spoken just as the Realtor had done set off alarm bells of locals putting one over on unsuspecting city slickers. "We really should be on the road," Julie muttered under her breath at my shoulder. "Fantasy hour is about over, isn't it?" Julie, ever the practical one. But that was one of the reasons I'd brought her along on this pity trip down the Eastern seaboard—to help give me some stability and to speed the healing. I turned and voiced my regret to the Realtor and thanked her for her time. Neither she nor the young man pressed me further, but they both gave me their cards—just in case, the Realtor said—and as we climbed into the Mustang, I looked around and saw Bill Hamilton, once more lounging against the fender of his Jaguar, giving me another speculative look. He was smiling a private little smile—as if he knew he hadn't seen the last of me. Our dinner at the Captain's Deck that night became yet another celebration—this time champagne in addition to the decadent dessert. When we returned to the condo in Hilton Head from the afternoon trip to Beaufort, another voice mail was waiting from me from Sal Singleton. He'd sold my second manuscript, right on the heels of the sale of my first. The contract already was inked for me to sign, and the advance on the second book was even larger than the first one. I was tipsy when we got back to the condo, but I wasn't so drunk that I couldn't read the printing on the Beaufort Realtor's business card. Over Julie's objections and admonishments, I rang through to the Realtor and put a bid in on Fiddler's Rest. I couldn't resist the call of the coincidence. My next call was to the contractor, Bill Hamilton, who responded, maddeningly, as if he'd known all along I'd be calling him to contract the refurbishment of the tumbling-down bungalow on Fiddler's Cove. I went to bed not caring that Julie had lectured me for two hours straight after I'd made those calls. I didn't care. For the first time in my life, strangely, I felt like I had someplace to go to that I could call home. * * * * "It's perfect," Don said. "That's the one we want." "It's beggin' for a sinkin'," Maddie said. "The Hamilton boy told me it weren't seaworthy. That it'd go down in a storm." "Bill Hamilton?" I asked. "He knows about boats?" "No, Jim Hamilton, his brother," Maddie responded. "He's the waterman of them two boys. He goes out fishin' for his supper ever day. He should know a boat from a shipwreck." Don gave Maddie a venomous stare. It was all I could do to keep them apart. Don looked for any excuse he could get to fire the housekeeper who had been a lifeline for me. I took another dubious look at the nearly twenty-five-year-old Seidelmann 30-T thirty-foot sailboat. It was nearly as old as I was., and it didn't look any too seaworthy to me either. But I knew next to nothing about boats. Don had once told me he was the same way, but he either had just been trying to humor me, or he'd developed a sudden passion for them. "You know we can afford something newer, Don—that I can afford it," I amended, as I knew who was going to pay for this. "No, I want this one," Don said, the stubbornness showing in his voice as well as his stance. "This one speaks to me. I like it. It's comfortable." "Oh, Lawd a mercy," Maddie sputtered, and she turned and waddled off the dock and up to the house to the domain she knew she could control. "That woman has got to go, Meghan," Don muttered. "You know I—" "You know we'd not be able to stay here without her, Don," I interrupted. "She just about came with the place and supervised the renovations. She's as much a part of Fiddler's Rest as I am now—as we are." I found myself continually bringing Don into the picture almost as an afterthought. He claimed he was comfortable at Fiddler's Rest, but I never could quite see him adjusting to this life, and he was always flitting back to New York, leaving the impression that he couldn't take the southern pace here for more than a week at a crack. This hadn't been at all what I thought a marriage would be. But I could easily see that it was my fault—that I disappointed where it counted most—in bed. His affinity for New York and the urbane over rural South Carolina was why it was so strange that he was insisting we needed a sailboat. I couldn't see him going sailing more than a couple of times a season—it just wasn't in his lifestyle. And we could easily hire a sailboat from the marina at Beaufort for those rare occasions if he wanted to claim he was a sailor. But he had been bugging me to buy a sailboat, and now he was insisting on an old one of questionable seaworthiness. Sometimes I just couldn't figure Don out. I had no trouble figuring out his attitude toward Maddie, though. They had been at tenterhooks from the day I brought him to Fiddler's Rest. I could tell that Maddie's response to Don was grounded in her preference for Bill Hamilton and her extreme disappointment that it hadn't worked out between Bill and me. But I didn't know what Don's problem with Maddie was—although it seemed that it wasn't just Maddie, but that he was making an effort to drive a wedge between me and all of my friends. He seemed to like it best when there was no one but him to give me advice. He had very nearly driven Julie off with sarcasm and criticism. He wanted me concentrating on churning out best-sellers. And he apparently believed I needed complete isolation for that—even from him much of the time. With him in New York sending me e-mails on doing this and that—and always working away on my manuscripts. And I don't know as I could disagree with that. I indeed needed my mind and time totally free to be able to apply myself to my writing. Sometimes I thought that was the only reason he pretended to like Fiddler's Rest—because this was isolation and quiet, and here I had turned out profitable manuscript after profitable manuscript until I was—we were—already quite wealthy at my young age. And since Don seemed to be right about this, I increasingly was demurring to his judgment. I found myself needing his approval—even when I told myself I needed to stand on my own. But Don would not get his way about Maddie. As long as I was at Fiddler's Rest and Maddie could still waddle down the lane from across Route 802—and as long as she wanted to put up with me—she had a job here. Maddie had appeared out of nowhere the day I settled on Fiddler's Rest at the lawyer's office in Beaufort and drove, alone, out to Fiddler's Rest and just stood there, scared out of my wits about what I'd just done and wondering if the structure would topple over on its own before my eyes. I had wondered who I was buying the place from, but only a lawyer showed up at the settlement. When I perfunctorily signed the papers, the lawyer the Realtor had gotten for me raised his eyebrows and asked if I didn't think I should read them first—and did I know that a codicil was attached? But all I could think of at the moment was getting it done and rushing out to Fiddler's Rest to assure myself that it was in better condition than I remembered. I would read the papers later. Fiddler's Rest didn't look a bit better than I imagined in the glaring light of ownership. In fact, rather the opposite. I had no idea what I had been thinking when I bought it, or just how badly I'd be taken by the smug contractor who had conned me into letting him renovate it for me. I was standing there, huddled against my car, my arms wrapped around my chest in an attempt to control my trembling, on the brink of tears, when I heard the rich low alto of a voice behind me. "It's a good house. It's got good bones." This didn't reassure me. Saying something had good bones seemed to be everyone's expression in this town for "you've been taken, city slicker." I turned to face the rotund little chocolate-colored woman with a calico dress and wispy gray strands of hair forming a halo around her fat-cheeked face. "It's a mighty fine house," she said. "Yer otter think about buyin' it." "I seem to have done that all ready," I answered. "And I'm not sure I put enough thought into it when I did." The woman's face was beaming now. "I'm the widder Maddie Johnson from across the highway. I'se been hopin' someone would bring this house back ter life." Then she gave me a stern look. "You ain't thinkin' of tearing it down and building one of those glass towers or log monstrosities the summer folks likes these days, are you?" "No, I hadn't thought of that," I answered. "I'd thought this house could be fixed up. But I don't know . . . I just don't know." Now that the place was mine, the bloom was off the charm of it, and I could only see rot and decay. And looking at it again, my worry was renewed that it was leaning a bit to the south. The woman was beaming now. "Yer outta get the Hamilton boy over in Beaufort to make it right for you. He's the best contractor around, and he has reason to love this place. Couldn't do better than that." "I'm glad to hear that," I said. And that had brought me my first real smile of the day and a sudden lifting of spirits. "Yes, very glad to hear that indeed . . . because I've already contracted Bill Hamilton to do the job . . . if that's who you were speaking about." From her satisfied look, I knew I'd identified the right contractor. "And you'll be needin' me too," she said. "The house is too big for you to take care of alone. I've served here before. You can't do better'n me, and I'll be cheaper than tryin' to get someone to come out regular from Beaufort." For some reason this wasn't even up for discussion. And I'll never know why I didn't even attempt to question her audacity. But she was right. I could never have gotten through the renovations and settled in without her. But from the moment Don returned to Fiddler's Rest with me, it seemed the two were ever on the edge of a world war. And on this day, as Don stared hard at the retreating figure of my saving angel, all I could think of was distracting his attention. And, so, we became owners of a less-than-sparkling Seidelmann 30-T sailboat. I sat there, docilely in the stern of the sailboat as it slowly moved from Fiddler's Cove back to the Beaufort marina under the power of a sputtering engine, while Don and the agent dickered pricing that was considerably less than I would have been willing to pay for a more serviceable craft. As we docked at the marina, a businesslike fishing boat followed us into the channel and pulled into a berth two docks over from us. My attention was arrested by the appearance of Bill Hamilton on the deck. He was busy moving coolers full of fresh fish, which must have come from a full day's trawling out in the St. Helena Sound. I watch him as he worked, remembering how my hands had moved along those firm muscles of his arms and along his back as he lay between my legs in my bed at Fiddler's Rest, the windows open to a cross breeze that made the curtains flutter in rhythm with his strong, deep movement inside me. Feeling loved and wanted, no hint of shame of a body that would charitably be referred to as Rubenesque. His tongue and lips on my navel; his head burying itself between my pendulous breasts and kissing me deep in the cleavage there. When he looked up now and saw me, however, his face was blank. He looked right through me, as if he didn't even know me. But he hadn't just looked through me when I'd come back to Fiddler's Rest—a week before Don arrived there—coming early so that I could be assured that everything in the house was in order for my new husband. And, yes, apprehensive of an unpleasant encounter with Bill. He had been waiting for me in the driving circle in front of Fiddler's Rest, leaning on the fender of the hunter-green Jaguar just as he had done on that first day. But this time he was tense and seething with anger. "You married," he blurted out in anger, his voice incredulous, accusing when I climbed out of the Mustang. He didn't move from where he stood, however. My eyes flickered to the house, and I saw Maddie standing in the front door. And that gave me comfort. I knew she wouldn't let this get out of hand. "Yes," I said. Just that and nothing more. I moved to the trunk of the car, opened it, pulled my suitcase out, and set it on the gravel. "But why?" he asked, his voice more wounded now, defeated, deflated than angry. "You and I. We—" "You know why, Bill," I said in the most even tone I could manage. "It wasn't just you and I. It was her too." "Her?" he asked. And if I hadn't seen him on his porch, making love to Sondra Laurens with my own eyes, I think I would have bought his confused little boy look. "Go back to Beaufort, Bill," I said. "Go back to her. I can't take the lie." I climbed the steps to the front porch and Maddie opened the screen door, welcoming me into my own house. I half expected to feel his hand on my arm. And I know if he had touched me, I would have collapsed into tears. But when I reached the top of the steps to the front door and turned around, I saw that he was still there, standing against the Jaguar—almost collapsed against it, though, looking at me with eyes full of hurt and, to me at that moment, deception. He was doing a magnificent job of looking confused. Maddie took my suitcase, and I followed her into my bedroom. When she turned back from setting the case on the bed, her lips were pursed and she had a confused look on her face to rival Bill Hamilton's, but she could clearly see that I was close to the edge of holding myself together, and she just silently slipped past me and into the kitchen. Fiddler's Rest When I came out of the bedroom and moved to the living room window overlooking the drive, I saw that Bill was gone. And I hadn't seen him again from that day until now, when our eyes met across the docks at the Beaufort marina. But I could see that I was dead to him now. He acted like I wasn't even there, that we'd never made love, that he'd never seen me before. And I never felt so sad and struck with loss as I did at that moment. * * * * I couldn't fault Bill Hamilton for the job he did in renovating Fiddler's Rest. Throughout that summer, he was on the site constantly, directing the work of an army of subcontractors and in the thick of every project himself, whether it was swinging a hammer or lovingly buffing the wood-paneled walls to a high shine. And the quality of the work was superb and the materials he was using were of such high quality that at some point I began to question whether I would be hit with an impossibly high overcharge at the end—although when the bill came, it was on the dime of the estimate. My apartment in the city sold quickly, and with nowhere better to go, I moved down to Beaufort while the work progressed on Fiddler's Rest. I found a great B&B right on Bay Street, the Cuthbert House Inn, which overlooked the river, and where I was given a room with a desk in a turret, where I could sit and tap away on my computer and watch the sailboats drifting in and out of the marina to my heart's content. The writing went very well, but the closer I came to the completion of my next manuscript, the more restless I became about the work out at Fiddler's Cove. The house was shaping up now and was becoming a true gem. Each day I was more grateful that I hadn't had it demolished. I couldn't wait to take up residence there. I took to rushing my writing and review work in the morning so that I could drive out to the construction site in my new Volvo convertible and watch the men at work. I found, increasingly, that I was there to watch Bill Hamilton at work. He worked feverishly and with what I thought was total concentration on getting the finest craftsmanship out of his workers—and himself—that he could. He worked stripped down to his jeans and construction boots, and after a few sessions of following the movement of his bronzed, well-muscled torso around the construction site, I began to wonder if I was coming to watch the progress on the house or him. When I was honest with myself, I knew it was him. As the summer progressed, I found myself coming to the site earlier each day, so that it wasn't long before I was there before the workers broke for lunch. Most of them left the site for their midday meal, and then I was mostly watching Bill Hamilton. It took a while before it dawned on me that he wasn't breaking for lunch with the others. And so, I began bringing a lunch for both of us and making him stop to eat it with me. We'd go back near the riverbank in a grove of trees to the southeast of the house. And while we ate, with the food I brought spread out on a blanket, we'd talk. He'd tell me stories of the locals in Beaufort and of the town's history. His family had been here forever, and Bill was able to look on the ways of the townspeople and their foibles and dignity with humor and grace. It was only when we approached talking about his immediate family that Bill's face clouded up and he became reticent. I quickly learned that the subject was not open for discussion, and I wondered what pain or tragedy resided in that. I, in turn, told Bill of my work. I was pleased that he didn't belittle or minimize that I wrote for a living or what I wrote—that I wrote mainly uplifting books for lonely women. Rather he talked to me of underlying themes in stories and showed that he understood the universal truths I strove to bring out in them. He treated my themes with respect, and I found that he was able to help lead me into insights in the manuscript I was then working on that would help me to make it better and the various threads of the story to take on more significant meanings. Neither Taylor nor Don were able to bring my best work out of me that Bill could within the space of an afternoon's lunch out on the riverbank. And, amazingly, Bill seemed to take interest in me as a woman. There was never a reference to my plumpness or any crass reference to the size of my bust or my hips. No leering or suggestive phrasing. And that was all fine, but, increasingly I found myself wishing that there was some of that. I was interested in him as a man, although I kept telling myself that he was in a league far above me—the sort who would date the homecoming queen or the captain of the cheerleading squad—not the plump and buxom girl sitting in the corner and weaving her stories of fantasy lovers. And so I was ripe for that Tuesday morning when I arrived with a bottle of wine, several wedges of cheese with crackers, and a vegetable tray—to find the site deserted. Or so I thought at first. A truck was in the drive when I pulled up, but there was no sign of activity. Only then did I remember that the crew had been given the day off because there was a regatta festival that day, and every strong arm that could hold a sail steady in the wind was being put to the test out on the river. But there was a truck parked in the drive, so I thought that maybe someone was here. I called out, but there was no response. I entered the house and found him there—Bill—standing on the porch, where the old, rusting screen had been pulled off and the new screening had not been strung yet. Just standing there and looking out at the water. "This has been my favorite view since I was a child," he said, not turning toward me as I entered the porch from the house, but somehow knowing I was there—and that it was me. "A child?" I asked as I came up beside him. "Yes, my father used to bring me here—the place was deserted even then—and we'd just stand here and look out into the river. But he'd never say anything, and after a while he'd take my hand and lead me back to the car and we'd drive home. He'd never mention the visit to my aunt or to my grandfather, who was living with us then—or, rather, we were living with him—in the big family home on Hamilton Street. And somehow I knew I wasn't supposed to mention it either. And so I never did. When Dad died, I stopped coming. I don't know why. But I never forgot being here." "So, the house means something special to you, does it?" I whispered. "That's why you are restoring it so lovingly." "Yes, I suppose it does," Bill answered after a moment of silence. "But I can't quite grasp why. I just know I was as happy as I could be when you bought it and agreed to renovate it rather than tear it down—and let me do the job." "I know how you feel about it," I said. "I have grown to love it more and more each day, as you have brought it to life for me. It has brought both of us—you and me—something to love." Bill turned and looked deeply into my eyes at that more. "More important," he whispered, "It has brought me someone to love. If only you—" I lifted my trembling fingers to his lips and shushed him. And then, not believing either that I was doing it or that he was letting me, I took his hand and led him out to the grove. Once there, I turned and dropped his hand and moved my shaking fingers to the buttons of my top. I was lost to him the moment his hands cupped my cheeks and his lips sought out mine rather than either going directly to my breasts. What followed was unlike any lovemaking I had ever experienced before. He lowered me to the blanket, the same one we'd put in place for all of the luncheon meetings here over the past couple of weeks, and his hands moved everywhere on my body. Opening and loosening and releasing. And I was open to him and to his roving hands, finding and molding to every mound and crevice of me, centering, centering, until his fingers possessed me while his mouth captured my muffled moans and I began to move with him—on his impaling fingers—shuddering and exploding with the mere touching of his fingers. Then and only then did his lips go to my nipples and his hands to my hips, and he was entering me. And the waves of passion began crashing all over again, and I was lost in his glorious taking and giving. Hours later he was gone and I was still sitting on the edge of the dock, humming to myself and trying to decide if my life had ended or only was beginning. I had never opened to a man like this before, and I felt like dancing and laughing and, at the same time, like crawling under a rock in shame. "A breeze is coming in from the sound, honey. You need to put this sweater on, or come inside." I turned and smiled a wan smile at Maddie as she put the sweater around my shoulders and went down on her haunches on the dock beside me. "Oh, Maddie, thanks . . . I—" "He's a good man, girl." "You saw?" I wanted to scream, but it came out in a hoarse whisper. "Maddie sees everything, girl. No worry; I've seen this comin' for weeks. He's a good man. He isn't like this just for his own fun. He connects you with this house. And any fool can see how much he loves this house by the love he has put into restoring it." "He says he came here in his childhood and he can't remember why." "He said that, did he?" Maddie said. And the little catch in her voice made me turn and look into her face again. She looked a little confused. Then, as I watched a small smile curled into her lips and there was a gleam in her eye. "Yes, I guess he might have remembered such visits at that." "What is it, Maddie?" I asked. "What is it that you know about this place that Bill doesn't? You tell me you see everything." "It would mean tellin' you the story of this house and of its builder," Maddie said. "You never asked about the history of the house or how it came to you. I thought maybe you jus' wasn't curious about that." "Not curious? How do you figure that, Maddie?" "Did you read the papers you signed on the house and the codicil that came with it?" Maddie was looking at me hard now. I was embarrassed. I never had read them; I'd just put them in my safety deposit box and hadn't bothered to read them. "No, I'm sorry. Everything was such a blur at the time. I didn't read them when I signed them, and I guess it just slipped my mind." "Well, I'se been sorta wonderin' about that. I sorta thought you just didn't care." Her voice had a hurt tone to it, and I put my hand on her forearm and said, "I'm sorry, Maddie. It was just an oversight. Please tell me what you know about it." The old woman sat there, a pensive look on her face. "But if you'd rather not, I understand," I whispered. "No, it ain't that I don't want to tell you, Missy. I'se jus' not sure where to start. OK, here goes. I think you been told about this house bein' built by a man named Fiddler—his name was Will Fiddler." "Right, I remember that." "And that he came out here because of some botched affair with a woman in town. A high society woman." "Yes." "That woman was Aida Hamilton, Bill and James Hamilton's grandma." "Oh, now that you mention it, I do remember the double reference to Hamiltons." "Well, the affair didn't really stop there," Maddie continued. "That Aida Hamilton come out here whenever she could get away. And Will Fiddler lived for jus' three things in life: makin' this house ever bit as nice as the house Aida had in town, the visits from Aida, and makin' Aida's visits as long as they could be." Maddie paused for a moment, and I saw that her lips were pursed, as if she didn't know whether she should go on. "The rest of this isn't very nice, Missy Meghan. I'm not sure you want me to go on." "Please, Maddie. Don't stop now." "Well, that Will got what he wanted eventually. Aida came out here on one of her visits and jus' didn't return to town. And when she didn't return to town, her husband got together some friends of his and they come out here in the dark of night with torches and guns and stuff and took her back. And when they did that, they also beat that Will to within an inch of his life. But that weren't the end of it. A week later, Aida broke free and came back out here. And that same day she and Will got on his old sailboat right here at this dock, and they sailed out into the sound into the arms of a squall. The bodies came up on the rocks down near the tip of Port Royal a few days later. No one could ever say if they was tryin' to go somewhere else or if they rode into the storm on purpose." "How awful," I said. "And I guess that's why Aida's son, Bill's father, brought him out here when Bill was a boy. And I guess it's why Bill feels such an affinity to the place. That's all obvious from the attention he has given the restoration. But I wonder why he let the house run down, why he didn't just buy the house himself and restore it." "You should read that codicil, Missy Meghan. Especially as it applies to you too. The Fiddlers put a stop on any future sale of Fiddler's Rest to a Hamilton. It was the only payback they were able to make for what Will had gone through. Bill Hamilton couldn't buy the house. He may never have known the full story why he couldn't, but he only had to go to the courthouse to find out that he never could own it. I imagine watchin' it deteriorate as it did was punishing him some, seein' as how it was built to honor his grandma. And I guess that's what the Fiddlers wanted. Well, most of them, least ways." "And how do you know so much about the paperwork on the house, Maddie? I know you say you see everything, but you certainly seem to know more than anyone else about this." "Well, if you'd looked at the papers on the house sale, you might of been able to figure it out, Missy." I looked at Maddie again, and her eyes were laughing, as if she were about to spring a joke. And there was only one joke I thought she could spring. "You. It was your property I bought," I said. "Yep," Maddie said. She said it with a grin, but then her eyes dimmed again and her lips were compressed in a small frown. "I owned it, but Lawd knows I couldn't afford to keep it up, and I was hopin' for years some angel would come along and save it. And she did." "Thanks, Maddie," I murmured, and I started to rise from the dock, but Maddie placed her hands on me and held me there. "I ain't finished," Maddie said. "I've said this much, so I might as well say the rest. What's in back of me owning the house is at the bottom of why the story of Aida and Will was such a tragedy. I held the property because Will Fiddler was my grandpa. The love between him and Aida Hamilton was the worst sort of taboo that could be in these parts at that time. A black man and a high-born white woman. And that's probably why Bill and James have never been told the full story. Their dad would have been old enough at the time to know, and he probably loved his mother so much in spite of it all that he came out here to be near her. But the family's shame of mixin' the races would have been just too much for any Hamilton to talk about, even within the family." We sat there for several moments in silence before I finally spoke. "Thank you for telling me, Maddie, but I don't suppose I'll ever tell Bill of it." "No, I don't suppose that would be too wise. But he's a good man, Missy Meghan. I don't think he'd hold any truck with this mixin' of the races being scandalous even if he knowed the whole story, but I don't this it would do him good to know of the trouble within his family. That Bill Hamilton, he's a good man. I doubt any woman could do better. I hope you won't stop seein' him." "No, I don't suppose I'll stop," I answered in a whisper that I knew she could hear—but just barely. * * * * The following fall and winter were both heaven and hell for me. Fiddler's Rest was heaven—by September it was finished. I was moved in, and Maddie was organizing the furniture and me, protecting my writing time from anyone and everyone demanding my attention. All except Bill Hamilton. Maddie couldn't refuse Bill anything, and she continually said he was good for me. I didn't even pretend to disagree with her—I saw Bill as heaven too. But I had never been in a relationship like this before, and I couldn't bring myself to believe that it was real—that Bill was paying attention to me for me. The man was gorgeous—everything a woman could want. And being desired by a desirable man hadn't been my lot in life. It was probably a defensive mechanism that I had started fantasizing stories of women like me getting the hero; my vivid imagination was my best friend in that regard. And disbelief in truly being desirable to Bill wasn't my only reservation; there also was Fiddler's Rest. His love for Fiddler's Rest had come out so strongly that I had to protect myself. I had to acknowledge the very real possibility that it wasn't me he was interested in at all, but having access to Fiddler's Rest. I had to consider that he surely knew of the codicil that kept him from ever owning the place, and, given his love for the place and the impossibility of owning it, that the next best thing for him was to cozy up to the one who did own it. "He's a good man," Maddie would say stubbornly each time she quizzed me on why I was distancing myself from Bill a bit, why our relationship, as warm as it was, seemed to be on hold. "He wouldn't do that. It's you he's interested in." "I'm sure you're right, Maddie," I would say. "I'm sure I'm being silly. I just need time. This is all so new to me." And Maddie would give me that hard look of hers and say, "Bill Hamilton isn't no gold digger, Missy Meghan. You just go on up to his house in town and look around, and you'll know that he don't need none of your money." But this was rather beside the point. It wasn't that he might want my money that held me back; it was that he might want Fiddler's Rest and that courting me was the only way he could get it. "And, besides," Maddie continued, "if he just wanted to use a girl to get at the house, he could have courted me when I had Fiddler's Rest." I had to look away to stifle a giggle on the image of that, but Maddie saved me by launching into a snorting laugh herself. Maddie's cajoling aside, I couldn't bring myself to discuss this with Maddie except when she brought it up. She had already declared for Bill Hamilton. She was an easy woman to talk to—on every subject but Bill Hamilton. I just couldn't believe she was objective on that topic. "What you need is a girlfriend, someone your own age you can talk to and giggle with," Maddie said out of the blue one day. "What I need to do is to finish these proofs and get them back to the publisher," is what I said. But my heart was aching. I realized that this was exactly what I needed. I even dialed Julie's number in New York. I knew this was her busy season at the advertising agency, but I felt that if she could just come down for a week—or a weekend even—I wouldn't feel so alone with my concerns. And Julie had always been my steady hand anyway. I'd trust her to take a look at the situation and Bill and to tell me the truth. God knows she'd seen me through the two most serious relationships I'd ever had—and in each case she'd declared my boyfriend a bum who would not stick with me. And she'd been right on both counts. But when I called, I found out that she was on assignment in Europe—too far away and too busy to help me. It wasn't only the concern in the back of my mind motivating my "take it slow" attitude with Bill that concerned me and drove Maddie to distraction. I sensed that Bill was reticent too. He was affectionate—God, he was affectionate—and attentive to me. But he seemed reserved as well, and a little sad too. I asked Maddie what was behind this, but she was evasive and claimed not to see it. Her evasiveness didn't fool me, and I decided that if she wouldn't discuss it, it must be something that didn't show Bill in a favorable light. And this is probably what made it much easier to believe he was just toying with me when I ultimately saw evidence of it.