Read Online The Time Between by Karen White - Free Book Online Page A

seemed like music, a symphony of words, the lilting cadences and rounded vowels the notes. Sometimes if I pressed her really hard, Lucy would speak in Gullah, but only if we were alone where nobody else could hear. I once asked her why she was so reluctant, and she told me it was because Gullah is the language you cry in.
    I remembered that as Finn and I drove away from Luna Point, with its dark rooms and the lonely old woman. Her accent wasn’t as strong as it had once been, as if the ocean’s waves had weathered the harsh consonants like a battered shore. But I wondered if she thought in Hungarian, and if it was the language she still cried in.
    “So, what do you think?” Finn asked, his eyes nearly translucent in the glare from the sun.
    “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” I kept my eyes focused on the road ahead, feeling his steady gray gaze on me.
    “I still want to hire you, if that’s what you’re asking. I just want to make sure you’re still interested. I know Aunt Helena didn’t make the best first impression.”
    I nodded, making the turn onto Highway 174, passing the landmarks of my childhood, prominent on the landscape like bookmarks in my memory. “I have a sister, too. And I understand her pain.” I paused, remembering something Helena had said. “But I think there’s something more than grieving for her sister. Like she doesn’t want to be here anymore. Do you know what I mean?”
    Without looking at me, he said, “Yes.”
    I waited for him to say more, but we rode in silence, the air heavy with the scent of salt water and marsh. “Show me your house,” he said suddenly. “Where you used to live as a girl.”
    I braked in surprise, throwing us both forward. Pressing my foot on the accelerator again, I asked, “Why?”
    He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Never mind.” He rubbed his hand over his jaw, as if suddenly uncertain, and I was once again struck by how different he was here than at the office. There, dressed in dark suits and a serious demeanor, he was confident and unapproachable. Except now I’d seen his eyes when he spoke of his daughter and had seen his boyhood room with the model rockets and paper airplanes. I was beginning to learn that there was much more to Finn Beaufain than the person he usually allowed most people to see.
    “I’ll show you. It’s not there anymore—it got hit by lightning in the late nineties and burned to the ground. It was on Russell Creek, near the Brick House ruins. We rented the house from the family that still owns the ruins. I used to think it was the most wonderful place in the world and I’d never see anything more beautiful.” I was silent for a moment, thinking about the years following my father’s death, and of the house in North Charleston that was filled with silent accusations and stale penance and where music never played. “I still do,” I added, surprised I’d spoken aloud.
    We drove in silence down Highway 174 to Brick House Road. Just before the gates with the NO TRESPASSING sign, I turned left on a dirt road. We traveled a short distance until I saw Russell Creek and stopped the car, letting the engine idle. “Have you ever been here before?” I asked, nodding toward the distant skeleton of the old mansion, its missing roof and windows like the mouths of baby birds in a nest waiting to be fed.
    “A few times,” he said, and then was silent for a while, so I thought he was done speaking on the subject. He unbuckled his seat belt, and then, staring straight ahead, he said, “I brought my ex-wife to Edisto right after we were engaged, to meet my aunts. I hadn’t been back since I’d finished high school, and I’d never been allowed to explore the island, so I thought it would be fun to discover it with Harper. It’s funny, really; I’d only ever known such a small corner of Edisto, but I’d loved it. It’s what I always thought of as home when I was away at school.” He paused and looked at me. “I wanted her