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

to love it, too.”
    “And did she?”
    His mouth twisted. “No.” He shrugged. “She’s from Boston, so I probably shouldn’t have brought her in the summer. She couldn’t stand the heat or the bugs or the smell of the marsh. Or how casual and shabby everything is allowed to get here. We were supposed to stay a week and we ended up leaving after two nights.”
    I felt personally affronted at her dismissal of my beloved island, knowing where the flaw lay. A distant memory of my father and me brushed through me, and I turned to Finn. “Did you take her to see the sunset? When my father was home and the weather fine, we would watch it together. I don’t think there’s anything else on earth more beautiful than an Edisto sunset.”
    “I did. Aunt Bernadett gave us one of her sweetgrass baskets with a bottle of wine and two glasses and sent us out to go watch. But the mosquitoes wouldn’t leave Harper alone and we were back inside before the sun had even begun its descent.”
    The image of his ex-wife being bullied by mosquitoes made me want to laugh, and I had to bite my lip and look away.
    “Are you laughing?”
    I shook my head, although by now I couldn’t hold it in, and an unladylike snort came out of my mouth. I looked up at him, mortified. But he was smiling and I felt myself relaxing again.
    “It was a good bottle of wine, even though I ended up drinking it by myself.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    “Me, too.” He opened his car door and stood while I turned off the ignition.
    The sun was directly overhead, the heat pricking my skin. But a breeze stirred the tall grasses like the breath from a ghost, and I felt light-headed for a moment, remembering my father in this place. With the house gone, it was almost as if he’d never existed at all.
    We walked toward the creek, the ruins of the old house behind us. The chorus of insects rose and whirred, the staccato sound of the cicadas keeping tempo for the rest of the band. For a long time after moving from the island, I’d had a hard time going to sleep with the silence, missing the night music of the marsh.
    “It’s beautiful here,” he said, turning his face into the breeze. “I wonder sometimes how different things would be now if I’d grown up here instead of in Charleston.” His hair at his temples and at the back of his neck had darkened with sweat, and again I had to work hard to reconcile this man with the cool and crisp Mr. Beaufain. It was as if two souls lived within his skin, separate but not. But maybe everybody was like that, all of us living the lives we had to while dreaming of the lives we wanted.
    “What a great spot for watching the stars at night.”
    I cupped my hand over my forehead to shade my eyes as I looked up at him. “And at your aunt’s house, too, I would guess.”
    He nodded. “I used to have a telescope in my bedroom at their house, but I brought it with me to college. Then things got in the way and I didn’t have time anymore to study the sky. I don’t really remember what happened to it.”
    I wanted to be an astronaut.
    His words came back to me and I found I couldn’t look at him, afraid that I might see the disappointment in his face, afraid I’d see my own reflection.
    A blue heron flew overhead, its wings seeming to mock us humans, with our clumsy feet, who had to rely on planes to make us airborne. I wondered if watching the shorebirds was what had once made a little boy stare up at the sky and dream of reaching the moon.
    “Why did you want to come here?” I asked.
    His eyes were sharp and clear as he assessed me, and I had the feeling that he’d been waiting for my question. “Aunt Bernadett once brought me here—we snuck out while Aunt Helena was at one of her meetings for the historical preservation society. She brought me here because she wanted me to see the ruins. And because the last time she’d been there, she’d heard something that she’d wanted to share with me.”
    He paused. “We