The Women of Bayberry Cove

Louise pictured the mousy woman with the shoulder-length gray hair neatly pinned back from her forehead with two barrettes. A New Age lady? Well, why not? Louise looked at the mattress and box springs and the “nearly new” plaid sofa she had bought from Suzie’s shop the day before, and another explanation came to mind. “Maybe she’s just thanking me for buying a few things.”

Jamie ran his hand over the surface of the dresser and picked up the sander again. “Maybe. She would do something like that—quietly leave a candle without expecting recognition. She’s a nice woman.”

The origin of the candle solved, Louise returned to her struggle with the first of three windows that looked over Main Street. After scrubbing for ten minutes with the vinegar solution and following up with industrial strength glass cleaner, she was finally able to see the sun dappling the sidewalks in the square across the street. She yanked another batch of paper towels from a roll and feverishly wiped the stubborn glass with a circular motion. “Just have to eliminate a few more streaks,” she huffed, “and then a bird with a bad case of cataracts might actually knock himself silly trying to fly into this place.”

“For the love of Saint Pat, Louise,” Jamie said above the steady whirr of his sander, “you’d better quit now before you rub a hole in the glass.”

“Jamie’s right, Lulu. You’re taking out your frustration on the window.”

Louise laid her forehead against the nearly clean pane and sighed. “You’re right. I still can’t believe I didn’t notice the name Fletcher on that lease. Four days ago, if I’d had a client who’d done something as stupid as sign a document without reading it carefully, I’d have seriously considered not representing him.”

Jamie looked at Vicki and was unsuccessful at hiding a grin. “And what difference does it really make now? You have a place to stay at a reasonable rent—the only place available, as I see it. Why do you care who owns the building?”

“But they’re so smug,” she said. “Wesley practically crowed when he told me that his family owns this building.”

“They own Buttercup Cottage, too,” Vicki pointed out. “And that didn’t bother you when you thought you could rent it.”

“That was yesterday, before I knew them.” She gestured out the window, where people in the square were now visible through the sparkling glass. “And that old guy over there…Mason Fletcher. Now that I think about it, he was smug, too. And I can just imagine Haywood. He’s probably more smug than the rest of them.”

Jamie hunched a shoulder in a sign of agreement. “Smug, clever…there’s a fine line between the two if you ask me. You have to be clever first in order to justify being smug. And as for your signing the lease, my advice is to forget about it. You’re on vacation from lawyering, so you might as well relax and enjoy yourself.” He walked to the middle window and with his fist cleared a three-inch circle through the grime so he could see the street below. “Bayberry Cove is a really nice little town.”

Louise let out a long breath and followed his gaze. It was Sunday morning, and families had gathered on the square. Fathers pushed children on swings and women chatted on benches.

“Yes, it is,” she admitted. “And you’re right. I’m going to relax just as soon as I get this place clean. And right after you tell me how old man Fletcher got all his money.”

Jamie went back to the bureau, picked up a piece of sandpaper and began smoothing the edges by hand. “That’s an interesting story,” he said, his words a soothing accompaniment to the rasp of the paper. “Mason was in his early twenties when he took a small inheritance his father left him and traveled from Bayberry Cove to Arizona. He invested in a silver mine out there with some other fellas, and as luck would have it, they uncovered a rich vein that gave them each a good stake for their futures.”

Louise dipped her rag again and attacked the middle window. “So he came back to North Carolina and bought Bayberry Cove?”

Jamie chuckled. “Not all at once. He made his real fortune in patents. Sold one to Henry Ford that revolutionized the assembly line process. And then, bit by bit, he started buying up property around here and dabbling in various ventures. He built Buttercup Cottage in 1935 for the love of his life, the woman he married.”

Louise stared down at the old man under the oak tree. She wasn’t surprised to learn a romantic soul lurked behind his knowing blue eyes. Smugness aside, Mason Fletcher had a soft spot. “Who was she?”

“An Arizona gal. He married her out there and took her away from all that soaring rock and desert and brought her to the sea. They say she loved being on Currituck Sound, and Buttercup Cottage was his gift to her on their second anniversary.” He stopped sanding and looked first at Louise and then at Vicki. “He called her Buttercup. He was a man very much in love, apparently. Still is, twenty-some years after her death.”

“Haywood was their only child?” Louise asked.

“The only one who survived the polio epidemic of the late forties,” Jamie answered. “Haywood had two younger sisters, twins. They both died.”

Louise watched as Mason Fletcher rolled a colorful plastic ball toward a group of children in the square. “That’s sad.”

“And Haywood only had one child—Wesley.” Jamie blew a film of sawdust from the top of the bureau. “Can’t say he didn’t try for more, though. He’s been married four times—which is why he shies away from wedded bliss today,” Jamie added with a hint of bitterness in his voice.

Louise resumed scrubbing. “So Haywood is quite the ladies’ man as well as a renowned legal mind. I can’t wait to meet this paragon of Bayberry Cove society.”

“You will meet him,” Vicki said. “The only woman in his life now is Jamie’s mother, Kate.”

“But didn’t you tell me that Jamie’s mother works for Haywood?” Louise asked.

“We said ‘used to,’ as in she used to be his housekeeper. Now she’s a bit more to him than that.”

“Yeah, but not his wife,” Jamie said with that same edge of rancor in his tone.

Louise spritzed a generous amount of cleaner on the window and began rubbing it dry. As the solution evaporated, a group of men standing on the sidewalk in front of the Bayberry Cove Kettle came into her view. There was no mistaking the tall, lean figure waving goodbye to the others and heading across the street. She quickly cleaned a larger section and watched Wesley Fletcher walk toward his grandfather. “Speaking of the Fletchers, the youngest one just appeared on the square.”

Vicki levered her pregnant body off the chair. She stood beside Louise at the window. “Is that him? Is that Wesley?”

“In the flesh.” Louise admired the stretch of a snug T-shirt over his chest and his muscled thighs extending from a pair of gray jersey shorts. “Or the next best thing to it, anyway.”

“Ohh…” Vicki’s one syllable rolled into several seconds of blatant admiration.

“Don’t stare at the poor man, ladies,” Jamie said from the middle of the room. “You couldn’t be more obvious.”

Vicki laughed. “You’re just jealous because there’s someone in Bayberry Cove who is nearly as good-looking as you are.”

“Maybe a little,” he admitted. “But Wes is a good friend. And he’s the town’s favorite son. He was born and raised here and all the locals followed his exploits through the naval academy and beyond. I’m content to stand in his shadow as the adopted son.”

Louise drummed her nails against the pane. “I wonder why he’s not married.”

“He was, once,” Jamie said. “To a girl he met while he was at Annapolis. She was a journalist in Washington, a couple of years older than him.”

“What happened?”

“She went her way, covering stories around the world, and he went his, to wherever the navy sent him. Tough to make a marriage work under those circumstances. They divorced after a few years.”

Louise drew her friend’s attention back to the window. “Look, he’s a runner.”

Both women watched as Wesley stretched his legs and arms. He jogged in place a moment before taking off around the perimeter of the square.

“He runs a few times a week when he’s in town,” Jamie said, adding that he started the regimen at precisely the same time each day. “Now get away from the window and give the man his privacy.”

“No way,” Louise scoffed. “He doesn’t want privacy. He’s running in the middle of the town square!” Determined to raise the window, which probably hadn’t been opened in a decade at least, she struggled until old paint finally cracked and the glass slid upward with a stubborn hiss. She waited for Wesley to sprint around to the street side again and then leaned out the window. “Ahoy, Commander,” she yelled. “Good morning.”

He looked up, shielded his eyes. “Good morning to you, Louise,” he called. “How are the new digs?”

“Couldn’t be better,” she said, propping the window up with a yardstick.

He tossed her an offhand wave and jogged around the corner. Louise continued to watch. His legs churned with nearly effortless grace. His arms pumped rhythmically at his sides. He was all fluid, powerful motion, an image of focused elegance. She nudged her friend. “So, what do you think?”

“Oh, you’re right, Lulu. I’ve never seen a man more outrageously…” Vicki fumbled for the right word and glanced over her shoulder at her husband “…sinfully smug in my life!”

Louise hooted with laughter. “See? I told you. But on him it does look good.”

LOUISE’S APPROACH TO LIFE in Bayberry Cove was characterized by good intentions. First, she intended to take Jamie’s advice. Once the apartment was in good shape, she’d kick back, relax, read a few good books. She’d definitely brightened the day of the owner of Books by the Bay when she’d walked out of the shop Monday morning with ten novels.

Second, she intended to stay a little bit angry with Wesley Fletcher. It was the safest way to combat a growing attraction to the good-looking ex–naval officer who seemed to be popping into her thoughts with alarming regularity. A man who lived his life according to regimens and schedules wouldn’t complement Louise’s more flamboyant style. More importantly, she wasn’t staying in Bayberry Cove for long. Two months in this town was the only interlude she meant to have from her real life.

And last, she definitely intended to avoid legal matters of any kind. She was in the South, where everybody understood that the livin’ was easy, and she was going to return to Oppenheimer Straus and Baker bathed in an aura of mint-julep cool if it killed her.