The High Tide Club

Brooke shot to her feet, nearly knocking the chair backward. “I think I’d better be going. I don’t need money badly enough to be insulted this way.” She reached for her briefcase and her pocketbook. “I suggest you find somebody else for this particular assignment.”

Teeny and Tiny, sensing her hostility, went on the offensive, jumping down to the floor, bracing themselves on either side of their mistress’s chair, yapping loudly.

“Don’t be foolish,” Josephine snapped. “I didn’t mean to wound your pride. I just wanted to learn more about you.”

Brooke’s face was hot. “I don’t appreciate your insinuation that I’m some sort of harlot.” She would have said more, but she hadn’t been raised to disrespect her elders. Even elders who were as loathsome as Josephine Bettendorf Warrick.

“That’s not what I meant to insinuate at all,” Josephine said. She scooped the dogs back up into her lap, stroking their heads soothingly. “I just wondered if your son’s father is part of your life—that is, does he provide financial support? Does he see the boy?”

“He doesn’t need to be part of our lives,” Brooke said. “Henry and I do just fine without him.”

“Is this man even aware that he has a child?”

The smaller of the two dogs arched her neck and began licking Josephine’s chin.

“No.” Brooke still had no idea why she was submitting to this deeply personal line of questioning. Maybe it was because she’d become immune to the intrusive questions asked by strangers who all seemed to feel entitled to ask questions about Henry’s absent father.

“Do you think that’s fair? To your little boy? Doesn’t he wonder where his papa is?”

Brooke sighed. How often had both her parents asked that same question? “Henry’s only three. I’m all he knows. Anyway, times have changed, Mrs. Warrick. There’s no longer any real stigma to being a single parent. Now that we’ve established that I’m broke and unmarried, is there anything else, before I catch the boat back to St. Ann’s?”

“I really must insist you call me Josephine,” the old lady said. “And I’ve already told you what I want. Two things. I want you to keep the state from taking my island away from me. From ruining all of it. Whatever it takes, that’s what I want from you. And I want you to help me make things right by those women I told you about.”

She coughed again, then reached for a thick, leather-bound book on the table beside the chair. Opening it, she took out an envelope and extended it toward Brooke.

“That’s your retainer. It’s a certified check. I’m assuming $25,000 is sufficient for you to get started?”

“I’m sorry,” Brooke said. “As I’ve tried to explain, based on the little you’ve told me, I really don’t think I can help you.”

The old lady’s eyes were closed again.

“And remember,” Josephine said. “Strictly confidential. Not a word to anybody about what we discussed today.”

Josephine nodded off once more, leaving Brooke wondering again if she should go or stay. She still smarted from the intrusive questions about Henry’s paternity and whether his father knew of the boy’s existence.

Henry had straight dark hair, a high forehead, and a short nose like her own. His moods changed moment to moment. One minute he was climbing into Brooke’s lap and smothering her face with kisses while she was trying to work at the kitchen table, and the next thing she knew he was scowling and howling, “Bad Mommy!” Strangers stopped her at the grocery store to comment that he was a carbon copy of his mama. But sometimes, when the tantrum clouds passed, and he gave her that full-faced impish smile, all she could see was Pete. He had Pete Haynes’s smile, Pete’s square jaw, long, Bambi-like lashes, stormy blue eyes, and smooth olive skin. Even the faint sprinkle of freckles across Henry’s nose and cheeks were Pete’s.

He was his father’s son, a son Pete knew nothing about.

6

Josephine

October 1941

“Such a lovely party.” Everybody kept saying it, and it was true. Papa and I wanted everything perfect for Millie’s engagement party.

The ballroom floor had been waxed and polished until it shone like a mirror. The orchestra, brought all the way down from Atlanta—ten pieces—played all the most popular songs from that year. Caterers had been brought in too. A steamship round of roast beef, silver trays piled high with cracked lobster tails, steamed shrimp and oysters mounded on beds of crushed ice, poached quails’ eggs, and the cleverest little pink cakes. Flowers everywhere. Orchids from the greenhouse, huge vases of peonies and roses and lilies, their perfume scenting the gentle breeze blowing in from the open doors to the veranda.

Thank goodness for that breeze! October could still be oppressively warm on Talisa, but even the weather cooperated that evening, with a full moon shining down on the loveliest party that I’d ever seen.

My gown was pale blue silk, with elegant beading and a plunging neckline. Millie was fairy-tale pretty in pink organza, the gown a surprisingly generous gift from her miserly grandmother, and Ruth, in seafoam-green satin to complement her copper hair. “You girls look like a rainbow,” Papa had said, nodding in approval.

A hundred people filled the ballroom at Shellhaven that night. Or was it two hundred? Such a pretty, perfect night.

Until Russell strolled back into the ballroom from the veranda. He’d been drinking steadily all night, supplementing the champagne punch from the silver flask stuck carelessly in the breast pocket of his dinner jacket. Poor Millie had been on edge all night, fluttering around, too nervous to do more than nibble at the edges of the plate of food Ruth had tried to coerce her into eating.

“He hasn’t danced with her once tonight,” Ruth had hissed in my ear, glaring in Russell’s direction.

“Too busy drinking and talking sports and smoking cigars with his fraternity brothers,” I’d agreed, following her gaze.

Russell Strickland stood by the french doors, holding the stub of a still-lit cigar in his hand, coolly surveying the room. The dance floor was a crush of color and movement because right at that moment the orchestra was playing Glenn Miller.

Ruth slipped her arm around my waist, and we both hummed along and swayed to the rhythm. “Moonlight Serenade.” A perfect song for a perfect night.

“What’s he staring at?” I muttered.

Russell’s eyes were narrowed, his jaw tight with anger.

“Oh Lord,” Ruth said. “It’s Millie. She’s dancing with another man.”

“Where?” I craned my neck to see through the crowd.

“Over there, near the punch bowl.”

Finally, I spotted Millie’s gauzy pink dress. She was in the arms of a lanky man with a white dinner jacket and a deep tan. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. It’s only Gardiner. He’s just being nice. Papa probably made him ask Millie.”

“Maybe your brother is just doing the gentlemanly thing, asking his little sister’s best friend to dance, but I doubt Russell sees it like that,” Ruth said. “He is holding her awfully close.”

“Because every single living person in the room is on that dance floor,” I said, laughing. “You and I are the only ones who aren’t dancing.”

“Russell isn’t dancing. And he doesn’t look at all happy at the way his fiancée is looking right now.”