The High Tide Club

“How much?”

“Twenty-five thousand. You won’t get the money right away, because the estate will be probated, but she’ll continue to pay your salary, the same as she will with Louette and Shug.”

“Guess that’s better than nothing, but why’s she paying me to sit on my can on this porch? Docs can’t tell me yet how long I’ll be laid up.”

“Consider it worker’s comp,” Brooke said. “And before I forget, if you’re interested, Josephine’s service is Saturday, at 6:30 P.M., at the AME Church.”

“I can give you a ride if you want,” Lizzie offered.

C. D. finished off the beer and belched again. “I’ll let you know how I feel.”

“Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you around,” Brooke said.

They were halfway down the path toward the barn when he suddenly called out. “Why’d she give me that toy truck, then?”

Lizzie raised one eyebrow, then followed Brooke back to the cottage.

“If I wasn’t her kid, why’d she give me that truck for Christmas? Why’d she treat me special, over all them other kids? Hold me in her lap and act like I meant something to her?”

Brooke took her time answering the question, walking the tightrope between truth and fiction.

“We think your mother was somebody Josephine cared about. Somebody who was special to her. Which made you special.”

“Just not special enough to adopt. Or raise as her own,” C. D. said bitterly. “Got it.”

79

The Episcopal minister imported for Josephine’s funeral looked out at the tightly packed pine pews in the small wood-frame African Methodist Episcopal Church on Talisa Island. Her face gleamed with perspiration, and a fly buzzed persistently around the podium.

She was short and young, in her midthirties, with a cherubic face and a tangle of enviable black curls that touched the collar of her vestments. The Reverend Patricia Templeton admitted that she’d met Josephine Bettendorf Warrick only once, six months earlier, when she’d stopped in at her church on the mainland to ask her to preside over her funeral.

“I say asked, but really, it was more of an order,” Rev. Templeton said.

“I know that’s right,” mumbled a woman near the back, loud enough to provoke scattered laughter and rib-poking.

“Miss Josephine explained to me that she believed in God and believed that he was calling her home, and she said that although she had sinned mightily in her life, she had come to believe the promise of redemption that we, as Christians, cherish,” the minister said.

“Hmmph,” muttered the same woman. Just as Brooke turned to see who the commentator was, she was astonished to see C. D. slip into the only open seat remaining at the back of the church. He was nearly unrecognizable in a starched white dress shirt and baggy black trousers. He clutched his ever-present ball cap in his good left hand, and his wiry gray hair was slicked back to reveal his balding forehead. He saw Brooke’s stare and nodded a greeting.

Brooke and Marie were wedged into the “family pew” at the front of the church, alongside Lizzie and Louette and Shug. Varina sat on the right end of the pew, but Felicia, her great-niece, had declined to attend the service. The room was uncomfortably hot, so the AME church members fanned themselves with the photocopied funeral programs.

They’d deliberately planned an early evening service, hoping the June temperatures would have cooled off by six, but Brooke was certain it must have been at least ninety degrees. She felt her eyelids sag. The church, with its simple whitewashed plank walls and Gothic arched windows, had only a single, barely functioning air-conditioning unit installed in a window near the altar. Large brass vases brimmed with bunches of white gladioli, asparagus ferns, and palmettos lovingly arranged by members of the church’s altar guild, and gardenias, which had been wired onto chicken wire–framed crosses, hung at the end of every pew, their overpowering scent filling the air.

All of this, even the menu for the reception to be held afterward at Shellhaven, had been spelled out in a letter that Josephine had entrusted to Louette right after her cancer diagnosis.

Brooke had stressed the need for brevity to the pastor and was thankful when, fifteen minutes later, Marie roused her from a nap with a subtle tap on the arm in time to hear Rev. Templeton intone the final words from the Book of Common Prayer.

They recessed from the church while a joyous version of “Amazing Grace” was played on the AME Church’s organ and then they gathered outside, shaking hands and accepting condolences from two dozen islanders, most of them current or former residents of Oyster Bluff, along with a smattering of old friends from the mainland whom Josephine had specifically included as invitees to the funeral.

Marie had rebelled on only one point of Josephine’s instructions and invited the cousins, Dorcas and Delphine, despite Josephine’s specific ban.

“They’re her family too,” Marie had insisted. Still, she’d been relieved when the women begged off, instead sending a huge, hideous arrangement of carnations in the shape of an open Bible.

As they stood in the late-afternoon heat, Brooke was grateful for the light breeze that ruffled the fronds of nearby palmettos. She was even more grateful when, thirty minutes later, Shug pulled Samuel Bettendorf’s Packard up to the front of the church.

It had been another of Shug’s thoughtful gestures. He’d fine-tuned the old engine, then washed, polished, and buffed the car until it gleamed in the dimming sunshine like a burnished coin. He held the driver’s-side door as Marie climbed behind the wheel with Varina in the front passenger seat and Lizzie and Brooke in the back.

* * *

The funeral-goers milled around inside the house, helping themselves to the buffet provided by Louette, Varina, and other AME church ladies. Platters of golden fried chicken vied with trays of deviled crab, potato salad, pickled shrimp, baked ham, macaroni and cheese, and sliced tomatoes on the polished dining room table. The sideboard was loaded down with more desserts than Brooke had ever seen in one place. Coconut cake, caramel cake, pound cake, chess pie, lemon meringue pie, pecan pie, brownies, and three different colors and shapes of congealed Jell-O salads. Pitchers of iced tea and lemonade stood on a huntboard alongside an enormous crystal punch bowl that held a vivid red concoction that resembled Hawaiian Punch and lime sherbet.

Lizzie brought a plate of food to Varina, who, as the oldest living member of Oyster Bluff and Josephine’s oldest friend, held court in a high-backed chair near the fireplace, then joined Brooke and Marie, who stood near a pair of open windows in a corner, hoping for a bit of cool air.

“I don’t know about you, but I could really use a drink,” Lizzie told the women. “And I can’t wait to get out of this dress. I’m melting!”

“Amen to that,” Marie said, fanning herself. “I wanted to have an open bar, but Louette and Varina were appalled at the suggestion. They said Josephine didn’t mind drinking, but she wouldn’t want to be ‘likkerin’ up half the island,’ as they put it.”

“How much longer before everybody clears out?” Brooke asked. She’d smiled and nodded and accepted the sympathy of strangers for what seemed like an eternity. Her feet hurt, and she desperately wanted a cocktail.

“It’s nearly eight,” Marie said. “But it seems like everybody is just settling in.”