The High Tide Club

“You must have been so proud of him,” Marie said.

“At the time, I thought it was terribly romantic,” Josephine said. “And heroic. Of course, that was October, and in early December, Pearl Harbor happened, and the United States did get into the war.”

“Did you ever see Gardiner again?” Marie asked.

“Just once, and only for a few hours. He came home briefly, after training and before he was shipped out. By then, Papa had closed up this house. Most of the men on the island, including all the Shaddix boys, went off to fight the war, plus German U-boats were prowling the coast, and he didn’t think it was safe for us to stay.”

Gabe looked up from his glass of port. “I never heard that before.”

“Oh yes. In 1941, at least five Allied merchant ships were torpedoed by the Germans between here and Savannah, and I believe four or five U-boats were sunk, right off the coast here.” Josephine drained most of her port and, setting the glass down, tipped the rest onto the tablecloth, watching idly while the deep purple stain pooled on the white damask.

“I should really be getting to bed,” she said. Her eyelids drooped, and she slumped back in her chair.

“Oh no,” Lizzie objected. “You still haven’t told us how Russell Strickland disappeared.”

31

Louette hovered in the doorway, anxiously observing her employer’s body language. “Y’all need to let her go to bed now,” she warned as she mopped up the spilled port. “She’s flat wore out.”

Josephine’s eyelids fluttered, and she seemed to struggle to stay awake. “No,” she protested, raising a bony hand. “No, it’s all right.” She coughed, then recovered. “I owe them this much. Go back out in the kitchen, Louette, and leave me be.”

“You were saying?” Lizzie prompted.

“We all slept late the morning after the party, but at breakfast, Millie seemed different. She was edgy and agitated. Of course, at the time, we had no way of knowing what had gone on the night before. As Varina said, it was a full moon. We had this silly custom—a ritual, I suppose you’d call it—of skinny-dipping on a full moon at high tide if we were near a beach. We called ourselves the High Tide Club.”

Josephine’s fingers found the brooch on her collar, and with trembling fingers, she managed to unfasten it and hold it out in the flat of her palm for the others to see. “Millie had these made for Ruth and me, as bridesmaid’s gifts.”

“She gave me one too,” Varina said proudly, pointing to the pin fastened to her chest.

“Mom? Did Granny have a pin like this too?”

“May I see it?”

Josephine handed the pin to Marie.

“No, at least I never saw her wear one like this, but then she never wore much jewelry. Just her wedding band and engagement ring. Is that a diamond … on her nipple?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “I never knew Mama had a naughty side to her.”

“Yes,” Josephine said. “She could be as silly as the rest of us. We were just girls. Anyway, we’d skinny-dipped at Millie’s grandmother’s beach house and at Ruth’s family house at Palm Beach and at Cape Cod, all during the full moon, and that weekend seemed like the perfect time. The moon was full and high tide was around nine that night. Millie claimed she had a headache and didn’t want to go, but Ruth and I pestered her until she finally gave in and agreed to come with us.”

Felicia gave her great-aunt a sideways look. “Auntie Vee—did you skinny-dip too? I’m shocked!”

Varina ducked her head and then looked away.

“It was peer pressure,” Josephine said. “We took Gardiner’s roadster, picked Varina up at Oyster Bluff, and sweet-talked her daddy into letting her go with us. We said we were having a beach picnic, which was true, but we left out the part about skinny-dipping.”

“My daddy was a Church of God preacher,” Varina told the others. “He never would have let me go if he’d known what those fool girls were up to.”

“There’s a place on the island—not far from the lighthouse, a little secluded spot that we named Mermaid Beach. That’s where we were headed,” Josephine said. “I’d gotten the cook to fix us a picnic basket, and I snuck in a bottle of champagne and a bottle of Gardiner’s bourbon. We had a fine supper, but when it came time to go swimming, Millie flat refused.”

“Mama was always so modest,” Marie said. “I don’t think I ever saw her undressed the whole time I was growing up.”

“It wasn’t just that,” Josephine said sadly. “Ruth and I had both been drinking, and we were sort of teasing Millie, telling her she had to swim, and I guess I pulled at the jacket she was wearing—long-sleeved, even in the heat—and that’s when we saw the bruises.”

Brooke felt herself recoil at the thought of Millie, just a girl of nineteen, and a victim of sexual abuse.

“She had bruises up and down her arms and on her shoulders and thighs,” Josephine said. Her eyes filled with tears. “Our dear, sweet Millie. That’s when she broke down and told us what that bastard Russell had done to her. She as much as told us Russell violated her whenever he was drinking—and he drank a lot. He was a violent, abusive drunk.”

“Dear God,” Marie said. She was clutching the edge of the table like a life preserver.

“Ruth told her she couldn’t marry Russell. So did I. We both tried to talk her into breaking the engagement, but she said it was too late. She said it was the only way out of her mother’s money problems.”

“I’d never heard of rich people with money problems before,” Varina said. “I thought rich folks didn’t have problems like the rest of us.”

“Millie insisted there was no way out of her predicament. She drank some more, and then we all went skinny-dipping and finished off the champagne and the whiskey,” Josephine said. She looked over at her old friend, sitting at the opposite end of the table.

“You too, Auntie?” Felicia said, her eyes widening in disbelief.

“I’d never had a drop of alcohol before,” Varina said. “That whiskey tasted nasty and burned my throat, but the champagne, that was a different story.”

“It was very good champagne,” Josephine added. “Moët & Chandon.”

“I did like that champagne,” Varina admitted. “It had bubbles like a Coca-Cola, only it tasted different. I didn’t have but maybe a whole cupful.”

“But you were so small, it didn’t take much to get you drunk,” Josephine said.

“My first and last time drinking alcohol,” Varina said. “I guess I was cutting up pretty bad.”

“It had gotten late, after midnight. And we didn’t dare take her home drunk,” Josephine said. “And anyway, none of us wanted to go home. We had this crazy idea about staying out all night—under the stars. Millie wanted to do it. She thought it would be her last night with all of us before she got married.”

“But the bugs … oooh, the bugs were bad back then,” Varina said.

“And it started to rain. Then I remembered the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage. The government had decommissioned it several years earlier, but I knew Gardiner had a key to the cottage hidden under the roadster’s doormat. So I drove us over there, the key worked, and we all piled onto the only bed in the place.”