Fiddler's Rest

I couldn't be sure, even in standing and staring at the house, whether it sat straight or listed a bit to the south.

When the Realtor opened the door and let us in, the inside was a surprise. Most of the rooms were wood-paneled, dressed out like a more expensive house would be. And the house was bigger on the inside than it seemed on the outside. A front parlor flowing into a large living room through pocket doors, a separate dining room, and an add-on wing with a den at the end, with windows on three sides, all facing water. A kitchen and four bedrooms ran along the southern wall. There was only one, big bath, with ancient fixtures that would have to go—except maybe the claw-footed bathtub, if a separate shower stall also could be worked in—but my mind was already subdividing one of the bedrooms into a laundry room and a bath and walk-in closet for the master bedroom, which took up the southeastern corner of the building and had two window walls facing water.

"I can't believe you are contemplating what you would do with this dump," Julie huffed when I let my thoughts of renovations of the fourth bedroom out of my mouth.

"I know, I know, it's creepy, isn't it?" I said with a laugh. "I just always find myself fantasizing like that. I agree that it's impossible. It would take almost as much to fix this up—if it can be fixed up—as the purchase price. It was just a fantasy I was having, because of, you know, the name and the title of my book and all."

"There's still time to get back to Hilton Head to make those dinner reservations at the Captain's Deck," Julie said, as she tugged at my arm, drawing me toward the front door.

"Oh, you're interested in the name," the Realtor said. That stopped me. Yes, in fact the name was everything to me. The house itself was a disappointment. I wasn't even sure it could be saved. But as derelict as it was, I couldn't bring myself to thinking of tearing it down and putting a new house here. This one seemed too settled on the site.

"The house sits on Fiddler's Cove out there," the Realtor said as she moved out on the deep, screened porch and drew me with her. "But both the cove and the house were named after a man who actually was named Fiddler rather than being a fiddler and who moved here from Beaufort and built this house after what they said was an ill-fated affair with a married woman. The woman was one of the Hamiltons from up at Beaufort. The man remained a recluse here, putting all of his effort into work on the house. It's rather a pity, I think, that the house has gone empty and unattended all this long. It has good bones."

I knew the Realtor was only trying to make a house sale, but the house was getting under my skin anyway. However, I just could not afford to fix it up. True, that den at the end could be made into a perfect room for my writing. But I just could not afford the work that was required here.

"Yes, it's a pity," I said. "I think it's just too far gone."

"Good," Julie said. "Let's get back in the car and hightail it back to Hilton Head. I'm dying to tie into some crab cakes and marinate myself in a gallon of mint juleps."

We made it as far as the front door, when we were caught up short by the appearance of a scene straight out of one my books. The hero had arrived on the scene. Or at least that would have been the way I would have written it up in one of my Romances.

And quite a typical hero he was too. Long and lanky, with bedroom eyes and a sensuous smile. Dressed out casually in jeans and a pristine-white polo shirt, he was lounging languidly against the fender of a hunter-green Jaguar sedan. And the way he was lounging brought images flashing through my mind of the young man Julie and I had spotted on the front porch of the mansion in old Beaufort, and the man of my recent dreams. He was wearing casual loafers without socks, which made me fanaticize him undressed and sent chills down my arms. In my books he would have been consulting a map and looking lost, but in reality he was just leaning there, his hands neatly folded before him.

"Hi, Bill," the Realtor called out in a voice that was dripping with honeyed wishful thinking. "So, you got my message."

"Yeah, I got the message, thanks," he said. But intriguingly, he wasn't looking at the Realtor. He was looking at me—and with interest in his eyes. I was nonplussed by this. I wasn't accustomed to this. He was looking into my eyes rather than where I was accustomed to guys looking. I blushed and became disconcerted. I was the kind of girl guys ogled at chest height and then moved right on to liking me for my mind or simply to get their hands on a set of big bazooms if they grew to liking me at all.

"Ms. Mason, this is Bill Hamilton, a Beaufort contractor," the Realtor continued. "I took the liberty of asking him to come over and give you some assessment on the house. He's quite familiar with the place. I know you're just here for the afternoon, and I thought it would save some time and effort on your part."

"Um, thanks," I answered dubiously. "I'm sorry you had to come this far out of town, though, Mr. . . . it's Mr. Hamilton, isn't it?" I wasn't sure, as it seemed like I'd just heard that name in some other context. "It looks like the place is too far gone for my pocketbook. It's a pity, though, the setting is delightful."

"Did you know you could see the lights of Beaufort from the porch here at night?" Hamilton asked. The voice went with the rest of the package, a smooth, confident baritone. And it revealed a good college education, probably someplace up north. This young Mr. Hamilton was intriguing indeed. And I wondered if I thought so only from the standpoint of a model for a character in one of my Romances or because my mind kept wanting to connect him to the dream I'd been having.

"Does it?" I asked.

"And good bones. It's got really good bones. I'd hate to see it slide any further—or to see it demolished. My grandmother told me that the original builder put his entire life into it."

Hamilton. His grandmother. Ah so. I could see a storyline forming. And it made me turn and look at the house again with a good deal of interest and regret. If only it wasn't so run down.

But as entranced as I was, hearing "good bones" spoken just as the Realtor had done set off alarm bells of locals putting one over on unsuspecting city slickers.

"We really should be on the road," Julie muttered under her breath at my shoulder. "Fantasy hour is about over, isn't it?"

Julie, ever the practical one. But that was one of the reasons I'd brought her along on this pity trip down the Eastern seaboard—to help give me some stability and to speed the healing.

I turned and voiced my regret to the Realtor and thanked her for her time. Neither she nor the young man pressed me further, but they both gave me their cards—just in case, the Realtor said—and as we climbed into the Mustang, I looked around and saw Bill Hamilton, once more lounging against the fender of his Jaguar, giving me another speculative look. He was smiling a private little smile—as if he knew he hadn't seen the last of me.

Our dinner at the Captain's Deck that night became yet another celebration—this time champagne in addition to the decadent dessert. When we returned to the condo in Hilton Head from the afternoon trip to Beaufort, another voice mail was waiting from me from Sal Singleton. He'd sold my second manuscript, right on the heels of the sale of my first. The contract already was inked for me to sign, and the advance on the second book was even larger than the first one.

I was tipsy when we got back to the condo, but I wasn't so drunk that I couldn't read the printing on the Beaufort Realtor's business card. Over Julie's objections and admonishments, I rang through to the Realtor and put a bid in on Fiddler's Rest. I couldn't resist the call of the coincidence. My next call was to the contractor, Bill Hamilton, who responded, maddeningly, as if he'd known all along I'd be calling him to contract the refurbishment of the tumbling-down bungalow on Fiddler's Cove.

I went to bed not caring that Julie had lectured me for two hours straight after I'd made those calls. I didn't care. For the first time in my life, strangely, I felt like I had someplace to go to that I could call home.

* * * *

"It's perfect," Don said. "That's the one we want."

"It's beggin' for a sinkin'," Maddie said. "The Hamilton boy told me it weren't seaworthy. That it'd go down in a storm."

"Bill Hamilton?" I asked. "He knows about boats?"

"No, Jim Hamilton, his brother," Maddie responded. "He's the waterman of them two boys. He goes out fishin' for his supper ever day. He should know a boat from a shipwreck."

Don gave Maddie a venomous stare. It was all I could do to keep them apart. Don looked for any excuse he could get to fire the housekeeper who had been a lifeline for me.

I took another dubious look at the nearly twenty-five-year-old Seidelmann 30-T thirty-foot sailboat. It was nearly as old as I was., and it didn't look any too seaworthy to me either. But I knew next to nothing about boats. Don had once told me he was the same way, but he either had just been trying to humor me, or he'd developed a sudden passion for them.

"You know we can afford something newer, Don—that I can afford it," I amended, as I knew who was going to pay for this.

"No, I want this one," Don said, the stubbornness showing in his voice as well as his stance. "This one speaks to me. I like it. It's comfortable."

"Oh, Lawd a mercy," Maddie sputtered, and she turned and waddled off the dock and up to the house to the domain she knew she could control.

"That woman has got to go, Meghan," Don muttered. "You know I—"

"You know we'd not be able to stay here without her, Don," I interrupted. "She just about came with the place and supervised the renovations. She's as much a part of Fiddler's Rest as I am now—as we are." I found myself continually bringing Don into the picture almost as an afterthought. He claimed he was comfortable at Fiddler's Rest, but I never could quite see him adjusting to this life, and he was always flitting back to New York, leaving the impression that he couldn't take the southern pace here for more than a week at a crack. This hadn't been at all what I thought a marriage would be. But I could easily see that it was my fault—that I disappointed where it counted most—in bed.

His affinity for New York and the urbane over rural South Carolina was why it was so strange that he was insisting we needed a sailboat. I couldn't see him going sailing more than a couple of times a season—it just wasn't in his lifestyle. And we could easily hire a sailboat from the marina at Beaufort for those rare occasions if he wanted to claim he was a sailor.

But he had been bugging me to buy a sailboat, and now he was insisting on an old one of questionable seaworthiness. Sometimes I just couldn't figure Don out.

I had no trouble figuring out his attitude toward Maddie, though. They had been at tenterhooks from the day I brought him to Fiddler's Rest. I could tell that Maddie's response to Don was grounded in her preference for Bill Hamilton and her extreme disappointment that it hadn't worked out between Bill and me. But I didn't know what Don's problem with Maddie was—although it seemed that it wasn't just Maddie, but that he was making an effort to drive a wedge between me and all of my friends. He seemed to like it best when there was no one but him to give me advice. He had very nearly driven Julie off with sarcasm and criticism. He wanted me concentrating on churning out best-sellers. And he apparently believed I needed complete isolation for that—even from him much of the time. With him in New York sending me e-mails on doing this and that—and always working away on my manuscripts. And I don't know as I could disagree with that. I indeed needed my mind and time totally free to be able to apply myself to my writing.

Sometimes I thought that was the only reason he pretended to like Fiddler's Rest—because this was isolation and quiet, and here I had turned out profitable manuscript after profitable manuscript until I was—we were—already quite wealthy at my young age.

And since Don seemed to be right about this, I increasingly was demurring to his judgment. I found myself needing his approval—even when I told myself I needed to stand on my own.

But Don would not get his way about Maddie. As long as I was at Fiddler's Rest and Maddie could still waddle down the lane from across Route 802—and as long as she wanted to put up with me—she had a job here.

Maddie had appeared out of nowhere the day I settled on Fiddler's Rest at the lawyer's office in Beaufort and drove, alone, out to Fiddler's Rest and just stood there, scared out of my wits about what I'd just done and wondering if the structure would topple over on its own before my eyes.

I had wondered who I was buying the place from, but only a lawyer showed up at the settlement. When I perfunctorily signed the papers, the lawyer the Realtor had gotten for me raised his eyebrows and asked if I didn't think I should read them first—and did I know that a codicil was attached? But all I could think of at the moment was getting it done and rushing out to Fiddler's Rest to assure myself that it was in better condition than I remembered. I would read the papers later.

Fiddler's Rest didn't look a bit better than I imagined in the glaring light of ownership. In fact, rather the opposite. I had no idea what I had been thinking when I bought it, or just how badly I'd be taken by the smug contractor who had conned me into letting him renovate it for me.

I was standing there, huddled against my car, my arms wrapped around my chest in an attempt to control my trembling, on the brink of tears, when I heard the rich low alto of a voice behind me.

"It's a good house. It's got good bones."

This didn't reassure me. Saying something had good bones seemed to be everyone's expression in this town for "you've been taken, city slicker."

I turned to face the rotund little chocolate-colored woman with a calico dress and wispy gray strands of hair forming a halo around her fat-cheeked face.

"It's a mighty fine house," she said. "Yer otter think about buyin' it."

"I seem to have done that all ready," I answered. "And I'm not sure I put enough thought into it when I did."

The woman's face was beaming now. "I'm the widder Maddie Johnson from across the highway. I'se been hopin' someone would bring this house back ter life."

Then she gave me a stern look. "You ain't thinkin' of tearing it down and building one of those glass towers or log monstrosities the summer folks likes these days, are you?"

"No, I hadn't thought of that," I answered. "I'd thought this house could be fixed up. But I don't know . . . I just don't know." Now that the place was mine, the bloom was off the charm of it, and I could only see rot and decay. And looking at it again, my worry was renewed that it was leaning a bit to the south.

The woman was beaming now. "Yer outta get the Hamilton boy over in Beaufort to make it right for you. He's the best contractor around, and he has reason to love this place. Couldn't do better than that."

"I'm glad to hear that," I said. And that had brought me my first real smile of the day and a sudden lifting of spirits. "Yes, very glad to hear that indeed . . . because I've already contracted Bill Hamilton to do the job . . . if that's who you were speaking about."

From her satisfied look, I knew I'd identified the right contractor.

"And you'll be needin' me too," she said. "The house is too big for you to take care of alone. I've served here before. You can't do better'n me, and I'll be cheaper than tryin' to get someone to come out regular from Beaufort."

For some reason this wasn't even up for discussion. And I'll never know why I didn't even attempt to question her audacity. But she was right. I could never have gotten through the renovations and settled in without her.

But from the moment Don returned to Fiddler's Rest with me, it seemed the two were ever on the edge of a world war. And on this day, as Don stared hard at the retreating figure of my saving angel, all I could think of was distracting his attention.

And, so, we became owners of a less-than-sparkling Seidelmann 30-T sailboat.

I sat there, docilely in the stern of the sailboat as it slowly moved from Fiddler's Cove back to the Beaufort marina under the power of a sputtering engine, while Don and the agent dickered pricing that was considerably less than I would have been willing to pay for a more serviceable craft.

As we docked at the marina, a businesslike fishing boat followed us into the channel and pulled into a berth two docks over from us.

My attention was arrested by the appearance of Bill Hamilton on the deck. He was busy moving coolers full of fresh fish, which must have come from a full day's trawling out in the St. Helena Sound.

I watch him as he worked, remembering how my hands had moved along those firm muscles of his arms and along his back as he lay between my legs in my bed at Fiddler's Rest, the windows open to a cross breeze that made the curtains flutter in rhythm with his strong, deep movement inside me. Feeling loved and wanted, no hint of shame of a body that would charitably be referred to as Rubenesque. His tongue and lips on my navel; his head burying itself between my pendulous breasts and kissing me deep in the cleavage there.

When he looked up now and saw me, however, his face was blank. He looked right through me, as if he didn't even know me.

But he hadn't just looked through me when I'd come back to Fiddler's Rest—a week before Don arrived there—coming early so that I could be assured that everything in the house was in order for my new husband. And, yes, apprehensive of an unpleasant encounter with Bill.

He had been waiting for me in the driving circle in front of Fiddler's Rest, leaning on the fender of the hunter-green Jaguar just as he had done on that first day. But this time he was tense and seething with anger.

"You married," he blurted out in anger, his voice incredulous, accusing when I climbed out of the Mustang. He didn't move from where he stood, however. My eyes flickered to the house, and I saw Maddie standing in the front door. And that gave me comfort. I knew she wouldn't let this get out of hand.

"Yes," I said. Just that and nothing more. I moved to the trunk of the car, opened it, pulled my suitcase out, and set it on the gravel.

"But why?" he asked, his voice more wounded now, defeated, deflated than angry. "You and I. We—"

"You know why, Bill," I said in the most even tone I could manage. "It wasn't just you and I. It was her too."

"Her?" he asked. And if I hadn't seen him on his porch, making love to Sondra Laurens with my own eyes, I think I would have bought his confused little boy look.

"Go back to Beaufort, Bill," I said. "Go back to her. I can't take the lie."

I climbed the steps to the front porch and Maddie opened the screen door, welcoming me into my own house. I half expected to feel his hand on my arm. And I know if he had touched me, I would have collapsed into tears. But when I reached the top of the steps to the front door and turned around, I saw that he was still there, standing against the Jaguar—almost collapsed against it, though, looking at me with eyes full of hurt and, to me at that moment, deception. He was doing a magnificent job of looking confused.

Maddie took my suitcase, and I followed her into my bedroom. When she turned back from setting the case on the bed, her lips were pursed and she had a confused look on her face to rival Bill Hamilton's, but she could clearly see that I was close to the edge of holding myself together, and she just silently slipped past me and into the kitchen.