Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [125]
Here lies a spendthrift who believed
That only those who spend may keep;
Who scattered seeds, yet never grieved
Because a stranger came to reap;
A failure who might well have risen;
Yet, ragged sang exultantly,
That all success is but a prison,
And only those who fail are free.
Fade to Darkness
Chapter Twenty-eight
In Control
The weather was not as violent in the morning as it had been the night before but the skies were still pouring plenty of rain. There was no sign of it clearing anywhere on the horizon no matter in which direction I looked. I got up with the birds, because since before the first ray of morning light crossed my floor at dawn, I had been worried sick that Aunt Daisy was down at MUSC all alone having another attack. Of course she had not, or the hospital would have called me. But as I lay there having all manner of paranoid fantasies, I couldn’t get my mind to slow down long enough to go back to sleep. So I got up, dressed, put on a pot of coffee, and started rereading some of the notes I had on Dorothy Heyward.
Patti must’ve smelled the coffee in her sleep, because when the pot finished dripping here she came, barefooted, crossing the floor in her flannel pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, scratching her stomach and yawning like a teenager.
“Hey!” she said and gave me a hug. “You’re up early.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about Aunt Daisy. Respiratory arrest. Screw that! It scared me to death. Coffee’s ready.”
“Still raining. Wow.” She ambled over to the windows and looked out. “The yard’s a mess. I’m definitely not washing my hair for this weather. You want a refill?”
“No, I’m good, thanks. Listen. As long as we’re up we may as well try to get Ella to Aunt Daisy’s bedside as early as we can. When we tell her what happened last night, she’s going to want to teleport herself there.”
“You are right about that,” she said and pointed her finger at me for emphasis. “Let me just guzzle a couple of mugs and wash my face.”
“Take your time. It’s just seven.”
“Cool,” she said and disappeared to the kitchen downstairs.
Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy, I thought, how would you like your story to be told?
And as if she was whispering in my ear I heard her say, I was never as happy anywhere as I was with DuBose. And in this house. And on this island. Life without a great love is no life at all.
I thought, well, sugar? If we can just keep the dialogue going, I’ll have your story on paper in no time. I’d just be channeling Dorothy as soon as I got my laptop plugged in and when Patti went home, which would only be another day or two.
I went downstairs to get another blast of caffeine and continued thinking about Dorothy. We did seem to have an uncanny amount of things in common. Beyond the obvious similarities such as being orphaned and raised by our aunts, and having theatrical backgrounds and being widowed at a pretty young age, I’d been happy here, too. And, with Addison’s horrible legacy, I’d learned I could be happy with a lot less, which was kind of marvelous to know, although I’d still say that having pots of money was better than not. But Dorothy knew that, too, didn’t she?
So many nice things had happened in such a short time. I’d reconnected with the island and Aunt Daisy and Ella at a very important moment and I’d even made some headway with my wacky daughter-in-law, Alice. But perhaps most important, I might have found my great love right here, too. Yeah, for the foreseeable future, Dorothy Heyward and I had a lot to talk about. And I had hundreds of questions for her.
I called Ella at seven thirty, which, knowing her habits, seemed like a reasonable hour. She said she was just taking an apple-cinnamon coffee cake out of the oven for the nurses but that she had made one for us, too. We’d be there on the double, I told her.
In the car I said to Patti, “You know, lately,