Alice at Heart by Deborah Smith

Author:Deborah Smith [Smith, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Mystery Fiction, Literary, Man-Woman Relationships, Domestic Fiction, Family, Georgia, Islands
ISBN: 9781935661108
Publisher: BelleBooks
Published: 2002-01-15T18:26:59+00:00

15

Land People fight and struggle and yearn to find magic in their lives. Water People hide behind that magic, but realize the loneliness of it.

—Lilith

Traveling on dry land is overrated, Griffin admitted as he managed the last few exhausted paces into the cottage’s sandy yard. Every bone in his body ached, and his scars felt raw. Doctors had removed the casts from his leg and forearm, and he stepped steadily, though with a slight limp. He had just forced himself on his daily fitness hike, a grinding four-mile tour along piney backroads where no one was likely to notice him. A sweaty flannel shirt hung open down his chest, and his old khaki pants had settled low on his hips. The tie-strings on his heavy-soled walking boots had come undone, but his still-healing back was too stiff for him to bend and tie them. He gave in now, in the sanctity of his own yard, and leaned on the mermaid cane as he walked.

“Ready to take on the world,” he intoned, “as long as my pants don’t fall off my ass, or I don’t trip over my own shoelaces.”

You’re doing fine. I left you a gift on the dock. Alice’s voice, dulcet and southern, elegant and somber, sang inside him.

He halted instantly and scanned the bay. There was no sign of her, but she was out there. I’m glad to hear you again, he answered. After that first time—well, I’m not fit company, right now.

I left you a gift. She wouldn’t openly react one way or the other to what had passed between them before, or whether he was fit company anytime. Look on the dock.

He tossed the cane, limped through the heavy sand with as much machismo as he could feign, and made his way down the dock’s alley of heavy, gray plank. His gaze went to the top of the endmost piling. When he saw the small marble sculpture there, he slowed. When he reached the piling, he braced himself on it with one trembling hand. Reaching up with the other, he gently lifted the figurine down.

You found this out there?

Yes, but so could you if you tried.

Slowly, his legs folded, he sat down with the boy and the dolphin cradled in his lap, and bowed his head over it. He stayed there a long time, sifting a torrent of emotions caught in the twilight of such old memories. Alice was silent, and when he could finally clear his head, he knew she’d slipped away to give him his privacy.

She had no idea what she’d done. He looked toward the island and beyond, where the Calm Meridian lay.

If she could find this, he believed her sisters had found him.

They had been out there that day in the storm.

Now he knew how Alice could help him prove it.

Lilith gathered Mara and Pearl long after Alice slept contentedly in bed that night. “Alice confessed something she did today. She was so pleased with herself. And I am pleased for her, honestly.

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