He looks at me quizzically. “Lunch? You barely ate anything this morning. It’s twelve thirty. I thought we should eat before we get to Hunting Island.”
“The Foolish Frog?” I get out of the car, eyeing the cartoonish sign. “Doesn’t seem like your kind of place.”
“You don’t know me that well yet, Basil Allard.” He winks at me. “Come on.”
The restaurant turns out to be a quaint place paneled in honey-colored oak, with a breezy seating area on the back porch. The crab cakes and turkey basil wraps we order taste divine, and the cracked okra surpasses all the okra I’ve ever tried. Near the end of our meal, the brisk wind catches one of the big umbrellas on the porch, lifting it right out of its base. It starts to sail away over the swampy water, but Dorian leaps onto the bench and manages to catch it just in time. The other guests applaud, and our server thanks him breathlessly, tucking her hair behind her ear about seven times. He brushes off the gratitude with a laugh and a wink.
Then we’re on our way again, covering the rest of the distancequickly. Dorian drives into the state park, all the way down to the southernmost point of the island, where we park near a building with a couple of restrooms.
He takes a bag out of the back seat—one of those beach bags with an insulated compartment.
“I’ve always thought those were neat,” I say, half to myself. And then I pinch my lips together because I, the cool artist goth chick, just told Dorian Gray that insulated cooler bags are “neat.”
Fuck me.
But he only smiles a little. “Theyareneat. I take it you haven’t been to the beach often?”
“Before I moved here, not much.”
“You lived in Columbia, right? It’s not that far.”
“No.” I drag out the word as a sludge of memories fills my mind. “No, it’s not. Trust me, I used to ask to go to the beach all the time. But our financial situation made beach trips impossible. Every time I asked, Mom would say stuff like, ‘I can’t spare the gas money to drive two hundred and forty miles both ways just so you can splash in shallow water full of other kids’ pee and burn your skin to a crisp and probably get stung by a jellyfish.’ Or she’d say, ‘It’s not worth the hours of driving just for you to play for an hour and then start whining to go home.’”
We’re on a gravel trail now, trekking through subtropical forest, bright beams of sunlight lancing down from above. Without a breeze, it’s a little too hot for comfort—besides which, I can feel my body temperature rising like it always does when I dredge up uncomfortable memories. Sweat trickles down the back of my neck, a drop of it tracing along my spine.
“Your mother was being unreasonable,” Dorian says.
“Right? Totally unreasonable. I promised her I wouldn’t whine.I suggested we could stay overnight with Aunt Jessie, like we did a couple times before Dad passed. That way, we could spend more time here, make the most of the gas money without having to pay for a hotel. But Mom always said no. Said my aunt didn’t want anything to do with us. Once, when I was fourteen and feistier than usual, we got into a yelling match about it. I’d scraped together a little money doing caricatures, and I wanted us both to go on a vacation. So we’re screaming at each other, right, and finally Mom comes out with the real reason we can’t stay with Aunt Jessie—because Aunt Jessie thinks my mom killed my dad. Even though Mom had an alibi. She’d been at the store, and lots of people had seen her there. Aunt Jessie never believed it. You know, I think that’s why my aunt left me all her stuff. Because she felt guilty about abandoning me with Mom and never seeing me again. I was the last piece of her family, her brother’s daughter, and she never saw me after the funeral. We could really have used her help. Got pretty desperate sometimes.”
“I wish you hadn’t endured that,” Dorian says quietly. “I’ve never been poor. Thanks to my face, my body, and my invulnerability, I’ve always found a way to make money. The lowest I sank was around 1918 in Casablanca, when funds were low and I hired myself out as a prostitute. Fortunately I was in such high demand I got to choose my clients. But I quickly worked my way out of that.”
“How?”
“I stole a lockbox full of money from the madam at the brothel and ran away with a duchess.”
“Damn,” I breathe. “How long were you with the duchess?”
“Not long. I had to dump her once she got nosy about my portrait.” He hitches the bag higher onto his shoulder. Despite his strength, it seems heavy for him. Probably full of wine, if I know him at all.
“Yes, that was the closest I came to poverty,” he muses. “I was born into wealth, you see.”
“What were your parents like?”
“Well, my mother, Margaret Devereux, was the beautiful daughter of the pompous Lord Kelso. She defied Kelso’s wishes and ran off with a handsome, penniless soldier. While she was pregnant with me, Kelso paid someone to lure my father into a duel in which he was killed. My mother died soon after my birth. So it’s a very romantic and tragic story, but I never had any real emotional connection to either of them. My grandfather hated me with a passion while he was alive—beat me for the smallest infractions.”
“That’s so unfair.”
“Those were different times.”
“Sucky times.”
“Agreed. When the old bastard died and left me everything, I used to spend money on things I knew he would hate on purpose. I like to think his ghost has witnessed every glorious, wicked thing I’ve ever done and that he can’t rest because I’m such a gleeful sinner. My kind of revenge, I suppose.”
We’re crossing a weathered bridge now, a kind of stubby boardwalk over a strip of shimmering water. There’s a thin line of palmettos, with the ocean beyond that.
“So it’s just a beach then,” I say.
“Hush.” Dorian steps off the end of the boardwalk, removes his sandals, and tosses them under a bush, so I do the same.
