Love Starts with Elle(62)

“Sure, whatever you say.” Darcy didn’t mean one hollow word. “You won’t regret this.”

Elle pressed End. She already regretted it.



In the den, Kelly paced, listening to NBC’s “Saturday Night Dance Party” while her fourteen-year-old sister played Monopoly with their sixteen-year-old brother.

“Hal, you landed on my hotels.” Christie held her palm under Hal’s nose. “You owe me a million bucks.”

Hal slapped her palm. “There.”

“Cheater. Give me the money. Kelly, tell him to play fair.”

“Hal. And Christie, he doesn’t owe you a million bucks. Tell him how much he owes. Fair and square.”

Another week without a letter from Chet. She felt ill just thinking about it. Was he hurt? Dead? In prison? No longer in love with her?

Surely his mama would call if he was missing in action or killed. Kelly pressed her hand against her growing middle. At times, fear dwelt there as much as their child. She feared the worst. Not death, but that he no longer loved her. By this time next month, their secret would be known. She’d let out her skirt waist as far as it could go.

“Kelly, I declare you’re making me nervous with all that pacing,” Mama said without looking up from her knitting. “Why don’t you call Rose or Shirley, see if they want to go downtown. Get a malt or something.”

“Sure, Mama.”

Kelly phoned Rose, who was “dying to get out of the house” and promised to call Shirley. “Meet you at Harry’s in fifteen.”

Upstairs, Kelly changed her blouse and shoes, then combed her hair and found the Johnny Jeep hat she’d worn on her first date with Chet. When she turned to go, Mama stood in the doorway.

“Oh, you scared me.” Kelly exhaled, thrusting her hand over her heart. “What are you doing sneaking around a girl’s room?”

Mama eased the door closed, her eyes on Kelly’s middle. “We should talk about it now before your daddy sees.”





Heath scrubbed cereal from yesterday’s bowls before loading them in the dishwasher, staring out the kitchen window toward the grove of oak and pine in the lot next to Elle’s, pondering the lives of Kelly Carrington and Chet McCord.

Kelly being pregnant surprised him, but he knew it happened to a lot of women. Had Chet married her before they consummated their love or was it a night of passion before he shipped out? He’d have to decide, but he liked the complication the pregnancy created. Especially since he’d left Chet flying over the artic North Pacific with his engine freezing up.

Last bowl in the dishwasher. Heath loaded the detergent and pressed Start. The machine’s low hum was the only noise in the quiet house. He’d enrolled Tracey-Love in a day school this week, and he missed her little-girl sounds—singing softly, playing with her dolls—and the way she set her hand on his knee before asking, “C-can you put on a movie?”

But the interaction with other children seemed to be boosting her little confidence.

Meanwhile, he used the alone time—ten to three—to write and research. He’d spent today researching the Aleutian Islands, the Warhawk P-40, North Pacific war history, and war babies. The further he dug into history, the more he wrote, the more the story gripped him.

Leaning against the sink, he gazed at the heat waves rolling across the yard and found it hard to imagine Chet suffering in icy Alaska. He’d have to dig around his boyhood memories of New York winters, playing outside with Mark until they couldn’t feel the tips of their toes, to write a true experience for the southern flyer.

Suddenly Elle emerged from the heat waves, dressed casually and free-looking in baggy brown shorts and a white tank top. She carried a metal box by its handle, striding for her car, her arms and legs moving in graceful synchronization.

Art in motion. More and more, his fictional heroine Kelly mirrored the real-life woman of Elle Garvey.

Watching her drive away, Heath thought of their little encounters the past two weeks—Elle wandering over as he sat out on the screened porch, or grabbing a quick dinner out with Tracey-Love.

A couple of times as he walked out to the van to go pick up Tracey-Love, Elle threw open her window and yelled down at him, “Afternoon, McCord.”

“Afternoon, Garvey.”

The other night she told him a story about her friend Caroline, a K-Mart blue light she’d wired to her old Mustang, a dark night, and a Beaufort County deputy. Had him doubled over.

He wondered where she was off to this afternoon?

The tip of Ava’s waiting letter caught his eye. Making sure his hands were dry, Heath reached for the envelope. If he ever thought he’d want more than friendship with Elle, or anyone like her, he’d have to read this letter.

Turning it over, he flicked at the small tear, then returned the letter to its perch on the windowsill behind the lock. Not today. Leaving the kitchen, Heath flipped off the light.



Sitting on the tarp-covered floor of Julianne’s salon, her wood palette next to her, Elle painted a marsh scene over fresh drywall. Despite initial doubts, she conceded Julianne’s success. The shop remodel had gone quickly, though the subject of her boyfriend-investor remained taboo.

Concentrating on painting the last blade of grass in the shade, Elle jerked around when her cell beckoned with an out-of-area tone.