The Final Victim(4)

And the way he died…

Maybe if he'd been sick, Charlotte would have been prepared for the inevitable. But he wasn't. She can't recall her grandfather ever being sick, even with a cold. He was indestructible.

In fact, the closest thing to vulnerability she had ever seen in the man was his reaction to the death last year of his stalwart lifelong friend old Doc Neville. Grandaddy, who in his lifetime had stoically buried his parents, wife, two sons, and young grandchild in the family plot, had seemed haggard and prone to uncharacteristic emotion for a long time after that loss.

"It was a beautiful service, wasn't it?" Royce is asking Charlotte, dragging her thoughts back to the present. 'You did your Grandaddy proud."

She swallows hard. "I wonder if he was up there somewhere, watching."

"And counting heads."

Charlotte laughs despite the grief welling in her throat. If there was ever any doubt that Gilbert Xavier Remington II maintained a prominent place in Low Country society after all these years, today's turnout at the little Baptist church overlooking the sea put it to rest.

“I’ll bet there were three hundred people at the service. And probably almost as many at the reception," she adds, remembering the crowd that gathered in the shade of the plantation's oversized portico for an elegant luncheon.

"And at least one who skipped the church but showed up for the free food after."

Yes. Vincent Champlain.

Royce is immediately contrite. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get in a dig at your ex today, of all days."

"Feel free to dig him any day, Royce. He sure doesn't hesitate to do it to you every chance he gets."

She finds it ironic that although her ex-husband chose to walk away from her and Lianna, he resents another man stepping in to fill his shoes. Especially a man like Royce, who has everything Vince has striven desperately to achieve-and, when all else fails, does his best to fake.

Like class, and good looks, and good taste, and a means of supporting himself.

"He 'accidentally' tripped me with those big feet of his when I was walking to the buffet table," Royce tells Charlotte, "then he fell all over himself apologizing. But believe me, he was about as transparent as that white blouse Phyllida put on after the funeral."

Again, Charlotte laughs. Leave it to her cousin, the would-be Hollywood actress, to go directly from mourning black to red-carpet sexiness.

Yes, and leave it to Charlotte's first husband to miss the lengthy church service and the burial beneath the blazing midday sun, arriving just in time for the catered reception. He claimed he got held up in traffic driving up from Jacksonville, but she doesn't believe him.

She learned years ago never to believe anything he said. If only their daughter would do the same.

"The irony," she tells Royce, "is that Vince couldn't stand my grandfather, and vice versa."

"Well, at least he was there today for Lianna."

"He wasn't there for her." He never has been. "He was there to rub shoulders with the Reynolds, the Chathams… people who might be able to do something for him someday."

She shakes her head, remembering how Vince finally sauntered over to extend his sympathy to her, devouring several jumbo shrimp as he spoke.

"So sorry about your grandfather, Charlotte. What a shame."

He said all the right words, but his tone was utterly indifferent.

And that, right there, was the story of their lives together.

The marriage was dying long before their firstborn drowned off Achoco Island eight years ago. Vincent blamed her for Adam's death, of course-she was there; he wasn't.

She never knew where he was that day, but she has her suspicions.

Not that any of it matters now.

Adam is gone; so is Vince, for the most part, as well as the friends she once had as a young wife and mother. They turned away from her after she lost Adam-or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe it was she who severed the ties, unable to see them with their intact families when her own was shattered.

And now Grandaddy is gone, too.

Now all she has left are Royce and Lianna.

Nothing else, nobody else, matters.

Deep in the thicket beyond Oakgate, broad stretches of marsh are broken by dense wooded clumps of maritime forest: oaks, pines, cabbage palms, and a tangle of native vines. Abundant Spanish moss threads its scaly tendrils over every living bough. Years ago, a good portion of this marshy acreage behind Oakgate must have been dry land.

Dry enough, anyway, to house the row of slave cabins that are surprisingly well preserved after decades of neglect and encroaching tidal surges.

Of course, the cabins aren't in the water-yet. Just surrounded by it, and well sheltered from human destruction by acres upon acres of wetlands and dense undergrowth.

If there remains anyone on this earth who even remembers that the cabins exist, they certainly don't care enough to go to the trouble of paying a visit.

The structures poke their sturdy crowns through the tangle of foliage, looking for all the world like something out of a nursery rhyme… except that all three are made of brick.

Pity there's no door on the nearest, and most easily accessible of the three.

Yes, otherwise I could knock and say, "Little pig, little pig… Let me come in!"

Only there's no one inside to hear… Yet.