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They sat side by side. Abby put a hand over Carolina’s. With their flashing eyes and similar noses, Sage spotted the resemblance. He had to ignore the hair, skin color and freckles, but they were family.
Abby finished her tea and then pushed away from the table. “I need to figure out what to feed people for dinner.”
“I’ll help.” Carolina stood, too.
“Anything I can do?” Sage asked.
“Gray, Kaden and Courtney are entertaining the kids in the solarium. They’d love some help.”
“I’m on it.”
“You can take the cookies down to them. Be the muffin man for me.” Abby handed Sage a platter of cookies. And the tune “Do You Know the Muffin Man?” filled his head. Great. Now he had an earworm.
He backed through the swinging doors and the last sight he saw as he left the room was Carolina and Abby with their heads together.
Abby had fired her, so how was this happening?
Hurricanes made strange bedfellows, but maybe they also made friends out of half sisters. For Carolina, he hoped it was true. She needed people. She needed family.
If he’d screwed things up so much that he couldn’t be her family, he wanted the Fitzgeralds for Carolina.
* * *
“MAMÁ, WILL YOU be okay here this morning?” Carolina asked.
“Oh, yes. Look! The sun is shining.” Mamá settled into a chair in the Fitzgerald House library. “Go. Do what you need to do.”
The storm had passed over in the night. A guest said it had been downgraded to a tropical storm after landfall. And luckily, landfall had been somewhere in South Carolina. Power was still out. And Tybee was closed to traffic.
Carolina had endured one more night with Sage sleeping just down the hall. He’d been gone before she’d left the bedroom this morning.
She stepped onto the Fitzgerald House front porch. It was time to help cleanup.
Her heart broke at the sight of the uprooted massive old oaks. A giant oak that had stood in the square blocked the street and rested on the Carleton House fence.
Chain saws buzzed along the block and in the square. She pulled on gloves and moved to where Bess knelt next to an uprooted magnolia tree. Sage came around the corner and her foolish heart picked up a couple of extra beats.
“I can save this,” Bess muttered.
She pointed at Carolina, Sage and her husband, Daniel. “I’ll need you three to lift and pull while I straighten out the roots.”
Bess pulled tools and rope out of a wheelbarrow. She wrapped rubberlike sleeves around the tree. “Daniel, you and I will pull on this one. Sage and Carolina you pull this one.”
Water seeped into Carolina’s sneakers as they took their places.
“Pull,” Bess called. “Gently.”
Carolina pulled, her feet slipping in the mud-like grass. She went down on her butt, but scrambled right back up.
Bess called again. “Harder.”
There was a sucking sound as the ground around the root ball tried to keep the tree from moving. But it started to rise. Bess ran and pushed the trunk with her hands. “Help me, Carolina.”
Carolina slid over to Bess and pushed, jamming her shoulder into the trunk. Her feet slipped as she helped push the twenty-foot tree upright.
“It’s working,” Bess gasped.
Sage and Daniel moved closer together, still pulling on the ropes. And the tree was upright.
“There you go, baby.” Bess tucked in stray roots. “You’ll be as good as new.”
While Daniel and Sage held the tree, she and Bess pounded stakes into the wet ground.
Bess tied the ropes to the stakes. Stepping back, she shook her head. “It’s so wet, the stakes will just pull out.”
Daniel checked the tension. “They might.”
Carolina and Sage waited next to each other as the couple discussed options.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Fine.” Heartbroken. “You were up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“I know what you mean.” And it hadn’t been the wind.
He turned and brushed his finger under her eyes. “I’m sorry if you couldn’t sleep because of me.”
Don’t flatter yourself was on the tip of her tongue. But Sage was right. She hadn’t slept because of him.
Bess and Daniel tied the ropes off on the porch pillars.
“Not pretty, but it will give the tree a chance to re-root.” Bess slapped her work gloves on her thighs.
“I hope that won’t tear the porch down,” Carolina whispered to Sage.
Bess pushed the wheelbarrow to the street. “Everything else in the courtyard is just sweeping and picking up. Abby, Gray and Nigel are working in back. Let’s get the tree off the fence and clear the street.”
