Updated: June 18, 2023

Clay

Like she said, everything does melt. Time does what its designed to do.

Six months have now passed from the night I picked Aubrey up at Charleston Airport. Our lives collided into a fast-moving cyclone. I don’t know where the time went. As I was occupied prosecuting criminals, she was transferring her life to South Carolina.

I finally got to marry that girl. She wanted her parents’ anniversary, a date she thought was lucky. It felt lucky to me, June 12. Just shy of three months after we’d met.

It was a wonderful, small intimate ceremony on Fripp Island at the Golf and Beach Resort.  With Aubrey carrying a bouquet filled with Miss Abigail’s prize roses.  We were barefoot in the sand and madly in love. Prior to this Livvie of all people threw Aubrey a bridal shower in good old fashioned Southern style. Lots of spiked sweet tea, food prepared by good Christian women and new gossip to chew on.

The reception was held with an ocean view at The Fripp Island Resort, with all our friends and family under a billowing tent. My son Tate proudly served as my best man, Jenna flew down to be the maid of honor, and Dean Grayson gave the bride away. Even Tessa and Rick attended, starting to build bridges with their old friends.  Jimmy Lee governed the bachelor party, which I cannot under oath recount most details of that evening.

Our reception was the same kind of party, raucous, loud and everyone having a grand time. I slow danced with my wife most of the night, and before the evening was over, I turned on the headlights of my truck and held her close in my arms in their beams to the last song of the evening. I still cannot stop kissing that woman.  

Two days later, I took that exquisite bride of mine to Taormina, Sicily for our honeymoon. Her mother’s home village. We relaxed, made love, and ate some of the best food I’ve ever tried. Garnering promise from my new bride, she could indeed replicate some of those dishes back in the Lowcountry.

Aubrey also tried to dig for some answers about her mother, with no joy.

We did find a house, a perfect waterfront, three floor property in Beaufort county near Port Royal Beach. Spending one week of our honeymoon to move in with the help of our friends.  

The private sale of her Cape May house easily went through, and she quickly turned around and put the money down on the Port Royal property. Never again stepping foot back in New Jersey to my great relief.

My girl had an entire floor for an office with a view of the water. The commute to my office was less than ten minutes and in the ensuing months, I still worked late nights, but never two in a row. I wanted to be home with her.

Aubrey was now a Lowcountry resident, with a South Carolina driver’s license and Palmetto State auto tags on her brand-new Escalade.

The Saint Helena investigation was in a slow crawl. The bodies had finally been identified as the USC Co-Eds and with the FBI, SLED and the South Carolina Attorney General’s office all working in tandem to figure out who done-it, they finally made the request to Grayson Investigations and Aubrey would get her chance to look at it. She was a rock star, since solving the Triboro New York homicides, I remember the night, she paced the floor of the cottage in Saint George, when she unraveled the mystery.

My whole life did change, as well as Aubrey’s. I’m sitting in our spacious beach house living room reviewing briefs and I hear her puttering around in the kitchen. Putting things away and cleaning up after our supper. I want to stop what I’m doing to take her to bed. It’s late and my eyes are blurring from the small print I’m reading.

“Wife!” I roar into the open concept first floor. I loved to yell that title out for her.

“Husband?” she comes toward me on the sofa, dressed comfortably in tight leggings and a cute pink Cape May tee shirt. I pulled her into my lap. “Kiss me before I wither,” I demand. And she does, this mystic creature I convinced to pull up all her roots to live with and love me. She gave me so much, and all it cost me, was my vintage Clemson tee shirts. They mostly belong to her now.

I kiss her like a starving man, and I’m not, not anymore. I’m the luckiest man alive and I know it. “I need a favor,” I ask, kissing her over and over, stroking her back with my hands.

“What’s that honey?” she asks with a smirk, thinking it might be the typical request to flash me with a quick glimpse of her epic tits.

“I want you to watch this deposition on video, something about this witness is bugging me,” I reach for my laptop and que up a video interview and let her watch it.

“He’s lying,” she says softly, she stops the video and shows me his face, “No grief muscle in the forehead, he darts his eyes to the left and he is hunched over, making himself a smaller target.”

Fuck I love her, so goddamned smart and beautiful. And I’m gonna poach her from Dean, it’s inevitable, I warned him already. Those SLED guys are frothing at the mouth to hire her and I’m dangling her like a carrot in front of them.

I nod my head and pack everything up, it’s time to take her to bed while I still have an ounce of energy left. I have to be inside her, she’s my life force and I thank whatever Gods were responsible for her strolling into that lobby bar at the Gracie Hotel six months ago.

Our new bedroom is tranquil and serene, the paint colors are what Aubrey calls a sea glass palette with a soft cushioned king size bed, one I never want to get out of when she lies beside me. We lay awake talking, never tired of the conversation or the sound of each other’s voices. Our lovemaking is still unhinged and unbridled, and sometimes it’s slow and dirty, soft, and jungle-like, but it’s perfect. We cannot keep our hands off each other and I doubt that will ever change. Neither will the depth and comfort of our intimacy. She saved me, unchained me from my former life.

I’ve never been this happy, and something about that scared me. With so much to be grateful for, there is so much to lose. I find myself staring at her, lost in her loveliness and the music of her laugh, and pray to God he lets me die first, I couldn’t live a day without her ever again.

It must have been what went through my head the next morning as I was getting ready to leave for the office, I was absent-mindedly checking around for my phone, my keys, rummaging through my briefcase in the hall foyer when she glided past me to answer the front doorbell.

I heard the gun shots ring loud and thought I was dreaming, the idea was so out of context.

When I spun around–there she was bleeding out, slumped on the cream tile floor in the vestibule as her ex-husband turned the gun on himself and blew his head off in our doorway.

Aubrey

Was I dying? I was floating in some half pain, half fog. Clay was screaming in the distance, my name over and over again and then there were sirens, loud and shrill.

They were jostling my body around, the pain from my abdomen was searing. I felt him take my hand,

“Sugar, don’t you go anywhere, you stay with me!,” I heard him shouting.

It was dreamy and hazy, I couldn’t focus my eyes.

Was that Adam? Did he shoot me? What the fuck was he doing down here? My hands were wet with blood. Sticky and wet.

I couldn’t make any sense of what was happening. Sirens and the sound of machine alarms blaring around me, Clay’s voice in my ear, begging me to hold on.

I saw lights, pretty lights. Fireflies and floating, glowing flowers. Music was playing, beautiful peaceful music. Then it got dark.

There was a great sense of urgency around me, moving my body, I know I cried out with the pain. And then darkness. Heavy curtains lay atop me, I couldn’t sit up or see the light.

Where was I? And how do I get back to my happy life, my perfect husband, my water view?

Clay

Chaos, madness, and utter fucking destruction surrounded me.

We raced to the hospital with a police escort running code and we got her to the ER doors of Beaufort Memorial Hospital in less than 10 minutes. She lost a lot of blood and barely held onto consciousness. My suit jacket and dress shirt were streaked with her blood from when I held her and helped the paramedics place her on the stretcher.

The trauma team brought her immediately into emergency surgery and I hit the wall. They took her away from me and I was prohibited from following. I turned to face the cluster of law enforcement, men, and women I knew well. Waiting for me to give them the details.

My son!  Suddenly I remembered Tate worked here for his semester co-op and I asked someone to find him. Police were surrounding me, and my mind was a cluster fuck.  I stood against the wall, propping myself up. If I had left for work only five minutes earlier, surely she’d be gone now.

            “Did y’all scrape that motherfucker off my threshold? Is he good and dead?” I barked, running my bloody hand though my hair.

The Deputy Sherriff stepped forward,
            “Clayton he’s dead. SLED is on their way down there to review the crime scene. Tell me, Son, who is he? I’m fixin’ to find his kin to make the notification.”

I ran my hands over my face, I spit his name out of my mouth like it tasted vile.

            “Adam, Adam Vergamo. He is Aubrey’s ex-husband. Lives in New Jersey.” I mumbled.

Suddenly the sliding glass doors were whooshing open, and running toward me in slow motion came;  Jimmy Lee and Livvie, Lora Jean, old man Carl Higgins, and pulling in behind the crowd was my only child, dressed in dark scrubs, all of their faces etched with shock and concern. I must have looked a sight, smeared with my wife’s blood, like warpaint all over me.

I reached for my boy, holding him tight to me.

            “Pop, what the in the holy fuck happened?” he gasped into my shoulder.

            I couldn’t speak, Sherriff Devon Pritchett was on scene now and corralled everyone into the private surgical suite waiting room to tell the story once.

            I sat with my head in my hands, the anguish was crushing. I can’t lose her, she can’t die. How many times we whispered to each other, ‘till death do us part” That cannot be today. What reason was there left to live in a world without her? Dear God, hear me please?

            I heard them call the code blue to the operating suite and I almost fell to the floor, I knew that was her. I looked at my son frantically, and he ran back to speak to someone. I held my breath until he ran back to the waiting room.

            “They got her back, Pop. Breathe. The code team is staying in there with her.”

I stood up to find a men’s room, I knew I was going to vomit and wanted one less bodily fluid painted on my clothes.

            When I got back, my people had begun to consolidate. Livvie went to get everyone coffee. Jimmy Lee was fixin’ to go back to our house to check in on the crime scene investigation and pack me a bag of clothes, my shaving kit and to retrieve my briefcase and laptop.

            A nurse found me and brought Aubrey’s jewelry in a plastic sandwich bag. Her engagement ring and diamond wedding band saturated with blood. Her stack ring from Charleston, the diamond studs from her ears and her wedding present, a diamond tennis bracelet, things she never removed. All the jewelry she owned were gifts from me. Now stained with her blood.  

            I started to cry, deep heaving sobs wracked my body. This couldn’t be the way I lost her. We are getting old together, we swore, two wrinkled old fools on rocking chairs watching Lowcountry sunsets.

            Tate wrapped his arms around my sunken shoulders,

             “Pop, pull yourself together, she’s a rebel, she’s gonna pull through this. Faith Pop, have some faith in Aubrey.” The rare emotion in my son’s voice defied his confidence. He was trying to convince me everything would be alright, when he hardly believed it himself.

            Lora Jean approached me and took the baggie from my hands.

            “Clayton, I’ll take them and get them cleaned up for her. You’ll see, good as new.” She whispered affectionately.  I looked down at my own gold band, blood starting to dry on it.

            “Want to give me yours too, Clay?” she asked.

I shook my head, tears coming from eyes.

            “She put this on my finger….stars in her eyes that day….so beautiful gazing up at me…I can’t….I won’t….I’m never taking this off,” I choked out the words.

Lora Jean nodded in agreement, her eyes filled with tears.

            I gave the SLED guys my official statement. They asked so many question, had she been receiving threats? Was she in contact with him prior?

            I didn’t know, she never mentioned his name after the Cape May house was sold.

            I had her phone in my pocket, “Here” I handed it to one of the special agents, “..download her phone, y’all tell me if he’s been in contact with her. I tell y’all what, I’d like to blame all this on that fucking viper, Shania Greene. That bitch hasn’t given up on the story of Aubrey’s horrible first marriage and the jail sentence Adam served for hurtin’ her. She been rooting like a swamp hog into that girl’s life, slinging mud for months. No doubt she stirred the hornet’s nest around him, he was under a judge’s order not to comment or be interviewed and that order expired a month ago,”

            “Clay now don’t get ahead of yourself Son, we can’t pin an attempted murder on a bad journalist,” Pritchett said quietly.

I stood quickly, my hand on my hips,

            “You can’t? Watch me sue that cunt for inciting violence, risking a catastrophe, and fuck all, Devon, I’ll even charge her with killing Jesus Christ himself when I’m all done. I will ruin her. She stirred this pot, Sheriff, every night with another story, over and over again, never getting Aubrey’s name out-her-mouth. I will make it my life’s work to bring her down.” I vowed angrily.

            “Clay. Take a breath, cooler heads on this will prevail. Let’s get Miss Aubrey through this and we’ll lather up the firing squad on another day.” Devon replied, he held onto my arm and nodded with encouragement. “Trust me Son, I won’t let her get away unscathed.” He whispered.

            “Easy now, Pop,” Tate stood and brought me back to the chair.

            “How ‘bout I get you a change of clothes?” he asked. “You covered in blood, Dad,” he whispered softly.

I shook my head,

             “Jimmy Lee’s heading back with a bag for me, I’ll clean up and change when he gets here,” I looked down at her blood, in a wild pattern across my chest, my beautiful girl, the life seeping out of her in the entryway of her dream house. I could never set foot in that house again, and if she survived this, I would build her a new one and burn that fucking place to the ground.

            I gave my clothes to the investigators along with the bag of Aubrey’s clothing which came from the nurses in the surgical suite, all packed into evidence bags.

            After almost six excruciating long hours, the surgeon came out to speak to me.

            “Mr. Hoover, your wife is out of surgery Sir,” he was a tall gentleman about my age, early fifties with a shiny bald head and kind brown eyes.

            I stood up quickly, dressed now in clean clothes, all the blood scrubbed off me and with half the coffee in the county racing through my veins.

            “Doctor, give me good news,” I begged. The group of us all rose to our feet and gathered around him.

            “I don’t mind telling y’all, it was touch and go for a good while in there. She crashed on me twice. Lost a great deal of blood. But miraculously the bullets missed vital organs. She lost her spleen, her transcending colon, and the bottom quarter of her stomach, but we took as long as we did to patch her up carefully.  She’s in recovery now and will be in our intensive care unit for the next twenty-four hours. We are going to keep her in an induced coma about twelve hours to give her a rest,”

            “What all is the prognosis?” I asked holding my breath.

            “Well Sir, I’m not gonna lie, it’s a gradual recovery. Fortunately, she didn’t require a colostomy bag. Her body has suffered great trauma and eventually it will train her small intestine to start taking over the job of the lost section of her large intestine. Mostly, she’ll be on a liquid diet until she can tolerate solid foods. No Lowcountry boils for a spell.” He paused and smiled at me,

            “She’s fixin’ to be just fine, Mr. Hoover, she gonna need some time is all. Right now my concern is infection. She can develop peritonitis due to the invasion to her abdominal cavity. We’re running wide open antibiotics and will for the next ten days until we’re sure she’s out of the woods on that.”

            He handed a cup to the Sherriff, “She was shot three times and I retrieved these slugs, 9-millimeter, gratefully nothing got near her spine,”

            Devon took custody of the bullets and had the doctor sign the chain of evidence log.

            I fell into the surgeons arms, hugging him tight and thanking him for the miracle of his training.

            “When can I see her?” I pleaded.

            “Give us another hour to set her up in recovery, and I’ll fetch y’all to come through.”

            He stepped away and my son embraced me, holding me tight and close.

            “I’m fixin’ to go pick up Lovey, she should be here.” He whispered confidently.

            I stared back at my son, “Do you think that’s wise? She’s a creature of her environment, she hates hospitals, and this might upset her,” I asked concerned.

            Tate held onto my arms, “Pop, she adores Aubrey. She’ll want to comfort her, and we should let her,”

            Lora Jean returned with Aubrey’s jewelry cleaned and polished. I slid the jewelers envelope into my pocket when the nurse came to get to me.

            The recovery room was filled with machines. Multiple monitors were alight measuring her heart rate and other telemetry above her head. IV bags piggy backed on top of one another, transfusing blood and drains, tubing snaking out from under her blankets into bags attached to the handrails of her bed.

            She looked tiny and frail in the bed. Her dark hair twisted across the pillow, her tanned skin now blanched pale and ghostly. My beautiful bride, the love of my fucking life, fighting to come back to me. I started to sob again. Quietly the tears streamed from my eyes.

I made my way around the machinery to touch her. I leaned over and kissed her forehead.

“Sugar, I’m here and I’m not leaving without you. You rest now and get yo’self better. Thank you, thank you, for fighting for me.” I murmured.

The nurses were in and out of the new room in the ICU, helping to situate the machinery to make it easy for me to make camp in a comfortable recliner and be able to hold her hand.

My phone was vibrating and blowing up. I stepped into the hallway to find Jimmy Lee.

“Crocodile, Whatcha need?” he asked, concerned.

“My phone, it won’t stop. I can’t work right now, I need you to take over.” I asked wearily.

“Clay its already in the works. I filed all kinds of continuances this morning. Alan is heading down from Columbia with Jasper, to check into our office for anything they can take off our desk. We got you Clay, you take care of that girl. It will all be waiting for you when you ready, Son.”

Knowing our boss, the Attorney General was fixin’ to cover us, this was one comfort, knowing our friend, his assistant and deputy, Jasper Moody would be with him was the greater relief.

“What about the press?” I asked with disdain.

“Oh the vultures are circling. We’re working on a press release, I’ll run it by you in an hour or so, we just waiting on an update in Aubrey’s condition. The hospital won’t give a press conference, they’ll cite HIPPA. But y’all know your favorite reptile is already sniffing for an interview,” he sneered.

I stared into Jimmy Lee’s eyes, my mood black and circling into a storm squall.

“Jimmy Lee,” I whispered ominously.

“No need Clay, I got this. Shania about to meet up with the Good Ole Boy network. They useful for situations like this here. She’s getting stonewalled from Sheriff’s to SLED. She’s not getting anywhere near y’all, the hospital, or our office. Pritchett and I have already discussed this. They have patrol cars surrounding your house, no one’s getting a picture….Son I never seen so much blood, Sweet Jesus.” He shook his head emotionally. “Clay y’all can’t go back there and for the love of heaven, Aubrey can’t never step back into that house.”

I nodded my head, “I made that silent declaration about five hours ago. I’ll burn it the fuck down first,” I said, my voiced strained with emotion.

Livvie stood to hug me, “Clay you have to eat something. Let us take you down to the commissary, fix you a plate.”

I shook my head, “I’ll drink one of them protein shakes the boy keeps offering me, I’m fine. I need to stay in there with Aubrey,”

The soft whispers of my gathered group in the waiting room suddenly hushed with reverence upon the arrival of my mother. Tate had her positioned regally in a wheelchair with a blanket over her legs. Still wearing her straw gardening hat and her lap filled with fresh cut roses.

“Clayton?” she whispered, her face skewed with concern.

“Where is she, my boy? Take me to her bedside,” her voice tinged with urgency.

I leaned down and kissed her cheek, ‘Thank you for being here Momma, we need you,” I choked on my tears.

She touched my cheek tenderly. “Bring me to her, Clayton. I need to talk with her.” She whispered.

“Momma, she’s in a coma. Unconscious, she won’t be able to speak with you,” I tried to explain.

My mother grinned slyly. Looking me over like I was the crazy one.

“She’ll talk to me, sweet boy. Don’t you fret.”

I wheeled Miss Abigail into Aubrey’s room and brought her close to the bed, so that she could touch her and hold her hand.

“Child, look at you,” she tsked to Aubrey quietly. She smoothed her blankets and touched her softly. “What did that awful man do?” she whispered. I slumped into the chair across from them.

She held Aubrey’s hand in hers, “tell me what you seein’ Aubrey, talk to me, Sugar.” The room was eerily still and quiet with only the sounds of the machines purring in the background and the hiss of the oxygen canula at Aubrey’s nose. For the first time, I saw the powder burns up her forearm from the close range of the shots. Cold shivers went down my spine.

Momma held her hand and stroked it with her free one. Nodding her head as if she were listening to a conversation. I sat up to watch the interaction intently.

“He’s right here, child. He hasn’t left your side and I’m plumb sure he’s not fixin’ too,” my mother’s tender voice was reassuring Aubrey and truly as if she were communicating with her in some fashion. “No Sugar, he wasn’t hurt. He is sitting across from me holding your other hand, darlin’, not a mark on him.” Momma reassured Aubrey.

She looked up at me, “Clayton, is he dead? The man did this to her? She’s asking.”

I nodded, “Yes Ma’am, he shot her and then himself. His body is downstairs, in the morgue.”

Momma focused back on Aubrey, and tears stole down her cheeks, “He won’t hurt you anymore, child. He’s dead. Aren’t you precious, thank you kindly Aubrey.”

She glanced over at me, “Our Susie is there with her, leading her back to us. Aubrey asking to see her Momma and she’ll be back. She telling me how much your sister loves us both,” Momma swiped at her tears with a lace handkerchief she pulled from her pocket. 

“Aubrey, honey. You take your time, we waitin’ on you. Visit with your kin and come back to us, we love you so very much, sweet girl.” She raised Aubrey’s hand to her mouth and kissed it.

“Thank you darling, please tell her how much we love her too. I will indeed tell him, you get to resting now.” She whispered.

She looked up at me, her eyes sparkling, “Clayton, she wants me to tell you, she warned you, you stuck with her forever, and she’s not leaving you.”

It sounded like something Aubrey would say, and I believed it. I broke down and wept, resting my head on my wife’s blanketed thigh. Relief and wonder flowed through me…my magical mother. Thank you God. Thank you for these remarkable women who love me.

I brought Miss Abigail back to the waiting room and everyone stopped to greet her. She peeked up at Tate, “Lovey, will you bring me back now? I’ve got work to do.” She handed the flowers from her lap to Lora Jean.

“Miss Lora Jean, you know how to fix these for my lovely daughter in there, now don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes Ma’am I’ll take care of them Miss Abigail, be my pleasure,” Lora Jean whispered.

I heard my mother call Aubrey her daughter, and I couldn’t hold back the tears. It’s something I never thought I’d see in my life, but since meeting Aubrey, the collection of ‘never did I ever’s’ were being obliterated.

I went to my knees before my mother and put my head in her lap.

“Thank you Momma, thank you so much,” I whispered.

She stroked my hair like she did when I was a child.

“You be strong now Clayton. Aubrey needs you. She facing a long road to getting better. But she coming back, just give her some time.” Her voice was soothing and brought back the memories of my youth when she’d restore me after scraped knees and early injustices.  

Tate took her from us to drive her back to her world, her supernatural garden. Her visit lifted a weight off my shoulders. My son, he knew, she would do wonders with her appearance.

I exhaled loudly and walked back to my wife’s bedside.