Free Secrets on Cedar Key by Terri Dulong Page B

grows between a man and a woman based on a mutual admiration and respect for one another. But yes, I did love your father.”
    I had a feeling that what my mother felt for Henry Foster was her latter definition of love. She had known him all her life, growing up on the island.
    I followed her gaze out to the water and softly asked, “Did you ever experience that romantic and passionate love?”
    To my surprise, she replied, “Yes. Yes, I did. Before your father and I married. I was a young girl of eighteen.”
    I refrained from saying anything, but I suddenly felt a stab of envy. I wasn’t sure that I could honestly say that I had ever felt that particular kind of love.
    â€œWhat happened?” I asked, uncertain if my mother would continue.
    But she did. “His name was Julian Cole. It was 1953 and your father was in the army. We had no commitment to each other, no engagement or anything like that. Just friends who had grown up together. Julian was a writer. A journalist, actually. He was from California and came here to write some articles about fishing communities in Florida. That spring of 1953 we fell hopelessly, desperately in love.”
    â€œSo he loved you back?”
    â€œOh, yes. There was never any doubt about that. From the first moment we met at the Island Hotel.”
    I was almost afraid to ask. “Why didn’t you end up together?”
    My mother let out a deep sigh. “I’m afraid it wasn’t a good time in our country. McCarthyism was going on. People were suspicious of one another. In Hollywood, it was a very dark time, with many actors losing their careers for being accused of communism. Most of it was false, and this was later proved. But it didn’t matter. Lives were ruined and the damage had been done.”
    â€œBut I don’t understand. You said Julian was a writer. A journalist writing articles about fishing communities.”
    â€œThat’s right, but although he wasn’t a communist, he was a liberal. He believed in equal rights for everybody, and the year before he had written for a progressive magazine. Articles supporting what unions wanted to do for the workers and other left-leaning topics. Actors weren’t the only ones singled out. Professors and writers were among the accused, and Julian was one of them.”
    I was soaking in this story as if it had happened to somebody else, but here was my seventy-eight-year-old mother telling me about a man who appeared to have meant the world to her.
    â€œThe magazine he was working for contacted him that October and told him he had to come back to California, that charges were pending against him and he had to try to clear his name. But at the time, I knew none of this. All I knew was one evening he told me something had occurred and he had to leave the next day. He promised to be in touch as soon as he could. And then . . . he was gone.”
    â€œBut you know why he left, so he did get in touch with you again?” I knew this story did not have a happy ending, and I felt sadness for my mother’s loss.
    She nodded. “Not until almost a year later. A letter arrived with a Paris, France, postmark. Julian explained he had never been formally charged, but many of the accused were leaving the country. Better to be safe than sorry, they felt. And so . . . he left. He began a new life in Paris, writing for an American magazine that welcomed the news that the expats could provide. He begged me to join him there. Julian asked me to marry him and assured me we would have a good life.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you go?” I whispered.
    â€œQuite simply, because of my sense of duty. Sybile had already left home the year before to go to New York and pursue her modeling career. Daddy was ill by then, and I couldn’t leave Mama alone to care for him.”
    â€œSo instead you gave up your own life?”
    â€œI didn’t look at it that way. Until I received the