Opie, her grandmother’s Jack Russell terrier, was crouched in the grass nearby. As Conley approached, he raised his graying snout and sniffed hopefully, and when no doggie treats were forthcoming, he snuffled loudly, twitched an ear, then settled back into his previous pose.
“Everything looks amazing, G’mama,” Conley said, walking around the fenced yard. “I don’t know how you do it. I can’t keep a cactus alive.”
Lorraine’s face was shaded by a wide-brimmed, floppy straw hat. “Joe does most of the hard work,” she said, referring to her yardman. She shook her head. “I really thought we’d be out at the Dunes by now. That’s why I haven’t bothered planting much this spring.”
“What else could you plant?” Conley asked, amused. “There’s not a square foot of ground here that’s not in bloom.”
G’mama shook her head impatiently. “Not here. At the Dunes. I need to get my tomatoes and peppers put in the ground out at the beach this week, or it’ll get too hot.” She pointed at the brick-paved patio shaded by a sprawling live oak, where a line of plastic pots held foot-high vegetable plants. “I can’t get that hardheaded sister of yours to understand why any of this is so important to me.”
Conley made a snap decision. “Come on,” she said, taking the hose from her grandmother. “We need to get your tomatoes going. I’m itching to get out to the beach too. It won’t be that much work. You go on upstairs and start packing what you need to take. Winnie can go on home and get her stuff together, and if we hurry, we should be able to get on the road by two. Right?”
“Maybe we should wait until tomorrow,” Lorraine said, tilting her head to look up at the sky. “The news said we might get a big storm moving through this afternoon.”
“A little rain won’t hurt anything,” Conley said, but her grandmother’s blue eyes looked troubled. “Unless you really don’t feel like moving in out at the Dunes just yet. I mean, it’s totally up to you.”
“Oh no, it’s not that. For weeks now, I’ve been champing at the bit to get out there. You can ask Winnie. It’s just that Grayson’s been so sweet. So worried about me. I don’t want her to think I’m ungrateful or anything.”
Conley had to bite back her impatience. She’d been in her hometown less than twenty-four hours and was already feeling claustrophobic. “I guess it won’t hurt to wait another day. But you could still start packing whatever you want to take. And then we could leave in the morning. Right?”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Lorraine said, looking relieved. “I’ll go inside and light a fire under Winnie. You know how poky she is. I’ll tell her we’re absolutely leaving here at nine in the morning, and she’d better be ready or we’ll leave without her.”
“Oh, God no,” Conley said, acting horrified. “If we leave her here, who’ll do the cooking?”
Lorraine laughed and adjusted the string of pearls she was never seen without. “That’s an excellent point.” She leaned over and kissed her granddaughter’s cheek. “I’ll let you break the news to your sister about our new plan.”
* * *
Conley went back to the makeshift office she’d set up in the dining room. She fiddled with her query letters for another thirty minutes, but it was no good. She clicked around the internet, looking at job postings on various journalism websites, but the prospects were depressing and the truth even more so.
She was an award-winning reporter, at mid-career, in a shrinking industry that no longer seemed to value experience, tenacity, talent, and nerve.
“I’m screwed,” she mumbled, closing the laptop.
She was also bored, unused to any kind of idleness or inaction.
* * *
She went out to the kitchen in search of something to do. Winnie was at the kitchen table, with the previous week’s Beacon spread out and heaped with an intimidating mountain of sterling silver flatware on top of it.
“Are we having a party I don’t know about?” Conley asked, picking up a teaspoon and examining her reflection in the gleaming silver bowl.
“Nope.” Winnie looked up. “Your grandmother says we’re leaving for the Dunes in the morning.”
“That’s right.”
“Which means I need to get this silver polished before I head home.”
“Why’s that?”
The older woman shrugged. “That’s just what we do. Whenever Lorraine goes on a long trip or moves out to the beach, we get the house redded up. Joe’s coming tomorrow to wash all the windows. I’ve already cleaned the oven and cleared out the fridge.”
She held up a long-handled implement with a curiously flat-shaped, triangular pierced head, rubbed at an invisible speck of tarnish with her rag, then set it aside.
“What exactly is that thing for?”
“That’s a tomato server,” Winnie said.
“I get why you clean out the fridge, but why polish silver that nobody’s going to be around to use?” Conley said, holding up another piece. “What’s this one?”
“Asparagus tongs.” Winnie took the piece, inspected, and nodded her approval.
“We’ve never really discussed the why part,” the housekeeper admitted. “But your grandmama isn’t getting any younger. She don’t allow anybody to know her age, but I think it’s because every time she leaves this house now, she thinks, ‘This could be the last time. Next time I come back here, it might be in a coffin.’ So she wants everything nice. Just in case her next cocktail party ends up being her own wake.”
“Speaking of cocktail parties,” Conley said, holding up an inside page of the Beacon. “Rowena Meigs? I can’t believe we’re still running that ridiculous column of hers.”
Winnie glanced at the newspaper. “I never pay any attention to it, but your grandmama says lots of folks only get the paper so they can read Hello, Summer.”
“Listen to this,” Conley said, reading aloud in her most exaggerated Southern accent.
Wedding Bells were ringing last Saturday at Silver Bay First United Methodist when Miss Katherine Ann Cruikshank and Mr. Frederick Mark Eppington Jr. pledged their troth in front of a multitude of some of the finest members of local society. Katherine, known to all as Kitsy, is the daughter of Tinkie and Raymond Cruikshank. Ray Cruikshank is the owner of the Silver Bay IGA, and Tinkie is a fearsome adversary at the bridge table. The bride was radiant in a strapless dress of blush duchesse satin with a hand-sewn pearl bodice made from her own design.
“What the hell is duchesse satin?” Conley asked, pausing her read-aloud.
“Beats me, but it sounds pretty fancy,” Winnie said.
Conley read on.
Her veil, of Alençon lace attached to a pearl-and-rhinestone-studded tiara, was a family heirloom handed down from her great-grandmother. The wedding bouquet consisted of exquisite freesias, white orchids, white sweetheart roses, and baby’s breath. Katherine was attended by a bevy of beauties arrayed in striking ombré-pink satin sheath dresses. “Rick,” who is the son of Dr. and Mrs. Frederick M. Eppington of Bonita Springs, wore a black Hugo Boss tuxedo, as did his groomsmen. The ballroom at the Silver Bay Country Club was arrayed in dazzling ropes of tiny white lights, ferns, and a multitude of white princess roses. Guests dined on steamship round of roast beef, crab imperial, and—in a novel twist—a mashed potato martini bar. The wedding cake was a scale model of White Columns, the bride’s maternal grandparents’ antebellum home in Thomasville, Georgia.