Page 12 of Hello, Summer
“She’s broken your grandmama’s heart so many times, I can’t believe it’s still beating,” Winnie said sadly. “She still believes Melinda might come home any day now.”
She pointed at the ancient black rotary phone that had been hanging on the wall by the pantry for as long as Conley could remember. “Every time that phone rings, she jumps up, hoping and praying it’s your mama on the other end,” Winnie said. “Ain’t nobody calling on that landline except rip-off artists and people selling time-shares in Mexico, but you can’t tell Lorraine that.”
Conley nodded. “That sounds right.”
She’d initiated the conversation about her mother, but suddenly she couldn’t stand to be in this kitchen, with that phone and her grandmother’s heartbreak, for one more minute. She looked around the room and spotted Opie snoozing on his bed near the air-conditioning vent.
She found his leash hanging on a nail by the back door. “Come on, Opie,” she said, kneeling beside him. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Opie opened one bloodshot eye, snuffled, then returned to slumbering.
“A walk?” Winnie said with a hoot. “Only thing that spoiled mutt wants is a nap and a treat.”
“He’s had way too many treats,” Conley said, poking the dog’s generous flank. “Jack Russells aren’t supposed to be this fat.” She clipped the leash to his collar and gave a gentle tug. “Come on, boy, let’s go.”
The dog struggled to his feet and gave her an expectant look. She gave the leash another tug, and he plopped down on his haunches.
“He won’t move a muscle without a treat,” Winnie advised. She went to the Donald Duck cookie jar on the counter, reached in, and pulled out a dog biscuit, then handed it to Conley. “Carrot and stick,” she said, nodding. “Wave it under his nose and start walking. Works every time with old men, mules, and dogs.”
5
She started off at a slow, even jog but hadn’t made it to the end of the block before Opie went out on strike, plopping down onto his belly, his legs splayed out beneath him.
“Come on, boy.” She yanked at the leash, and in response, he lowered his head to the sidewalk.
She gave the leash another tug. “Come on, Opie! Let’s get moving.”
In desperation, she waved a dog treat under his nose. He looked up, his dark eyes showing a glimmer of interest. She moved the treat at arm’s length from his snout.
“Carrot and stick, buddy,” she said as he clambered to his feet. “Carrot and stick.”
In the end, they reached a compromise. Opie agreed to walk at an agonizingly slow pace, and she agreed to reward his progress with a snack every so often.
She twitched the leash impatiently as the old dog trailed along in her wake. Conley had been a woman in motion her whole life, always speeding toward her next deadline, next job, next relationship. She was unused to walking anywhere.
It wasn’t even noon yet, but already the oppressive coastal Florida heat and humidity settled over her shoulders like a suffocating cloak.
The rubber soles of her running shoes slapped on the hot concrete, and the slow pace forced her to look up and down the street where she’d spent so much of her childhood.
Woodlawn had always been a wealthy neighborhood that lived up to the name, with live oaks and crape myrtles lining the streets, thickly carpeted lawns, hedges of blooming hibiscus, and poisonous but pretty pink and white oleanders. The air was perfumed with the confederate jasmine that clambered up brick foundations and wrapped tendrils around lacy wrought iron columns and trim.
Two blocks down from G’mama’s house, the sprinklers were on in the front yard of the handsome two-story colonial that had once belonged to the Snyders. Kristin Snyder had been her best friend until the start of eighth grade, when Conley had been packed off to the same Virginia boarding school her grandmother and mother had attended.
Who lives here now?Conley wondered idly, prodding Opie with the toe of her sneaker to get him moving again.
As her walk took her farther from home and closer to the center of town, a distance of less than a mile, the tree-shaded blocks of Woodlawn transitioned to a slightly shabbier neighborhood, with one-story concrete block homes on smaller lots. Lacking the shade of the tree canopy, she could feel the heat of the asphalt street beneath her shoes.
She guided Opie off the street and onto the grassy verge, where he stopped and took a long time to pee on a telephone pole. While she waited, thunder rumbled overhead, where an ominous tower of pillow-shaped dark clouds were gathering. Fat, warm droplets of rain began to pelt her bare shoulders, and steam rose up from the sunbaked asphalt.
Should she try to run for home? Or keep moving? Opie looked up at her expectantly. She realized that they were only a block from theBeaconbuilding. Maybe she’d drop in on her sister and tell her, face-to-face, about the change in plans. She scooped the dog into her arms and began to run through the rain toward the newspaper offices.
Grayson glowered at her from across her cluttered desktop. “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Did you not hear a word I said this morning?”
“Hmm?” Conley was staring out the open door of her sister’s office and into the newsroom of her family legacy—The Silver Bay Beacon.
Or what passed as a newsroom. It still held eight hulking metal tanker desks that had been in the office for as long as Conley could remember, but only two of the desks seemed occupied. The rest were piled high with what looked like decades’ worth of broken or outdated equipment—ancient manual Underwood typewriters, bulky beige IBM Selectrics, office chairs missing backs or casters, stacks of phone books, and dusty black rotary telephones.
Conley dropped Opie’s leash, and the dog immediately sought shelter beneath her chair. “You thinking of opening a museum out there, Gray?”
