Page 120 of Hello, Summer
“Surprisingly well. Charlie said he thought his half brother and half sister should know that their dad was diagnosed with cancer and that the prognosis wasn’t great. He didn’t want either of his parents to know he’d reached out to us.”
“What did you do next?”
“Nothing. I told Hank and Rebecca. The news made them sad, but I don’t think it really hit them that Symmes was going to die. Then six weeks later, my cell phone rang, and it was Symmes. You could have knocked me over with a feather. It had been so long, I didn’t even recognize his voice.”
She slid the wedding band up and down her ring finger. “He told me Vanessa had moved him back down here, to their house on Sugar Key. He said the doctors at Walter Reed were opposed to that, but she insisted she could take care of him better at home. And he asked if I thought the children would be willing to see him. He said he wanted to make amends.”
“How did your kids react to that?” Conley asked.
She let out a deep sigh. “Hank wanted nothing to do with his dad.We’ve always been really close, and I think he thought it would upset me. Rebecca, on the other hand, agreed right off the bat. Charlie agreed to act as the go-between to make it happen.”
“How did you work around Vanessa?”
“When they first moved back down here, it wasn’t that difficult. Symmes would make up some excuse to Vanessa, and Rebecca would meet him in some out-of-the-way spot. She was ecstatic! She’s a single mom these days, and it meant the world to her to reconnect with her dad.”
“What about Hank?”
“He was a much tougher sell. So stubborn!” Toddie said. She laughed. “But Rebecca guilt-tripped him into going with her for a meet-up. Hank works with me on the quail plantation, and Symmes was a big hunter back in the day, so I think they were happy to discover they still had something in common.”
The minutes were ticking away, and Conley still had so many questions.
“Toddie, I have to ask. How did Symmes come to deed Oak Springs Farm over to you? And only two weeks before he died?”
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Toddie slid the wedding band off her hand and held it up for Conley to see.
“I quit wearing this after my kids were grown. Put it away in my jewelry box. I told myself it was pathetic to hang on to a symbol of a marriage that had been over for decades. But my hand felt so naked without it! It was like my finger had atrophied where the wedding band was. So I put it on again. I wear it now to remind myself that those years mattered. That we had kids and a life together, andshedoesn’t get to erase that.”
“Why did Symmes deed over the farm to you? That’s a pretty valuable piece of real estate.”
“I bet it’s driving Vanessa nuts, isn’t it?”
“She didn’t believe me when I asked her about it,” Conley said.
“Too bad, so sad,” Toddie said. “Oak Springs Farm has been in my family for nearly a hundred years. My granddaddy bought it during the Depression, when you couldn’t give away farmland around here. It was our family’s happy place. We’d get together with all the cousins and aunts and uncles there every holiday. But then, in the eighties, my dad had made some bad investments, and my mom got sick and he needed to sell it. I had to beg Symmes to buy it so we could keep it in the family.”
She reached down and pulled a bulging photo album from the grocery bag, flipping pages until she came to a faded photo of a young couple on the porch of a rustic cabin. Toddie’s hair was blond, and she wore a bikini top and cutoff jeans, and she stood on tiptoe, kissing an impossibly young Symmes, who sported sideburns and a wispy mustache, tight blue jeans, and an unbuttoned shirt. She tapped the picture with her fingernail. “That’s the summer we got engaged.”
There were many more photos—Symmes in military fatigues, Toddie and Symmes on their wedding day, Symmes and Toddie smiling into a camera as their young son blew out birthday candles, the family sitting on the edge of the cabin porch, dressed in plaid flannel shirts, Symmes and a preteen boy, posed together on the deck of a boat, holding a stringer of fish. Even one of Symmes being sworn in for his first term of office in the Florida Senate. Toddie tapped the photo with a finger. “I sewed him that suit,” she said. “Sewed the dress I wore that day too.”
“Could I borrow a couple of those photos for my story?” Conley asked. “Maybe the photo of you guys at the farm and the one of you and Symmes the summer of your engagement? I promise I’ll get them back to you.”
“You’d better,” Toddie said, handing over the album. As she did, another photo fluttered out. This one was printed on cheap white copy paper. Toddie held it up for Conley to see.
Symmes Robinette, hollow-eyed and unshaven, was seated on a rocking chair on the cabin porch. He stared into the camera, flanked on either side by his now-grown, middle-aged children. Rebecca sat on a chair pulled up to her father’s, his hand clasped in hers. Hank stood awkwardly on the other side, holding a shotgun.
Toddie let out a long sigh. “That’s the last photo we have of our whole family. The next-to-last one was taken about twenty-eight years ago.”
“Symmes came out to the farm?” Conley asked.
“Yeah.”
“When was this?”
She shrugged. “Maybe a month before the accident? Charlie was acting as the go-between. He called and asked if it would be okay. It wasa Sunday morning, and I remember Charlie joked that ‘the warden’ was at some kind of out-of-town function. I assumed Charlie would drive him, but Symmes came alone. He looked like death warmed over.” She stared down at the photo, her palm resting lightly on it.
“It was strange, you know?” Toddie said. “Seeing him like that after so many years. He’d always been larger than life, and that day, he looked so diminished. Thin and sick. But he wanted to tour the farm and see the dogs and the old cabin. Hank drove him around on the ATV. I’d fixed lunch, but he didn’t eat much. He gave Hank that shotgun he’s holding in the picture. It’s some special edition with sterling mounts. Probably cost thousands. Symmes said he felt bad that he hadn’t been there when Hank got his first eight-point buck. He gave Rebecca a little diamond ring that had been his mother’s.”
