Page 13 of Hello, Summer
“Cute,” Grayson said. “You’re really cute, little sister. But don’t try changing the subject on me.” She slumped down into her chair. “I told you this morning, it’s not a good idea having G’mama and Winnie out at the beach just now. Winnie won’t say anything, but I know for a fact that she’s in constant pain with her hip. Her nephew flat out told me he wants her to quit working, but Winnie won’t listen. As for G’mama—you do realize she’s in her eighties now, right? She’s started falling. So far, she hasn’t broken anything, but it’s just a matter of time.”
“Fifteen miles just isn’t that far, Gray. And I’ll be right there. If either of them needs to come into town to see a doctor or whatever, I can do that. And besides, G’mama wants to be out at the beach. You should have seen her face today when I told her I’d help her pack and get the house opened up. She was like a kid, skipping around, making plans. Winnie too. This is what they want. It’s what they’ve been doing their whole lives. You can’t take that away from them just because they’re getting older.”
Grayson braced both hands on the desktop. “You think you can just parachute in here and fix things, right? You get to be the golden girl who gives G’mama what she wants, and I get to be the bitchy sister, the killjoy who always says no. But what happens to them when you get bored out at the beach? What happens when you get a new job? You’ll be out of here like a shot, and I’ll be the one making the midnight runs out to the beach—or God forbid, to the emergency room.”Her smooth olive skin was flushed with anger. “What? No answers? I thought you always had all the answers.”
“You never told me G’mama has been sick,” Conley said, her voice low. “You didn’t tell me she’d fallen until this morning. Or that you were worried about her health. Or Winnie’s.”
“What would you have done if you’d known?” Grayson demanded. “Would you have dropped everything and come running? Give me a break! You didn’t even come home for Christmas this year.”
“I was working,” Conley said. It sounded feeble, even to her.
“Working at what? Proving to the world how awesome you are? Proving you don’t need anybody? Can you even remember the last time you came home to see your family for more than a day or two?”
“Dad’s funeral,” Conley said, without hesitation. “I was home for a week when Dad died. It was all the time the paper would give me.”
“Six years ago,” Grayson said. “Dad’s been gone six years, and since that time, you haven’t spent more than a weekend here.”
Conley opened her mouth to protest, but her sister was right. She hadn’t been home, and it wasn’t because she couldn’t get away.
The hurt and shock of her father’s death, not just the loss of his steady, reassuring presence in their lives but the how and the why of it that she’d never shared with anyone, had filled her with dread every time she’d returned home.
Grayson was watching, waiting for Conley to make yet another lame excuse. Then she glanced at her watch, stood abruptly, opened the office door, and poked her head out. “Lillian!” she called. “Michael?” Her words echoed around the high-ceilinged room. “Where the hell is everybody?”
“Quit your hollerin’,” the answer came. A petite, compact-bodied black woman emerged from the newsroom’s outer office. Her short hair was salt and pepper gray, and she wore a flowing, tentlike yellow-and-black-striped dress.
“Lillian, do you happen to know where Michael is?” Grayson demanded, pointing up at the clock on the wall. “Don’t we have a staff meeting scheduled for right now?”
“We do,” the receptionist replied calmly. “But there’s a big freighttrain derailed over in Varnedoe. Chemical spill, according to Buddy Bright. I heard it on the radio and called up Michael, told him to get on over there.”
“Hello?” A woman’s voice called from the outer office. “Hellooooo! Where is everybody?”
“Jesus, take the wheel,” Lillian whispered.
“Yoo-hoo, Grayson, honey. I’m here.” A spritely woman with a cottony puff of snow-white hair made her way into the editor’s office, her walking stick cocked at an insouciant angle. She wore a pale pink polyester suit that had seen better days, a pearl choker, suntan stockings in a shade Conley hadn’t seen since the early nineties, and sensible, lace-up shoes. Her oversize straw pocketbook held a small dog with a matching hairdo.
“Oh, hi, Rowena,” Grayson said, forcing a smile.
“Hello, dear. And here’s this week’s column, right on time, as always,” she said, flourishing a stack of paper before sliding it onto the editor’s desk. She looked around the office. “Where is everybody else?”
“Seems like we’ve got a breaking news story,” Grayson said. “We’ll, uh, have to postpone this week’s meeting.”
“Breaking news? How exciting! What’s happened?”
“Train derailment,” Lillian answered. “You know, Rowena, columnists really aren’t obligated to come to staffer meetings.”
Grayson cleared her throat and shot Lillian a meaningful look.
“But of course, we love it when you drop in,” Lillian said hastily. She picked up the stack of paper and began to retreat from the office. “I’ll start typing this into the system.” She glanced over at her boss. “What do you want to do about the train thing?”
Grayson let out a long sigh. “Damn it. Buddy Bright knew about it before we did? Again? Why do we have police scanners? Why do we bother to call ourselves reporters? All right. Call Michael and tell him to make sure to find out what kind of chemicals we’re talking about. Has the area been evacuated? Do we know if there are any injuries?”
“Buddy said there are ambulances at the scene,” Lillian said. “That’s all I know.”
“Does Michael have the good camera with him?”
Lillian pointed at a black camera bag slung over the back of a nearby chair. “You mean that one right there? No, he thought he was going to the hospital meeting, so there wasn’t any need to take it.”
“Damn it,” Grayson muttered under her breath. “Sorry, Rowena.”
