Page 132 of Hello, Summer
“Who’s that?” Mike asked as his shutter clicked away.
“I think that must be George McFall. He owns the funeral home.”
Conley reflected that death became Vanessa Robinette. Her red hair was twisted into a chignon. She wore a severely cut black dress with elbow-length sleeves, obviously couture, but Conley, who didn’t keep up with such things, couldn’t name the designer. A tiny pin twinkled from the scalloped neck of the dress. Symmes’s fraternity pin, she remembered. Her eyes were obscured by a veil pinned to a small velvet pillbox hat. It was a very Jackie Kennedy look, Conley had to admit.
A second limo pulled behind the one Vanessa had vacated. The back door opened, and Charlie Robinette emerged, dressed in a charcoal suit, followed by Kennedy McFall. Then Charlie leaned down and lifted a wriggling preschooler out of the back seat, delivering her to her mother’s outstretched arms.
Graceanne wore a navy dress with a smocked bodice and puffed sleeves and a ruffled petticoat. As Charlie handed her off, Conley stifled a giggle as the child’s bare pink bottom was exposed. She saw, rather than heard, Kennedy gasp, then dart back to the limo to retrieve a pair of lacy white underpants, a pair of black patent Mary Janes, and one sock.
Mike’s shutter continued to click as the hearse drew up, followed by another limo. “That’s the governor,” he said. “Why don’t you go inside and grab us some seats. I’ll finish up out here.”
“I’ll be on an aisle, halfway up,” she said. She tucked her head down and her elbows out as she moved determinedly through the throng snaking toward the church doors.
She’d grown up going to services in this church. It was an elegant, pre–Civil War building with thickly veined marble floors, mahogany pews, and a soaring ceiling supported by twin rows of fluted columns.
A harpist and string quartet were stationed on the right side of the altar, with the harpist accompanying the church organist, playing something she vaguely recognized as Mendelssohn.
Michael tapped her shoulder, and she scooted in to let him join her in the already packed pew, earning her an angry glare from the middle-aged woman sitting to her right.
“What’s it looking like out there?” Conley whispered.
“Total crazy-town. I just saw a sheriff’s deputy arrest a lady for parking her handicapped-access van on the sidewalk. Like, seriously on the sidewalk. He told her she’d have to move it, and she took a swing at him with her pocketbook.”
“You got that, right?”
He grinned and held up the Nikon. “Shot the shit out of it.”
People were still streaming into the church as white-gloved ushers shoehorned them into every available space.
From the pew behind hers, Conley heard a small gasp. Turning, she watched while Hank Robinette, dressed in an ill-fitting sport coat, escorted Toddie and Rebecca Robinette up the aisle toward the front of the church. She recognized both from Toddie’s photo.
She glanced at Mike, who had the Nikon in his lap. “That’s Toddie,” she whispered. “I don’t care how you do it, but we need that shot.”
He spun around in the pew, clicked off half a dozen frames as Toddie and her children passed, then turned back and put the camera on the pew between them. “Got it.”
“Boom,” Conley said.
She felt a light tap her on shoulder and looked up to see G’mama walking up the aisle with her hand tucked into Skelly’s arm.
Lorraine was dressed in a simple buttercup-yellow linen dress and her favorite turquoise beads. Her grandmother had always had an uncanny sense for wearing classic fashions that never went out of style, and she never wore black because, as she always said, there were so many beautiful colors in nature. Conley realized with a start that it was the same dress G’mama had worn to her father’s funeral.
A few minutes later, the large wooden outer doors to the vestibuleclosed, and the church’s massive pipe organ began booming the opening notes to “A Mighty God Is Our God.” The church pastor, Dr. Phipps, processed down the main aisle, followed by the black-robed choir, followed by six pallbearers and a rosewood casket containing the earthly remains of C. Symmes Robinette.
Vanessa Robinette came next, on George McFall’s arm, followed at a safe distance by Charlie and Kennedy McFall, with a now-docile Graceanne holding their hands.
The service started, but the pastor’s voice seemed to Conley to be coming from far away. Despite the air-conditioning in the church, she felt warm, suffocating even. Her palms grew damp, her face flushed, and she felt light-headed.
She didn’t realize that she was breathing hard until Michael nudged her. “Are you all right? You look kinda sick.”
“I’m okay,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and tried to meditate. This church, these funeral rituals, all brought her father’s own service rushing back into her memory.
The pastor was a kind-faced, benevolent presence. He yielded the lectern for a brief eulogy from the governor of Florida, who said he’d been a freshman state senator during Symmes Robinette’s last term in the Florida Senate and that Robinette had always been a source of strength and inspiration.
The governor yielded to Charlie Robinette, who was already masterful at public speaking—charming, self-deprecating, funny, and touching. If you didn’t know him. His voice gave Conley a sour taste in her mouth. He was still the Little Prince. To the manor born.
“I always wanted to be like my dad,” he said, placing both hands on the lectern. “But the truth is, nobody could ever fill Symmes Robinette’s shoes. And I mean that literally, because my father wore a size 6 shoe. It was a miracle that a man of his height—he was six two in hisstocking feet—and weight—which he never divulged to anybody, not even my mother—could stand erect on such tiny, toddler feet.”
Gentle laughter rippled through the congregation.
