Page 36 of Hello, Summer
“Just the cute ones.” He handed her one of the bottles. It was icy to the touch.
“Wanna come in?”
Skelly stepped back toward the edge of the porch and looked out at the deserted street. “Maybe we could sit out here?” he asked, gesturing at the rocking chairs. “If Mom wakes up and I’m not there, she’s liable to get confused and wander outside looking for me.”
They sat on the rockers and uncapped the beers, clinking the bottles together in a silent toast.
“She’s that bad, huh?” Conley asked.
“Oh yeah,” Skelly said. “It’s weird. Some days, she’s fine. Insists on going to the store with me, putting on her lab coat. She greets old customers, even talks about their prescriptions. She still thinks she’s running the store. Other days, she doesn’t recognize me, can’t figure out how to put on her own shoes. Some days, she thinks I’m my dad. Other times, she thinks I’m her own father.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Conley said.
“Nothing to say.” He tipped his bottle to his lips and drank.
“Hey, did you hear about Symmes Robinette?” he asked. “He was the guy. In the wreck.”
“I did. In fact, Grayson and G’mama ganged up and browbeat me into doing a story for theBeacon.That’s why I’m here tonight. We don’t have Wi-Fi at the Dunes, and I needed to start doing research for the obit.”
Skelly rocked backward, crossing one leg over the other. “Too bad you can’t talk to my mom. She went to high school with Toddie, you know.”
“Who’s Toddie?”
“Toddie Robinette. Symmes’s first wife.”
“For real?” Conley sat up straight. “I’ve been in there doing research on Symmes for a couple of hours. I never saw anything about a first wife.”
He shrugged. “I think they kept the split real quiet when it happened. I don’t know much about her, just that Mom used to cuss every time anybody mentioned Symmes’s name. She was never interested inpolitics, but after the divorce, she by God made sure she went to the polls and voted against him every time he ran for reelection.”
“Verrrry interesting,” Conley said. “Fascinating.”
“See?” Skelly said. “Silver Bay’s got all kinds of shit going on, if you just know where to look.”
13
Skelly sat with his back against the white-painted columns on Lorraine’s front porch, gazing up at the sky. An owl hooted from the top of an ancient pecan tree that shaded the far end of the house. “It’s sure a pretty night. Clear as a bell. I bet you don’t see this kind of night in Atlanta, with all the lights of the city around.”
Conley stole a glance at her old friend’s profile. There were fine lines etched around his eyes, and she could see flecks of silver in Skelly’s beard.
“No,” she agreed, inhaling the scent of the night-blooming jasmine that wound around the wrought iron porch railing. “To tell you the truth, I can’t remember the last time I even looked up to see the night sky in Atlanta.”
“Everything all right out at the beach when you finally got there?” he asked.
“Yeah. Well, actually, it was kind of sad. The Dunes seems so run-down, and G’mama has me kind of worried. I didn’t want to believe Gray, but G’mama really has started to slow down. This year, she said she and Winnie want to stay downstairs in the bunk rooms. She made out like it was because of Winnie’s bad hip, but I think she really doesn’twant to have to go up and down those stairs all the time. She insisted that I take her old room on the top floor.”
“How old is Miss Lorraine?”
“It’s a state secret. Eighty something?”
“Count yourself lucky that she’s in as good a shape as she is,” Skelly said. “My mom is only sixty-eight, and some days, she can’t figure out how to button her own shirt or fasten a bra.”
“Oh, Skelly.” Conley touched his knee. “Don’t tell me you have to—”
“Not yet, thank God,” he said, smiling ruefully. “I hired an aide who comes in every day to help her bathe and get dressed. I bought her a bunch of ladies’ undershirts, the kind we always used to callwifebeaters? She’s awful skinny now, so it’s not like she really needs a bra. And then I finally just gave away all her blouses and tops with buttons, and now she wears T-shirts that she can just pull on. And pants with elastic.”
“Pretty resourceful,” Conley said.
“She cried when she saw I’d cleaned out her closet,” Skelly said. “She keeps asking me what happened to all her pretty church dresses and high-heel shoes.”
