Page 65 of Hello, Summer
Conley stood up from the table and began gathering the rest of the plates. “Come on, Skelly. Let’s give Winnie a hand.”
“No, no,” Lorraine protested. “I’ll help Winnie. It’s your first Saturday night at the beach. You young people should go have some fun.”
Conley turned to Skelly and rolled her eyes. “Is it my imagination, or is my grandmother trying to set me up with you?”
Skelly grinned. “It might work, if you’d bake me a chocolate silk pie.”
22
Effectively banished from the kitchen, Conley and Skelly stood, uncertain, on the screened porch.
“Where shall we go?” Skelly asked. “Back to the American Legion?”
“God, no!” Conley shuddered at the memory.
“I was kidding. We don’t have to go anywhere if you don’t want to. I mean, your grandmother can’tmakeus go out on a date.”
“You mean, like your mothermadeyou ask me to the country club teen dance all those years ago?”
“For the last time—”
“I was kidding too,” Conley said, playfully tapping his arm. “I know you said you don’t think G’mama has a concussion, but I think I probably need to stay close to home.”
“How about a walk on the beach, then?”
“Sounds perfect.”
They kicked off their shoes at the dune line and followed the worn path down to the water’s edge.
Skelly waded out until the water lapped at his ankles. “Want to hear something pathetic? I think this is the first time, in at least two years, that I’ve been anywhere near the beach.”
“Since Danielle left?”
“Maybe before that. She hates sand.”
“That’s not pathetic. It’s sad.” Conley waded out to join him. She let her feet sink into the soft sand, feeling the hundreds of tiny coquinas burrowing away from her toes. “You wanna hear pathetic?”
He nodded.
“I came out and went swimming after I moved G’mama in here the other day. And it was the first time I’d set foot in the Gulf since before my dad died.”
“Really? You used to be such a beach bunny. You never came out here all those times you came back to visit over the years?”
“No,” she said simply. “As Grayson reminded me, I’ve been blowing in and out of Silver Bay, in a strictly perfunctory way, for years now.”
“It’s not such a bad place to live,” he said, gazing appreciatively back at the lit-up profile of the Dunes.
They saw the silhouettes of the two older women, Winnie and Lorraine, standing side by side at the kitchen sink, bathed in the soft, yellow light of the kitchen.
“It’s not that it’s a bad place. It’s just not necessarily a good place for me,” Conley said. A wave rolled up, splashing water on the hem of her pants, so she walked back up to the beach.
He followed a moment later, and they walked slowly along the waterline. When a row of huge, close-set houses appeared ahead, she stopped and stared. There were four of them, pale pink stucco, vaguely Moorish revival in appearance, four stories tall, each house bristling with balconies, rotundas, and rooftop cabanas. The turquoise swimming pools behind each house glowed in the gathering dusk, and laughter and music drifted through the air.
“What the hell is that?”
“That, my friend, is Villa Valencia.” Skelly said the name with a pronounced Spanish accent.
“Where did those monstrosities come from? Didn’t the Cooleys used to live there? And your aunt and uncle? Didn’t they own that cute little yellow cottage your family used to stay in every summer?”
