Page 67 of Hello, Summer
“Seems weird to me,” Skelly said. He walked on, then stopped. “Any chance the two of you will get back together?”
“Why all the questions about my past?”
“Maybe I’m trying to figure you out. That’s all.”
“Let me know when you do,” Conley said. She dipped her hand in the water and flicked it at him.
They left the lights of Villa Valencia behind and finally reached the south end of the island, the point where Silver Bay flowed into the Gulf. A long line of weather-beaten pilings jutted out into the water, the last remains of the Fisherman’s Pier that was blown away in a hurricane in the late 1990s. Pelicans roosted on several of the pilings, their heads folded under their wings as though tucked in for the night.
By unspoken agreement, Conley and Skelly trudged through the soft, white sand toward a swinging bench that stood at the edge of the dune line. The wind was up, and there were whitecaps on the waves. Her dark hair blew in the breeze and ruffled the fabric of her blouse.
“Remember when we all used to go shark fishing out there on summer nights?” Skelly asked, pointing at the remnants of the long-gone pier and stretching his left arm across the back of the bench.
“Did anybody ever catch a shark?” Conley asked.
“I think somebody caught a little nurse shark one time. Mostly, I think we just sat out there, drinking and smoking until the old guys who ran the bait shop ran us off.”
Conley turned her face skyward and gazed up at the stars. “Back then, I always thought summer would last forever. Like, I never even knew what day it was. We’d move out here to the beach right after school got out. Grayson and I had our bikes and a little bit of spending money from doing our chores, and every day, we’d wake up, eat breakfast, and then take off. G’mama’s only rule was that we had to check in with her at lunchtime.”
“Same with all my cousins and me. We’d roam from our place, to y’all’s, to the LaMonacos’, to the pier, and sometimes, if we had money, to the arcade,” Skelly said. “Don’t think we put on shoes—or underwear, for that matter—from June ’til September, when we had to go back to school.”
“Halcyon days,” Conley said, smiling at the memory. She and Grayson had been the only girls in the pack of boys that included the Kelly cousins, right up until puberty struck. After that, after she’d gone away to boarding school, things changed. She was suddenly an outsider. And she’d been one, she realized, ever since.
“Halcyon,” Skelly said, turning the word over in his mouth. “I’ve seen that word in books but never really knew what it meant.”
“I’ve always thoughthalcyonmeans a time of sweetness and contentment, of happy times remembered,” Conley said. “But let’s ask the Googles.”
She pulled her cell phone out and typed the word into the search engine.
“Huh,” she said reading the definition. “I never knew that.”
“What?”
“It’s a word that comes from Greek mythology, referring to a bird—a kingfisher, actually—who had the magical power to calm the wind and waves at the winter solstice so that she could breed in a nest floating at sea.”
“Halcyon days,” he repeated. “I guess you don’t know you’re living them until years later, looking in the rearview mirror.” After a moment, he said, “I can’t remember. Did your dad come out to the beach with y’all in the summertime, or did he stay in town for work?”
“Up until my mother left, the whole family stayed at the Dunes for the season. Dad kept what he calledsummer hoursat the bank. He’d get off work at two and then come out and spend the night. He only worked half days on Friday.”
“My dad did the same thing,” Skelly said. “He’d tell his nurse not to schedule any patients after two in the summertime, unless it was an absolute emergency. He’d come out to my aunt and uncle’s house, change out of what he called histown clothesand into this ratty pair of orange Bermuda shorts with blue flamingos embroidered on them.”
“Oh my God! I totally remember those shorts. I don’t ever remember seeing him on the beach when he wasn’t wearing them. They’d faded so much they looked pink.”
“My mom tried hiding them, but he always found them. It was like a running joke between them. Finally, one year in August, she enlisted all us kids in her plot. She sent him to Mr. Tastee for ice cream, and while he was gone, she rigged the pants to some rope and she ran it up the flagpole on the front of the cottage. When he got back with the ice cream, we were all standing on the front steps, saluting his shorts. I’ve still got a photo of it somewhere.”
Conley pointed at the brightly colored shorts Skelly was wearing.“I was wondering when you’d suddenly gotten so sporty—these aren’t the same shorts, right?”
He laughed. “No, but they’re as close as I could find. I guess I have gotten sporty in my middle age. After wearing a white lab coat at the store all day, this is my way of changing gears. Maybe that’s how my dad felt too, after wearing his white lab coat all day.”
“Your dad was such a good sport,” Conley said. “I always thought he and your mom made a great team. They were always laughing and joking around. You could tell they liked each other.”
“I never really thought about that before,” Skelly said. He looked over at Conley. “I guess things weren’t so great between your parents, huh?”
She shrugged. “We never even knew there were any problems until the first time she left.”
Her phone pinged, signaling an incoming text. She glanced down, glad of the distraction, then stood so abruptly the swing hit her in the back of the knees, nearly sending her sprawling. “I need to get back to the house.”
“Something wrong?” he asked, trying to match her pace as she strode through the sand.
