Page 69 of Hello, Summer
She picked up her cell phone, and using the flashlight app, she began leafing through the book she’d chosen for her bedtime reading—the collected wit and wisdom of Rowena Meigs.
The paper was shiny and the print small. It was evident that the book’s publisher had merely photocopied Rowena’s old columns instead of resetting them in more readable type.
Conley flipped pages until one of the hundreds of boldfaced names caught her attention.
HELLO, SUMMER
OCTOBER 28, 1984
A good time was had by all last Saturday as friends and family ofToddie and the Honorable U.S. Rep. Symmes Robinettegathered for a delightful harvest-time “hoedown” atOak Springs Farm,the family’s country estate in Bronson County.
Toddie, always the “hostess with the mostest,” transformed the farm’s rustic horse barn using hay bales, jack-o’-lanterns, and scarecrows aplenty, into a magical party setting, complete with square dancing and cocktails for the grown-ups and hayrides, a pumpkin-carving contest, face painting, and bobbing for apples for the kiddies.
In keeping with the party theme, Symmes, who is our handsome and outgoing congressman for the Thirty-fifth District, and Toddie wore fetching his ’n’ hers denim overalls and plaid flannel shirts, while their teens were dressed in dungarees and T-shirts emblazoned withVOTE FOR MY DAD. A little birdie informed your correspondent that Toddie, as talented with a needle as she is with a saucepan, designed and whipped up the entire family’s costumes herself.
Spotted among the partygoers were the cream of Silver Bay polite society, includingGeorge and Winkie Covington.George is chairman of the Symmes Robinette for Congress committee, and Winkie is a whiz on the tennis courts.Luther and DeeDee Najarianwere among the square dancing set. Luther does important things for the railroad, and DeeDee owns a darling boutique in downtown Silver Bay called Shoe Business. Later in the evening, Symmes and Luther were seen outside the horse barn, “holding court” with theHonorable Judge Beckett Martin,no doubt plotting how to keep progress moving in our fair community.
A “frightful” event marked the fifth birthday party of your correspondent’s own great-niece, Tara Torrence, at thePiggy Park Bar-B-Q Ranchin downtown Silver Bay. Entertainment was provided by a skeleton-costumed bluegrass group who proclaimed themselves as the Crypty Kickers. (Don’t tell the kiddies, but your correspondent happened to recognize Tara’s talented daddy, Tommy Torrence, as the fiddle player.) The Piggy Park chefs departed from their usual fare and delighted the young guests with such Halloween-themed delicacies as “spaghetti and eyeballs,” and “Frankenweiners” franks and beans, “Ghoulish Green Punch,” and chocolate-covered “Black Cat Cupcakes.” At party’s end, Tara’s little guests were each given specially made pumpkin goodie bags full of take-home treats.
Conley read only a few more of Rowena’s columns before closing the volume. Oak Springs Farm, she’d learned, was in Bronson County. Bronson had been a mostly rural area in the Florida Panhandle when she was growing up, a place of quail-hunting plantations and cattle farms. She’d taken horseback riding lessons at a stable there as a preteen, in her horsey phase.
Earlier in the day, June Kelly had said Oak Springs might have been where Toddie Robinette and her children moved after her divorce from Symmes. Maybe, Conley thought, Toddie was still there.
And if she did still live there, would she have anything interesting to say about her recently deceased ex-husband? Would she have any light to shed on the circumstances surrounding Symmes’s death?
She stared up at the ceiling, pondering her next move.
G’mama’s breathing, from the bunk below, was steady and even, punctuated by muffled, snuffling snores. She felt her own breathing fall into rhythm with her grandmother’s. As a child, Conley loved slipping out of her own bed in the bunk room she shared with Grayson and tiptoeing upstairs, where she’d noiselessly slide under the covers, spooning up against G’mama. She’d loved the scent of her grandmother’s night cream, the feel of the pink satin pillowcase she always used to keep her hair from being mussed. Falling asleep with her grandmother’s breaths tickling the back of her neck, she’d felt safe, secure. Loved.
24
She was floating in the warm waters of the Gulf, her body lifting and falling with each movement of the tide. Above, the ink-black night was spattered with numberless stars and just the sliver of a moon. Her father’s voice was calling. “Sarah. Sarah. Where are you?” She turned over, limbs flailing, trying to get a bearing on his location.
“Dad?” She spun around. “Dad?”
He called once more. “Sarah. Where are you?”
She struck out swimming, desperate to find him. Her strokes were awkward and uneven. She’d never been a graceful swimmer. She swam for so long! Her arms and legs burned from fatigue, and she struggled to keep her head above water. Now she was sinking, pulled down by the weight of her own body. “Dad?” she whimpered.
“Sarah! Sarah!”
She sat upright, gasping for air, yanked abruptly from one world to another.
G’mama stood by the side of the bunk bed, tugging at her arm. “Sarah Conley Hawkins! What on earth are you doing up there?”
Conley blinked and looked around the room and then back at her grandmother, her mind racing to come up with a plausible explanation.
“When I came in from walking on the beach, I was too tired to go upstairs to my own room, so I just decided to climb up here.”
Lorraine pushed aside the sheet Conley had pulled up to her neck. “But you weren’t too tired to go upstairs and change into your pajamas?”
“Busted,” Conley said sheepishly.
“I told you, I’m fine. I don’t need a babysitter or a bodyguard,” G’mama said. She picked up the bound volume of Rowena’s columns from the foot of the bunk, where Conley had shoved it before falling asleep. “Where did you get this?”
“Rowena gave it to me yesterday.”
“Gave it? I never heard of that woman giving anybody anything.”
