Page 68 of Hello, Summer
“The text was from Kevin. He sent me the information I need for my story.”
He reached out and grabbed Conley’s hand. “It’s Saturday night. I thought we were having a nice time. You told me there’s no internet out here. What’s the rush?”
“TheBeacon’s deadline is Tuesday. I’ve got to get a handle on this Robinette thing so that I can convince Grayson there’s more of a story here than just a politician’s tragic accident.”
“I thought you said you quit theBeacon,” Skelly said.
“I did. But G’mama wants me to see it through. Besides, if this story turns into a thing, it could be my ticket to a real job at a real paper. If it has national implications, I could freelance it out to theTimesor thePost.At the very least to my old paper.”
“What if it’s not a thing?” he persisted. “What if it’s just a run-of-the-mill accident on a lonely country road? What then?”
She turned around to face him. “Then I find another story or, better yet, another job. I have to work, Skelly. I’m a journalist. It’s who I am. It’s what I’m good at.”
He watched her striding away, back down the beach toward her grandmother’s house. He took one last look at the remains of the pier and the dozing pelicans. “Halcyon days,” he murmured.
23
“She’s asleep,” Winnie reported when Conley got back to the Dunes. The housekeeper had dragged a chair into the hallway outside Lorraine’s bedroom and was sitting there, looking half-asleep herself, with a battered Nora Roberts paperback novel open on her lap.
Conley opened the door and tiptoed inside. Her grandmother was propped up on her pillows on the bottom bunk bed, glasses perched on the end of her nose, softly snoring. The bruise on her cheek made an ugly dark stain on G’mama’s pale skin. Conley reached out and removed the glasses, placing them on the nightstand, then leaned down and lightly kissed her cheek before turning off the reading lamp and exiting the room.
“You go on to bed too,” Conley told Winnie, pointing at the small bedroom across the hall. She was already having second thoughts about driving back to town for the night, especially after G’mama’s fall earlier in the day. Skelly was right. The story would have to wait.
When she heard a slight knock at the front door, she flew down the steps and opened it.
Skelly stood there, holding the sandals she’d forgotten out on the beach.
“I figured Cinderella might need her slippers,” he said, handing them over.
She looked down at her sandy bare feet. “Whoops.”
“Want me to follow you back into town?”
“There’s been a slight change in plans. I’m staying here tonight,” she said, stepping outside. “If G’mama’s feeling okay in the morning, I’ll go in.”
“What changed your mind?” he asked, clearly surprised.
“I guess you did. There’s nothing I could do tonight that I can’t do tomorrow. And in the meantime, if something happened, if G’mama had another spell, I’d never forgive myself for not being here when she needed me.”
“You’ll want to call her doctor Monday and let him know what’s going on,” Skelly said.
“I will,” she promised. And then she placed both hands on his shoulders, stood on her tiptoes, and impulsively kissed him square on the lips.
He took a half step backward and looked at her quizzically.
“That’s for being my Prince Charming,” she said.
He bowed from the waist. “My pleasure.”
Conley changed into her pajamas and carried her things downstairs, noiselessly slipping into the boys’ bunk room and climbing into the top bunk using the wooden ladder her grandfather had built by hand.
The beds were probably relics from the fifties or sixties, she thought, with maple wagon-wheel headboards and footboards to fit in with the vaguely cowboy-meets–Beach Boys decorating theme. The wall-mounted sconce on the top bunk featured a brass horse head, but the slightly musty-smelling chenille bedspreads had a tufted design of seashells, waves, and anchors.
She switched on the light, and the brass chain pull came off in her hand. She shook her head, looking around the bunk room. This had been the hangout for generations of boy cousins, and she hadn’t been in here in decades.
In the dim light from the sconce, she could see that the ceiling was mottled with large water stains. The wheezy air-conditioning unit in thebedroom’s only window dripped water onto the floor, where the boards were beginning to warp.
The Dunes was showing its age, and the effect, even in the semidarkness, was not flattering.
