And still, I feel heat rising up my chest, the urge to tell him that the porch is only for paying customers bitter on my tongue.
Another crack of thunder rattles the windows, and the boy on the porch cringes, but I’m already turning away from him because Lo Bailey is walking toward me.
I’ve seen her picture on the internet and in the magazines that Mom had hidden away, so I’d known how gorgeous she was when she was younger, but I’m not prepared for how beautiful she still is. Her hair is long and thick, curling a little from the rain, and while calling it “blond” is technically true, it doesn’t really do justice to the color. It’s a riot of different shades, caramel and gold, platinum and ash, the kind of hair that would cost a fortune in a salon, but I feel like in her case, it’s all natural. Her eyes are the same clear green as the water just outside the door, and even though I know she’s got to be at least sixty—she was in the same grade as my mom—she could easily pass for ten years younger, maybe even fifteen.
I almost want to laugh at it, how stupidly, almost obscenely pretty she is, a true freak of nature—becauseof courselives got ruined over this woman.
Of course she was a scandal.
Of course a man was left dead in her wake.
“Hi,” I say. “You must be August.” I turn to the woman next to him. “And I’m guessing you’re Lo Bailey?”
“And you must be Geneva.”
My attention had been so focused on Lo, this woman who has loomed so large over my hometown, that I’d barely clocked August. But as he steps forward, I realize Lo is probably not theonly one used to turning heads. August Fletcher is tall and lean, his black hair a little too long, threaded with gray at the temples, and his teeth are very white in his very tanned face.
When I take his hand to shake it, his skin is warm, his grip is tight, and I’m surprised by the shiver of lust that shoots up my spine. Since Chris left, I’ve barely looked at men at all, too consumed with saving the hotel and too pissed off at the entire XY contingent to even think about dating, much less sex.
But that part of me definitely wakes up a little when he smiles at me and says, “Hope it’s not an issue that Lo decided to tag along. If you’ve got another room free, that would be great, but we can share if needed.”
“As you can see, we’re completely swamped,” I joke in reply, spreading my hands wide to take in the empty lobby before I remember that sometimes self-deprecation can sound a lot like bitterness.
“Great,” August replies, his teeth flashing in a quick grin, then he adds, “And of course I’ll pay our agreed-upon rate for Lo’s room as well.”
That’seight hundred dollars a night.For who knows how many nights. I almost feel lightheaded as I nod and say, “Sounds good!,” like this man isn’t offering a whole fucking lifeline just as I’d felt the waves start to crash over my head.
I’m still reeling when Lo says, “It’s still such a pretty spot.” She sounds dreamy, like she’s talking to herself, not to me. “I forgot how pretty it was.”
“You’ve been here before?” I ask, wondering when she would have stayed at the Rosalie, given that she grew up just down the road.
“Aren’t you Ellen Chambers’s little girl?” she asks, and I find myself smiling. Only in Alabama can you be forty years old and still be referred to as anyone’s “little girl.”
“I am,” I say. “Well, Ellen Corliss’s.”
Lo nods at that, still a little distracted, like she’s not quite in the same room with us. “Right, right. Well, she’ll always be Ellen Chambers to me.”
She turns then, and her green eyes get a little sharper, a little clearer. “You knew my mama? Beth-Anne Bailey?”
“Everyone knew Miss Beth-Anne,” I say, thinking of the friendly woman who ran the Greedy Pelican, a souvenir shop on Main famous mostly for the giant acrylic pelican on its roof, its beak stuffed with a fake surfboard, beach chairs, and sunglasses. It’s hard to believe a woman this stunning came from such a plain, down-to-earth shopkeeper, but genetics are weird that way.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I add. Miss Beth-Anne didn’t make it through Covid, and it had been a big blow for the whole town. Thinking about it now, I’m surprised Lo didn’t come home for the funeral. I wonder if they had still been on speaking terms.
Lo barely acknowledges my condolences, her gaze still turned toward the sea, and August looks back and forth between us before saying, “I technically understand the words you’re both saying, but it still feels like code somehow.”
That brings Lo back to the present, and she turns a sly grin on August before winking at me. “August here is fromOhiiiiiiiiooooooo,Ellen Corliss’s Little Girl. He’s not used to an Alabama Greeting. You know, establishing ‘your people,’ where they’re from, how you all know each other.”
“Do all people from Alabama know each other?” August asks, and Lo and I both chorus, “Yes.”
The laugh that comes out of me is a surprise, and Lo grins, a little moment of camaraderie between us. It shouldn’t feel asintimate as it does, given that she’s a stranger. Then again, I have a feeling Lo Bailey has never met a stranger.
“Sorry, I was trying to figure out why the phone in 132 wasn’t working!” Edie calls out, coming from the back hallway. “Turns out it wasn’t plugged in, which is a pretty standard requirement, so—”
“Come say hi to Mr. Fletcher and Ms. Bailey,” I call back as she enters the lobby, her hair spiky with sweat.
Edie stops by the staircase, her eyes blinking behind her glasses as she takes in Lo and August standing there.
“August Fletcher,” August tells her, stepping forward with an outstretched hand.
