Lo gives another one of those pealing laughs, her hand slapping the tabletop. “See?” she all but crows to August. “I’m telling you, everybody you’re gonna talk to is gonna tell you I murdered Landon Fitzroy and took advantage of the hurricane to cover it up. Some of the details might be different—some might say I killed him because he wouldn’t leave his wife for me, or they might say that no, it’s because I found out about someothergirlfriend, or even that he wouldn’t buy me some piece of jewelry I wanted. But whatever story they come up with is gonna tell you a lot more aboutthemthan it will about what really happened that night.”
August doesn’t answer her but instead pulls his phone out of his pocket and starts tapping away.
Lo rolls her eyes. “He does this all the time,” she tells me. “Writes down some silly bullshit I say, acts like it’s profound.”
It kind of was, though—the fact that the gossip people are willing to believe is more about them than anything else. The thing is, Igetwhy people wanted to think Lo had killed Landon Fitzroy because otherwise, he was just a tragic victim of a natural disaster, and that wasn’t supposed to happen to men like him. A potential future president wasn’t supposed to be dead due to high winds and seas while this beautiful but far too brash girl from some Podunk town somehow managed to survive. A lurid story of murder was so much more fun, so much more satisfying.
But as I watch Lo Bailey sway to the music across from me, even as I see her smile brightly, I find myself surprised to realize I could believe in that story, too.
It’s something about the way she’d looked at me when I talked about Chris, the quickness and the intensity with which she’d declared him an asshole. She might be sunshine at first glance, but she’s tougher than she lets on, Lo Bailey.
She’s already slipped back into happy-go-lucky mode, singing along with the band as they play “Fins,” her long-fingered hands drumming along with the beat, her blond hair a reddish pink in the lights. I’m surprised to realize that I’m having fun—a thing as foreign to me lately as hope had been—and I’m considering getting another beer when a man approaches our table.
He’s in his seventies, I’d guess, thick white hair swept back from his face, a bright orange Hawaiian shirt straining slightly over his beer belly. A chunky gold Rolex circles his wrist, and a diamond pinky ring winks in the dim light as he bestows a brilliant smile on our table, his catcher’s mitt hands spread wide.
“Hey, folks!” he says, all Good Ol’ Boy Charm, and I catch myself waving in response. He looks familiar, but he’s also definitely a type we see a lot of down here, so I can’t say if I know him or not.
August clearly doesn’t, but Lo is squinting at the man like she might be trying to place him.
“Hey!” she answers back. “Do I know you?”
“Oh, probably not,” the man says, still grinning as he puts his hands in his pockets. “Don’t think you and me would’ve ever run in the same circles. But I know whoyouare. Took me a few minutes, but I figured it out.”
He shakes his finger at her like she’s a naughty child, and something about that makes the beer in my stomach go sour.That fun, tipsy feeling is rapidly fading, and the room is once again too hot, too crowded, this man’s presence at our table making me feel trapped.
“You still lookmightygood, Miss Bailey, but even The Line has to have… well.” He chuckles. “Well, it has to havea line, doesn’t it?” His smile falls abruptly. “And since I own a ten percent stake in this bar, I’m gonna say the line is trampy little trash like you ordering herself a Bushwacker and having a fine ol’ Thursday night inmygoddamn bar.”
“Ten percent your goddamn bar,” August says, his voice mild but his eyes hard. I watch as the hand he has lying on the table opens and closes, opens and closes.
Lo isn’t smiling anymore, and she looks pale all of a sudden, but she holds the man’s eyes as she picks up her Bushwacker and slowly, thoroughly drains the glass.
My stomach once again threatens to rebel—Bushwackers are basically just alcoholic milkshakes, and I’m pretty sure chugging one would kill me—but Lo just sits the glass down on the table with a delicatetink.
“Let me guess,” she says, raising her voice over the music. “You’re one of his fishing buddies. Or maybe you tried a case in front of his daddy back when he was a judge. Or are you a fraternity brother?”
Lo looks him up and down, then shakes her head. “No, Landon always said you could tell a Sigma Chi man with one glance, and I don’t think you measure up.”
No hint of a smile now, all that false charm slipping off him like oil. “Alison Fitzroy is my cousin, slut,” he says, the word somehow sounding worse in that honeyed old-money voice.
August is suddenly on his feet, and I am fully sober now, blinking as I stand up, more than a little unsteady. But Lo only smiles up at the man and reaches over to lay a hand on August’sarm. “Don’t worry about it, Auggie,” she says, then turns those big green eyes on him, winking dramatically. “It’ll be a great scene for the book.”
With that, she gracefully scoops up her purse from the bench beside her and, head held high, walks out of the bar.
DELPHINE
July 4, 1965
I didn’t even want to go to the beach that summer. Linus didn’t listen because he never listened, not to anything I had to say in any case, and besides, the Richardsons were going. If Harold Richardson did something, well then, by God, Linus Bailey was going to do it, too.
“Not about to sit and spend the entire goddamn fall listening to him brag to everyone at the hospital that he took his family down there while we sat on our asses here in Nashville, Beth-Anne.”
I hated how he said my name. Everyone else sort of slurred it together, pretty, like it was one word.Bethanne. But Linus always said it like two separate names.
Beth.
Anne.
It sounded like he was trying to bite something, his teeth clicking around the words.
