IT’S PAST NOONby the time I get back to the inn. The families that were staying with us for the Fourth of July have mostly cleared out, leaving just a handful of guests to take care of. The lobby is quiet and still when I walk in, the waves outside sounding unnaturally loud.
Edie is nowhere to be seen, but to my surprise, Lo is there.
She’s sitting on the navy-and-white-striped sofa just underneath the biggest window, her blond hair carelessly piled on top of her head, her shoulders a little sunburned under a bright red tank top. There’s a magazine in her lap, but she’s turned slightly to look out the window, and when she hears me, she glances over, her face breaking out into a smile.
“Afternoon!” she calls brightly. “Haven’t seen you around much today.”
“I was visiting my mom.”
I hadn’t meant to tell her that, but as always, the visit has left me feeling raw and hollowed out, and even though Lo is a stranger to me, more or less, she’d known Mom. Known a version of her I never had.
Lo’s face crumples in sympathy. “Mama told me about Ellen’s… troubles… before she passed.”
Troubles.That’s so Southern, to take something as catastrophic as a life-changing—life-ending—diagnosis and pretty it up with a vague word.
“It doesn’t seem right,” Lo goes on, “Ellen being in a nursing home. She’s still so young.”
“Well, they don’t call it early-onset Alzheimer’s for nothing,” I attempt to joke, but my voice wavers, then cracks.
Lo is up off the sofa in a flash, and I’m suddenly enveloped in a surprisingly strong hug that smells like candy apples and sunscreen. “Oh, honey,” Lo says, stroking my hair, and for just a second, I let myself be held.
“I miss her,” I hear myself say. “Which sometimes feels ridiculous because she’s right there in front of me, but she’s not there at the same time.”
“Baby girl, baby girl,” Lo croons, and she doesn’t sound anything like my mom, doesn’t feel anything like my mom, but it’s still nice, not only having someone call me sweet names, but also being able to say shit like that out loud to someone. I hadn’t realized how lonely I’ve gotten over the past few months, how much the weight of keeping the inn afloat, of making sure Mom is taken care of, has started to drag me under.
After a few more seconds, I gently pull away from Lo’s embrace, a little embarrassed as I smile at her. “Sorry about that,” I say, “but thank you.”
“You’ve got a lot on your shoulders, don’t you, Geneva?” Lo asks, and I give a watery laugh.
“Just your classic twenty-first-century woman, having it all!”
Lo snorts at that.
“Oh honey, they barely let us haveanything.Why would we ever get to have itall?”
She’s smiling as she says it, but there’s real bite behind the words, and I think back to that man at The Line the other night, the genuine hatred in his eyes as he looked at her.
Lo had handled that encounter like a pro, but what had it been like all those years ago, when she was so much younger, so less calloused by life? How had she stood it back then, knowing that anytime she went anywhere, there was a chance of someone glaring at her or cussing her out or calling her a murderer? She wasn’t even twenty when that trial happened, for fuck’s sake. I’m twice that age, and I don’t think I could have survived it.
“I’m glad you’re writing a book,” I blurt out, and she raises her eyebrows.
“It’s just…” I step back from her, my cheeks warm, myemotions still running high. “I just think you have a valuable story to tell. About what it was like for you back then, about how you were treated. The whole scarlet woman bullshit thing, when you were barely more than a kid, andhewas the one who was married, with all the power. Andhewas the one who came here of his own free will.”
“Man, do you wanna write the pitch for this book once it’s done?”
I turn to see August ambling into the lobby, his notebook in hand. He grins at me, and once again, my face flushes.
“I guess I didn’t really get it until the other night,” I tell both him and Lo. “The way that man spoke to you, the look on his face…”
“Oh, he was just a small man with a big mouth,” Lo says, waving it away, but August looks at me and says, “That’s why I wanted us to come here to work on the book.”
“So I’d get yelled at in bars?” Lo asks, putting her hands on her hips in faux outrage, but August ignores her.
“It’s been over forty years since Landon Fitzroy died, but some people are still that mad. Like it all happened yesterday.”
“Some people around here talk like the Civil War happened yesterday,” I tell him, “but I get what you mean.” Until the other night, I hadn’t understood how large the scandal still loomed for some people. It had been a footnote in my own childhood, after all.
For a moment, the box of articles and clippings that Mom saved, that’s been gathering dust in the attic, flashes in my mind.
