I laugh, too, nodding. “Even people who didn’t grow up here know that. When I was at college, my roommate asked me if it was true that St. Medard’s Bay was cursed. Apparently, that’s the story all along the coastline—from Gulf Shores to Orange Beach, even Mobile.”
“And did you tell her it was true?”
I look over at Lo in the waning light, expecting to see that same teasing grin she flashes at August so often, but am surprised to see that she’s looking at me very seriously, her green eyes locked on my face.
I give a nervous sort of chuckle and start walking back down the beach. “No, I think I just told her climate change was a thing, and St. Medard’s Bay sometimes bore the brunt of that.”
Out over the ocean, the clouds are moving faster now, and I can see a thick sheet of rain blurring out the horizon. The wind picks up again, but I have a sense that this particular storm is going to miss us as it blows itself farther out into the Gulf.
“But if that were the case, why do we get hit so much?” Lo counters, coming up next to me and linking her arm in mine with a casual intimacy that startles me. “How else could this one town have so many deaths, suffer so much destruction?” Her hip bumps mine. “And why is the Rosalie Inn always still standing when the storms pass?”
There’s a tightness in my chest, but I try to keep my voice light as I reply. “It’s funny you say it like that. My mom used to joke that if the town was cursed, then maybe the inn could be blessed. Protected.”
Lo gives me a satisfied smile before her expression growsdreamy and far-off. “The Witches of St. Medard’s Bay,” she murmurs, and I glance over at her.
“What?”
“That’s what we used to call ourselves, your mom and me. And Frieda. We were too old to believe in that kind of thing, but it was the seventies. Witches were very, very groovy.”
I laugh along with Lo, but I can’t quite imagine my mother being that playful, that… innocent.
Why had Mom never once mentioned Lo to me if they used to be that close? Was it because of the murder trial, the scandal? Did Mom think Lo had killed the governor’s son, and cut off their friendship as a result?
I’ve spent much of the past few years wishing I could talk to Mom, ask her questions and have her answer them, but now I find myself longing for it with a fierceness that almost brings tears to my eyes. We’d never been as close as I would have liked, but I hadn’t realized there was so muchmoreI didn’t know about her.
So many wasted years—years I spent living hundreds of miles away, with a guy who would leave the second things got hard. Years when I could have been here, helping her and Dad. Years when I could have been making an effort to have the kind of relationship with my mother that I’d seen other girls grow into with their moms, as the angst and stress of the teenage years faded and they were finally able to just be… friends.
And now next to me is a woman who actually knew Mom—who probably knew her better than I ever had.
“What was she like back then?” I find myself asking.
Lo sighs, hugging herself as she looks up at the night sky. “Lordy,” she says, thinking. Then, “She was quiet, at least compared to me. She kept her own counsel. But smart,sosmart. I think that’s why she was so funny.”
“You mentioned that before,” I say as I scratch at a bug bite near my elbow. “But I never thought of her that way? She wasn’t, like, super serious or anything, but my dad was the one always trying to crack jokes with the guests, charm them with something witty or clever. Mom was… well, like you said. Quiet. Smart. She did all the financial stuff for the inn, handled the taxes, all of it. I never realized just how big of a job that was until I had to take it over. I promptly hired a guy to do it for me.”
Lo looks over, the wind blowing a strand of hair across her eyes. She pushes it back before saying, “Were you close? With your mom?”
I don’t know why I tell her the truth, but it slips out anyway.
“No.”
I wait for her to look shocked, or to rush in to assure me that no, no, maybe it felt like that, but she’s justsureEllen Chambers would love thefireout of her little girl!
But instead, she just nods and looks sad. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice soft.
“So am I,” I reply on a long breath.
“Me and my mama were close until we weren’t,” Lo says. “No big falling-out or anything, not even after I darkened the family name like it was my damnjob.But I kept moving around, and… I don’t know, I guess you think your mama will just always be there. And then Covid happened, and just like that, Mama was gone.”
“Why didn’t you come back?” I ask her, and Lo gives me a sad smile.
“I don’t know. I think it all felt like too much at the time—the shock of losing her, then the idea of coming back to this town that was at the root of so much pain, and when it was already too late to tell Mama I loved her. And with the wholedamn world turned upside down… I guess I could pretend it wasn’t real so long as I stayed away.”
We’ve reached the trees of the nature preserve, and I come to a stop. It’s almost full dark now, but the clouds have parted, revealing a full moon, and the sodium lamps the city installed at the entrance of the preserve cast a soft orange glow over both of us as I spot the bikes lying just a few feet away.
I walk over, picking one up by the handlebars, and Lo does the same to the other. As we start wheeling them back toward the beach, I say, “I get that. When Mom first called with her diagnosis, I spent at least a week telling myself she probably just needed a second opinion, and everything would be fine. Magical thinking and all that.”
“Ellen was like that, too,” Lo says with a nod. “Always hoping for the best.”
