“Your mom cried when she got mad, too,” Edie says softly. “If that’s something you didn’t know.”
“I did know that, actually,” I say, my voice catching on a sob. It’s another memory that makes me feel like someone’s squeezing my chest. I was about fifteen, and Mom was standing behind the front desk in tears after some rude guest chewed her out, stamping her foot and saying,Oooh, I hate that I do this!,asshe dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex.It’s like my own body undermines me.
They’re not tears, they’re liquid rage, I’d responded, and that had made her laugh, the big, goofy laugh she gave when something had, as she would have put it, “really tickled her.”
I don’t know if it’s the memory or the way Edie is looking at me, her face open, her eyes kind, but the fight suddenly drains out of me, and I sigh, tipping my head back. There’s a wasp’s nest in the corner of the porch ceiling, and I make a mental note to deal with that as soon as we’re done here, the innkeeper part of my brain still chugging along, even now.
“I just wish you would have told me, and I don’t understand why you didn’t.”
“Because I’d spent the last few decades of my life putting Frieda Mason behind me, and I loved that when I came back, no one recognized me. I introduced myself as Edie Vargas because that’s who I’d been for the last thirty-something years, and no one remembered sad little Frieda Mason and her dead family.”
Lo had told me about Edie’s family, what had happened to them during Hurricane Audrey, and now a stab of pity—and a little bit of shame—pierces my heart. “I’m sorry,” I tell her now, my voice soft as I reach out and give her arm a squeeze. “I… Lo told me.”
Edie’s jaw is tight as she nods, and she clears her throat before she says, “Thank you. But to be honest, that look on your face right now?” She points at me. “That’s what I got so tired of those last years that I lived here. That’s what I didn’t want to see again. So that’s why I didn’t tell you initially, because I didn’t want anyone else making that connection. But when you asked me to come help out here at the Rosalie, I should have said something. I just—I wanted this job. And I wanted to be able to do something for Ellen’s little girl. And yeah, I’ve felt crappyabout it for a while now, but once I really regretted not saying anything, I figured too much time had passed, it was too weird now, and that you’d probably be…”
She huffs out a humorless laugh. “Well, you’d be as ticked off and freaked out as you apparently are.”
“I’m not ‘ticked off,’” I say, then sigh. “Well, Iwas, when I first heard, but I understand a little more now. At least about you keeping it from me. Though I’m still not sure I get why you came back here at all.”
“Same reason you did,” she says, and I raise my eyebrows at her.
“I came back here to take over the inn.”
“Sure,” Edie replies, studying me from under her brows. “But it was more than that, wasn’t it? You tried city life. You lived in Savannah, Atlanta… but did either of those places ever really feel like home?”
I don’t answer, but she’s right. I know it, and she knows it. Yes, I came back here for Mom and for the Rosalie and Chris’s dream of us basically living in a Hallmark movie, but it was more than that. It was the tug I felt every time I visited, the way I sometimes dreamed of green waves and white sand. For all the stress and heartbreak of running the inn, something in my soul had settled when I came back to these shores, and maybe that’s another one of St. Medard’s Bay’s curses.
Or blessings.
In any case, I turn to Edie now and say, “Anyway, I’m not angry, not anymore. It was just a shock, hearing it from Lo.”
Edie’s expression hardens. “I didn’t think she recognized me.”
“She said she didn’t at first,” I reply, leaning back against the railing. Sweat is popping out on my forehead, my upper lip, and I can tell today is going to be another hot one. “But I guess therewas something you did the other day—some phrase you used—that made her look a little more closely at you.”
That’s what Lo had told me last night, after we’d brought the bikes back, the two of us sitting in the rockers on the porch, drinking lukewarm beers I’d snagged from my Airstream on the walk back.
As soon as I heard her say, “Couldn’t find his bee-hind with both hands,” I thought, “Hooooooly shit, that’s Frieda Mason!” She always saidbee-hind,like that, neverass.Her mama would’ve washed her mouth out with soap if she’d ever heard that girl cussing.
It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that for all of her exterior toughness, I’d never heard Edie curse. But it’s true, she doesn’t, and the weirdness of the situation—thatLoknewEdie, knew her better than I ever had—had washed over me.
Why didn’t you say something to her right then?I’d asked.
Well, she hadn’t said anything to me, now, had she?Lo had countered.So I figured she was happy I hadn’t made the connection, and I thought given everything, it was probably best to let sleeping dogs lie.
I’d asked her what she’d meant by that, “given everything,” but she’d only shaken her head and stood from the rocker, stretching her arms over her head, her shirt riding up to reveal a sliver of tanned and surprisingly taut stomach.
Too much reminiscing for one night, and August probably has a thousand questions for me already, she’d replied before heading off to her room, leaving me to stare at the ocean for a few more hours.
Now I say to Edie, “I noticed how weird you seemed when she was around, and I couldn’t figure out why. I guess you were afraid of exactly this—that she’d recognize you and tell me.”
To my surprise, Edie shakes her head, the multiple silverhoops in her left ear clinking together. “No, it wasn’t that. Or notjustthat. It’s this whole thing.” She waves her hand in the air with exasperation. “Her, and that guy, August. Writing this book. Dragging up the past. The fact that it’s been forty years, but it’s still like she’ll die if she’s not the center of attention.” Edie’s cheeks have flushed, and her eyes are flashing. “That’s why she’s doing this, you know. Whatever she’s saying about wanting to ‘clear her name once and for all,’ that’s BS. She’s just bored and broke, and she’s looking for something that might give her one last little turn in the spotlight.”
Frowning, I fold my arms over my chest. “That’s not the kindest read on the situation, Edie.”
She steps closer, resting one hand on my forearm. “Don’t let her fool you,” she says with a vehemence that startles me. “She’s really good at this whole seduction act, I know. She’s fun, and sassy and sweet, and she’s everyone’s best friend. Until she’s not. And your mama would’ve told you the same thing.”
I think again about the box in the attic, the articles Mom kept for all those years, every little clipping about Lo Bailey and Landon’s murder trial. It all seemed almost lovingly collected and preserved. Once again, I wish I could ask her why.
