“Amen and amen,” Brick said, lifting one of the shots. “Here’s to Picks.”
Maggie toasted him with the water and got a wry look, but noticed he barely touched the whiskey, wetting his lips at the most.
“How do you know this Picks character?” she asked.
“Oh, he is a character,” he said. “He worked for me for years.”
The statement surprised her. She couldn’t imagine him working himself, let alone having employees. “Doing what?” she asked.
“I owned a paving company in Pensacola. Poured asphalt and blacktop. Kenneth Pickering—Picks to most—was one of my top guys and we rode a lot together. Picks and Brick. We were a pair.He’s older than Gail by a decade and a half, but you’ll love him.” He grinned. “And he’ll love you. Now, have a real drink and tell me about you and Jo Ellen.”
She took a glass of white wine and nodded her thanks, taking a sip. “There’s not much to tell.”
“Oh, I do not agree,” he said. “I saw you two dance like a couple of eighties ladies.”
“Sixties, more like.”
He tipped his head. “Yeah, we’re old. But I can see you have a history. I’d have sworn she was your sister.”
“She is. Sorority sister.”
His eyes danced with humor. “Tell me everything and don’t leave out a single detail down to the panty raids. Remember those?”
She laughed softly as the tension eased from between her shoulders and the wine loosened her just enough.
“Come on, now,” he said. “Start with college. Tell me about you and Jo and your lives as best friends.”
“Oh, it’s…” She swallowed the thought, sipping again, and regarding him over the rim. “You really care?”
“Why do you think we’re here? I’m interested in you. This…” He pointed to his face. “This is interest. Tons of it. Tell me.”
“We met in college, so it’s a long story,” she said.
“Gimme the highlights.”
She took a sip of wine and considered how—and how much—to tell him. “She showed up in my dorm room first day of freshman year at UGA, the Yankee-est of New Yorkers, with that infectious optimism and hunger for fun.”
“And she loosened you up?” he guessed.
“Exactly. The friendship grew, we met the men we’d marry, and she and Artie went back to Ithaca, and Roger and I lived in Georgia. We stayed in touch through long-distance phone callsand letters, then one day one of us had the idea to spend a summer in Destin with our kids.”
“Probably it was Jo,” he said.
She conceded with a tip of her head. “And we did that for seven years, starting when her girls and Vivien were twelve and the last year, they were eighteen.”
“Must have been wonderful.”
“Until it wasn’t,” she said. At his raised brow of interest, she tried to keep it simple. The whole “my husband got mixed up with the Dixie Mafia and Artie helped the Feds” was too much and no longer important. “We had a strange falling out,” she said instead. “And Jo and I lost touch for thirty years.”
He drew back. “That’s sad.”
She sipped more wine, enjoying the way it made her feel a little softer and more open. “It was. But this past March, I revealed to the kids that my husband had purchased the property that last summer—well, Eli knew, and he used the money I’d accrued from renting it to tear down the old cottage and build the Summer House.”
He let out a long, low whistle. “That’s impressive.”
“It is,” she agreed. “It spurred a reunion between the two families.”
“Beautiful.”
