“Did you find anything interesting about that summer in the diary?” Jo Ellen asked.
“Not yet.” Maggie let her head rest on the back of the couch. “Vivien noticed that Roger and Artie were ‘off’ with each otherbeforewedid. She heard them on the porch arguing and she wrote it down, but thought it was nothing. I was sitting two rooms away and I thought it was nothing, too.”
“We were busy.”
“Busy drinking the Cavallaris’ limoncello that you poured down my throat with the announcement that, ‘In Destin, we drink.’”
Jo Ellen snorted. “Limoncello then, green tea for antioxidants now. Oh, Father Time. What a cruel, cruel monster you are.”
Maggie closed her eyes and could see Jo Ellen in a bright yellow sundress with her hair in a French twist, Roger on the porch with a cigarette he was not supposed to be smoking. Maggie could feel the first tingle of the limoncello make her arms heavy, and hear the laughter that they shared rise up.
She could remember the girls—Vivien and Kate and Tessa—scampering off to the beach, with little Crista determined to follow.
Jo Ellen reached for the remote. “Shall we look at the weather and see what our hurricane is doing, then? I heard they’re calling him Norman.”
“Norman? It sounds like an accountant.”
“Or an artist, like Norman Vincent Peale.”
Jo Ellen wasn’t capable of seeing the negative.
“I say we wait until it’s closer and they send some idiot in a yellow jacket to pretend he’s in a storm,” Maggie said. “Eli will keep us up to date. I’d rather we have peace.”
Jo Ellen conceded with a little shrug and a sip.
For a moment, there was only the sound of the palms from the balcony door that, of course, Jo had left open. The breeze carried salt and not roses, which was surprisingly pleasant to Maggie, who’d lived for the scent of her rose garden.
“We’ll have to evacuate,” Jo Ellen said, obviously still thinking about the hurricane.
“Crista already did,” Maggie told her. “She texted me this morning that she and Anthony are boarding up their new bungalow and driving back to Atlanta this afternoon—with Pittypat.”
Jo Ellen looked at her over the rim of the mug. “You let Nolie take your dog?”
“Is she really mine anymore?” Maggie asked on a laugh. “Pitty loses her mind in a thunderstorm, so imagine her in a hurricane. Besides, she and Nolie are a matched set. The child will not sleep without that Yorkie wedged under her chin.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you driving back with them?” There was actually a note of fear in Jo’s voice, which touched Maggie in a way she couldn’t describe.
“No,” she answered. “Are you going back to Ithaca with Kate and Emma?”
A slow smile pulled at Jo’s lips. “Are you kidding? Leave and miss a hurricane? I’ve never been in one!”
“They’re not fun, Jo.”
She lifted a shoulder, as if she’d be the judge of what was fun, giving Maggie a flash of insight on where Tessa got her addiction to a good time.
“We’ll make it fun. And, point of surprising fact, Kate and Emma are staying, too. She told me last night that she wants to help Eli get the house ready and Emma doesn’t start school for a few weeks. She said when they evacuate inland, we’ll go with them. It’ll be our next adventure.”
Maggie choked, relieved that Jo was staying, but shocked by her naivety. Even for Jo Ellen Wylie, she sounded clueless.
“Expect a lot of damage and blown windows and people with no power for a week,” Maggie said. “No AC, which means no sleep.”
“Eli has multiple generators,” Jo Ellen replied. “And I’m so glad you’re not in that car with Crista going back to Atlanta!”
How could she? Maggie lived here now and?—
