A couple other guys came, too, like Dustin Mathers who had a boom box, so Tessa got her box of cassettes, and we had adock-building party with Tessa in a red bikini because, have I mentioned that life isn’t fair?
Kate and I sat on the boardwalk steps with iced tea and watched, cataloging it all. What I noticed? Peter has the kind of forearms that should be illegal in the state of Florida.
Kate observed that Eli measures twice and cuts once and quotes our fatherevery single time.(I thought Dad would come down to help or opine, but he really is always gone this summer.)
Around two o’clock the platform was half-done and propped on sawhorses on the beach, and Tessa decided to test it. She jumped on it. The whole thing went out from under her sideways and dumped her on the sand, and the three boys lost their minds laughing. Tessa somehow managed to make the most ungraceful and embarrassing moment of her life lookadorable.
Life. Isn’t. Fair.Anyway, the platform floats now. We are planning to spend all day tomorrow tanning and swimming in the Gulf.
Love,
Viv
P.S. Is there anything quite as appealing as a sweating man with a hammer? I think not.
Maggie sat at her kitchen counter at seven forty-five on Thursday morning, setting Vivien’s diary to the side to pick up her phone and re-read a text message for the fourth time.
Brick:Sleep tight, Mags. Don’t worry about tomorrow.
She had received the message at eleven the night before, at the bottom of a long, easy back-and-forth “conversation”—if a bunch of words on a screen could be called that—that had started as a thank-you for dinner Tuesday and drifted into…a million other things.
For two old people who’d spent eighty percent of their lives before the advent of smartphones and text messages, they were pretty adept at communicating through that little box.
And for some reason, after that conversation, Maggie had slept well without any hint of a dream about Roger.
She’d shared some highlights of her day, and some lowlights—the stress of the coming storm, the shortage of help for Eli, Jo Ellen’s insane excitement to attend her first hurricane party.
For his part, he told her he’d been to Gator Jack’s and it was boarded and ready, thanks to him and his two grandsons. He talked about those young men for a while—Wyatt and Nick—andtheir mother, his only daughter, who, according to Brick, had “raised her boys right.”
Fighting a smile over how much she enjoyed the conversation, she set the phone down and got up to refill her coffee, vaguely aware she was humming.
“Someone’s happy,” Jo Ellen called from the balcony. “Basil and I can hear you. I officially named him that.”
“So creative,” Maggie drawled. “Better bring him in before Norman comes or he’ll be…pesto.”
Jo Ellen came back into the kitchen, setting her silver watering can on the counter. “Did you see the news? The cone’s moved east.”
“Is Destin still in it?” Maggie asked.
“Yes, but on the edge. It’s Thursday. Landfall early Saturday. By tomorrow that horrible thing might be all the way off us and we can breathe.”
Maggie took her coffee and glanced at one of the many, many gabbing heads on the Weather Channel, which they’d run continuously, her eyes skimming the graphic to try and process the numbers. Wind speed, barometric pressure, position.
“It could actually be stronger in Crawfordville than here,” she mused, looking at the map.
“I’m not worried,” Jo Ellen said. “We’ll be far inland and plenty of people are evacuating to Tallahassee, which is right there. We’re fine. Are you packed?”
“We’re not moving there,” Maggie said. “I’ll take one change of clothes and some toiletries.”
“Traffic is bad,” Jo Ellen said. “Maybe we should leave today.”
“And spend two nights at Gator Jack’s?” Maggie choked softly. “Don’t push it, Jo.”
Jo went to the sofa, bringing a teacup, while Maggie settled into her chair.
“Who were you texting so frantically?” Jo Ellen asked with a sly smile. “I could see you with your face in the phone like a teenager.”
Maggie shuttered her eyes and prayed for patience with her dear friend.
