When Conley returned from the IGA, she saw her sister’s aging silver BMW parked under the house. She considered making up another errand for herself, but shrugged and pulled in alongside Grayson’s car. No use delaying the inevitable.
She found the three of them—G’mama, Winnie, and Grayson—seated on the back porch, their chairs pulled into a companionable semicircle, highball glasses in hand, gazing out at the sky, which was blazing coral and orange and pink as the sun sank toward the horizon.
The frosty glasses were beaded with condensation, and Conley knew they were drinking what G’mama called her sunsetters—pink grapefruit juice, vodka, club soda, and a slice of lime.
“Oh, hey, Gray. Did you drive all the way out here to make sure I’m taking good care of G’mama?”
Her grandmother shot her a reproving glance and tapped the folded copy of the Beacon resting on the wicker table beside her. “Grayson always delivers my copy of the paper in person. Every week.” She gave her oldest grandchild an indulgent smile. “It’s an excellent issue. I think that new reporter of yours did a nice job on the train derailment piece. What’s his name again?”
“Michael Torpy,” Grayson said. “He’s a good kid. Young, but definitely a hard worker. And he’s willing to learn, which a lot of these millennials aren’t.”
Lorraine picked up the paper and ran her finger across the front page, bringing it to rest on the column running down the left-hand well of the page.
“And then there’s this.” She jabbed at Rowena Meigs’s outdated photo topping the Hello, Summer column and sighed deeply. “I hate to say it, but I really believe it might be time for Rowena to retire.”
“I’ll second that motion,” Conley said eagerly. “I know she’s a friend of yours, G’mama, but the truth is, Rowena is a dinosaur. Her writing stinks, she’s out of touch, and she can’t even spell. According to Lillian, half the time, she doesn’t even get the names right. She’s an embarrassment.”
“I’d love to fire Rowena,” Grayson said. “Or retire her or whatever. But it’s not that simple. She’s as beloved and unmovable a community fixture as that damn Confederate statue on the courthouse square. Plus she basically works for free.”
“Goes to show you get what you pay for,” Winnie commented.
Grayson gulped a slug of her cocktail. “Have you two forgotten what happened the last time we tried to get rid of Hello, Summer?”
Lorraine rocked backward in her chair, shaking her head. “Actually, I had forgotten. Never mind. We don’t need to go through all that again.”
“All what?” Conley asked.
“It was years ago. I can’t remember the specifics, just that it was so awful, so libelous, that Pops did fire her.”
“I remember,” Winnie said suddenly. “It was Rowena’s usual crap column, rich-lady tea parties and such, but then she wrote something about the new youth minister at the Baptist church, how he’d been seen ‘gadding about town’ in a shiny new convertible with the pastor’s wife.”
Lorraine shuddered. “Oh dear Lord. It’s all coming back now. Rowena as much as inferred that the youth minister and the pastor’s wife were having some sort of torrid affair. She wrote some catty comment questioning how he could afford an expensive car on his salary. She all but accused him of embezzling money from the church.”
It was Winnie’s turn again. “Turns out the convertible belonged to the pastor’s father-in-law, or maybe it was the youth minister’s father…”
“Doesn’t matter,” Lorraine said. “It was a deeply unfortunate incident. Pops made Rowena write a retraction, and he ran it on the front page of the Beacon, and then he fired her.”
“And yet she’s still writing Hello, Summer, with the same airbrushed photo sig that she must have had done at Glamour Shots thirty years ago.”
“The day after she was fired, calls started coming into the office. Rowena’s friends from church. Her friends from the women’s circle, bridge club, garden club, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the DAR.” Lorraine ticked off the list one by one. “They all threatened to cancel their subscription to the paper if Rowena’s column was dropped.”
“Pops folded to public pressure?” Conley asked, disappointed. “Rowena couldn’t have had that many friends. I mean, back in the day, the Beacon was the only paper around. Every family in town had a subscription. I know, because I used to ride my bike to deliver the copies on our block.”
“It wasn’t the loss of subscriptions,” Lorraine said. “We could have withstood that. Two weeks after the firing, Sam Greenbaum came into the office and had a confidential talk with Pops. And the week after that, what do you know? Hello, Summer was back.”
“Sam Greenbaum?” Conley looked from Lorraine to Grayson.
“He owned Green’s Department Store,” Grayson explained. “They were the Beacon’s biggest advertiser. Back in the day, they’d run four, sometimes six full-page display ads. Every week. And in September, we’d publish a full-color back-to-school fashions preprint section. Eight pages. Same thing at Christmas.”
“I remember Green’s Department Store,” Conley said. “That’s where we’d go see Santa Claus every year. So this Mr. Greenbaum was a friend of Rowena’s too?”
“Oh Lord, no!” Lorraine said, chuckling. “Sam—may he rest in peace—definitely was not a fan of hers. But say what you want about Rowena—she may be crazy—but she’s not stupid. No, Rowena got all her friends, those DAR and UDC and garden club ladies, all of them, to march themselves down to Green’s and threaten to cut up their credit cards unless Sam Greenbaum persuaded your grandfather to put Rowena back in the Beacon.”
“Oh.” Conley shook her head.
“Conley thinks it’s terrible that Pops caved in to pressure from our biggest advertiser,” Grayson told their grandmother, her voice mocking. “She probably never realized that ad revenue paid for her expensive boarding school and out-of-state college tuition.”
“That’s enough, Grayson,” G’mama said, her voice sharp. “Sarah is part of this family and part of the Beacon ownership. She has a right to question our editorial decisions. Just as you have a right to explain our rationale.”
“Okay,” Conley said slowly. “But Green’s Department Store has been out of business since, what, the nineties? So you actually could fire Rowena now, right?”
“We could,” Grayson agreed. “If we wanted to lose our status as the county’s legal organ, and if revenue from our legal ads wasn’t the only thing keeping us from financial ruin.”
“I don’t understand,” Conley admitted. “I mean, I know the Beacon is the official legal organ for Griffin County, which means we run all the bankruptcy, liquor license applications, and death and divorce notices. But what’s Rowena got to do with that?”
“It’s not Rowena,” Grayson said, scowling. “It’s her grandson, Rusty.”
“Wait. I didn’t know Rowena was ever married,” Conley said. “And she had a kid too?”
“Lawton Meigs was a darling man,” Lorraine said. “Everyone adored him.”
“Smartest thing he ever did was have the good sense to drop dead of a heart attack before that woman could make his life a living hell,” Winnie said.
“Rowena had a daughter, Rebecca,” Lorraine said, “who ran off at seventeen when she got pregnant. A few years later, she married an older man, who adopted Rebecca’s son, Rusty.”
“And Rusty Cummings is the Griffin County clerk of court,” Grayson concluded. “Who, coincidentally, holds the power to appoint any publication as the county’s legal organ of record.”
“Oh.” Conley picked up the newspaper and fanned herself with it. “Thus, it’s either Hello, Summer or goodbye, legal ads.”
“Exactly,” Grayson said.
“There’s another reason I came out here today,” Grayson said. “G’mama asked me to pick up her prescription.” She held up a small white paper bag and shook it. “She was supposed to have you pick up her prescription before y’all headed out here this morning.”
“I forgot, all right?” Lorraine snapped. “Sometimes things slip my mind. It doesn’t mean I’m senile.”
“No, it means her hair was about on fire to get out here to the beach,” Winnie said.
Lorraine glared at her housekeeper. “I called Grayson to ask her something, and she very sweetly volunteered to bring my medicine out to me. And to stop at the liquor store on the way.”
Grayson wagged a finger in G’mama’s direction. “One sunsetter a day, agreed?”
Lorraine shrugged and looked away.
“There’s something else on my mind,” Grayson said, sitting back in her chair. “Skelly and I were chatting, and he told me about that wreck you guys came across last night. He said you took some pictures?”
Conley nodded, waiting.
“Do they know who was in the car?” G’mama asked.
“I called Michael in and had him make some phone calls. I just heard from him as I was driving out here. Nothing official yet, but it looks like it was Symmes Robinette.”
“What?” G’mama’s drink slipped from her hand, the glass shattering on the wooden floor.
“Oh my God,” Winnie said, her face turning pale. She jumped up from her chair. “Don’t move, y’all. I’ll get the broom.”
“Symmes Robinette? For real?” Conley asked, just as shocked as her grandmother.
Symmes Robinette was actually Congressman Charles Symmes Robinette, a longtime member of the U.S. House of Representatives, from Florida’s Thirty-fifth District, which included Griffin County.
Conley hadn’t kept up much with local politics over the years. She’d been sent off to Virginia to boarding school as a teenager and hadn’t really lived in Silver Bay since graduating from college, but she knew the Robinette family, particularly the congressman’s son, C. Symmes Robinette Jr.—or Charlie, as he liked to be called—on a personal—and painful—level.
“I can’t believe it,” Lorraine said.
Grayson went to the bar cart and deftly assembled another cocktail, handing one to Conley, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, fixing a replacement drink for their grandmother.
“They’re sure it was Symmes?” Lorraine asked.
Grayson nodded.
Winnie returned with the broom and a metal dustpan and attacked the shards of glass and ice cubes with a vengeance.
“The accident was actually just over the county line in Bronson,” Grayson said. “The sheriff’s office there told Michael it won’t be official until their coroner makes a ruling. I gather the body was pretty badly burned.”
Conley dug her cell phone from her pocketbook and opened the photo library. She tapped the video of the car engulfed in flames and felt another twinge of queasiness before handing the phone to her sister.
“Oh my Lord.” Grayson pushed the phone away. “No way anybody walked away from that.”
“No,” Conley agreed. “They got there as fast as they could, I’m sure, but it took the firefighters a while to put out the flames. Skelly and I didn’t have the stomach to hang around and watch the recovery effort.”
“Poor Vanessa,” Lorraine said. “What a tragedy.” She sighed heavily. “I suppose the women’s circle will do the reception after the funeral. I should call Bunny and the other girls.”
“No!” Grayson put a hand on G’mama’s arm. “I mean, please don’t do that. Michael had to swear he’d hold on to the story until the coroner’s report comes in. It hasn’t been made public yet.”
“But Vanessa knows, right?” Lorraine asked, her eyebrow raised.
“According to the police, she’s been notified,” Grayson said. “But again, it’s not for public consumption yet.”
“I guess you’ve got your front-page story for next week,” Conley said. “Big news, right?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You were there. You could write a hell of a first-person story to go along with those photos.”
“Me?” Conley was taken aback by the request.
“Why not? It’s not like you’ve got anything else going on.”
“Grayson Hawkins!” G’mama’s unspoken rebuke was sharp.
“Thanks,” Conley said bitterly. “Way to go, Grayson! Reminding me that I’m out of work is a surefire way to get me to do you a favor.”
Grayson had the grace to blush. “Okay. I’m sorry. Really. But like you said, this is a big story. Symmes Robinette wasn’t just a big deal in Silver Bay. This is national news, sis. I mean, eighteen-term congressman, senior member of the Florida delegation. You could do a great piece about what a Cinderella story his was—a mill kid from Varnedoe, raised by a widowed mother. Joined the Marines and went to Vietnam, law school on the GI Bill, the whole thing.” Grayson’s normally placid face became animated as she continued her pitch. “This is a guy who literally never made a wrong move. He gets out of law school and makes the right kinds of friends in local politics. The local Dems anoint Symmes to run for and win a seat in the statehouse.”
“I remember that,” Lorraine said. “The paper endorsed him. Your grandfather had reservations, because Symmes was so young, but Pops said he was a young man with a future.”
“I checked,” Grayson said. “The only time the Beacon didn’t endorse Symmes Robinette for office was when he switched parties, back in the eighties.”
“It caused quite an uproar when he joined the GOP,” Lorraine said. “Hard to believe the Democrats once held such a death grip on politics in this state.”
“From the state legislature, he goes to Congress. I’m telling you, this is a great story, Sarah.”
“No.” Conley shook her head vigorously. “I’ll download the video and photos, you can use them with your story, but no, thanks. Not interested.”
“Sarah!” G’mama said. “Why on earth not?”
Grayson was leaning forward, her hands clamped on her tanned knees. “If it’s about money, I’ll pay you. We don’t run a lot of freelance, but obviously, this is a whole different set of circumstances. What do you say to five hundred?”
“No, thanks. It’s not about the money.”
Grayson raised one delicately plucked eyebrow. “Oh. Oh yeah,” she said softly. “I forgot about your history with Charlie Robinette. I wouldn’t worry about that. Most people never even knew you two were a thing.”
“Fuck you, Gray,” Conley said from behind her gritted teeth.
“Sarah Conley!” G’mama’s voice sounded a warning note.
Grayson’s lips tightened, and her eyes narrowed. “You don’t want your byline in a shitty, hometown weekly, do you? Big-deal Conley Hawkins is just too good for The Silver Bay Beacon. Too good for Silver Bay, right?”
“No,” Conley said, trying to keep her cool. “I don’t know anything about local politics. You’ve got a reporter; let him write the story. How is this kid Michael going to feel if you hand the biggest story of the year off to your sister, who just shows up—what’s that word you used yesterday? Somebody who parachutes in from out of town and assumes she knows best?”
“You let me worry about my staff,” Grayson said heatedly. “You don’t give a shit about this paper or this town. Or this family. You never have.”
“That’s enough,” Lorraine said suddenly. “It’s quite enough.”
She grabbed each sibling by the hand, the way she’d done when they were young children, bickering over whose turn it was to ride in the front seat or battling over the remote control.
“I won’t have this fighting,” she said, her voice steely. “We are family, and I, by God, will not have the two of you at each other’s throats like this.” Lorraine released their hands. “Now. Sarah? Grayson was absolutely out of line with some of her remarks. Especially that dig about Charlie Robinette. I feel certain that what your sister meant to say was that she couldn’t imagine anyone who could do a finer job of writing up a story about this tragic accident. I’m sure she feels that it would be an honor to have a Hawkins byline in our family newspaper again. Isn’t that right, Grayson?”
Grayson picked at the cuticle on her right thumb until it started to bleed. “Yeah,” she muttered. “Something like that.”
“Good,” G’mama said. “So that’s settled. “Sarah will write a first-person piece about Symmes Robinette’s death for next week’s paper.”
“What?” Conley started to object, but her grandmother quickly shushed her.
“You’ve been bored and restless practically since the minute you got back home. This will give you something constructive to do with your time.”
“But I’ve never covered Florida politics—”
“Then you’d better get started doing your research,” G’mama said. She picked a slice of lime from her drink and nibbled at the rind.
Conley knew she’d been beaten. So much for her plan to loll on the beach and sip fruity umbrella drinks. “Okay,” she said, putting her drink down. “If you need me, I’ll be upstairs in my room, looking up Symmes Robinette in the Congressional Record.”
“And, Grayson?” Lorraine said, turning to her other grandchild.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You’ll pay Sarah $1,000. But that includes the main story and whatever sidebars you two decide are necessary.”
“A thousand!” Grayson exclaimed. “That’s a full week’s payroll for me. What if my other reporters find out I’m paying my sister that kind of money?”
“They won’t,” Lorraine said serenely. “Your sister knows how to be discreet.”
“Okay, but she’s gotta do the police blotter too,” Grayson said, as she headed for the door.
“One last tiny detail,” Lorraine called after her. “From now on, I want Sarah to do rewrites on Rowena’s column. We may not be able to fire her, but at the very least, we can make Hello, Summer literate and accurate.”
Conley was standing by the wide french doors that separated the porch from the living room. “What? No, absolutely not. I can’t be babysitting that old lady.”
“Rowena won’t stand for that,” Grayson said. “You know what she’s like.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to make it sound like a great opportunity,” Lorraine said. She held out her glass and jiggled the half-melted ice cubes. “But before you go, dear, fix me another sunsetter, would you? That last one tasted awfully light on the vodka.”