Effectively banished from the kitchen, Conley and Skelly stood, uncertain, on the screened porch.
“Where shall we go?” Skelly asked. “Back to the American Legion?”
“God, no!” Conley shuddered at the memory.
“I was kidding. We don’t have to go anywhere if you don’t want to. I mean, your grandmother can’t make us go out on a date.”
“You mean, like your mother made you ask me to the country club teen dance all those years ago?”
“For the last time—”
“I was kidding too,” Conley said, playfully tapping his arm. “I know you said you don’t think G’mama has a concussion, but I think I probably need to stay close to home.”
“How about a walk on the beach, then?”
“Sounds perfect.”
They kicked off their shoes at the dune line and followed the worn path down to the water’s edge.
Skelly waded out until the water lapped at his ankles. “Want to hear something pathetic? I think this is the first time, in at least two years, that I’ve been anywhere near the beach.”
“Since Danielle left?”
“Maybe before that. She hates sand.”
“That’s not pathetic. It’s sad.” Conley waded out to join him. She let her feet sink into the soft sand, feeling the hundreds of tiny coquinas burrowing away from her toes. “You wanna hear pathetic?”
He nodded.
“I came out and went swimming after I moved G’mama in here the other day. And it was the first time I’d set foot in the Gulf since before my dad died.”
“Really? You used to be such a beach bunny. You never came out here all those times you came back to visit over the years?”
“No,” she said simply. “As Grayson reminded me, I’ve been blowing in and out of Silver Bay, in a strictly perfunctory way, for years now.”
“It’s not such a bad place to live,” he said, gazing appreciatively back at the lit-up profile of the Dunes.
They saw the silhouettes of the two older women, Winnie and Lorraine, standing side by side at the kitchen sink, bathed in the soft, yellow light of the kitchen.
“It’s not that it’s a bad place. It’s just not necessarily a good place for me,” Conley said. A wave rolled up, splashing water on the hem of her pants, so she walked back up to the beach.
He followed a moment later, and they walked slowly along the waterline. When a row of huge, close-set houses appeared ahead, she stopped and stared. There were four of them, pale pink stucco, vaguely Moorish revival in appearance, four stories tall, each house bristling with balconies, rotundas, and rooftop cabanas. The turquoise swimming pools behind each house glowed in the gathering dusk, and laughter and music drifted through the air.
“What the hell is that?”
“That, my friend, is Villa Valencia.” Skelly said the name with a pronounced Spanish accent.
“Where did those monstrosities come from? Didn’t the Cooleys used to live there? And your aunt and uncle? Didn’t they own that cute little yellow cottage your family used to stay in every summer?”
“After my aunt and uncle died, my cousins couldn’t agree on what to do with the cottage, so they sold it. The Cooleys sold out too, and so did the people who owned that squatty little brown concrete-block house.”
“I remember that place. We used to call it the shit house,” Conley said.
“A developer came in, knocked everything down, and built those ‘villas’ in their place.”
“They must cost a small fortune. They’re huge!”
“I’m surprised Miss Lorraine hasn’t complained about them to you. Everybody on the beach has been up in arms about the villas.”
“Because they block out the sunlight?”
“That too. Somehow, the developer got the county to grant a height variance. They’re now the tallest structures on the beach, which means they effectively block the view of the houses across the street from them.”
“That’d piss me off,” Conley said. “Of course, G’mama’s house is big too, but it’s only two stories, raised up off the ground, and it’s been there since the 1920s.”
“It’s not just the view that has people riled up. None of those owners are local. They built those houses as investment properties. Each one has ten bedrooms and ten baths. They’re rented out through Airbnb, which means every weekend, and all week long during tourist season, as many as ten cars descend on each house. Sometimes lots more. People rent them out for frat parties and weddings and corporate functions. Sometimes there’ll be a hundred people or more, spilling out on those patios, partying in the pools ’til dawn, blasting music, clogging the street with illegally parked cars.”
“Ohhhhh,” Conley said.
“The neighbors are righteously pissed,” Skelly said. “To them, it’s like somebody plunked down motels right in the middle of their quiet, quaint little street.”
“And there’s nothing anybody can do about it?”
“The neighborhood association hired a lawyer who complained to the county, and they’ve made noise about trying to get an ordinance passed prohibiting multifamily rental units, or at least putting a moratorium on more of them. But the Villa Valencia homeowners have a lawyer too. You’ll never guess his name.”
“Not Symmes Robinette?”
“Close. Like blood close. Charlie Robinette.”
Conley felt her phone buzzing in the pocket of her shorts. She pulled it out, looked at the caller ID screen, and turned to Skelly. “Sorry. I gotta take this.”
“Hi,” she said softly. “Thanks for calling me back, Kev.”
“Where are you? Are those waves I hear?”
“I’m taking a walk on the beach,” she said, deliberately omitting the fact that she wasn’t walking alone.
“Sounds nice. Our D.C. correspondent did some asking around and managed to get your guy’s address in Georgetown and down there in Florida. I’ll text it to you. I also got you the names of the corporate officers of Sugar Key Partners, Ltd.”
“Who are they?” she asked eagerly.
“The names don’t mean anything to me,” he said curtly. “Guess you’ll have to do your own legwork. Okay, bye. Have a nice walk.”
Kevin had every right to hang up on her. But she couldn’t deny that it hurt when he did.
She sighed and put her phone away.
“Business call?” Skelly asked.
“Yeah. A friend at the paper. I’d asked him to help me with some research about Symmes Robinette.”
He raised one eyebrow. “A friend or a special friend?”
“Former special friend. That was the guy I told you about. Kevin Rattigan, my ex-boyfriend. He has access to a lot of databases and sources that I don’t have down here.”
“He’s helping you out even though you dumped him?”
“It’s a newspaper thing, Skelly. We were colleagues before we were a couple. That’s what colleagues do in our business.”
“Seems weird to me,” Skelly said. He walked on, then stopped. “Any chance the two of you will get back together?”
“Why all the questions about my past?”
“Maybe I’m trying to figure you out. That’s all.”
“Let me know when you do,” Conley said. She dipped her hand in the water and flicked it at him.
They left the lights of Villa Valencia behind and finally reached the south end of the island, the point where Silver Bay flowed into the Gulf. A long line of weather-beaten pilings jutted out into the water, the last remains of the Fisherman’s Pier that was blown away in a hurricane in the late 1990s. Pelicans roosted on several of the pilings, their heads folded under their wings as though tucked in for the night.
By unspoken agreement, Conley and Skelly trudged through the soft, white sand toward a swinging bench that stood at the edge of the dune line. The wind was up, and there were whitecaps on the waves. Her dark hair blew in the breeze and ruffled the fabric of her blouse.
“Remember when we all used to go shark fishing out there on summer nights?” Skelly asked, pointing at the remnants of the long-gone pier and stretching his left arm across the back of the bench.
“Did anybody ever catch a shark?” Conley asked.
“I think somebody caught a little nurse shark one time. Mostly, I think we just sat out there, drinking and smoking until the old guys who ran the bait shop ran us off.”
Conley turned her face skyward and gazed up at the stars. “Back then, I always thought summer would last forever. Like, I never even knew what day it was. We’d move out here to the beach right after school got out. Grayson and I had our bikes and a little bit of spending money from doing our chores, and every day, we’d wake up, eat breakfast, and then take off. G’mama’s only rule was that we had to check in with her at lunchtime.”
“Same with all my cousins and me. We’d roam from our place, to y’all’s, to the LaMonacos’, to the pier, and sometimes, if we had money, to the arcade,” Skelly said. “Don’t think we put on shoes—or underwear, for that matter—from June ’til September, when we had to go back to school.”
“Halcyon days,” Conley said, smiling at the memory. She and Grayson had been the only girls in the pack of boys that included the Kelly cousins, right up until puberty struck. After that, after she’d gone away to boarding school, things changed. She was suddenly an outsider. And she’d been one, she realized, ever since.
“Halcyon,” Skelly said, turning the word over in his mouth. “I’ve seen that word in books but never really knew what it meant.”
“I’ve always thought halcyon means a time of sweetness and contentment, of happy times remembered,” Conley said. “But let’s ask the Googles.”
She pulled her cell phone out and typed the word into the search engine.
“Huh,” she said reading the definition. “I never knew that.”
“What?”
“It’s a word that comes from Greek mythology, referring to a bird—a kingfisher, actually—who had the magical power to calm the wind and waves at the winter solstice so that she could breed in a nest floating at sea.”
“Halcyon days,” he repeated. “I guess you don’t know you’re living them until years later, looking in the rearview mirror.” After a moment, he said, “I can’t remember. Did your dad come out to the beach with y’all in the summertime, or did he stay in town for work?”
“Up until my mother left, the whole family stayed at the Dunes for the season. Dad kept what he called summer hours at the bank. He’d get off work at two and then come out and spend the night. He only worked half days on Friday.”
“My dad did the same thing,” Skelly said. “He’d tell his nurse not to schedule any patients after two in the summertime, unless it was an absolute emergency. He’d come out to my aunt and uncle’s house, change out of what he called his town clothes and into this ratty pair of orange Bermuda shorts with blue flamingos embroidered on them.”
“Oh my God! I totally remember those shorts. I don’t ever remember seeing him on the beach when he wasn’t wearing them. They’d faded so much they looked pink.”
“My mom tried hiding them, but he always found them. It was like a running joke between them. Finally, one year in August, she enlisted all us kids in her plot. She sent him to Mr. Tastee for ice cream, and while he was gone, she rigged the pants to some rope and she ran it up the flagpole on the front of the cottage. When he got back with the ice cream, we were all standing on the front steps, saluting his shorts. I’ve still got a photo of it somewhere.”
Conley pointed at the brightly colored shorts Skelly was wearing. “I was wondering when you’d suddenly gotten so sporty—these aren’t the same shorts, right?”
He laughed. “No, but they’re as close as I could find. I guess I have gotten sporty in my middle age. After wearing a white lab coat at the store all day, this is my way of changing gears. Maybe that’s how my dad felt too, after wearing his white lab coat all day.”
“Your dad was such a good sport,” Conley said. “I always thought he and your mom made a great team. They were always laughing and joking around. You could tell they liked each other.”
“I never really thought about that before,” Skelly said. He looked over at Conley. “I guess things weren’t so great between your parents, huh?”
She shrugged. “We never even knew there were any problems until the first time she left.”
Her phone pinged, signaling an incoming text. She glanced down, glad of the distraction, then stood so abruptly the swing hit her in the back of the knees, nearly sending her sprawling. “I need to get back to the house.”
“Something wrong?” he asked, trying to match her pace as she strode through the sand.
“The text was from Kevin. He sent me the information I need for my story.”
He reached out and grabbed Conley’s hand. “It’s Saturday night. I thought we were having a nice time. You told me there’s no internet out here. What’s the rush?”
“The Beacon’s deadline is Tuesday. I’ve got to get a handle on this Robinette thing so that I can convince Grayson there’s more of a story here than just a politician’s tragic accident.”
“I thought you said you quit the Beacon,” Skelly said.
“I did. But G’mama wants me to see it through. Besides, if this story turns into a thing, it could be my ticket to a real job at a real paper. If it has national implications, I could freelance it out to the Times or the Post. At the very least to my old paper.”
“What if it’s not a thing?” he persisted. “What if it’s just a run-of-the-mill accident on a lonely country road? What then?”
She turned around to face him. “Then I find another story or, better yet, another job. I have to work, Skelly. I’m a journalist. It’s who I am. It’s what I’m good at.”
He watched her striding away, back down the beach toward her grandmother’s house. He took one last look at the remains of the pier and the dozing pelicans. “Halcyon days,” he murmured.