In the morning, Conley followed the smell of frying bacon down the stairs and through the dining room.
For a moment, she paused outside the kitchen door, taking in all the familiar sensations. The scent of coffee and biscuits, the drone of the local radio station punctuated with the pops and sizzles of frying bacon. There was a jelly jar of pink, orange, and yellow zinnias on the windowsill, and Winnie’s ever-present turquoise transistor radio stood beside it. The green linoleum floor appeared to have been freshly mopped. The time could have been now or five or ten or twenty years ago.
Nothing had changed. Nothing ever did, she thought.
Winnie stood at the massive six-burner range, tending a cast-iron skillet. She glanced over her shoulder and nodded, unsurprised at Conley’s presence. “Hey, shug. Coffee’s on. I got biscuits coming out of the oven in another five minutes. Sit yourself down.”
Conley greeted her grandmother’s housekeeper with a light pat on the arm. Winnie was not a hugger or a toucher. G’mama said maybe that was because Winnie had been in prison.
Winnie had come to work for the family years earlier, when Conley was a young child.
In all the years Conley had known her, Winnie’s appearance had changed little. She still dyed her hair the same shade of pinky red, still wore it in a plait that hung down nearly to her waist. Her eyebrows were an iron gray now, but her pale face was surprisingly unlined. As always, she wore a white, button-down man’s shirt, tucked into elastic-waisted, black double-knit slacks she must have stocked up on in the seventies. Her black, lace-up shoes were polished, and she peered down at the frying pan through thick-lensed glasses.
“Hey,” Conley said. “How’re you, Winnie?”
“Can’t complain. You want juice, there’s some in the fridge.”
Conley took a mug from the row of cups hanging by hooks beneath the cabinet by the sink and lifted the battered aluminum percolator from the stove top.
“Well, look who’s here.”
Conley turned, coffeepot still in hand. She hadn’t seen her there, tucked away in the built-in banquette overlooking the backyard. Grayson raised her own mug in a mock salute.
“Oh, hey, Gray,” she said. “What brings you over here?”
“Bacon and biscuits brings her here. She shows up every morning on the regular, just like that damn stray cat I keep telling your grandmother to stop feeding,” Winnie said. “And just like that cat, she never gains an ounce.”
Conley took her coffee and sat down on the bench opposite her older sister. Gray was dressed for the office. Unlike the casual blue jeans and tennis shoes Conley’s coworkers at the Atlanta paper favored, Grayson Hawkins was dressed like the small-town Rotarian she was—a navy pantsuit, pale pink cotton blouse, single strand of pearls.
“You don’t eat breakfast with your husband?” Conley asked.
“Not if I can help it. Tony’s idea of breakfast is a bowl of açai berries and hemp hearts, washed down with that kombucha crap.”
“They sell kombucha at the Piggly Wiggly? I’m impressed.”
“Piggly Wiggly closed last summer,” Winnie reported. “All we got now is the IGA.”
“Tony orders a lot of stuff online,” Grayson said. “Anyway, G’mama called me last night after she heard you were on your way. I wanted to come over this morning to welcome my little sister home.”
Conley regarded her warily over the rim of her mug. With her straight, dark hair and olive skin, every year Grayson looked more like their mother, or at least what she could remember about her mother.
“Get real,” she said. “You’re here to gloat.”
“Not at all,” Grayson protested. “I was shocked when I read that Wall Street Journal story. I mean, Intelligentsia was big league. I assume you’d already heard?”
“No.” She let that hang in the air between them.
Grayson sipped her coffee. “What are your plans now?”
“I thought I’d lie low out at the beach for a while, work on my tan, and send out my résumé and clips. I’ve already got a couple of irons in the fire.”
This was a lie, and she was pretty sure her sister knew it.
“That’s a relief,” was all Grayson said.
Conley sipped her coffee. “What’s up with G’mama still being in town? She told me last night you didn’t want her to open up the Dunes because it’s too much work for her and Winnie.”
“What’s that you say?” Winnie asked, her long-handled fork poised over the skillet.
“It’s actually G’mama I’m worried about,” her sister said, her voice low. “But don’t say anything to her about that. She’s fallen a couple of times. So far, the only injury is to one of Granddaddy’s highball glasses, but I don’t like the idea of them way out at the beach, fifteen miles away from town and her doctor, if something should happen.”
Winnie slapped the heavy ironstone platter of bacon and scrambled eggs down on the tabletop, followed by the basket of biscuits. “For your information, we can take care of ourselves,” she said. “Been doing just fine for a long time now.”
“Says the woman who needs a hip replacement,” Grayson retorted.
“Says who?” Winnie ferried the plates and silverware to the table, then sat down on the old, green, metal step stool that was her familiar perch in the kitchen.
“Says Jack Holloway, your doctor. He also happens to agree that G’mama needs—”
The door swung open, and Lorraine entered the kitchen. “G’mama needs what?” she demanded, glowering at her granddaughter. “According to who? Grayson, you know I despise you talking about me behind my back.”
“Somebody has to,” she said, shaking her head. “Jack says G’mama is prediabetic. He’s given her a prescription, but she refuses to get it filled, and she refuses to listen to her doctor.” She looked across the table at her sister. “But maybe she’ll listen to you.”
“Scoot over,” Lorraine told Conley.
Conley did as she was told. “G’mama, is that true? This is the first I’m hearing about any of this stuff. Sis says you’ve had a couple of falls. And what’s this about diabetes?”
Winnie brought the percolator to the table and handed a mug to her employer. Lorraine scowled at both her grandchildren.
“I tripped on the coffee table, which somebody moved without consulting me.” This time, Winnie was on the receiving end of Lorraine’s ire. “It was dark, and it was absolutely nothing. I scraped my shin a little, that’s all.”
“She had a knot the size of a turnip on her forehead for a week,” Grayson said. “I had to physically force her into my car to take her to see Jack.”
“She lied and told me we were going to the liquor store,” Lorraine said. She placed a slice of bacon and a spoonful of eggs on the plate Winnie had provided and was about to serve herself a biscuit when Winnie deftly slid it out of her reach.
“Did you check your sugar this morning?”
“Not you too,” Lorraine said. “My blood sugar is perfectly fine. My diet is fine. Jack gave me a food plan to keep things in check, and I’ve been sticking to it.” She pointed first at Grayson, then Conley, then Winnie. “This topic of discussion is officially closed.”
Grayson rolled her eyes. “Hardheaded old mule.”
“Out!” Lorraine said. “Out of my kitchen. This minute.” Grayson grinned, grabbed for the basket, and helped herself to a biscuit, which she sliced open and mounded with butter and homemade fig preserves before topping her creation with bacon.
“I’m deeply wounded,” Grayson said, glancing at her watch. “Oops, I’ve got a phone call in fifteen minutes. Later, haters.”
After breakfast, Conley set her laptop up on the dining room table. She dreaded having to job hunt, but with the state of the industry, she knew she had to get her résumé out immediately.
“G’mama,” she said when Lorraine passed through on her way to the den. “What’s the Wi-Fi password?”
“Oh,” Lorraine said. She wrinkled her forehead. “Grayson set it up. Now let me think. It’s something easy. Something obvious.”
“It’s the address here,” Winnie said, dragging the vacuum cleaner into the room. “Thirty-eight Felicity.”
“That’s right.” Lorraine brightened. “It’s been so long since she set everything up, I’d forgotten. Am I being nosy if I ask what you’re working on?”
“Not at all. I thought I’d send out some emails to my contacts in the business. One of my former editors is now at the Miami Herald, another is in LA. And one of my college classmates is actually a bureau chief for Reuters, in London.”
“London!” Her grandmother sounded alarmed. “Surely you wouldn’t consider leaving the country. Or even taking a job all the way out on the West Coast.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too far away,” Lorraine said. “I mean, Washington, D.C., is one thing. Winnie and I were looking forward to visiting, once you got yourself settled in. I haven’t been to D.C. since Jimmy Carter’s inauguration.”
“I’ll consider any job I’m offered,” Conley said. “As long as the salary’s in the right range.”
“Why not stay here? Work at the Beacon?”
Conley laughed, but she stopped mid-chuckle when she noticed Lorraine’s serious demeanor. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Not at all. The Beacon is a family enterprise; it always has been. It’s not just a business. It’s your heritage, Sarah Conley. I know you’ve always been ambitious for a career, but you’ve already done marvelous things, first over there in Greenville, then in Charlotte, and now at the Atlanta paper. You’ve more than proven yourself. Why not take all those skills, all that experience, and put it to work here, where you could really make a difference?”
Conley swallowed hard and thought about the best way to couch all the objections that immediately flooded her mind.
“G’mama, it’s not that easy. I need a job. A real job with a real paycheck. It’s sweet that you want me to work at the Beacon, but it would mean a huge pay cut. And I’ve got bills to pay.”
“I realize that,” Lorraine said quietly. “But think how much cheaper it is to live here in Silver Bay. And how much nicer. I wouldn’t expect you to live here, with me. You could get your own place quite cheaply. Or live at the Dunes. You’ve always loved the beach. Despite what your sister thinks, fifteen miles is not on the next continent.”
“No,” Conley said. “Even if I wanted to stay here and work at the Beacon, which I don’t, you’re overlooking the obvious.”
“Which is?”
“Grayson is the publisher and the managing editor of the Beacon. I love her, and I have a sneaking suspicion she loves me, at least a little, but I guarantee you, she does not want me as an employee.”
Lorraine patted her carefully coiffed head and smiled. She was still a strikingly beautiful woman, Conley thought. Her wavy silver hair was arranged in a simple, flattering style. As always, she wore her signature shade of Dior lipstick, and her posture was, as always, perfect. She really didn’t look much different from the glamorous portrait that hung in the hallway portrait gallery, the one her grandfather had commissioned for Lorraine’s Mobile debut.
“Grayson has the title of publisher, it’s true. But as I mentioned last night, I’m the majority stockholder, and I’m still chairman of the board of Beacon Enterprises. So I assure you, Sarah, that if I want you to stay here and work at my paper, that will happen.”
She snapped her long, tapered fingers. “And it will happen just like that.”