The sound of a police siren shattered the thick morning air. She’d been in a deep sleep, so deep that awakening felt like trying to swim to the surface of a lake with her ankles chained to a pair of bowling balls. Gina threw off the covers and looked wildly around the room, uncertain of her whereabouts.
Sunshine streamed through a window covered with sheer organza curtains. A fan hummed from the top of a table, and from somewhere outside, birds called. The siren kept going. It seemed to be getting louder. Her sleep-smeared eyes focused on the nightstand by the bed. Lisa’s cell phone vibrated against the wooden tabletop. Wanting only to stop the siren, she picked up the phone and instantly regretted it.
“Good morning, my television star!” Birdelle’s voice trilled.
“Mama?”
“Well, who else? I guess you’ve been too busy with all the media interviews and that type of thing to think of calling anybody as unimportant as your mama and daddy.”
“Huh? Mama, I just woke up. I haven’t talked to anybody.”
“Well, I have,” Birdelle announced. “I’ve talked to the Jesup Press-Sentinel, the Jacksonville Times-Union, the Savannah Morning News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, WGUP, and I don’t even know who all else, just since six this morning.”
“About what?” Gina yawned and looked at the clock on her nightstand. It was eight o’clock.
“You, of course! About how I taught you to cook, and how you were always such a bright, adorable little girl. I’m waiting for one of those courier service folks right now, to come pick up the pictures.”
“Pictures of what?”
“Why, you, silly,” Birdelle said. “I’m giving them copies of you with your 4-H project when you were eight, and then, of course, that precious picture of you with your trophy and tiara when you were runner-up Miss Teen Vidalia Onion—”
“Oh, Mama, not the Vidalia Onion picture! I look like a total rube in that homemade dress and that bad perm—”
“You were just as lovely as you could be,” Birdelle said serenely. “Your daddy still carries a copy of that picture around in his billfold.”
She looked at the clock again. Eight o’clock! The ferry was leaving in exactly an hour—and she still had to shower and dress and pack.
“Mama, I can’t talk right now,” Gina said. “I’ve got a million things to do before the ferry leaves.”
“Not even famous for twelve hours, and already she’s too busy to speak to her loved ones,” Birdelle said mournfully. “All right. Put your sister on.”
“Sister?”
For the first time it registered in her foggy brain that she was alone in the room. Lisa’s bed was still made up. Gina checked the bathroom. Empty. And there was no telltale pile of her sister’s clothes on the floor to indicate that she had ever been there.
“Put Lisa on the phone,” Birdelle repeated.
“Uh, Lisa’s in the shower right now,” Gina fibbed. “But I’ll have her call you as soon as she can.” And before her mother could protest, Gina disconnected. And then she turned the phone off.
Where on earth was Lisa? Barry had been adamant that the ferry would leave the dock at nine o’clock sharp. And since she and Lisa had to drive to Savannah to catch a noon flight back to Atlanta, they were on an uncomfortably tight schedule.
She tried to think back. Last night’s party had gotten kind of wild. Her last memory, before begging off to go to bed, was seeing D’John trying to teach Zeke and Barry Adelman how to do the Electric Slide. The memory of the black-clad New Yorkers attempting to boogie-oogie-oogie with a bald black man in a white caftan was surreal.
In fact, the whole day seemed surreal.
As she stood under the shower, she replayed the taping in her mind. Even with the disaster with the oven, everything had gone so much better than she could ever have anticipated. The pecan pie parfaits had been a huge hit. Everybody had seemed genuinely glad that she’d won the Food Fight.
The only thing that could have made her victory sweeter was sharing it with the one man she couldn’t seem to please.
Tate. She’d looked all over for him, but he’d disappeared as soon as the taping was over. Even Val said she didn’t know where he’d gone. Obviously, he’d slunk off to lick his wounds by himself. That hurt. If he truly cared for her, couldn’t he have been happy for her?
As she rinsed the conditioner out of her hair, she slung her head from side to side, willing him out of her mind—and heart—for good.
She was toweling off when she heard the bedroom door open and close. “Lisa?” she called anxiously.
“Yeah?”
“Where have you been? We have to be down at the ferry in thirty minutes.” Gina wrapped a towel around her chest and stepped into the room, ready to give her truant sister a piece of her mind.
Lisa sat on her bed, holding out a mug of coffee. “I went downstairs to get you a cup of coffee. Is that okay?”
“Mama called,” Gina said. “She was asking about you, and naturally, I couldn’t tell her you never came home last night.”
“Yes, I did,” Lisa said. “I got in right after midnight. You were snoring your head off. Still snoring when I got up at seven. I showered, dressed, packed, and you never moved a muscle. Just how much of that Eutaw Yeehaw punch did you drink last night?”
“None,” Gina said. “Wait. Seriously? You’re packed and ready to go?”
“Yup,” Lisa said. “You’re packed too, except for your overnight bag. Everything’s been taken down to the dock. You’ll just have time to grab some breakfast if you’ll hurry up. Iris and Inez are both downstairs. They want to congratulate you and tell you good-bye.”
People!” Zeke stood in the lobby of the lodge, checking off items on his clipboard, as the crew members darted in and out with luggage and equipment. “We need everybody out on the porch, loading up in the golf carts immediately.”
“Hey, you,” Lisa said, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “Just let Gina grab a bite, all right?”
“All right,” Zeke said, blushing. “But we really have to hurry, okay?”
Lisa led Gina into the dining room, where a plate of ham biscuits was set out on the sideboard alongside glass carafes of juice and coffee. She was helping herself to a biscuit when the two old ladies came bustling out of the kitchen.
“There she is!” Inez said, beaming wildly, and digging her elbow in her twin’s side. “I done tol’ my sister the first time I saw you that you was a winner. Come here and hug an old lady’s neck.”
Gina wrapped her arms around Inez’s shrunken shoulders. “I could never have done it without your help. Thank you so much for everything.”
“That’s all right, honey,” Inez said, patting her hand. “You sure enough did me proud this week. I never seen a chile from off-island take to a place like you did. Fishin’ and swimpin’ and crabbin’.”
“Look like she mighta had a lot more help than Mr. Tate,” Iris grumped.
“Listen at her!” Inez crowed. “She just mad ’cuz she been tellin’ everybody Mister Tate gonna put her on his TV show after he won this Food Fight. Now that old fool gonna have to eat crow while I’m eatin’ fried chicken made with mashed-up Frosted Flakes.”
Gina laughed. “How about if I put both of you on my new show? Would that be all right, Iris?”
“Don’t know,” the old lady said. “How much you reckon bus fare might be from Darien to New York City?”
“No buses,” Gina promised. “We’ll either come down here and film a show with you right here on Eutaw, or we’ll fly you up to New York.”
“New York’d be good,” Iris allowed. “You reckon we could ride in a taxicab? I always did want to ride in one of them yella cabs.”
“Cabs, limos, whatever you like,” Gina said.
“Gina, Lisa,” Zeke poked his head into the dining room. “Last call, girls.”
“Here!” Inez said suddenly. She thrust something into Gina’s hand, turned, and ran back into the kitchen.
“What is it?” Lisa asked.
Gina smiled as she unfolded the rumpled sheet of notebook paper and read the tiny, cramped handwriting. “It’s the secret shrimp salad recipe,” she said. “Now that’s what I call a real prize.”
Scott found her up on the top deck, her arms on the stern rail, watching the island slowly recede into the horizon.
“There you are!” he said, tipping up his sunglasses and crowding in beside her, much closer than was necessary.
“Here I am.” She inched sideways.
“Great party last night,” he said. “Of course, we totally earned it. Did I tell you how proud I am of you?”
“Several times.” He’d gotten amazingly drunk in an amazingly short period of time, and had spent most of the evening slobbering on her shoulder.
“Sorry to interrupt your reverie,” he said now, pulling a sheaf of papers out of the back pocket of his slacks. “But I’ve been looking over this contract from Adel-Weis, and frankly, I can’t believe the kind of penny-ante crap Barry’s trying to get away with.” He slapped the papers on his thigh and sighed dramatically. “I’ve already told him we can’t accept this thing.”
Gina blinked. “You…did what?”
“This contract is a piece of garbage,” Scott said angrily. “For one thing, they’re only offering us six shows! With no guarantees that the network will order a full season. It’s an insult, and I told Barry so in no uncertain terms. And don’t even get me started on what they’re offering us for syndication.”
Gina felt her ears buzzing. She felt a slow burn working its way up from her chest, to her cheeks, to her ears, and then she knew, definitely, that her head was on fire.
“Give me that!” She snatched the contract out of Scott’s hands and shoved it in the pocket of her capris.
“But—”
“But nothing.” Gina bit the words out. “I’ve tried repeatedly to tell you this, but your selective hearing keeps tuning me out.”
She grabbed one of his ears in each hand. His designer sunglasses went flying off and into the brine.
“Are you listening?” she asked.
“Gina, for God’s sake.” His face was pale. Although his ears were getting pretty red, clutched as they were between her thumb and forefinger.
“Listening?” She pinched tighter.
“I’m listening.” It came out as a squeak.
“You don’t represent me, Scott. I fired you back there in Atlanta, after you slept with Danitra Bickerstaff and got my show canceled. I shouldn’t have let you come to Eutaw. That was a mistake on my part. So I want to be very clear with you now. There is no we. My contract with TCC has nothing to do with you. You are not my producer. You are not my agent. You are not my friend. You are not my boyfriend. Do you hear me, Scott?”
“You don’t mean that. You’re overtired, overexcited. You don’t know anything about these kinds of negotiations. You’re a naive small-town girl; these Yankees will eat you alive.”
She rotated the right ear clockwise and the left ear counterclockwise, as though tuning a faulty radio.
“Aaaiii-eeee,” he screeched. “Stop, for Christ’s sake.”
Reluctantly, she returned his ears to their normal upright position.
“Gina,” he whimpered, clawing at her hands.
“Scott.” She whispered it. “Are you listening?”
“Yes.” He had real tears in his eyes. She really should stop. She was starting to enjoy this much more than was seemly for a nice Christian girl.
“Good,” she said. “I’m going to count to three, and then I’m going to let you go. At that point, I want you to go to the farthest end of this boat. I don’t want to talk to you again, or see you again, or hear your weaselly voice ever again. Do I make myself very clear?”
“Yes.” A thin trail of snot worked its way down his handsome, tanned face.
“Excellent. Because, Scott? You are dead to me. Now. One. Two. Three.”
She released her hold. He tore away from her, slid on a slick spot on the deck, fell hard on his butt, scrambled to his feet, and scurried away. She noted, with satisfaction, a large streak of grease on the seat of his formerly immaculate linen slacks.
Gina leafed through the contract, but in the harsh sunlight, and without her reading glasses, the small print swam before her eyes. But that was all right. The last time she’d gone to a University of Georgia football game she’d run into one of her classmates at half-time. Sharon Douglas had laughingly confessed to being a failure at journalism, which was why she’d ended up going to law school. These days, she was an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles. Gina had her business card tucked away at home.
Home. For the first time it occurred to her that the town house wouldn’t be home for much longer. Funny. She’d been panicky about keeping it after Fresh Start had gotten canceled. Now she’d gotten her heart’s desire—and she’d still have to move.
She turned and rested her back on the rail, leaving Eutaw Island behind. She closed her eyes and willed herself to be still. She wanted to be in the moment, in the sunlight, with the wind whipping her hair, and just for now, just until this ferry docked in Darien, she didn’t want to think about the future or the past. Just the now.