Eight

We’re sitting in a stunned silence when Troy walks up from the beach. Once the sunset is complete, the camera-free zone ceases to exist, so his camera is on his shoulder. The men are right behind him. My father is holding Dustin’s hand. Chase and his father and sons are arranged around him. Andrew brings up the rear. They look like a batch of linemen in a protective formation around a miniature quarterback.

The pack of paparazzi straggle up the path behind them and plant themselves in the no-man’s-land of scrub and sand that lies between Bella Flora and the jetty. Apparently no real celebrities or celebrity look-alikes have popped up in the Tampa Bay area. We will have to do.

I brush my lips across Dustin’s sandy forehead and brush a dark curl back out of his eye, but I don’t meet my father’s eye when he hands Dustin to me, and I don’t speak when Troy begins to herd us inside for the grand announcement of the location of our next Do Over. I’m not sure how it’s possible to seethe and go numb at the same time, but that’s what I’m doing. I am an emotional Oreo cookie—hard and crumbly on the outside, soft and seething in the middle.

Avery goes up on her tiptoes to whisper something in Chase’s ear.

He swears, and I know she’s told him about Daniel buying Bella Flora. Chase poured his heart, his skills, and his money into both of her renovations. I hope Avery’s spared him the part about the indoor pool. And that I’m not around when he tells his dad.

“All right, everybody.” Troy continues to herd us toward the house, filming as we go. “We’re going to shoot the reveal in the salon.”

Just before the doors close behind us, I hear Nigel and Bill and the paparazzi at their backs begging for one more shot. A smile. Anything. Even a mooning from my brother or one of the Hardin boys would probably make their day. But I don’t turn around. They’ve had every bit of the golden hour when the light is best to get shots of Dustin on the beach. That’s as close to a Christmas present as they’re going to get from me.

Inside the lights are still twinkling on the tree. Opened presents lie all over the floor around it. Troy motions Mom, Avery, Chase, Deirdre, Nicole, and me to the sectional near the fireplace, then sets his camera on a tripod across from us, which will allow him to include the tree, the presents, and the rest of the group in the background. It’s exactly where I would have set up if I’d been shooting this, but I will never tell him that.

I breathe deeply and settle Dustin on my lap, trying to focus on what’s happening, but my mind is filled with images of Tonja Kay wreaking foul-mouthed revenge on our poor defenseless Bella Flora and of my family, which will only have one of my parents in it at a time. My reality has altered so much in the last twenty-four hours that I hardly recognize it. I’m afraid if someone looks at me the wrong way I’m going to start crying again.

I want to be anywhere but here. I’d be heading there right now, except that “anywhere but here” is not an option.

Troy locks down the camera, makes a small adjustment, and hands Avery the sealed envelope.

“Are you guys ready?” Avery asks. Her smile is uneven. Her hands tremble so badly that the envelope wobbles. My hands are clasped around Dustin’s stomach, which has the dual purpose of keeping him semistill and disguising my own trembling. He’s busy twirling the propeller of a wooden toy helicopter and kicking one of his legs against mine. He couldn’t care less about the camera, but then people have been aiming them at him since he was born.

Avery licks her lips as she tears open the flap and I realize how dry mine are. My mother reaches a hand over and rests it on mine, but I don’t meet her eyes. We’re about to find out where we’re going next—the network could theoretically send us anywhere in the world—but I still feel oddly half-numb. My emotional Novocain is starting to wear off.

Troy waves one hand above the lens until I look up. His lips stretch into a smile. He points at them and then at me. I smile and try to look eager and engaged. This is business. I have to be professional. No matter how much I resent Troy being first camera and the unpleasant reality TV turn Do Over has taken, none of us can afford to walk away from a network television series. I wear what I hope is an expectant look on my face as Avery’s eyes skim over the card. All of us zone back in from wherever we’ve escaped to as she begins to speak.

“Your next Do Over will start in May,” she intones. “When you turn the home of an extremely high-profile individual into a bed-and-breakfast.” Avery looks up and I can tell that like the rest of us she’s trying to figure out just how high a profile we’re talking. Is it a politician? A movie star? A relative of Mother Teresa?

“That home . . .” She flips the card over then hesitates as if waiting for a drum roll. “ . . . is located somewhere in the Florida Keys.”

There’s a beat of silence and then the guys hoot their approval. Without urging from Troy, they come toward us, talking fast.

“I’ve been down there by boat and car,” Chase says. “The fishing and diving are great. But May’s the beginning of the rainy season. It’s hot and humid as hell there in the summer, and the mosquitoes are as big as helicopters.”

“Hurrykopter!” Dustin says, spinning the wooden propeller.

“One of my roommates went to Key West last year for spring break,” Andrew says. “The pictures were awesome. Lots of body paint and big boobs.”

“Boobs!” Dustin says. I glare at my brother. I can tell by how well the word is formed that this is not the first time Dustin’s heard it. The village that’s raising my child is not always as mature as it might be.

Everybody’s talking over each other. Chase’s sons are on their phones, Googling everyone and everything they can think of to try to figure out who the house might belong to and which of the Keys it might be located in.

No one comments on the fact that the high-profile individual, whoever he or she might be, has been chosen because Do Over needs a major ratings boost to survive.

“Has anyone else noticed that we’re going to be on another barrier island in the middle of hurricane season?” Deirdre asks.

“We’ve all noticed.” Avery starts to roll her eyes then remembers she’s on-camera. “I have a feeling they’re not going to be happy until they get footage of us clinging to a rooftop waiting for someone to rescue us.”

“I guess Hurricane Charlene wasn’t enough for them,” Mom says. Charlene was the hurricane that roared up the Gulf Coast, right past Bella Flora, just after we finished renovating her, causing us to spend the night cowering in a Tampa motel bathtub. Last summer, when we were in South Beach, the disaster we faced was entirely man-made.

I see Troy smiling and I can’t really blame him. We’re all so excited that we barely notice that he’s here recording all of our warts and foibles for playback at a future date.

Dustin slides down off my lap and races over to the tree, where my father picks him up and helps him choose a candy cane off a branch. I wish I could forget that he and my mother are no longer the single entity I’ve always considered them. I’m a mother now myself, and the idea of being a child of divorce at the ripe old age of twenty-four is ridiculous, but it still makes my stomach hurt. The thought of Tonja Kay taking her anger at me out on Bella Flora makes the ache even worse.

I hear the loud whine of a boat motor out in the pass. An explosion of flashes lights the sky just long enough for someone to get an exterior shot of Bella Flora with a hint of us inside. I wish I were wearing my burqa right now. Or even the big hair and strap-on boobs that I wore in Nashville. I’m going to have to come up with a lighter, more breathable disguise, something that’s water-repellent, before we head down to the Keys.

I can feel Troy zooming in on my face. He pans the camera lens slowly across the couch, carefully pausing on each of us briefly before moving on. Unlike his lens, my thoughts move in quick jerks and starts. My mother says it’s all about accepting change and moving forward. But I think that’s easier for the person making the change than it is for the people who are forced to accept it.

I try to imagine who the “high-profile” individual in the Keys might be, but of course high-profile could mean about as much as celebrity does. The house we’ll be renovating could belong to the president of the United States. Or a Project Runway all-star.

Dustin runs to me and climbs into my lap and I hold him tight against me. I don’t have to look to know what Troy is shooting. We are the tabloid version of the Madonna and Child, but our powers are confined to selling magazines and, maybe, if we’re lucky, a successful network television show.

I look around me and I’m reminded that Dustin and I are not alone. We’re all bound up with each other and with Do Over. And another chance to “do over” our own lives. We’ve had two shots at this, and we’ve all made progress. I know I’m not the only one who’s hoping that the saying is true. That the third time, somewhere down in the Florida Keys, will be the charm.