Chapter 16
The threatened storm doesn’t materialize, although the sky continues to bulge with dark-gray clouds as night falls.
I’m refreshed and sweaty after a long walk on the beach, catching up on the latest episode of Elementary .
As I walk back to the condo, the shimmering blue light of the hot tub catches my eye.
A dunk in the Jacuzzi sounds lovely, and I still have a few minutes left of my episode to listen to.
The only problem is I’m not wearing a bathing suit.
I glance around the deserted pool deck and give a cursory glance at the balconies up above.
There’s no one around, so I strip down to my bra and underwear and step down into the hot tub.
The warm, gently bubbling water feels so good that I let out a sigh of contentment.
I’m about to slip my headphones back on, but then I notice the sounds: the ambient noises of the beach at night.
The waves whisper softly as they rush back and forth, and the palm trees overhead rustle in the warm breeze.
There are other sounds, too, like the musical chirping of something that might be a cricket, and the unmistakable deep croak of a frog.
“—and I told her, ‘Not with my money, sugar!’”
I startle at the sudden peal of laughter nearby. Crap. I go for my clothes, but they’re just out of reach, and before I can hop out, I have company.
“Mallory, is that you?”
Angela appears, wrapped in a white bathrobe, accompanied by a man and a woman I haven’t met.
“Hi, Angela.” I sink further into the water, hoping she doesn’t look too closely at my skimpy pink bralette.
“Isn’t a late-night soak just heavenly?” She gracefully removes her robe and drapes it across a chair, revealing a bright-purple one-piece. “It’s a ritual of ours. This is Pam and Simon.” The two strangers wave hello. “Mallory is Leonard’s granddaughter.”
“Ohh, poor Leonard,” Pam says, climbing down into the Jacuzzi.
Simon makes a sympathetic noise in agreement as he sits across from me.
“We’re sorry about your grandmother,” he says with a heavy Brooklyn accent. “She was a delight.”
“Thank you.”
“When do you fly home, Mallory?” Angela asks, settling into the water between Pam and me.
“In a few days,” I say vaguely.
“And have you had a nice trip so far? Is it what you were hoping?”
“Yeah. It’s been… nice.” The question makes me think about the reasons I’m here, and it occurs to me that I made absolutely zero progress today on the house stuff.
I’m supposed to be making decisions about renovations.
Instead, I let the entire day be consumed with work.
I didn’t extend my trip just to work from Gramps’s living room.
Tomorrow, I need to wake up earlier and actually get things done.
“Young people today,” Simon booms. “So virtuous. When I was your age—what are you, twenty?—I was hiking and drinking my way through Mexico with my buddies. Ha! Visiting grandparents? That was only if my parents dragged me along.”
I smile slightly. When I was twenty-two, I was sipping espressos at sidewalk cafés in Paris, snorkeling off the beach in Kantiang Bay. More recently, Alex and I had daydreamed about taking trips to Japan or Peru. Of course, that never happened, and it never will.
“I did some traveling in my early twenties,” I say. “Thanks for thinking I’m twenty, by the way. But it’s been years since I’ve traveled anywhere, other than here.”
“ Years ? What’ve you been doing?” Simon sounds scandalized.
“The pandemic, dear.” Pam slaps her hand lightly on top of the bubbling water.
“Oh, that. Well, it’s time to shake it off, all right? That’s behind us now. You grab some friends and go see the world.”
I bite back a laugh. I wish it were that easy. I glance at Angela and see that she’s giving me a soft, empathetic look.
“Actually, I’m also here because I inherited Lottie and Gramps’s old house. So I’m figuring out what it needs. And how to pay for it.”
Angela shakes her head with a click of her tongue.
“If only you could’ve talked to Lottie about this.
What a shame. Do you know, she was so talented at getting things done for free.
She would call in personal favors with no shame.
And if she couldn’t get someone to help her, she’d find a way to do it herself.
I remember the time she single-handedly replaced her Toyota’s muffler. Didn’t know a thing about cars.”
“How did she do that?” I ask.
Angela lifts both hands in a shrug. “Checked out a book from the library!”
Of course, the library. Pre-internet. With a sudden painful longing, I wish I could talk to Lottie about Pebble Cottage to get her advice. I wonder what she would say.
“Well, I better get going.” I point to the clock on the wall, above the sign listing out the “Spa Rules.” “I’ve been in here for more than fifteen minutes.”
Simon roars with laughter, and Pam leans over and says, “Darlin’, you want to loosen your grip on the rule book of life. Trust me, it’ll be more fun that way.”
I stare back at her for a moment. And then, head held high, I climb out of the hot tub with my Victoria’s Secret cheekies riding all the way up my ass.
As I walk away, clutching my clothes against my dripping-wet chest, I hear Angela say quietly, “I don’t know where these young people buy their bathing suits.”
“Brazil?” Pam suggests. The sound of their laughter rings through the sticky night air.
In bed, freshly showered and wearing buttery-soft shorty pajamas, I curl up underneath the seashell comforter with my laptop balanced on my legs.
The sky finally breaks open as I’m watching Outlander , thunderclaps booming every other minute.
It’s very cozy. Still, I can hardly focus on the episode.
What am I going to do about Pebble Cottage?
I suppose I should give Alan the green light to do the work he needs to do.
I wonder how long that will take. Maybe I should schedule another trip after he’s finished so that I can make a decision about the cosmetic updates.
But how long can I afford to wait before finding new tenants?
I guess I should go over the numbers again in the morning.
What would Lottie do? I wish, again, that I could ask her.
I wake up at seven forty-five. (I was aiming for seven thirty, but I hit the SNOOZE button in my sleep.) Gramps has already been up for an hour and says he’s content with his bowl of Grape-Nuts, so I head to the dining room alone.
I pile my plate with scrambled eggs, pancakes, and melon, and wolf it all down with a glass of cranberry juice and a mug of creamy coffee.
It’s better than the coffee Gramps makes, but I miss my oat milk lattes.
No one tries to talk to me, and I have a little table to myself next to an enormous window overlooking the gulf.
As I walk back to Gramps’s through the grassy lawn, the morning sun warms my face. The humidity at this hour is not only bearable but downright pleasant. Maybe the key to living in Florida is waking up early.
Under the white gazebo, Angela’s exercise class is in full flow, a dozen sweating seniors in formfitting outfits. I don’t know what the class is, but they’re moving fast and making a lot of grunting noises. It looks a bit intimidating, to be honest.
I spend the next hour going over everything about Pebble Cottage: the estimates for Alan’s work, for the cosmetic work, and the costs of property tax and insurance. I’m not really a numbers person, so I have to triple-check my work.
If I pay off Alan in monthly installments, I could go maybe three months without tenants.
Any longer than that, and I’d be too far in debt for my liking.
That should be enough time to figure out the aesthetic updates.
I feel somewhat divided on that issue, and I’m not sure why.
It’s as if part of me doesn’t want to disappoint Daniel McKinnon, even though all of me doesn’t want to shell out a premium for his so-called paint and floor guys.
But I don’t exactly feel like picking apart these feelings right now.
I need to stay focused on the numbers; I absolutely cannot let my financial judgment be clouded by the fact that I made out with my property manager—hot redhead or not.
And he is hot , a sly voice in my head reminds me.
Calm down , I tell her.
Before I devolve into having a full conversation with the voices in my head, I decide to take a walk. I’m not about to attempt yoga again with Gramps around, but I need to move my body before sitting at my laptop for eight hours.
Forty-five minutes later, my limbs feel pleasantly warm and loose from my beach walk. I make myself a turkey sandwich and bring it to my room to start my workday.
Before I get sucked into Slack messages and Zoom meetings, I send a quick email to Daniel and Alan letting them know I want to get started with the maintenance. This makes me feel like a responsible, accomplished adult, which launches me into work on a high note.
That note quickly sours, though, thanks to Gramps’s Wi-Fi. It worked well enough yesterday, so I can’t understand why it keeps flickering in and out today. In a team meeting, I can barely understand what my co-worker is saying, because she sounds and looks like a pixel-y robot.
Walking from my room to the kitchen to the living room, I say loudly, “Can you say that one more time? Sorry, my internet!”
A few more warbled words, and then, “—think we’ve lost Mallory.”
“No! I’m here!” I yell into my laptop. “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” comes Gramps’s voice.
“Ah!” I yelp and spin around to face him, simultaneously jabbing the MUTE button, which makes me drop my laptop. “Crap!” I shout-whisper, scrabbling to pick it up, trying to make sure I’m still in the meeting and also muted.
“Sorry, Gramps,” I whisper. He stands there holding a book, his face unusually stern.