Chapter Two
The afternoon Lo Bailey comes back to St. Medard’s Bay, it’s raining.
The rain is not a surprise. It’s summer in Alabama, summer at the beach in Alabama, and that comes with afternoon storms more often than not.
It’s practically a ritual at the Rosalie Inn this time of year, watching the families gather on the beach under clear morning skies only to scuttle back to the safety of cars or the front porch of the inn—whether they’re guests here or not—as thick dark clouds roll out along the horizon.
For about twenty minutes, it’ll rain so hard you can hardly hear yourself think, the drops hitting the ground so violently they can’t even soak into the parched plants and sandy soil.
And then, as suddenly as it comes on, it stops.
The clouds smooth out into gray wisps, the sun reemerges with such force that sometimes you can see literal steam rising from the grass, and the families head back out to their chairs and their towels, telling one another that the rain “cooled things off” even as the humidity feels like a second skin.
Still, it feels ominous, the clap of thunder that shakes the inn as I watch a nondescript white rental car pull into the narrow parking lot on the back side of the Rosalie.
I’m up on the second floor, standing at the big bay window that looks out on that side of the inn, matching the one across the landing that has a much prettier view of the Gulf.
The rooms on the back side are obviously the cheaper ones, but as Mom always said, not every room can look out at the ocean, and some people are happy to pay lower prices just to be near the water, who cares if they can look at it.
This summer, our ocean-view rooms aren’t even fully booked, and there’s no one on what we optimistically called the “Gull Wing.” Probably for the best since two out of the ten rooms up here smell vaguely mildewed no matter how much we clean, or how much I’ve spent replacing furniture and bedding.
August Fletcher isn’t staying on this side, of course. He paid for one of the best rooms we have, a big corner room downstairs with French doors opening onto a private piece of the front porch, windows facing all that sand and sea.
The driver’s side door opens, and an arm darts out, a navy umbrella popping open and nearly hiding the driver from view.
I catch a glimpse of one long, tanned, and hairy leg beneath a pair of khaki shorts, a brief flash of white T-shirt, and then he’s hurrying around the front of the car and opening the passenger door.
Nowhere in his email did he mention he might have a companion, but as soon as I see her—the swirl of floral skirt, a gleam of jeweled sandal, a cloud of blond hair—somehow, I just know it’s Lo Bailey in that car with him.
My pulse jumps up a notch, curiosity making me want to press my face to the window like a little kid, but the umbrella blocks my view, and all I can really see clearly is my own wavering reflection in the rainy window.
I’m still not quite used to it, seeing my mother’s face reflected back at me.
It happened around the same time I turned forty, earlier this year.
I always knew we looked alike, but age has made the resemblance even more pronounced, and I can’t think about it too much because it reminds me that when my mother was forty—when she seemed old to me—I was already twenty.
When Mom was the age that I am now, she had a decades-long marriage, a college-aged daughter, and a thriving family business.
What do I have? A shitty ex-boyfriend who wasted twelve years of my life, a spider plant that is on death’s doorstep, and a hotel that I alternately fantasize about burning down and also somehow seeing on the cover of Coastal Living.
I hear the door open and wait for Edie’s usual “Welcome to the Rosalie Inn!,” a cheerful cry so loud I sometimes tease her that they can hear it in Orange Beach, but there’s nothing, just the sound of the rain and their footsteps on the wooden floors.
Time to play the Charming Innkeeper, I guess.
They’re both at the front desk as I enter the lobby, the rain easing up now outside the wide glass doors that lead out onto the beach.
A tanned little boy stands just next to the railing, bright blue inner tube in hand, watching the waves, no doubt waiting for the moment his mom tells him he can head back out there.
Not a guest, I’m pretty sure, probably someone staying at the condos farther down the beach and just using the Rosalie Inn’s porch for shelter.
I hate how angry that makes me. It’s not this little boy’s fault that his parents have enough money not to book an old hotel for their summer vacation.
I can’t pretend that it’s not probably a fuck-ton nicer, having a whole condo to yourself—a kitchen, a door you can close between you and your family members. If it were me, that’s what I’d want.
And still, I feel heat rising up my chest, the urge to tell him that the porch is only for paying customers bitter on my tongue.
Another crack of thunder rattles the windows, and the boy on the porch cringes, but I’m already turning away from him because Lo Bailey is walking toward me.
I’ve seen her picture on the internet and in the magazines that Mom had hidden away, so I’d known how gorgeous she was when she was younger, but I’m not prepared for how beautiful she still is.
Her hair is long and thick, curling a little from the rain, and while calling it “blond” is technically true, it doesn’t really do justice to the color.
It’s a riot of different shades, caramel and gold, platinum and ash, the kind of hair that would cost a fortune in a salon, but I feel like in her case, it’s all natural.
Her eyes are the same clear green as the water just outside the door, and even though I know she’s got to be at least sixty—she was in the same grade as my mom—she could easily pass for ten years younger, maybe even fifteen.
I almost want to laugh at it, how stupidly, almost obscenely pretty she is, a true freak of nature—because of course lives got ruined over this woman.
Of course she was a scandal.
Of course a man was left dead in her wake.
“Hi,” I say. “You must be August.” I turn to the woman next to him. “And I’m guessing you’re Lo Bailey?”
“And you must be Geneva.”
My attention had been so focused on Lo, this woman who has loomed so large over my hometown, that I’d barely clocked August. But as he steps forward, I realize Lo is probably not the only one used to turning heads.
August Fletcher is tall and lean, his black hair a little too long, threaded with gray at the temples, and his teeth are very white in his very tanned face.
When I take his hand to shake it, his skin is warm, his grip is tight, and I’m surprised by the shiver of lust that shoots up my spine.
Since Chris left, I’ve barely looked at men at all, too consumed with saving the hotel and too pissed off at the entire XY contingent to even think about dating, much less sex.
But that part of me definitely wakes up a little when he smiles at me and says, “Hope it’s not an issue that Lo decided to tag along. If you’ve got another room free, that would be great, but we can share if needed.”
“As you can see, we’re completely swamped,” I joke in reply, spreading my hands wide to take in the empty lobby before I remember that sometimes self-deprecation can sound a lot like bitterness.
“Great,” August replies, his teeth flashing in a quick grin, then he adds, “And of course I’ll pay our agreed-upon rate for Lo’s room as well.”
That’s eight hundred dollars a night. For who knows how many nights. I almost feel lightheaded as I nod and say, “Sounds good!,” like this man isn’t offering a whole fucking lifeline just as I’d felt the waves start to crash over my head.
I’m still reeling when Lo says, “It’s still such a pretty spot.” She sounds dreamy, like she’s talking to herself, not to me. “I forgot how pretty it was.”
“You’ve been here before?” I ask, wondering when she would have stayed at the Rosalie, given that she grew up just down the road.
“Aren’t you Ellen Chambers’s little girl?” she asks, and I find myself smiling. Only in Alabama can you be forty years old and still be referred to as anyone’s “little girl.”
“I am,” I say. “Well, Ellen Corliss’s.”
Lo nods at that, still a little distracted, like she’s not quite in the same room with us. “Right, right. Well, she’ll always be Ellen Chambers to me.”
She turns then, and her green eyes get a little sharper, a little clearer. “You knew my mama? Beth-Anne Bailey?”
“Everyone knew Miss Beth-Anne,” I say, thinking of the friendly woman who ran the Greedy Pelican, a souvenir shop on Main famous mostly for the giant acrylic pelican on its roof, its beak stuffed with a fake surfboard, beach chairs, and sunglasses.
It’s hard to believe a woman this stunning came from such a plain, down-to-earth shopkeeper, but genetics are weird that way.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I add. Miss Beth-Anne didn’t make it through Covid, and it had been a big blow for the whole town. Thinking about it now, I’m surprised Lo didn’t come home for the funeral. I wonder if they had still been on speaking terms.
Lo barely acknowledges my condolences, her gaze still turned toward the sea, and August looks back and forth between us before saying, “I technically understand the words you’re both saying, but it still feels like code somehow.”
That brings Lo back to the present, and she turns a sly grin on August before winking at me. “August here is from Ohiiiiiiiiooooooo, Ellen Corliss’s Little Girl. He’s not used to an Alabama Greeting. You know, establishing ‘your people,’ where they’re from, how you all know each other.”
“Do all people from Alabama know each other?” August asks, and Lo and I both chorus, “Yes.”