Chapter Four
It’s ironic that the place where my mom will spend the rest of her days is called “Hope House.”
Callie, the front-desk nurse, smiles when she sees me, raising a hand. She likes me, and since she’s always good to Mom, I like her, too.
“She’s having a good day today!” Callie calls out, and I smile even though Mom’s days are, as far as I can tell, always the same. Not good, not bad, just a kind of limbo that taught me there are a lot of things worse than dying.
When I open the door to her room, I see her sitting in her recliner by the window, her hair, once as dark as mine, now steel gray, her thin hands fluttering in her lap.
Her hands are always moving, and I used to wonder if she thought she was still crocheting.
She always loved that, making blankets for the babies at her church, sending me socks that were always a little too warm but that I wore anyway because I knew they were her way of telling me she cared—even if the words themselves had never come easily to her.
“Hi, Mom,” I say, but as usual, she doesn’t answer, just keeps looking out the window, her fingers moving, moving, moving.
She’s been here for three years now, and she might be here for five, or ten, or fifteen more. No one really knows. Her body is still in good shape, even if her mind is gone. Hell, she could go on another twenty years like this. Sitting in the sunlight, staring out at nothing.
I putter around her room, straightening bedclothes that don’t need straightening, watering plants that are probably fine, talking to her about the inn, telling her what funny thing Edie said last week about the weather. It’s the same routine, every time I visit.
Do I do this for her, or do I do it for me?
She doesn’t ever acknowledge my presence, and I always leave here sadder, so maybe there’s no point in doing it at all.
But it breaks my heart to think of her as one of those patients no one ever visits, so I’ll keep coming here every Monday, keep asking her about her day and what she had for breakfast, and telling her gossip about people she doesn’t know.
Although now it occurs to me that I do have a story about someone she knows.
Someone she knew.
“Lo Bailey is back in town, Mama,” I say, smoothing the wrinkles out of the blanket on her bed.
“She says she knew you when y’all were growing up.
She’s brought some writer, and they’re writing a book about Hurricane Marie.
About Landon Fitzroy. I know it sounds silly, but I’m kind of hoping the book is this big ol’ hit and then we get people wanting to stay at the inn because of it.
Wouldn’t that be something? Not exactly how I wanted to put the Rosalie Inn on the map, but beggars can’t be choosers, right? ”
I turn back to her, and okay, I was wrong. Turns out there must be some hope left in Hope House after all, because as I study her face, I find myself wishing that there will be some awareness in it, a sudden widening of her eyes. That this reminder of her long-ago past might spark something in her.
And for a second, I think it might have. Her fingers stop moving, suddenly going still on her lap, and her lips seem to tremble just the slightest bit.
“Mom?” I ask softly, going to crouch down next to her.
She always had the prettiest eyes, a bright, clear hazel that I sadly didn’t inherit—I got my dad’s dark brown eyes—but these days, they’re dull and glazed over.
Do I see a spark there now? Or maybe I just want there to be one.
“Mama?” My voice is soft as I cover her hand with mine, her skin papery and cool beneath my palm.
And then her fingers start to move again, her lips press tightly together, and I drop my forehead onto the arm of her chair with a sigh.
IT’S PAST NOON by the time I get back to the inn. The families that were staying with us for the Fourth of July have mostly cleared out, leaving just a handful of guests to take care of. The lobby is quiet and still when I walk in, the waves outside sounding unnaturally loud.
Edie is nowhere to be seen, but to my surprise, Lo is there.
She’s sitting on the navy-and-white-striped sofa just underneath the biggest window, her blond hair carelessly piled on top of her head, her shoulders a little sunburned under a bright red tank top.
There’s a magazine in her lap, but she’s turned slightly to look out the window, and when she hears me, she glances over, her face breaking out into a smile.
“Afternoon!” she calls brightly. “Haven’t seen you around much today.”
“I was visiting my mom.”
I hadn’t meant to tell her that, but as always, the visit has left me feeling raw and hollowed out, and even though Lo is a stranger to me, more or less, she’d known Mom. Known a version of her I never had.
Lo’s face crumples in sympathy. “Mama told me about Ellen’s … troubles … before she passed.”
Troubles. That’s so Southern, to take something as catastrophic as a life-changing—life-ending—diagnosis and pretty it up with a vague word.
“It doesn’t seem right,” Lo goes on, “Ellen being in a nursing home. She’s still so young.”
“Well, they don’t call it early-onset Alzheimer’s for nothing,” I attempt to joke, but my voice wavers, then cracks.
Lo is up off the sofa in a flash, and I’m suddenly enveloped in a surprisingly strong hug that smells like candy apples and sunscreen. “Oh, honey,” Lo says, stroking my hair, and for just a second, I let myself be held.
“I miss her,” I hear myself say. “Which sometimes feels ridiculous because she’s right there in front of me, but she’s not there at the same time.”
“Baby girl, baby girl,” Lo croons, and she doesn’t sound anything like my mom, doesn’t feel anything like my mom, but it’s still nice, not only having someone call me sweet names, but also being able to say shit like that out loud to someone.
I hadn’t realized how lonely I’ve gotten over the past few months, how much the weight of keeping the inn afloat, of making sure Mom is taken care of, has started to drag me under.
After a few more seconds, I gently pull away from Lo’s embrace, a little embarrassed as I smile at her. “Sorry about that,” I say, “but thank you.”
“You’ve got a lot on your shoulders, don’t you, Geneva?” Lo asks, and I give a watery laugh.
“Just your classic twenty-first-century woman, having it all!”
Lo snorts at that.
“Oh honey, they barely let us have anything. Why would we ever get to have it all?”
She’s smiling as she says it, but there’s real bite behind the words, and I think back to that man at The Line the other night, the genuine hatred in his eyes as he looked at her.
Lo had handled that encounter like a pro, but what had it been like all those years ago, when she was so much younger, so less calloused by life?
How had she stood it back then, knowing that anytime she went anywhere, there was a chance of someone glaring at her or cussing her out or calling her a murderer?
She wasn’t even twenty when that trial happened, for fuck’s sake.
I’m twice that age, and I don’t think I could have survived it.
“I’m glad you’re writing a book,” I blurt out, and she raises her eyebrows.
“It’s just…” I step back from her, my cheeks warm, my emotions still running high.
“I just think you have a valuable story to tell. About what it was like for you back then, about how you were treated. The whole scarlet woman bullshit thing, when you were barely more than a kid, and he was the one who was married, with all the power. And he was the one who came here of his own free will.”
“Man, do you wanna write the pitch for this book once it’s done?”
I turn to see August ambling into the lobby, his notebook in hand. He grins at me, and once again, my face flushes.
“I guess I didn’t really get it until the other night,” I tell both him and Lo. “The way that man spoke to you, the look on his face…”
“Oh, he was just a small man with a big mouth,” Lo says, waving it away, but August looks at me and says, “That’s why I wanted us to come here to work on the book.”
“So I’d get yelled at in bars?” Lo asks, putting her hands on her hips in faux outrage, but August ignores her.
“It’s been over forty years since Landon Fitzroy died, but some people are still that mad. Like it all happened yesterday.”
“Some people around here talk like the Civil War happened yesterday,” I tell him, “but I get what you mean.” Until the other night, I hadn’t understood how large the scandal still loomed for some people. It had been a footnote in my own childhood, after all.
For a moment, the box of articles and clippings that Mom saved, that’s been gathering dust in the attic, flashes in my mind.
August gestures at me with his notebook. “I’d actually love to grab an interview with you, if you have some time over the next couple of days.”
“With me?” I say, surprised. “I don’t really know how much insight I can offer. I never heard that much about Hurricane Marie growing up, much less Landon Fitzroy.”
I’m still picturing that box in the attic. I don’t know why I’m reluctant to mention Mom’s collection of articles and clippings, only that it feels wrong to tell near strangers about something Mom didn’t even share with me.
“Right, but you know the town, know the history of the place,” August replies. “And the Rosalie Inn is such a fascinating piece of that. Still standing after every storm, for nearly a hundred years now. And named after a shipwreck that killed another Fitzroy.”
That’s news to me, and in a flash, my true crime fantasies detour into popular history. I knew about the wreck, obviously, but had only ever heard it was “some bootlegger.” I had no idea that it had been a Fitzroy.
But I try not to let that intrigue show on my face. Instead, I tell August, “There’s usually a lull in the early afternoon when everyone’s on the beach. We could try to chat tomorrow?”
“It’s a date,” he says, and a little frisson shoots through me.
I haven’t really dated since Chris. I briefly tried the Dreaded Apps, but after a couple of awkward coffee shop meetups and one dinner date that had seemed promising until the end of the meal when he admitted that, okay, maybe separated would’ve been a more accurate term for his relationship, rather than divorced, I’d decided that maybe that whole side of my life was just over.
I’d be like a nun, only instead of Jesus and the Pope, I’d have the Rosalie Inn and Edie, and that would be fine.
But now I find myself liking how August’s hair curls around his earlobes, how strong his fingers look clutching that notebook, the slightly crooked way he smiles at me.
A summer fling might not be the worst thing in the world …
I turn back to Lo only to find her watching me with the strangest expression on her face. Just a minute ago, she was joking and smiling, but now she looks … worried. Anxious, even.
It’s gone in a flash, replaced by another bright smile as she says, “Oh, thank God, someone else can take Auggie’s five billion questions for an afternoon.”
“Kinda hard to ghostwrite a memoir without asking questions, Lo,” August says. His tone is light, the words tossed off with a casual shrug, but there’s a tightness around his jaw, annoyance in the quick glance he throws at her.
Edie comes downstairs then, her combat boots heavy on the carpeted runner as she calls out, “I swear, that plumber couldn’t find his behind with both hands and a flashlight, but the leak in 203 is finally taken care of!”
She falters on the last step when she sees me standing there with Lo and August. She drops her voice and adds, “Um. Anyway, that’s one thing off the list. Guess I’ll start crossing out the next chore.”
“It’s Edie, right?”
Lo has stepped forward, studying Edie, her hands braced on her lower back, and I remember they never got much of an introduction on the first day, how stilted Edie was with her.
I step forward. “Edie is the right-hand woman here at the Rosalie,” I declare with an exaggerated arm wave, like I’m a game show hostess presenting a refrigerator. But when I turn to smile at her, she’s already headed down the hall, like she didn’t hear Lo’s question.
“Okay, that was Edie, the right-hand woman here at the Rosalie,” I say, laughing and hoping I don’t look as awkward as I feel.
But Lo isn’t fazed. She just pats August’s arm before sitting back down on the couch and saying, “Let me finish what I was reading, and then you can interrogate me some more.”
“I was planning on going for a walk on the beach anyway,” August says, nodding toward the big windows facing the ocean before glancing back at me. “Wanna join?”
“Can’t,” I tell him, even though it would be nice, walking next to a cute guy on a beautiful day.
The sky is ferociously blue this afternoon, and the sun is hot, but there’s a breeze off the water.
It’s the kind of weather that reminds me that St. Medard’s Bay isn’t all storms and responsibilities.
It can be magic in its own way, and I should enjoy that more often.
“I took the morning off for some family stuff, so I’m sure I have a ton of emails and bookings to deal with. ”
I actually have a toilet to unclog in 112, and some mildewed towels that need bleaching, but “emails and bookings” makes me sound more like a serious—and attractive, I hope—businesswoman, less of a scullery maid.
“Gotcha,” August says, then gives a little wave before heading for the door.
I glance over at Lo, wondering if she’s watching us, wondering if I’ll see that same weird expression she wore when August and I were talking a few minutes ago, but she’s not looking at us.
She’s not looking at her magazine, either.
Instead, her gaze is trained on the hallway that Edie just disappeared down.