How long had it been since she’d slept here? Most of her visits home in recent years had come during the summer, when she’d stayed at the Dunes.
The air-conditioning was on, but she went to the bank of windows that overlooked Felicity Street and tugged at the middle sash, flinging it upward, then leaning close, inhaling the humid, jasmine-scented air.
She was home, whether she liked it or not.
Sometime past midnight, she heard the soft ding of an incoming text. She reached for her phone and tapped the message icon.
I heard aboutIntelligentsia. Sucks, big-time. Where are u? Call if you want to talk.
“Oh, Kev,” she breathed his name out loud and after a moment’s hesitation started typing.
I’m in Silver Bay. Guzzling bourbon and licking my wounds. Can’t talk yet. Maybe later. Thanks. C.
3
In the morning, Conley followed the smell of frying bacon down the stairs and through the dining room.
For a moment, she paused outside the kitchen door, taking in all the familiar sensations. The scent of coffee and biscuits, the drone of the local radio station punctuated with the pops and sizzles of frying bacon. There was a jelly jar of pink, orange, and yellow zinnias on the windowsill, and Winnie’s ever-present turquoise transistor radio stood beside it. The green linoleum floor appeared to have been freshly mopped. The time could have been now or five or ten or twenty years ago.
Nothing had changed. Nothing ever did, she thought.
Winnie stood at the massive six-burner range, tending a cast-iron skillet. She glanced over her shoulder and nodded, unsurprised at Conley’s presence. “Hey, shug. Coffee’s on. I got biscuits coming out of the oven in another five minutes. Sit yourself down.”
Conley greeted her grandmother’s housekeeper with a light pat on the arm. Winnie was not a hugger or a toucher. G’mama said maybe that was because Winnie had been in prison.
Winnie had come to work for the family years earlier, when Conley was a young child.
In all the years Conley had known her, Winnie’s appearance hadchanged little. She still dyed her hair the same shade of pinky red, still wore it in a plait that hung down nearly to her waist. Her eyebrows were an iron gray now, but her pale face was surprisingly unlined. As always, she wore a white, button-down man’s shirt, tucked into elastic-waisted, black double-knit slacks she must have stocked up on in the seventies. Her black, lace-up shoes were polished, and she peered down at the frying pan through thick-lensed glasses.
“Hey,” Conley said. “How’re you, Winnie?”
“Can’t complain. You want juice, there’s some in the fridge.”
Conley took a mug from the row of cups hanging by hooks beneath the cabinet by the sink and lifted the battered aluminum percolator from the stove top.
“Well, look who’s here.”
Conley turned, coffeepot still in hand. She hadn’t seen her there, tucked away in the built-in banquette overlooking the backyard. Grayson raised her own mug in a mock salute.
“Oh, hey, Gray,” she said. “What brings you over here?”
“Bacon and biscuits brings her here. She shows up every morning on the regular, just like that damn stray cat I keep telling your grandmother to stop feeding,” Winnie said. “And just like that cat, she never gains an ounce.”
Conley took her coffee and sat down on the bench opposite her older sister. Gray was dressed for the office. Unlike the casual blue jeans and tennis shoes Conley’s coworkers at the Atlanta paper favored, Grayson Hawkins was dressed like the small-town Rotarian she was—a navy pantsuit, pale pink cotton blouse, single strand of pearls.
“You don’t eat breakfast with your husband?” Conley asked.
“Not if I can help it. Tony’s idea of breakfast is a bowl of açai berries and hemp hearts, washed down with that kombucha crap.”
“They sell kombucha at the Piggly Wiggly? I’m impressed.”
“Piggly Wiggly closed last summer,” Winnie reported. “All we got now is the IGA.”
“Tony orders a lot of stuff online,” Grayson said. “Anyway, G’mama called me last night after she heard you were on your way. I wanted to come over this morning to welcome my little sister home.”
Conley regarded her warily over the rim of her mug. With her straight, dark hair and olive skin, every year Grayson looked more like their mother, or at least what she could remember about her mother.
“Get real,” she said. “You’re here to gloat.”
