like . . .’
‘I just started a pot of coffee.’ Bobby is hopeful too.
‘I hope you don’t think it’s too late for . . .’
He lifts a corner of the cloth and peeks in, quick to reassure her. ‘They look great. Hey, Margaret brought orange blossom honey back from Homosassa Springs. Would you like . . .’
‘I’d love to.’ She smiles. ‘Can I come in?’
Her smile makes him smile. But, this house! He covers quickly. ‘It’s too pretty out to be stuck inside.’
‘The light really is beautiful at this time of day.’
He walks her around to the picnic table. ‘Let’s sit out here.’
‘Let’s do.’
‘Wait here, I’ll bring a tray.’
He likes the way she scoots her legs over the bench and sits. Bobby notes that unlike the girls when he knew them back in high school, Nenna does not jump up and offer to help, which is the Fort Jude way. She seems to know that he’d find it intrusive. When she had him at the front door she didn’t try to push her way inside. Maybe she knows he’d rather not have her nosing around in there feeling sorry for him, he thinks, going into Margaret’s dim kitchen.
She doesn’t need to see how he lives, which . . . yes!
Which he is going to change. Apartment down town, he’ll gentrify a neighborhood. Fresh resume; he’ll add a line that says consultant to explain the gap. With his credentials, he can get a new job.
Bobby collects coffee cups and the full pot, sugar bowl and two spoons, butter and two butter knives, honey with its wooden dipstick, proof against drips. Two of his mother’s Minton dessert plates. He works quietly because he doesn’t want to bring Margaret downstairs. He’s rather not hurt her feelings – which he would, if she found the tray and asked him to explain. When he comes back outside Nenna is waiting nicely in the twilight, sitting there with her head bent, like a child. He sets down the tray. ‘I’m sorry it took so long.’
‘This is so nice!’ She smiles.
‘I’m glad.’
She breaks one of the muffins and puts it on a plate. She butters the halves, drizzling them with honey and pushing the plate across the table. ‘Here, this one’s for you.’
‘Wonderful.’ Soberly, he pours the coffee, setting the first cup down in front of her. ‘Sugar?’
‘No thanks, Bobby, I’m fine. Nice to see you.’
‘You too.’
She is sitting there fishing for thoughts. Surprised by what surfaces, she laughs. ‘And let’s don’t talk about our problems!’
Bobby grins. ‘Let’s don’t.’
‘It’s just so nice to see you.’
He jumps up. ‘I forgot napkins!’
‘Don’t worry, we’re fine.’
‘I guess we are.’
She says, ‘We have a lot to talk about.’
They are both smiling now. Bobby says, ‘We do.’
44
Dan
Rushing out of the Flordana, overcharged and crackling with frustration, Dan feels like a fugitive from the static Fort Jude Sunday afternoon. In Grammy’s room, in the Flordana coffee shop, he turned into a convict in a holding pen, waiting for – helicopter rescue? Darkness, so he could swarm over the wall and escape?
The key, he realizes. Jessie Vukovich told her story, liberating him. He drives through the soft Florida night like a death-row murderer with a last minute reprieve. He is going to confront the man Lucy sent him all this way to meet. He knows she did: the whole jewel box thing, the contents she left behind like a message to him. The thump between his shoulder blades. He finds certain details encoded. How could she not want this?
He isn’t sure how the encounter with the father will end, but tonight by God he will end it.
Darkness changes everything. By day Coral Shores looks orderly and civilized, bisected by the boulevard, with neat cross streets intersecting. It looks like a grid, but only to outsiders. At night it turns into a warren. Coordinates keep sliding around, defying his GPS. In a better world it would be a straight shot to the peninsula, but in a community committed to privacy no road is straight and nothing is clear-cut. The route Dan mapped so carefully sends him down identical side streets that turn suddenly, looping back to Coral Boulevard, unless they dead-end at a stand of trees or dump him at the edges, stymied by yet another private driveway to a protected house with its private waterfront. At night all these houses look alike; every tree on Coral Shores looks like every other tree and landmarks repeat themselves so he can never be sure whether he