Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,66
too raw to handle kindness.
On my right side, I felt something sneak up on me and block out the sun. Out of habit, my hand reached for the gun I usually had in the back of my pants.
Habits from a life that somehow seemed long ago after only a few days.
“Sorry to bother you,” the shadow said, and Joan and I both cupped our hands over our eyes so we could make out yet another little old lady. A black woman wearing a long, flowing dress and flip-flops with huge plastic flowers on them.
And she had what looked like a bottle of champagne in a sand pail.
“You’re not bothering us,” I said, my eyes on that champagne. This was an upgrade.
“I remember you,” Joan said. “Nancy. You had all the grandkids.”
“Yes! I’m Nancy.” She smiled, her heart all over her round face. “And I do have quite a few grandkids.”
“Right.” Joan sat up, her arms crossing over her bare belly as if suddenly uncomfortable with the amount of skin she was showing.
“And I remember you. You and your sister. I’m so pleased that you’ve come back and on your honeymoon, too.” The woman’s happy gaze swept over me.
“Thank you,” I said, when Joan said nothing.
“Yes, here!” She handed me the sand pail with the champagne bottle sticking out of it. “Fern told me you eloped. Jimmy and me did that years ago, too. Both our families thought we weren’t going to make it so we decided they shouldn’t be a part of our day. So it was just me and Jimmy in the courthouse forty-two years ago, this year.”
“You showed them, huh?” I said, getting into my part.
“We certainly did and I figure a little champagne never went amiss.”
“Not ever,” I said. This fake marriage thing was exhausting.
Nancy smiled at me but she looked at Joan who was decidedly not looking at her. “I’m so pleased you’re back. Where’s that little sister of yours?”
“College. She’s going to be a nurse.”
“Like Fern.”
“Yep.”
“Oh that’s wonderful news. She was such a bright girl.”
“Yep. Real smart.”
“You know, she’d have my hide for saying this, but Fern was devastated when you left.”
Joan scoffed, deep in her throat, and then flinched as if she hadn’t meant to make that sound out loud.
“She was,” Nancy insisted. “I know she doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve and I know that you two had your problems. But she was truly heartbroken when you left and I’m thrilled you’re back to mend fences. Family should be together.”
Oh, she was barking up the wrong tree talking about that. Mending fences. Joan carried a sledgehammer for those fences that needed mending.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the champagne.”
Now move right along, nice old lady.
Nancy smiled but it did not reach her eyes. “Fern’s been different since you left. I’m hoping that we’ll get the old Fern back now.”
Joan nodded tightly and finally Nancy left. In the still heavy silence, I popped the champagne cork and poured half of it into her red cup. “Take this.”
“Thanks,” she said and took a sip.
I poured the second half of the bottle into my cup. I put the bottle down and lifted her arm so that her cup toasted mine. “To showin’ them, baby,” I said, but she didn’t smile. Not even a little.
We sat there as the sun dipped down over the other side of the building and the shadows grew long across the pool deck. The wind that blew up from the ocean was cold against my sunburned skin.
“I’m going inside,” Joan finally said. “It’s cold.”
She dumped the rest of the champagne into the prickly shrubs behind us and a bunch of those little Florida lizards came scurrying out across the white concrete deck. She wrapped a towel around her body, her shoulders bright red, her back criscrossed with the marks of the plastic lawn chairs that we were sitting on.
I drank my champagne and ate the last of the hot dogs all smeared up with cheese from the cheeseball.
A group of men walked past me, their white socks pulled up over their spotty old man shins. One of them…Dean? The guy with the paper, he slowed down as they walked past, and he flipped me a cigar from his pocket.
“Congrats, son. If my wife asks, you didn’t get that from me.”
“Or me!”
“Me either!” The guys all chuckled, walking with some old man swagger out to the beach where they’d smoke their cigars like they weren’t hiding from their wives.