He raised his head and regarded her with sad puppy dog eyes. “You’re totally making this up just to torture me.”
“Nope,” she said sadly. She mimed an X over her chest and repeated the oath she and Grayson—and Sean—had shared as kids. “Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”
“You’re killing me here,” Skelly said.
“I had the whole evening all planned out. We’d dance the night away. You’d wrap your arms around me during the slow dances, and I’d press my miniature breasts up against your masculine chest, and you’d be so swept away with passion, you’d kiss me right there on the dance floor.”
Skelly took a long gulp of his own wine. “Go on.”
“That’s about it,” she said, shrugging. “At one point in the evening, I went to the ladies’ room, and some girls had a flask of Southern Comfort. I took three or four swigs, and then, when I went back out to the ballroom to start my big seduction, you were dancing with Steffi. And you had your hands all over her ass.”
“She asked me to dance,” Skelly protested. “And for your information, she was grinding on me like a cat in heat. Also, now that you mention it, the guys in the men’s room were passing around some stuff that night, but it wasn’t Southern Comfort. I guess I was semi-buzzed, because if I’d been sober I never would have had the nerve to grope Steffi whatshername right there in front of God and the chaperones.”
“You broke my heart that night,” Conley said. “I found Grayson and begged her to get her date to take me home, but they had plans of their own, so I just had to sit there, watching you dry hump the biggest slut in Silver Bay.”
“I’m sorry,” Skelly said. He took both her hands in his. “Teenage boys should not be allowed out in public. They should be chained until their hormones are under control and they learn how to be decent human beings.”
Her mind wandered to Charlie Robinette and the excruciating humiliation he’d inflicted upon her only a year or two after that night at the country club with Skelly. They’d both been horny teenagers, but the difference was that Charlie had gone out of his way to hurt her.
“That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?” Conley said, looking down at their entwined hands. “Anyway, in retrospect, it’s probably all for the best. No telling how long that condom I stole from Grayson’s dresser drawer had been in there.”
Skelly’s eyes widened. “You brought a condom? To the country club dance? For real?”
“It was in my evening bag with my lipstick, a roll of Certs, and a quarter for the pay phone. My mama might not have been around a lot, but she did sit me down when I turned thirteen to explain the facts of life,” Conley said primly. “Her only words of advice before my freshman year of college were to never let a stranger buy me a drink in a bar and to get myself to the student clinic and get on the Pill.”
“Well, damn,” Skelly said. “Just … damn.”
“I know,” she agreed. “You didn’t even kiss me at the front door. All my fantasies died that night.”
Skelly leaned his forehead against hers. “If only there were a way I could make it up to you now,” he murmured, tilting her chin until his lips hovered over hers. “If only I knew your big sister wasn’t hiding in the bushes, waiting to beat the crap out of me for making a move on you.”
Conley’s lips curled into a smile. “I happen to know that at this moment, Grayson’s ensconced at the bar at the club, and I’m the last thing on her mind. What the hell. Give it a shot.”
“Really?”
She took his face in her hands and kissed him, long, slowly, deliberately.
He pulled away for a moment. “So that’s a yes?”
Her response was to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him closer. “Do you need a permission slip?”
His first kiss was gentle, tentative, like a prolonged sigh. He wove his fingertips through her hair, kissed her earlobes, then the hollow of her throat. He rained kisses on her bare shoulders, then worked his way back up to her mouth, parting her lips with his tongue.
“Okay?” he asked, his lips still against hers.
“Skelly?”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“You’re doing just fine.”
His kisses grew more urgent, and Conley responded in kind. By mutual agreement, they tumbled, giggling, out of the swing and onto the soft sand below. At some point, she realized that the sky had grown darker, violet deepening to purple.
“Hey,” she said, sitting up suddenly. She pointed toward the horizon. “The sun’s about to set.”
Skelly propped himself up on one elbow, dropping a kiss on her bare shoulder. He gazed out at the orange fireball poised to disappear. “Beautiful. Like you.”
“I’ve missed this,” she said.
“What? Making out on the beach with the cutest boy next door?”
“I was gonna say sunsets. I can’t remember a single night, living in Atlanta, that I stopped what I was doing just to watch the sky turn this amazing color. But making out with you on the beach is pretty amazing too,” she said, smiling down at him.
He sat up and wrapped his arms around her chest, kissing her neck and shoulders, and she leaned back into his embrace. Finally, the sky was an inky blue black, scattered with stars and a waning crescent moon.
Skelly pulled her back down into the sand, tugging at her clothes with renewed urgency, nudging her knees apart with his own. She pulled his shirt over his head, and he obligingly removed her top. He easily removed her shorts. She found his zipper and slowly inched it down, stroking him as she went.
They reclined on their sides, facing each other, their legs entwined, touching, stroking, kissing.
“Um, Conley?”
She was kissing his chest, working her way down his abdomen, enjoying how ragged his breathing got the farther south she moved.
“Did you by any chance keep that condom you stole from Grayson?”
She stopped what she was doing. “A twenty-year-old condom? Um. No. But what kind of pharmacist doesn’t keep birth control in his pocket for emergencies like this?”
“The newly divorced kind. The kind who’s convinced he’ll never have sex again.”
She kissed him lightly, then pulled him on top of her. “Lucky for you, I was a Girl Scout. And I’m always prepared.”
* * *
“Wow,” Skelly said, draping an arm over her side. “What was in that wine?”
“Nothing special,” Conley said lazily.
“Unlike you,” he said, nuzzling her neck. “I can’t believe what just happened here. Sarah Conley Hawkins jumped my bones.”
“I seem to remember that you made the first move,” Conley said, reaching for her top and pulling it over her head.
“I was trying to restore your faith in humanity. To make all your teenage fantasies come true,” he said.
She chuckled. “I’d say my fantasies were more than realized.”
Skelly sat up and gazed around. “I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want to spoil the mood, but for a while there, I kind of had this creepy feeling that we were being watched. You, uh, you don’t think your grandmother could see us from the house, do you?”
“No way,” she said flatly. “I can see the cove from my room, but G’mama sleeps downstairs. What time is it, anyway?”
He consulted his watch. “Nearly nine.”
“Then G’mama and Winnie are either bent over their jigsaw puzzle or fast asleep. I’d vote for sleeping.”
“Hope so,” he said, pulling on his shirt. “I don’t want her chasing me down with a shotgun for besmirching her granddaughter.”
She handed him his pants and donned her own panties and shorts. “Don’t be so dramatic. The besmirching was mutual. Anyway, my grandmother adores you. Always has.”
He put one leg into his pants and then the other before pulling her to her feet. “And what about you?”
Conley busied herself brushing the sand from her bare legs, arms, and neck. �
�God. I’m a mess. I’ve got sand in places I didn’t know I had.”
“Me too,” Skelly said. He reached for her hand. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“Skelly.” She drew out his name. “What do you want from me?”
“Never mind,” he said curtly. “What was I thinking? We literally had sex on the beach here a few minutes ago, but how self-involved am I to think you might indicate you have some kind of feelings for me?”
“I do have feelings for you,” she protested. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. But this—you and me? This is so new. I’m just out of a relationship, you’re newly divorced…”
“Were you in love with this guy Kevin? The reporter in Atlanta?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I cared about him, but it hadn’t gotten that far.”
“Well, I’ve been divorced for almost a year,” Skelly said. “And Danielle and I were off and on separated for the last five years of our marriage. This isn’t some rebound thing for me, Conley.”
“Oh, Skelly,” she said softly. “Give me some time, please?”
He picked up his shoes and started walking up the path through the dunes. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”
36
FAMILY DRAMA FOLLOWS MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF CONGRESSMAN ROBINETTE
By Rowena Meigs and Conley Hawkins
Silver Bay, Florida—Both the widow and son of U.S. Rep. Symmes Robinette (R-Florida) have announced that they will run for his unexpired term, a development that is sending shock waves through Silver Bay and the Thirty-fifth District.
The seventy-seven-year-old, eighteen-term congressman died last week in a fiery, early-morning, single-car crash in rural Bronson County. Bronson sheriff Merle Goggins said the incident remains “under investigation.”
On Monday, Robinette’s widow, Vanessa Robinette, in an exclusive interview with The Beacon, confirmed her intent to run in a special election, which will be held in November.
“Of course, I am heartbroken over the sudden loss of the love of my life,” Mrs. Robinette told the Beacon on Monday. “But public service has long been the focus of my life with Symmes, and I can think of no better way to honor his legacy than to continue serving his constituents in Washington.”
Earlier on Monday, Mrs. Robinette disclosed that Robinette received a diagnosis of end-stage non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma last September. Although the congressman was treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, his diagnosis was kept a closely guarded secret.
A few hours earlier, Mrs. Robinette’s only son, Charles S. “Charlie” Robinette Jr., announced that he has already formed a campaign committee, headed by Miles Schoendienst, a retired railroad executive and top political fund-raiser in North Florida.
“My father made it clear to me, even before his recent illness, that he believed I would be the best candidate to represent the Thirty-fifth District,” Robinette said. “Of course, we’d hoped I wouldn’t have to announce before his retirement, but cancer has a way of cheating the best-laid plans.”
Charlie Robinette, a partner in the Robinette Law Firm in Silver Bay, said his mother’s announcement took him completely by surprise.
“She didn’t discuss her decision with me or with anyone else in the family or [Symmes Robinette’s] close circle of associates as far as I know.… My mother is her own woman,” Robinette said. “Clearly, I think my father’s decision that I should run for his seat, should he not be able to complete his term, is one that should be respected.”
He downplayed the potential for a family feud stemming from clashing political ambitions.
“Thanksgiving could get a little awkward, but we’re a political family.… We’re used to finding ways of compromising.”
Charlie Robinette defended his father’s decision to hide his cancer diagnosis from voters. “We felt it was a private, family matter. Dad felt well enough to be in Washington, attending to the people’s business in Congress, right up until the end of his life.”
The body of Charles Symmes Robinette, a fourth-generation native Floridian, will lie in state Tuesday in the Capitol Rotunda, where government officials, including the president, vice president, Speaker of the House, and Florida governor Roy Padgett, along with other dignitaries, will gather to pay tribute to Robinette’s decades of public service.
Following the memorial in Washington, D.C., services will be held this Saturday at Silver Bay Presbyterian Church. The family will receive Friday night at McFall-Peeples Funeral Home.
But in the meantime, Robinette’s sudden death has revealed long-hidden cracks in the façade of the family life of the decorated Vietnam veteran and conservative congressman who also served in the Florida senate.
The obituary written by Robinette’s widow, Vanessa Monck Robinette, fifty-nine, and submitted to the Beacon, lists as survivors, in addition to Ms. Robinette, his thirty-four-year-old son Charles.
No mention is made in the death notice of Robinette’s older children from his marriage to his first wife and high school sweetheart, Emma Todd “Toddie” Sanderson Robinette, who married Robinette in 1962, when he was nineteen and she was eighteen. Hank Sanderson Robinette is fifty-two. and Rebecca Robinette Bouillotte, age fifty.
“Damn straight I left them out,” Vanessa Robinette said when asked about the omission. “They weren’t mentioned because they weren’t a part of Symmes’s life. You know what? I don’t even know their names. I doubt my husband could remember them either. That’s how estranged he was from all of them.”
But according to Bronson County tax records, Symmes Robinette transferred title to Oak Springs Farm, a working quail-hunting plantation that includes a 3,500-square-foot farmhouse and eight hundred acres of timberland, to Toddie Sanderson for one dollar “and other considerations,” the day before his fatal accident.
On the same day, Robinette also transferred title to his former home in Silver Bay to Charlie Robinette, who has resided at the Trinity Street home since his parents moved into their 4,200-square-foot oceanfront mansion on Sugar Key, the gated country club subdivision developed in 2017 by Miles Schoendienst, Robinette’s longtime business associate and campaign contributor.
Vanessa Robinette was apparently blindsided by the news of her late husband’s largesse in deeding the farm to his first wife.
“That’s not possible,” Vanessa said when told of the deed transfer. “I don’t know what that woman has told you, but it’s impossible. Symmes would never have done something like that.”
Toddie Sanderson, who has lived at Oak Springs Farm since her 1986 divorce from Robinette, declined to comment for this story.
Charles Symmes Robinette Sr. was the only child of Marva Franklin Robinette and Clyde D. Robinette. He grew up in the Plattesville community where, following the death of her husband at the age of forty-two, Mrs. Robinette worked at a now-defunct textile mill. Mrs. Robinette met and married her second husband, Gordon Pancoast, who was a plant manager, when Symmes Robinette was twelve.
Robinette enlisted in the U.S. Marines in 1965 and, following a tour of duty in Vietnam, returned home to Silver Bay in 1967. He received his undergraduate and law degrees from Florida State University.
He was elected to the Florida senate in 1978 and ran for his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1984.
During his terms in Congress, Robinette was instrumental in delivering tens of millions of dollars in federal funding to Florida and the Thirty-fifth District, including funds for new wastewater management systems, highway improvements, and the establishment and construction of a new Veterans Administration clinic in Silver Bay.
During his first term in office, Symmes Robinette hired a vivacious brunette named Vanessa R. Monck as a legislative aide.
According to Vanessa Robinette, a romance soon blossomed between the then forty-three-year-old legislator and his twenty-five-year-old protégée. “I was young and just starting out. Symmes was so kind and generous. He was always one to encourage young people,” she rec
alled this week.
Mrs. Robinette stated that the congressman’s marriage to Toddie Robinette “had been over for years. His alleged wife wouldn’t step foot in D.C. He was lonely and so unhappy. He’d been asking for a divorce for years, but she refused.”
But when Vanessa Robinette became pregnant with the congressman’s child, the divorce was quickly granted. The two were married in a private ceremony in Washington, D.C., in 1986, three months after the birth of Charles S. Robinette Jr.
According to several longtime residents, by the time Symmes Robinette brought his new bride and infant son home to Silver Bay, his first wife had withdrawn her children from local schools and moved with them, forty-five miles away, to Oak Springs Farm in Bronson County.
The farm is less than ten miles from the secluded stretch of county highway in Bronson County where Symmes Robinette died last Thursday.
At three o’clock that morning, two witnesses encountered a late-model black Escalade SUV, which had flipped upside down. The driver of the vehicle appeared unconscious and trapped inside the vehicle. The witnesses called 911, but their attempts to free the driver were unsuccessful, and when the Escalade caught fire, they were driven back by the flames. Fire rescue units from Bronson County responded to the 911 call, but the driver, later identified as Symmes Robinette, was unresponsive.
The witnesses said they saw no other cars in the vicinity. The weather that night was clear. Bronson sheriff Merle Goggins said that the cause of the accident remains under investigation. And although the congressman sustained massive head injuries, the district medical examiner’s office still has not determined the cause of death.
Vanessa Robinette blamed her husband’s accident on what she called “chemo brain,” saying that his cancer treatment made him “confused and disoriented,” and that in recent weeks, he’d begun to awaken in the middle of the night and go for long drives. “He hadn’t been himself,” she said. “That’s why he was home … to get some rest.”
That same impairment, she said, would be the only reason her husband would have deeded such valuable property to his long-estranged ex-wife.
Hello, Summer Page 27
