The Summer House

by Lauren K. Denton

  Across the grass, Hazel tapped a woman on the leg. When she looked down, Hazel said something that made her jump back and brush her hands quickly over the sides of her pants. Lily heard her yelp, and then Hazel knelt down in the grass and scooped up something.

  Rawlins shook his head and chuckled.

  “What does she have?”

  “It’s probably some kind of bug. She loves them.”

  They watched Hazel run to the edge of the grass where the people thinned out, her hands still cupped around whatever critter she’d picked up. She looked around a moment, then leaned down in a patch of grass where the sunlight was still shining. She opened her hands, then sat completely still, watching. The light filtering through her hair lit it up with a golden glow, and the breeze blew the wispy red curls into disarray. She was so alive, so full of breath and spirit and energy, it almost hurt to look at her.

  Lily had dreamed of being a mother since she was a young girl. When everyone else was deciding on veterinarian or teacher or nurse as their future career, all Lily could come up with was that she wanted to have children, and lots of them. As she grew older, the feeling never went away, though she did cut back on how many children she once thought she wanted. She’d be happy with any number, but one or two would be perfect.

  She and Worth hadn’t talked about kids before they married, his proposal coming so soon after the first night they met. After the wedding, once they’d gotten home from the honeymoon and began settling into the life that was now theirs, she brought it up to him. He’d laughed.

  “Maybe, one day, yeah,” he’d said. “It’s a little soon to be talking about it, though, don’t you think?”

  Considering how things had worked out, she was relieved they hadn’t brought a child into their world, though Lily’s yearning to be a mother hadn’t lessened a bit.

  Watching Hazel, who was now sprawled on the grass with her chin propped in her hands, Lily fought the urge to go to her, to touch her soft hair and smooth cheeks. Instead, she tucked her chin into her shoulder for a quick moment and inhaled, the scents of barbecue and grass and lingering sunscreen mixing into an intoxicating blend.

  Rawlins sat up and propped his elbows on his knees. Hazel caught his movement and turned to look at him. She grinned and kicked her legs back and forth. Rawlins waved at her, then lifted his chin toward the sky. “Red sky at night.”

  Lily watched him a moment, waiting to hear the next part of the rhyme—red sky at night, sailor’s delight—but he was quiet. “Is there any truth in that?” she asked. “The red sky thing?”

  He shrugged. “The colors at sunset have a lot to do with molecules in the air and how light hits them, but typically a red sky at sunset usually means high pressure’s coming in from the west.”

  When she didn’t respond, he smiled. “That means the next day will usually be clear.”

  “Ah. And the next part? Red sky at morning?”

  “Yep. Sailors take warning. If the sky is red early, it means the high pressure has already passed and a low-pressure system could be on its way. That means stormy weather.”

  “I bet you got good grades in science when you were a kid.”

  He laughed through his nose. “I did, actually. But that’s not where I learned about weather. That came from the job. Aside from the tides and where the shrimp are biting, weather’s the most important thing a shrimper has to know about. You’ve got to know what storms are coming and when.”

  “Do storms ever hit you out of the blue, or are you always prepared?”

  He was quiet a moment. “I’m hit out of the blue all the time. All the forecasting and radars and weather wisdom can only get you so far.” He shrugged again. “Sometimes you have to just go with what your gut’s telling you—and that can be perfectly right or dead wrong. Depending on the day.”

  Hazel ran up to him then, throwing herself in his lap and situating her legs on top of his. He ruffled her hair and pointed out toward the horizon. “Those colors, though? That means something good is coming.” He nuzzled Hazel’s cheek, making her laugh. “Mark my words.”

  The Village Vine

  Your Source for Neighborhood News

  June 6, 2018

  Compiled by Shirley Ferrill

  Good day, Safe Harbor Village!

  Weather

  This week we should see mostly sunny skies with occasional rain showers. Expect afternoon highs to hit the mid- to upper 80s, with morning lows in the low 70s. In short, your average, garden-variety, early June weather. If you plan to take advantage of outdoor activities, don’t forget your sunscreen!

  Marine Life

  More manatees! Four have now been spotted, and it’s possible there’s a fifth, though it could also be the rogue crab trap that fell off the back of Kitty’s pontoon last month. The Dauphin Island Sea Lab is asking residents and boaters to report any manatee sightings. With increased summertime water traffic, there’s a concern that the creatures could be harmed by boat motors. Thank goodness Coach decided to go with paddleboats instead of Jet Skis.

  As if the manatees aren’t enough water excitement, Ruth Beckett says she spotted an alligator in the marina. As of this printing, no one else has seen it, but regardless, please exercise caution on your docks and when entering and exiting your boats. I’m sure no one has forgotten the Hamp Hill incident of three years ago.

  (For the newcomers, Hamp was out fishing early one morning when he spotted what he said was a ten-foot gator. For reasons still unknown to us, he proceeded to cast his fishing pole toward the alligator with such vigor that he threw himself right in the water. Thankfully it was high tide and he was able to scramble back up on the dock, but not without scraping his leg on a barnacled piling, resulting in eighteen stitches and two rounds of antibiotics. Let Hamp be a cautionary tale to take care when near the marina!)

  Miscellaneous

  Janelle Blackmon lost a shoe at the Summer Kickoff party. She thinks it happened on the dance floor, possibly during Shania Twain’s “I Feel Like a Woman.” If you happened to bring home a pink peep-toe kitten heel that isn’t yours, please return it to her ASAP.

  The first meeting of the Beachy Book Babes will be Tuesday, June 12, at Beach Reads. Rosé will be provided, but please bring an appetizer to share.

  To the jokester who scattered pink plastic pelicans around the flagpole at the end of Port Place, please do us all a favor and pick them up. More than one canine villager has used them as toilets, and we don’t need to encourage that kind of improper animal behavior. (Please refer to rule 4.2 in the Safe Harbor Village Handbook.)

  Reminders from Management

  When calling Rawlins Willett for help or repairs, please keep in mind that the shrimping season has begun, which limits his time considerably. If you can find a way to hang those picture frames yourself or hold off on any unnecessary painting jobs, I’m sure he will appreciate it. (Note from Shirley: I’d like to point out that I’ve been holding off on asking him to build a dog shed for Louis the Sixteenth, so when he has available time, I’ve got dibs on his first slot.)

  Fourteen

  Dear Stella,

  It appears I will be helping Rawlins with babysitting duties, although I don’t think it can be called babysitting when it’s your own family. Especially not when it’s someone like Hazel. Sometimes I think she’s an adult trapped in a child’s body, but then she does something so outlandish, I think, Nope, she’s all kid. She’s a treasure. It should be you taking care of her, though, not me.

  I don’t say that because I don’t want to spend time with her, because I do. I have no experience caring for a child, and he probably should have asked someone else, but I’m honored that he did ask. No, I say that because you would be the ultimate grandmother. The grandma who’d let a child run free on a beach and not get onto her for making a mess of your clean floors with her sandy feet. You’d let her play in your makeup drawer. You’d probably even let her eat ice cream before dinner. That’s why you should be taking care of
Hazel when Rawlins is on the boat, not Rose Carrigan, old maid, childless woman of spotless floors, Ice Queen of her own one-person kingdom.

  I always wanted children. Did you know that? Even though I worried I’d pass on my weak genes—genes that made me spend countless hours in pediatrician waiting rooms and on the wrong end of a finger-pricker—I still wanted them. I imagined them to be healthy, rambunctious little rascals, full of vim and vigor and sugar and spice.

  It was Terry who didn’t want them. He said he had too much he wanted to accomplish and that children would only hold him back—hold us back. I figured I’d wait, bide my time, and eventually the paternal instinct would kick in. Thankfully (or not, depending on how you look at it), I didn’t have to wait long. He was gone and I’d lost my chance.

  Should I have pushed harder? Worked with him to hash out our conflicting desires? Maybe. But then again, who wants to have children with a man who didn’t want them in the first place?

  Because of the genuine kindness in your heart, you’d probably never say out loud that I got what I deserved. You might have thought it, though. And you’d be right. I deserve all that’s come my way—the solitude. The loneliness. The inescapable sense of homesickness, though I only live a hop and a skip from where I began. I have many regrets from the course of my life—choices that served as a black stain rather than the defiant but entirely justified actions I thought they were at the time.

  The one thing I don’t regret is how everything turned out with us. You, me, Terry, Jim. I’m thankful it happened just as it did. Why? Because if you had been the one to marry Terry, you would have been the one without the children, and I know how badly you wanted kids. You admitted it much more freely than I did. You were born to have children, to have a family, to nurture them through the ups and downs of life, and you had that chance because you married Jim—a man born of love and thoughtful devotion—instead of Terry, who was Jim’s opposite. So even though our friendship was forever ruined, even though the close relationship Jim and I once had was irrevocably broken, I’m grateful God allowed you to have the family you so desired. You deserved it.

  As always,

  Love,

  Rose

  Fifteen

  On Sunday afternoon Lily was hosing off the patio furniture when someone called her name. Glancing around, she spotted a cluster of women peering over her side gate, all wearing huge sunglasses and straw hats that jostled against one other.

  “Hi. Hang on a sec.” Lily turned off the spigot and dried her hands on the sides of her shorts. She walked to the gate and unlatched it.

  Tiny took a step forward. “Hello, Lily. Seeing as you’re officially a villager now, we’d like to invite you to Sunday afternoon cocktails at the café.”

  “That’s so nice of you, but . . .” Lily looked down at her damp legs. “Right now?”

  “Yes, ma’am. No need to change clothes. There’s no dress code at the Sunrise.”

  Lily cocked an eyebrow as she took in the group of women dressed head to toe in pastel Lilly Pulitzer. A tiny dog poked its head through a pair of legs, its eyes wide and its body quivering.

  “Really.” Tiny grabbed Lily’s hand and gave a gentle tug. “We just want to get to know you a little.” She looked back at the other ladies. “We’re a fun bunch, aren’t we, ladies?”

  Amid a chorus of agreement, Tiny smiled. “What do you say?”

  It was a hot afternoon and Lily’s pale skin was ready for a break. “Okay. Let me just grab my wallet.”

  Tiny shook her head. “Oh no, hon, your drink is on us.”

  Ten minutes later Lily sat among the handful of women at a table at the back of the Sunrise Café overlooking the water. The bay sparkled in the afternoon sunshine, with only a few high streaks of white clouds interrupting the wide open blue. One of the women leaned down and set a cup of water on the floor below the table, and the tiny dog drank with delicate laps. Even without the yellow rain slicker, Lily recognized it as the same little dog she’d seen the night she sat on her front porch in the rain.

  “How cute,” Lily said politely to the woman coiling the leash up in her hand.

  “Thank you. That’s my Prissy.”

  “How old is she?”

  “He is three. He’s a teacup Chihuahua.”

  Lily glanced down again at the dog. She noticed that his toenails were painted pink. Lily looked back up at his owner, Kitty, who shrugged. “I thought he was a girl for the first year of his life. Figured it was easier to finish the way we started.”

  With introductions out of the way, the ladies ordered drinks—Watermelon Bellinis and Strawberry Sundays—and began a rapid-fire exchange of information, mostly centered on the whos, whats, wheres, and whys of the Summer Kickoff party.

  “Did any of you try Donna’s pimiento cheese dip?” Shirley Ferrill asked to a murmur of yeses. “I was up all that night with a stomachache, and I’m blaming the cheese.” She wrinkled her nose and rubbed a hand over her belly. “It’s still a little iffy.”

  “I’d say blame it on that third slice of fudge pie I saw you hiding in a napkin at the end of the night!”

  “What about Janelle Blackmon?” Edna Blanchett asked, prompting groans from around the table.

  “That blouse was tight as a tick across her chest,” Kitty said. “I’m surprised the seams held together.”

  “I thought she looked nice,” Tiny said with a firm nod of her head. “If I had a chest like that, I’d want to show it off too.”

  “Tiny, if you had a chest like that, you’d topple clean over,” Kitty said.

  As the ladies were laughing, a young man stopped at the edge of the table with a tray full of colorful drinks.

  “Thank you, Elijah,” Edna cooed.

  “No problem, ladies.” He smiled as he set the drinks on the table. His hair stuck up in tiny black braids all over his head. “Y’all enjoy.”

  Edna watched him walk away until Shirley nudged her. “That boy is at least fifty years younger than you.”

  “I am well aware of that, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the Lord’s handiwork.”

  Laughter followed as Lily tried her drink, something called a Lemon Sparkler. It tasted like pleasantly fizzy lemonade. “Do you all do this every Sunday?”

  “Oh yes.” Tiny looked around the group. “We’re going on what, ten years? It started as a book club, but we finally acknowledged that we weren’t enjoying the book discussions half as much as we enjoyed the gossip and laughter.”

  “And the cocktails!”

  “Yes, and those. So we quit the books—most of us are members of other, more serious book clubs anyway—and now we just enjoy the chitchat.”

  “Is it always just the five of you?”

  “Others come in and out, but we’re the core group.”

  “What about Rose—does she ever come?” Lily sipped her drink as the ladies exchanged glances.

  “Rose doesn’t do very much with other people.”

  Lily looked from face to face. “Why not?”

  Tiny shrugged. “She just doesn’t get involved. I used to ask her to come, but she said no so often I guess I just stopped asking.” She twisted the umbrella in her Bellini.

  Kitty snorted. “Y’all just need to call it what it is. Rose hates people. She thinks she’s too good for everyone else. Like she’s the high and mighty manager of all us common folk. When she’s not barking out orders from the clubhouse, she holes up inside her cottage, isolated from everyone else like a dang hermit crab.”

  Kitty took a deep breath, then put her lips to her straw and sipped. Only then did she glance around at the other ladies staring at her. “Y’all know I’m telling the truth.”

  “Kitty, you’re being harsh,” Tiny admonished, but then she fell quiet.

  Rose did seem a little detached, but Lily felt like something was missing in Kitty’s explanation. If Rose hated people, why would she have hired Lily practically on a whim? Not only that, but Rose had agreed to let her
live above the salon basically for free. Sure, Lily was doing a service for the village, but Rose had thrown her a lifeline when she needed it. No one who hated people would have been that generous.

  “Well,” Shirley said brightly. “Lily, why don’t you tell us about you?” She leaned forward, hand over her heart. “Now, we all know about your husband. Such a shame, my dear. And you so young. How did it happen?”

  “Shirley!” Tiny said. “You can’t ask her that.”

  “Well, why not? She’s going to find out everything about us as soon as we sit down in her chair.” Shirley patted Lily’s hand. “Was it cancer?”

  “What? No. But . . . what did you hear?”

  “That he’s no longer with us, you poor thing.” The ladies around the table clucked like hens.

  “He didn’t die,” she said to a collective gasp. “He just left.” She glanced around the table at the wide eyes and slack mouths. “He walked out.”

  Tiny collapsed against her seat back, and Edna reached into her handbag and handed Lily a tissue.

  “What happened?” Shirley whispered. “Where did he go?”

  Tiny sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed to Lily.

  “It’s okay. You can ask. He just . . .” She paused. There were so many layers and specifics she could mention—all the tiny details that added up to a marriage that had crashed before it had even gotten off the ground—but she decided simple was best. “One day he was there, the next day there was a note.”