She smiled. “It’s okay. I don’t have far to drive.”
“I know. I just wish I could keep talking to you. I feel like there’s more to your story than just moving to a retirement village and cutting everyone’s hair.”
“There’s a bit more, but it’s much less exciting.”
“Because cutting hair is exciting?”
She laughed. “Sometimes, thank you very much. Especially now that Janelle is a client.”
“Well, you let me know when you’re ready to tell me the rest of your story. I’d love to hear it, regardless of how boring it is.”
“Thanks.”
He grinned. “You’re welcome.” He kept his gaze on her for a beat, and in the span of the moment she knew she wanted to tell him the rest—about Worth, about the note that had capsized her world, and about how she could feel alone one minute and thrilled by new possibilities in the next. She had a hunch he’d understand.
They said their goodbyes, and Lily watched him a moment as he walked toward his truck. When she settled in her own car, she cranked the engine and adjusted the vents so the chilled air blew straight toward her face. Loose hair brushed against her cheeks as she inhaled, exhaled.
Tonight had been good. The music and the crowd, the laughter and conversation. She rubbed the skin around her left ring finger, the empty space where her wedding ring had been. The memory of dancing with Rawlins flooded her mind, and her stomach clenched. She knew she shouldn’t be dwelling on it, but she couldn’t push the thoughts away.
Twenty
“Lily, honey, you’ve been here, what—a few months now?”
Lily smiled as she smoothed a lock of Tiny’s damp hair between her fingers. “A little less than that. Just since the beginning of the summer.”
“That’s all? I could have sworn you’d been here longer. It feels that way, don’t you think?”
“I suppose,” Lily said, though it was only partly true. If Tiny had asked her the same question yesterday, she would have answered an honest yes. The truth was, the village was beginning to feel like a new sort of home to her. She’d come to appreciate the neighbors’ various personalities and quirks, the laughter that floated across the street from the café, the way the afternoon light slanted in through the salon’s big front window. She loved the trees and the seagulls, the pervasive sea breeze and scent of coconut oil. The ebb and flow of life on this postage-stamp spot on the coast had both charmed and accepted her.
But the buzz from her phone early this morning had yanked her right back in her place, feet firmly planted in reality.
She’d just woken up, stretched, and pulled herself from her bed. She’d left her phone plugged in downstairs last night, and as she descended the steps to the coffeepot, it buzzed as a text came through. And as it did anytime her phone buzzed or rang in the months since Worth disappeared, her stomach shrank into a small, hard knot.
The text was from Worth, but there were no words. Not even any emojis, though he wasn’t one to use them. It was just a bubble, an empty space where words should have been. She stood staring at the screen, wondering what to do. Should she text him back? If she did, what would she say?
She sighed as she slid her mother’s scissors—her scissors—through Tiny’s fine gray hair. Even now, in the morning’s golden sunshine, she was as befuddled as she’d been a few hours ago. What did it mean? If he’d wanted to say something but thought better of it, why hit Send at all? Was it just a simple accident?
Lily nudged the chair to the right so she could better cut the hair over Tiny’s ears.
“Not too short now,” Tiny murmured, her eyes on the reflection of Lily’s hands in the mirror. “Everything okay with you today? You’re quiet.”
“I’m always quiet while I work.”
“Yes, but today your worry lines are showing.”
Lily laughed and nudged the chair back the other way. “I’ll have to do a better job of keeping those things hidden.”
Conversation swelled behind her, and she tried to put Worth’s text out of her mind. The three ladies filling the chairs—Shirley, Kitty, and Janelle—had developed a habit over the summer of coming well before their appointment time so they could catch up on gossip and dish about their favorite shows. Janelle leaned clear over Kitty’s lap to peer at a page in the magazine Shirley was holding up. Kitty pulled back as Janelle’s ample bosom pressed against her knees.
“Janelle, please. You’re all over me.”
“I’m sorry, honey. But look.” She pointed a pink fingernail at the magazine spread featuring Dolly Parton. “She’s just as gorgeous as she was in 9 to 5. Doesn’t look a day older.”
Kitty wrinkled her nose. “No offense to Dolly, but aging happens to the best of us.”
“What about Roberta?” Tiny piped up, peeking around a lock of hair that had fallen over her eyes to where Roberta sat under the dryer hood, her hair wrapped around curlers. “Roberta, you look as young as you did when you started working here fifteen years ago.”
Roberta smirked and patted her cheeks. “You can blame my mama for that. She gave me the good genes.”
Janelle sniffed. “All my mama gave me was high blood pressure.”
“What about . . .” Tiny pointed at Janelle’s chest. “Those.”
“Oh, Dr. Fleming gave me these.”
Roberta hooted and Tiny giggled.
Lily moved to stand in front of Tiny, pulling strands of hair down on either side of her face to make sure the cut was even. As she did, Tiny’s earrings—the same tiny silver airplanes Lily had noticed when she first met Tiny in the grocery store—caught the light. “Tell me about these earrings,” she said. “It feels like every time I see you, you’re wearing them.”
“Oh, my Catalinas?” She touched one of the planes with the tip of her finger. “I wear them every day. Just to remember.”
Lily waited but Tiny didn’t elaborate. “To remember what?”
“I used to be in the women’s air force.” She sat up a little straighter in the chair, pride shining in her eyes. “I did mostly clerical work, but I served.”
“Wow, Tiny. That’s amazing. So the earrings are to remember the pilots.”
“In a way. I actually was a pilot myself, though I didn’t fly for the air force. I learned to fly planes from my daddy. We had a big field behind our house that he used as a runway. He taught me to fly when I was ten years old. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to fly by myself until I was much older.”
“Where would you fly?”
“Oh, around. I picked up a boyfriend once for a date in my daddy’s crop duster.”
“You didn’t!” Kitty said.
“I did too! I was seventeen. I still remember how googly-eyed he was when he saw me land the plane in their pasture. I also remember how airsick he got on the way home that night.”
“How old were you when you joined the air force?” Lily asked. She set down her scissors and picked up a small round brush and the hair dryer to blow-dry Tiny’s hair.
“I was nineteen, and my sister was twenty,” Tiny explained. She raised her voice to speak over the noise of the dryer. “Louise and I joined together. And the earrings are for one certain night when we had to rescue three pilots who’d crashed on an island off the coast of South Carolina.”
“Tiny Collins, you are making all this up,” Kitty said, exasperated.
“I am telling you the gold-plated truth, Kitty Cooper. I heard the SOS call come in to the radio operator, and to keep the boys from getting into trouble for borrowing a plane to take their dates to Myrtle Beach, Louise and I rescued them.”
Kitty narrowed one eye. “And what did the rescue entail?”
“Well, I knew a certain airman named Archie was sweet on me, so I asked him if he could get me a plane. I knew he’d do anything I asked. So Louise and I flew to the island, found the boys’ plane bobbing in shallow water, and hauled them into our Catalina. Lord knows how they explained the crash to their superiors the next day, but Loui
se and I did our part to get them home safely.”
Other than the roar of the hair dryer, the room was quiet for a moment as everyone absorbed Tiny’s tale, each woman judging its credibility.
“Five years later, Louise married one of those boys.” Tiny said it so quietly, Lily turned the dryer off. “They were married for sixty years.”
Lily hesitated. “Is your sister . . .”
Tiny put a shaking hand up to her lips as she shook her head. After a moment, she sniffed, then cleared her throat. “She went to meet the Lord early last year. I’ll see her again one of these days.”
“Hopefully not anytime soon,” Roberta said. “We’d rather you stick around here for a while . . . especially if one of us turns up bobbing in shallow water.”
A small smile lifted Tiny’s cheeks, and Lily clicked the hair dryer on again. A few minutes later Tiny’s hair was finished and she stood from the chair. She smoothed her hands over it and ran her fingers through the tips. “Just wonderful, honey. How did you make it look so thick?”
“I just tried something a little different. A little tweak to the cut can make hair look completely fresh.”
“Well, you succeeded. My hair hasn’t looked this healthy since . . . well, since I was much younger.” She turned to Lily. “Thank you, my dear. I’ll be back on Friday.”
Tiny grabbed her purse off its hook and wrote out a check for Lily, then headed toward the door. At the threshold, she stopped. “Janelle, do you still have any of those long wraps you got in a few weeks ago?”
“The sarongs? I believe I have a few left.”
“I’d like to purchase one. I think it’ll make a great cover-up for my bathing suit.”
“Bathing suit?” Kitty asked, aghast. “I thought you didn’t believe in bathing suits.”
Tiny cast a lingering glance at herself in the mirror and patted her hair, that same small smile on her face. “Beliefs can change. And anyway, none of us knows how much longer we have. Might as well wear the bathing suit, right?”
Janelle hopped up off her chair, dumping her magazine to the floor. “You took the words right out of my mouth. Let’s go, dear. I have a sarong with your name on it, but I also have a new shipment of off-the-shoulder two-pieces I think you’ll just adore.”
Tiny and Janelle stepped onto the porch and down the steps. The remaining ladies heard Tiny’s voice floating back, “Let’s not get carried away, now.”
Lily lifted the hood of Roberta’s dryer and led her to the chair. “Let’s get you out of these curlers and back to the café. I’m sure you’ll have customers waiting on you for lunch.”
“Elijah can take care of things while I’m gone,” she said, settling her wide bottom down in the chair. “Of course, he still hasn’t learned how to make a good roux, but I can forgive him that. It takes years to perfect the technique.”
“I heard him play the other night,” Lily said, pulling the pins from Roberta’s hair. “He’s very talented.”
“You went to the Land?” Roberta’s eyebrows lifted. “By yourself?”
“No, I went with . . . Well, Rawlins was there, Rose’s nephew . . .”
“Yes, angel, I know who he is.”
“Right. Anyway, he told me about it. He was going and . . . he made it sound like it wouldn’t be my kind of place, but I actually liked it.” She rubbed her forehead with the back of her wrist.
Roberta watched her with a measured gaze. “I’m sure you got an eyeful at that place. It’s not somewhere I’d imagine you going, but you’re right that Elijah is talented. He has a much brighter future than just filling lunch orders at the café.” She paused. “I’m also glad you took the time to get to know Rawlins a little bit.”
“We’re not playing matchmaker, Roberta,” Kitty said, her eyes on her magazine but her ears obviously tuned to the current conversation. “That game isn’t healthy for anyone.”
“Don’t get on your high horse, Kitty. I’m not playing any games. I just think it’s good that two people of similar age can enjoy one another’s company. The poor girl spends all her time with old folks like us.”
Kitty rolled her eyes.
“Roberta, didn’t I hear your husband was in the military?” Lily said quickly, desperate for a change in subject. “ROTC or something?”
Kitty popped out of her seat and pulled Roberta’s purse off the hook on the wall. “You’re about finished, right? I just realized I never ate breakfast, and you know how I get if my blood sugar drops. Roberta, I’m going to need a sandwich. Maybe one of your Reubens?”
“Sure thing,” Roberta murmured. She rose steadily from the chair as Lily pulled the last curler from her hair. She thanked Lily, left money on the desk, and walked out of the salon.
Lily, stunned, watched her walk across the street and disappear inside the café. She looked at Kitty, who stayed behind. “What just happened?”
“Don’t ask Roberta about her husband,” Kitty said, shaking her head. “It’s an unspoken rule.”
“Why? What in the world happened?”
Kitty shrugged. “He died.”
“Recently?”
“Fifteen years ago. She moved here a few months later, I’m told.”
“But that . . . that doesn’t make sense. After all this time, she can’t—”
“The heart can be a baffling, unexplainable thing. And I’ve seen it all.” She sighed. “He was her love, and he died. When someone you love leaves you, it changes you, and therapy or work or drink can’t ever really fix it.” She shouldered her purse and smiled. “But she’s tough, and she’s still here, which says something. If I had to guess, I’d say this place saved her.”
She walked to the door, pausing at the threshold. “But we still don’t talk about Bob. When her head gets in a bad place, the food at the café goes to pot and not even Elijah can fix it. Now, I’m going to go have lunch. We’ll see you at Sunday cocktails?” She waved and followed Roberta’s path to the café.
For the rest of the day—as she washed, cut, swept, and cleaned—Lily couldn’t stop thinking about Roberta and the way she’d shut down when Lily had mentioned her husband. And how right Kitty’s words were—when someone you love leaves you, you’re forever changed, from the inside out. And Tiny’s and Roberta’s stories had shown the very different ways a person could respond to that tumultuous change. Tiny had lived through the heartbreaking loss of her sister, but she kept on living. On the other hand, though Roberta was still living her life, a simple mention of her husband fifteen years after his death had caused her to go practically comatose. Lily didn’t want that kind of millstone around her neck for the rest of her days.
As she slammed the washing machine door after shoving a load of towels in, she paused as a thought struck her. Roberta shouldn’t have to carry that either.
With her appointments finished for the day, Lily grabbed her wallet and locked the front door behind her. Across the street, the Sunrise was quiet, with only a few early-bird diners seated at tables overlooking the bay.
“Hey, Miss Lily.” Elijah was drying glasses behind the counter. “What can I do for you?”
“Is Roberta here? I was hoping to catch her before the dinner rush.”
“Yeah, she’s around here someplace. Let me see if she’s in the back.”
A moment later Roberta pushed through the swinging door from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Hello. Long time no see. Care for some dinner?”
“I was actually hoping you might be able to sit down and eat with me.”
“Eat with you?” Roberta laughed. “I don’t eat until I get home at night. It’s a rare occasion that I get food in my belly before eight thirty.”
“I try,” Elijah called from the other end of the counter. “I can never get her to eat anything more than a few crackers while she’s working.”
“Oh, I eat. I eat plenty.” She patted her middle. “I just don’t do it when I have customers,” she said pointedly as Elijah took a bite of a fish sandwich
.
“What about just a quick bite?” Lily asked. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Roberta looked hard at Lily, then checked her watch. “I just pulled some crab claws out of the fryer. I suppose I could be convinced to eat a few with you.”
Lily smiled. “Crab claws sound great.”
A couple minutes later Roberta came back from the kitchen with two plates of crab claws and two containers of cocktail sauce. Lily raised her eyebrows at the plates piled high.
“I guess I was hungrier than I thought,” Roberta responded.
Lily took a claw and bit. The meat was warm and tender between her teeth. “This is delicious.”
“Thank you.” Roberta took one for herself. “Now, what is it you want to talk to me about?”
Lily opened her mouth to speak, but all of a sudden her nerve faded. Lily had known about Roberta’s husband for all of an afternoon, but Roberta had lived with the loss for years. Who was she to tell a woman much more acquainted with life how she should respond to it?
“Let me guess. You’re wondering why I fled your salon this morning practically with my hair on fire.”
“Well . . . yes.”
“I’m sorry about that. I’m sure Kitty filled you in.”
“She did, a little, but . . . well, I was just wondering if you could tell me a little about him.”
Roberta paused, a crab claw poised in her fingers. “About Bob?”
Lily nodded.
Roberta dropped her claw on the plate and sat back in her seat.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“He was the cutest boy I’d ever laid eyes on, and I never knew why he wanted to marry me.” Her voice was soft and her eyes held a faraway gaze. “I was big, not that pretty, and my voice was always a little too loud. But that boy took a shine to me and he never looked back.”
Lily smiled as the story of Roberta and Bob’s courtship poured out of her. They’d gotten married at eighteen and honeymooned in the Caribbean at the home of one of his aunts who lived in the Bahamas.
The Summer House Page 20
