Page 40 of The Fadeaway

“Bit of this, bit of that,” Bev says. He takes a bottle of champagne from the fridge behind the counter as well as a container of orange juice. “Your girls turned the bookstore into a nightclub, Phyllis and Joe finally told us all they were dating and threw a wedding on the beach,” he says, referring to Phyllis Stein, who owns the island grocery store, and Joe Youngblood, her decades-long employee, “and Sunday stood on the shore every night, keening into the wind about her beloved returning to her.”

“Well, I brought him back safe and sound,” Ruby says, “so she can calm down with the keening.”

Bev sets the champagne flute in front of Ruby and leans both of his weathered hands on the bar. “The truth is, not a whole helluva lot happened, but then nothing ever really does. Looked like the bookstore did decent foot traffic, and we had a couple of days of visitors—bigger boats full of day-trippers. I poured some rum for them, they strolled about, and then they left.”

“How is Tilly?”

Bev leans more heavily on the bar, lets his head hang, and emits the deepest, most grandfatherly sigh she’s ever heard. “She’ll be the death of me,” he admits, looking hangdog and defeated.

Ruby sips her mimosa. Tilly is one of her bookstore employees, and she’s also the nineteen-year-old granddaughter Bev’s been raising alone for more than a decade. “What’s going on there? Is she getting restless living on this island instead of in a bigger city?”

“You have no idea,” he says. To distract himself, Bev grabs a rag and wipes down the bar, rubbing small circles into the highlypolished wood. “Her latest idea is to move to Tampa and go to tattoo school. Then she wants to open a tattoo parlor here on the island.”

Ruby nearly chokes on her drink. “Do we have a market for that?”

Bev drops the rag and puts both hands in the air. “Apparently I’m not allowed to judge whether the islanders are ‘tattoo type of people’ or not. I’ve already been dressed down for that.”

“But you have one,” Ruby nods at the tattoo that’s visible beneath the edge of Bev’s white t-shirt sleeve. She’s holding the champagne flute by its stem as she squints at it, head tilted to one side so she can assess his ink work. “What is it?”

Bev shoves the t-shirt sleeve up roughly to his shoulder, revealing a large, faded anchor with a mermaid wrapped around it. Ruby can see it more clearly now, but the ink has become muddied in places, and with some of the recent tattoos she’s seen, she’s pretty sure a current artist could have made it something far more colorful and beautiful.

“The mermaid is my wife,” Bev explains, looking at his bicep fondly as he runs a hand over the tattoo. “But back in my day, only the real outliers got inked. Military men, bikers, outlaws. Now every teenage girl has a damn rose on her ankle, or some kind of Roman numerals running up her arm for some reason or another.” Disapproval is written all over his face. “I don’t agree with it myself, and while I loved my beautiful wife, I sure as hell wish I’d thought more about getting something drawn onto me that would last forever.”

“Mmmm,” Ruby says, nodding. She puts her glass to her lips as she listens.

“But you can’t convince a girl on the cusp of twenty that she’s wrong—her birthday is this weekend, in fact—and I’ve seen the applications to different tattoo schools she’s been filling out.” He makes a face that looks like a cross between distrust anddisappointment. “When she moved here, she was a little sprite of a girl. Thought she’d stay forever, maybe take over this place.” Bev gestures at the tables and the rafters of The Frog’s Grog. “Now here she is, wanting to up and leave for a bit. Don’t know what I’ll do without her.”

Ruby sets her nearly empty mimosa glass on the bar and stands up as Banks pushes open the door to the bar, letting in a flood of morning sunlight. She looks directly at Bev with a gentle, knowing smile. “You’ll miss her, and you’ll wait for her to come back to you—even for a visit,” she says, setting a twenty on the bar. “And on that note, my own girls should be waiting at home for me, so I’m going to go and see them.”

“Good to have you back, chief,” Bev says, sliding the twenty across the bar and punching a few buttons on his register so that it flies open.

Ruby takes a moment to consider this. She’s been across the country and up to New York, she’s traveled the length of the west coast from L.A. to Seattle, and now she’s home again. Of course, being home means it’s time to truly start planning a proper goodbye for her mother, but armed with a new understanding of who Patty was and what she meant to other people, Ruby actually feels ready. “It’s good to be back.”

“Mom!” Athena yells from the open window on the second floor of Ruby’s house. She’s standing there, shaking a sheet out the window, grinning from ear to ear with a red bandanna wrapped around her head. Ruby’s older daughter disappears from the window as Banks parks the golf cart, but she immediately pops out the front door of the house with both arms waving. “You’re back!”

Ruby is more exhausted from the journey than she’d imagined she would be. She steps from the golf cart tiredly, wrapping Athena in both arms and holding her as tight as she can. It’s impossible not to flash forward as she hugs her baby girl, imagining Harlow and Athena as much older women, making final arrangements for her once she’s gone. But Ruby doesn’t want to think of that now, so she releases Athena and glances around.

“Where’s Harlow?”

Banks grabs Ruby’s suitcase and gives Athena a single nod as he takes it inside the house and deposits it there.

“She’s swimming—we thought you wouldn’t be home until later.”

“And what are you doing up there—waving a white flag in surrender? Sending a message to a boy to tell him not to come because your mother is home?” Ruby lifts her chin at the open bedroom window where Athena had been airing out the bedsheet.

“Ha. As if I’d invite a man to visit us here in paradise.” Athena purses her lips, but then breaks into a smile. “Besides, Elijah is on the island. We’ve been hanging out a little.” She gives one light, carefree shrug of her left shoulder. “You know—nothing serious.”

Elijah Hartley is Marigold Pim and Cobb Hartley’s son, and because Elijah himself is fairly well-known, being the only progeny of a former supermodel and an incredibly famous rockstar, he and Athena seem to really get one another. Ruby is happy that Athena is spending time with him, as Elijah is truly a smart, talented, kind young man. The kids had met up in Europe during the summer to travel together, and while Athena hasn’t spoken about him much since, Ruby is well aware that that doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on there.

“Hey, that’s understandable,” Ruby says. She watches her daughter’s face as it glows from talking about Elijah. Athena had been burned quite badly in her first adult love affair: Diego, a coworker she’d fallen hard for at the Library of Congress in D.C., had neglected to tell her that he was just days away from his own wedding when he’d taken Athena back to his apartment for the night. Ruby had been so sure her daughter would never trust men again, but now here she is, looking calm and happy talking about Elijah Hartley. It pleases Ruby to no end to know that her girl is resilient enough to put herself back out there, and she’s not going to spoil the whole thing by asking too many questions.

“Mom!” Harlow’s voice comes from inside the house. Both the front door and the back windows, which face the water, are wide open, so Harlow has come in to find her mother and sister standing on the porch within view. “Welcome home!”

Ruby rushes through the door and straight into the arms of her youngest daughter, her wild child, her untamable girl.

“I missed you, Lolo,” she says, nuzzling her face in Harlow’s damp blonde locks. Harlow is standing in the middle of the living room wearing a red bikini with a towel slung around her hips. Her bare feet are sandy, and a stream of water trickles down her spine.

“We missed you too. We didn’t even watchThe Golden Girlswithout you.”

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