I closed my eyes and turned my back to the other people waiting for the streetcar, then covered my eyes with my free hand, pressing my temples until it hurt.
“You’ll be happy to know she didn’t suffer. She complained of some chest pain, so Dot brought her in to the doctor. They couldn’t have known it before, but Mrs. Van Buren was at the beginning of what turned into a major heart attack. The doctor called for an ambulance, but she died on the way to the hospital. Dot said it looked like she just closed her eyes and fell asleep.”
I thought of the streetcar rumbling down the tracks toward me as it picked up and deposited people at various points on the line. Three and a half more minutes and it would stop for me.
I cleared my throat and sat up straighter on the bench. “Thank you for calling, Mr. Bains. I appreciate you letting me know.”
“We’ll have a reading of the will on Friday afternoon here at my office.”
“And where is that?”
“I’m in Mobile. Just across the Bay.”
3
SARA
APRIL
That night, I took a glass of wine into the courtyard. My building and several others on the block, all duplexes formed out of circa-1850 carriage houses, backed up to a small patio ringed by bougainvillea, sweet jasmine, and palms. Someone had stuck a wrought-iron table and a jumble of chairs in the middle, creating an open area in the lush oasis. On nights when the humidity wasn’t 200 percent, a cluster of neighbors and friends of all ages and varying degrees of quirkiness congregated to toast the end of another day.
On this particular evening, Millie and Walt, the couple who lived in the other half of my duplex, were staring each other down across a chessboard. Everyone knew better than to disturb them until one—usually Millie—cried checkmate. I settled down onto a glider and took a slow sip of cabernet.
I had roughly forty hours before I needed to head east on I-10 toward Alabama. I’d have to start early the next morning to move appointments, make phone calls, and write notes for Allyn. He’d probably resent me for assuming he couldn’t do my job alone for the week, but I couldn’t help it. The shop was my baby, and I didn’t take lightly leaving it even for just a few days.
I pulled out my phone to check the time. Eight o’clock, a good time to call. Dinner would be over, and if everything was as it had always been, Bert would be putting the last of the scrubbed pots and pans away. Dot would gather her crossword book and a big bowl of popcorn and retire to the back porch for the evening. Mags would head to her garden in her dirt-caked rubber shoes.
Mags always spent the late evenings there, sitting on one side of a well-worn cedar bench. Not gardening, not reading, just sitting. When I was a child, I’d try to keep her company there, but she always shooed me away, saying she needed to be alone with her memories.
My finger hovered over the number for The Hideaway. What would happen to the house now that Mags was gone? It hadn’t been a proper bed-and-breakfast since I was a kid. Could it be again? Should it be?
When I was young, the house had been a fun, if bizarre, playhouse to explore. As I got older, I became more aware of the unusual living arrangements the house offered. It might have been a legitimate B and B at one time, but over the years it had become a senior citizen commune with a revolving door, a long layover for people on their way to Florida retirement glory.
Maybe Dot and Bert would stay on and run the place, although it couldn’t have much life left in it. The house had once been a true beauty—Victorian turrets, white gingerbread trim, French doors opening up to a wide wraparound porch—but it had deteriorated over the years. By the time I left for college, it was hard to ignore the peeling paint, dislodged bricks, and window screens covered in wisteria and kudzu.
Even still, no one could deny it had a peculiar charm. Somewhere, in some forgotten, dusty travel guide, The Hideaway was still listed as a “Southern Sight to See.” Every summer, some unwitting family would stumble in, bleary from travel, and be shocked to find the B and B was decidedly not what the guide made it out to be. Mags and the others would fuss over them and usher them up to their rooms, excited to have real guests again, convinced it was the start of “the season.”
Somewhere in the first couple of days, the guests would inevitably cut their vacation short, saying something had happened at home and they needed to get back. Even though they couldn’t wait to leave, something about the place, or the people, would have charmed them. They were always apologetic about leaving. It was a strange conundrum—guests fleeing, sometimes in the middle of the night, but always thanking Mags for her hospitality.