“Look through your fingers,” Mary Alice said, holding her hand before her face.

“What good does that do?” I asked.

Mary Alice leaned over the balcony railing. “Don’t be silly. It cuts out half the rays.”

I was still trying to figure out a response to this when the sun disappeared into the water. There was no green flash, but that was okay. The western sky was every color of pink and orange, and the crowd of sunset watchers gathered on the seawall below us applauded. We did, too.

“A good one,” Haley announced.

“Mary Alice!” A man had broken away from the crowd and was standing below our balcony.

“Hey, Fairchild!” Sister called down.

“I saw your light come on!”

“What light through yonder window,” I murmured to Haley.

“I’ll bet he knew when she came in the gate,” Haley murmured back. “I think it’s the pheromones.”

“Fairchild Weatherby wouldn’t know a pheromone if it hit him over the head. I think Aunt Sister’s are dried up, anyway.”

“Y’all shut up,” Sister said. Then to the figure below, “How are you, Fairchild?” It came out as Fay-uh-chile.

“She’s talking Southern,” I said. “We might as well go on and start unloading the car.”

“Maybe if we wait a while, Fay-uh-chile will help us,” Haley said.

“True.” We went back into the living room and left Mary Alice flirting with Fairchild, who stood six floors below her. Not an easy thing to do.

“I love this place,” Haley said, settling down on the sofa.

“I do, too,” I agreed. In spite of being a luxury condo facing the Gulf of Mexico, the apartment was not done in the “beachy” style much favored on the Florida Panhandle. No interior decorator had placed little shell soap dishes in the bathrooms or furnished the living room and dining room with white rattan furniture and lucite tables. Instead, there was a deep beige sofa to sink into, one that had once been in Sister’s den in Birmingham. One that had been recovered many times because it was, simply, the most comfortable sofa in the world. The diningroom table was an oak one I had found at an estate sale. Three of the chairs matched. Each of the others was different. The walls were a pale blue and the carpet a beige Berber. A couple of wicker rockers with peach-colored cushions added some color. But the walls of windows, and the sliding doors that opened to the balcony and the Gulf, were the focal points of the apartment with their unbelievably beautiful view.

“Sometimes I forget how rich Aunt Sister is,” Haley sighed happily, propping her feet up on the coffee table.

“And never hit a lick at a snake.”

“She got married three times.”

“For her that was like falling off a log, not hitting a lick at a snake.”