Haley probably didn’t understand this synaptic leap, but I did. I remembered lying on a blanket on the warm sand with Daddy and Mama and Sister, watching the “fireworks” in the Gulf and swatting at mosquitoes that dive-bombed us like kamikazes. Daddy and Mama would puff on cigarettes and blow smoke over us to make the mosquitoes go away. Secondhand smoke and ships firing at each other created one of my best memories. Damn. Sometimes we just learn too much.

Sister nodded her head toward the dark Gulf. “That’s one reason the fishing is so good here. All those sunken boats.”

I looked at the peaceful water rippling with white edges against the beach. Beyond that, a few lights from buoys and fishing boats dotted a black expanse that blended into the horizon and seemed to continue forever. I shivered.

“Rabbit run over your grave?” Sister asked.

I nodded.

“Some key lime pie, ladies?” The waitress, obviously a college student working a summer job, asked. A groan from all of us was our answer. “I’ll bring you some coffee then.” We watched her walk away in the short flowered sarong that was the uniform at the Redneck.

“She looks like Dorothy Lamour,” Sister said.

“Who?” Haley asked.

Mary Alice and I looked at each other. “Like I told you, I’m going to be sixty-four next week,” she said.

I nodded. “Then that makes me fifty-nine.”

“What are you talking about?” Haley asked. “And who’s Dorothy Lamour?” Sister and I laughed.

We drank our coffee slowly and contentedly. I had talked to Fred before I left the condo. He was going to have dinner with Alan and Lisa and the boys, and seemed excited about his meeting the next day. He missed me. And I missed him. A very nice miss.

The early dinner crowd was thinning out and the bar crowd was getting larger and noisier.

“Let’s mosey on home, girls,” Sister said. We were pushing our chairs back when we heard our names called.

“Hey, y’all. Fairchild told me you were in Destin.”

The Millicent Weatherby who was walking toward us holding a drink was not the Millicent we had known for years, first as Tod Abernathy’s wife and then Fairchild’s. Though obviously Millicent, she looked spectacular. Her hair, which had been a salt-and-pepper gray, was now a soft, sun-streaked blonde pulled back casually and held by a large barrette. A 160-pound matronly body had become a tanned 110 encased in a size six jumpsuit, off-white and silky. Heavy gold earrings shaped like turtles brushed against tan, unlined cheeks.

“Lord, Millicent! You look wonderful!” Sister exclaimed.

“Thanks.” Millicent smiled. At least her smile was the same, sweet and a little timid. “I’m helping on the big development on the bay. You know that scrub pine I never thought would amount to a hill of beans and tried to talk Tod out of buying? Hah!”