“I actually don’t know the answer to that,” I said, squinting my eyes against that sun. “But if I had to guess, yeah. Probably illegal.”
“Hmm. Wack.”
“Wack,” I agreed.
We’d been in coastal Alabama for less than a day, and things were… not going to plan. At all.
Delly turned over on her stomach. “What are we gonna do, Addy?”
I met my sister’s gaze and smiled reassuringly at her. It’d been a long time since she asked me a variation of that question. She used to do it often when she was younger, panicking when our parents failed us at every turn.
But the older I got and the more competent I became at caring for her, the less she asked.
“We’re going to enjoy the beach,” I told her. “You’re going to put on another layer of sunscreen and go look for that sand dollar you were after last time. Then we’ll visit Pops, then maybe we’ll go cruise around town with the windows down. Yeah?”
She tipped her sunglasses down and met my gaze, smiling widely. “Yeah. But I’m gonna skip the sunscreen because I have…” She drew out the last word as she rummaged in her beach bag and produced a hat that was roughly the size of a monster truck tire.
“It’s a miracle you found one big enough for your head,” I said, holding back my laugh. “Was it from a specialty shop?”
Sand sprayed into my face when she stood up from her towel, and I sputtered as I whipped off my glasses and brushed it away.
“I’m ignoring your comment, brother, and letting the Zen of the water guide me,” she said primly as she placed the serving platter of a hat onto her head. “And it’s telling me to go that way,” she said, pointing down the beach. “Away from your sass.”
A gust of wind blew her towel up as she left, and I grabbed my crutch and threw it on top of it to keep it from blowing away.
Hopefully, we’d be better at beach-ing with practice, but that was the least of our problems.
With greasy fingers, tired eyes, and expired excitement, Delly and I had pulled into Live Oak around 6:00 p.m. last night. We’d gotten out of the Jeep outside Zinnia House, Pops’s new residence, planning on taking him to dinner.
But the moment I’d gotten out of the Jeep, my phone had buzzed with an email that spelled doom.
Not literal doom. Just mild to moderate doom.
The condo we’d booked for the summer had beenabruptly sold to a new management company. It was supposedly not uncommon—according to my frantic, immediate Google search—and they were closing it for renovations. They’d returned our deposit without so much as an apology, and now we had nowhere to stay for the next three-ish months.
A yawn cracked my jaw as I pulled out my phone and scanned the nearby rental listings for the tenth time this morning.
Thankfully, Jillie came with Pops for dinner last night and offered us her guest room and couch for the night when she heard about it. Despite the stress, it’d been nice to spend time with all of them, and Delly had cooed over Rachel’s baby bump with stars in her eyes at every opportunity.
But I’d still felt a bit like an intruder no matter how welcoming they were. Or how quirky.
I smiled as I remembered Jillie tiptoeing into the kitchen at some ungodly hour this morning and started blending something. I’d politely pretended to be asleep during it, not sure if it was some ritual of hers or what, discreetly pulling the quilt I’d taken from my old room at Pops’s cabin over my head.
If worse came to worst, I’d find the nearest hotel and eat the cost for a couple of nights while we searched for somewhere else. I had the savings for it, but I didn’t want to deliver a summer of uncertainty to Delly.
I lay back on the towel and focused on the sound of the waves, willing it to ease the panic.
Pops had seemed well last night. He didn’t offer much about his first month living at Live Oak beyond what he’d said during phone calls, but he did admit that his new medication was making him extra tired.
I’d kept an eye on the tremors in his hands the entiretime we’d been together, and they didn’t seemworse, at least.
I’d just started dozing when my phone buzzed beside my head. I rolled onto my side and shielded my eyes as I squinted at the text.
Jillie
Can y’all come to this address? I have an idea.
317 Camellia Lane
