The Treasure Man. Pamela Browning
“On Sunday, Tara wanted to wear this really horrible outfit to church. I mean, it was so short that it would have raised the eyebrows of every little old lady in the congregation, including Grandma. Especially Grandma. And no bra, and—”
“I don’t wear a bra sometimes.” Like maybe never, Chloe was thinking, if the weather didn’t cool off.
“You’re a grown woman, free to make your own decisions about how you dress. Tara’s still a kid. I told her that over my dead body would she leave the house in that getup, and she said that she hoped I wasn’t planning to assume room temperature any time soon, but she was going, like it or not. And I said she wasn’t, and she said I was a bitch, and—”
“She called you a bitch?”
“As well as other names I would rather not repeat. Then she stormed out of the house, wearing a dress no bigger than a sticky note. Ray and the twins and I waited for her to come home and were late for church because she never showed up. Or at least, she didn’t come home until we were gone. I didn’t figure out until late that night that she’d taken a duffel. She packed clothes, Chloe, and her teddy bear. She never goes anywhere without that bear.”
Chloe sighed. This sounded like an updated version of her own difficult adolescence, though she hadn’t had the comfort of a stuffed animal when, during Christmas vacation in her senior year of high school, she hitchhiked to visit a boyfriend who had recently moved to California.
“That’s awful, Naomi. You have my heartfelt sympathies,” Chloe told her.
“We’ve set off alarms in every direction. I’ve alerted Marilyn and her group in case she shows up in Dallas.” Marilyn, their cousin, and her husband, Donald, had five kids. Tara had been close to that branch of the family most of her life.
“You’ll call when you find her, won’t you?”
“Sure. Let’s hope it’s soon.”
“I’m sure it will be. She’s a good kid, Naomi.”
“I keep expecting her to walk through the front door—” Naomi broke off her sentence, a sob catching in her throat.
“I’m so sorry, Mimi.” Chloe was the only one allowed to call Naomi by her old childhood nickname.
“I’ll keep you posted. I wish I were in Florida with you. I worry about you being all alone there.”
“Well, don’t. Ben Derrick showed up.”
“Who?”
“You wouldn’t remember. You were already married to Ray the summer that Ben boarded at the inn and I was here.”
“He’s nice?”
“Also helpful.”
“Age?”
It took a moment for Chloe to figure this out. “Thirty-seven.”
She could picture her sister narrowing her eyes on the other end of the phone. “You haven’t taken up with him already, have you?”
Chloe let out an exasperated sigh. “I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, Naomi. Surely you jest.”
“I am not in the mood for joking, Chloe. I’m falling apart. I can’t even pull myself together long enough to throw a load of laundry into the washing machine.”
“Do you want me to come home, Naomi? Help you out?” She waited with dread for her sister’s answer, knowing that she’d go if Naomi needed her.
“No, Chloe,” Naomi said. “We’ll get through this. But thanks.”
Chloe, all but heaving a giant sigh of relief, decided to broach a new topic. “How are Jennifer and Jodie?” she asked. Naomi and Ray’s twin daughters were ten years old and never gave them any trouble. So far, anyway.
“J and J are upset that Tara’s disappeared, like all of us.”
“Give them my love.”
“I will.”
“And Grandma Nell—is she adjusting to the assisted-living home? Or is she still trying to decide if she likes it?”
“Chloe,” Naomi said patiently. “Stop assuming responsibility for other people’s well-being. Our grandmother is doing fine. She’s made a new friend, and they watch their favorite TV program together every day. The friend’s family treats them to dinner at the country club. Grandma’s happy. Repeat after me. Grandma’s happy.”
“‘Grandma’s happy,’” Chloe recited as if by rote.
“You’ve got it. You’ve got it! Listen, Chloe, I’d better hang up in case Tara tries to call home on this line instead of our cell phones.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Love you,” said Naomi.
“Love you, too.”
She heard the sliding glass door to the annex grinding along its track. It was located under her bedroom window, and a glance outside told her that Ben was no longer sitting and staring morosely out to sea. While she dressed, she heard the Jeep’s engine roar to life as Ben left. Briefly, she wondered where he was going, but she didn’t have time to mull it over. She had work to do.
Downstairs, she threw all the windows open and hauled the wicker rockers outside to the front porch, where last night’s rain had washed everything fresh and clean. A row of red hibiscus bushes bordered the porch, their flowers as big as saucers, and overhead, in a nearby palmetto tree, a mockingbird’s white feathers flashed as it flitted to and fro. Beyond the rolling dunes, the sea was glassy and calm. This day, like every day in summer, would be scorchingly hot. The sun was already blazing down on the sand.
Unfortunately, the Frangipani Inn wasn’t air-conditioned. Tayloe had been adamant that the winds off the ocean cooled it enough; she’d insisted that if the natural breezes had been good enough for her grandparents, they were good enough for her. Chloe wasn’t so sure. Sea breeze or not, air-conditioning seemed like a really good idea in this hot and steamy climate.
Once she’d opened the house, she tackled the dirty dishes in the sink, then measured the small study off the library, where she intended to set up her workshop. The space was cluttered with an old treadle sewing machine, a box of dusty jelly jars and various other debris. She’d place a workbench at one end of the long, narrow room A telephone outlet behind Tayloe’s old desk would make it convenient to connect to the Internet. Between the workshop and the kitchen, a large closet, formerly a butler’s pantry, would house her jewelry-making supplies. The closet contained a safe, where she’d keep the precious and semiprecious gems she used in her one-of-a-kind designs.
All that decided, she was finishing off a slice of peanut butter toast when someone began hammering on the front door.
Through the sidelight, Chloe spotted a tattered white sailor hat with the brim pulled low. She threw the door open to Zephyr Wills, one of the most senior of Sanluca’s senior citizens. Known as the Turtle Lady, she felt that it was her obligation to safeguard the big loggerhead turtles that nested up and down the coast.
“Chloe!” Zephyr cried, her round wizened face crinkling into a broad smile. She was under five feet tall and as frail as a bird. “Gwynne told me you were driving all the way from Texas, gal. What’s the matter—you tired of cowboys?”
“And how,” Chloe said with feeling.
“Well, no wonder. All those sweaty horses, all that nasty dust. I knew a cowboy once, but never mind about that right now. Thought you’d never open the door. With Tayloe and Gwynne, I always walked right in. Didn’t think you’d care for that, though.”
“I, um, wouldn’t have expected it,” Chloe admitted.
The Turtle Lady wore her customary white long-sleeved shirt, which she donned every day for protection