Fathom Read Free

ocean like a little heathen if you want, and you canstay in her nice big new house over there . . . like what you’ve got here at home isn’t just as good.”
    Nia’s mother shook her head. “I don’t think she means any of it like that.”
    “Maybe she don’t. But that’s how it reads to me. Go on down then, if that’s what you want, girl. We’ll get along without you, if you want to spend the season getting picked on and run ragged by that wild girl. She’s older than you, and she’s been around a lot more, and she’s not going to let you forget it. Bernice didn’t write that note, and I promise you she didn’t ask her mother to write it, either.”
     

     
    Grandmother’s words were still humming in Nia’s ears when she finally arrived on Anna Maria Island, a small strip of sand that jutted into the ocean, south of Tampa.
    After a long trip by truck, by train, and by ferry, a servant escorted her to the brand-new house at the edge of the beach. After he left her, she made her way into the courtyard behind the house, where two women were shouting at each other.
    Nia poked her head around the wall’s edge and flinched as a plate shattered just a foot or two away from it.
    “Hello?” She used the quiet word to announce her presence, and it almost didn’t work; but Marjorie spied her niece and threw up her hands as if someone were pointing a gun at her.
    The brunette woman in the tailored white suit smiled spontaneously, and stiffly. “There you are! Welcome, dear. I’m so glad you came. I assume Roger took your things to the cottage. . . . Did you have any trouble finding us?”
    “Oh, no,” she said, and she resisted the urge to add that she’d found her way by following the racket. Nia tiptoed into the yard to give her aunt a hug. “Roger’s directions were good. And Bernice,it’s real good to see you again, too,” she said to the sharply dressed, blondly curled beauty with a fistful of expensive porcelain.
    “Bernice,” Marjorie said through clenched teeth. “Nia is your
guest
. Say hello.”
    “
My
guest? I didn’t invite her.”
    Marjorie pried the bit of china from her daughter’s hand and set it back on the long covered table before Bernice could throw it. “Yes, I know, but it’s been a long time since you’ve seen each other. Since . . . since your grandfather’s funeral, I think. Or no, we all went to Gasparilla that next year, didn’t we?” The last part came out thoughtful, as she tried to count back the years.
    But then she turned to Bernice and her voice dropped. She breathed the next part in an exhausted whine, and underneath it, Nia could almost hear a long-buried accent that sounded like her mother’s. “Just for now, please? Let it go. Take Nia over to the cottage and help her get settled in.”
    Bernice liked the begging well enough to release the remaining plates, but even Nia could see that her truce was a temporary arrangement. “Fine,” she said. She relaxed and folded her arms across an expensive ivory suit jacket. “And hello, Nia. So Roger took your things to the cottage already? I’m
ever
so glad we won’t be forced to carry them in this
dreadful
heat.”
    Nia stepped aside and let Bernice take the lead. “Yes, your father’s assistant took care of it. He met me at the ferry.”
    “My
step
father’s assistant.” She casually lifted another glass and smashed it into the wall as she walked past it.
    “Aunt Marjorie,” Nia dragged her heels and called over her shoulder, “will you be joining us?”
    “No, dear. I’ll stay and finish setting up for the party. Mr. Coyne doesn’t think it’s going to rain tonight, so we can leave everything out in the open. I want it to look nice for tomorrow. And don’t go far, girls. Supper will be ready at eight.”
    They left her in her perfectly trimmed garden behind her new house, carefully picking up shards of glass and arranging the surviving cups and cutlery.
    Nia wondered how they’d ever