“Hey, y’all,” she said loudly. “Attention, everybody!”
Lillian hung up the phone. Michael stopped posting photos to the new Facebook page, and Conley rested her hands on the keyboard of her laptop. All three of them were startled by the sight of their usually gloomy managing editor in a state of euphoria.
“What’s up, boss?” Lillian asked.
“What’s up is, I just got word we have a complete sellout of this week’s edition of the Beacon.” Grayson’s voice cracked with emotion. “I checked with my grandmother, and she says that’s never happened before. After we shipped to our mail subscribers, I found that every paper box in town is empty. The stores that sell us—the IGA, the 7-Eleven, and the Kwik-Stop, Kelly’s Drugs, Tommy’s Bait and Tackle, all three gas stations in town—every retail outlet is sold out.”
“So that’s what’s goin’ on,” Lillian said. “I been on the phone all morning with people calling, wanting to come by and pick up a paper.”
Grayson pointed at her. “Lils, call the printer in Milton and tell ’em we need a second print run.”
“Are you crazy? You want to print twelve hundred more copies? Who do you think is gonna buy all those papers? Also, did you just call me Lils? Ain’t nobody who ain’t related to me can call me Lils.”
“Sorry,” Grayson said. “I got carried away. Okay, maybe run five hundred more. But before you do that, we’re gonna celebrate.”
She loosened the wire champagne cage, and the cork shot across the room, bouncing off the framed oil portrait of Arthur “Dub” DuBignon, the newspaper’s founder, dour-faced in a stiff white collar, neatly parted hair, and wire-rimmed glasses.
“Drink up, guys,” Grayson urged. “Warm champagne sucks. And cheap warm champagne sucks even more.”
Michael looked over at Conley, who nodded her approval. He stood up and collected a cup, and the boss poured. Conley got a cup and let her sister fill it.
When all four staff members were holding their champagne, Grayson raised her own cup.
“Here’s to all of us. The hardest-working staff in the business. Here’s to fighting the good fight, and as old Dub DuBignon used to say, ‘shining the light of truth.’”
They touched cups and sipped the cold, bubbly wine. They drained the bottle, then got back to work.
* * *
Conley was reading back through her notes of the phone conversation with Miles Schoendienst when her cell phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID and grabbed for it.
“Hey, Skelly.”
“Hey there,” he said. “I know you’re probably on deadline or something, but there’s someone here at the store who’d like a few minutes of your time. And I’ve got a feeling you’d like to talk to her too.”
“Who is it?”
He lowered his voice. “It’s Toddie Robinette.”
* * *
Skelly met her at the door. Two or three customers were in the store, one waiting near the pharmacy counter. “She’s back in the office,” he said. “I thought the two of you might want some privacy.”
“Did she say what she wants?” Conley asked. “Does she look pissed?”
“She’s carrying a big grocery sack, but I don’t think she’s packing heat,” Skelly said, cracking a smile. “I wouldn’t say she looked pissed. More like, serious.”
He helped her navigate the narrow, cluttered aisles of the stockroom, stopping at the open door of a small office. Toddie Robinette sat on a metal folding chair across from a battered steel tanker desk. He poked his head inside.
“Here’s Conley. Can I get you ladies some coffee or something?”
“Not for me,” Conley said.
“No, thanks,” Toddie said.
“Then I’ll leave you to it. Make yourselves at home.”
* * *
“Thanks for reaching out to me, Mrs. uh, Robinette,” Conley started, sitting behind Skelly’s desk.
“It’s Ms. Sanderson, but everybody calls me Toddie,” she said quickly. “I haven’t been Mrs. Robinette in over thirty-four years.”
Toddie had obviously taken pains with her appearance. Unlike the day they’d dropped in on her at Oak Springs Farm, today she was dressed in tailored beige slacks and a white silk blouse. Her silver hair was pulled back from her face with a pair of tortoiseshell clasps, and the only makeup she wore was a bit of lipstick. A bulging shopping bag sat near her feet.
She crossed, then uncrossed her legs. “I know I told you I didn’t want to comment about Symmes’s death, but since that article you wrote in the Beacon, my children have convinced me that I should, I don’t know…”
“Set the record straight?” Conley suggested.
“Something like that.”
Conley took her cell phone from her backpack and set it on the desktop. “Would it be okay if I taped our conversation?”
“Is that really necessary?”
“I won’t if you object,” Conley said. “It’s mostly to make sure I quote you accurately. I’m going to take notes too.”
Toddie wore a wide white gold band on her left ring finger. She twisted it around and around. “I suppose that’s okay,” she said. “This is really about my kids,” she added. “When Vanessa told you Symmes had no contact with them and that he didn’t even remember their names, that was incredibly hurtful to them. They were so damn mad! Especially Rebecca. They’d just lost their dad. And to see Vanessa spout lies like that.” She shook her head.
“Are you saying that Symmes wasn’t estranged from y’all? That you had a good relationship with him?”
“Up until very recently, it’s true, he’d had very little contact with me or the kids. But that was the way Vanessa wanted it, not the kids. She absolutely forbade him to have contact with them. And I only contacted him through his attorney.”
“Why was that?” Conley asked.
“I think she wanted to rewrite history. Make it so that she was his first and only love and their son was his only child.”
“And the congressman was okay with that?”
Toddie’s smile was bitter. “Have you met that woman? What Vanessa wants, Vanessa gets.”
Conley scribbled notes in her reporter’s notebook, because she didn’t really trust tape recorders and because she wanted to detail observations about Toddie’s demeanor.
“Can I ask you something?” she said, looking up. “A couple of people who were close friends of yours, back before the divorce, say that when it happened, you just packed up and moved out. Overnight. Your oldest friends and neighbors told me you’d vanished, and they had no idea where you’d gone or why. They were blindsided.”
“That was a condition of our divorce settlement. Symmes’s attorney, a man I thought of as a very close friend—his wife was Hank’s godmother—showed up and handed me a piece of paper. Wesley told me that it was a good offer. I’d get child support, the children’s college education would be taken care of, and I’d get health insurance and alimony for the rest of my life or until such time that I remarried. I’d get my car. Symmes would keep the house in town, which was important, because it was in the district, and the children and I could move into the farmhouse at Oak Springs.”
“That does sound generous,” Conley commented.
“Except that I got no share of our investments, or cash assets, which I’m pretty sure he hid from me, no property of my own—he got to keep the title to both, and my alimony was capped. It was barely enough to pay my bills. Everything was contingent on my settling quickly, without any fuss. And most important, keeping my mouth shut.”
“And you agreed?”
“What else could I do? I had no money of my own to hire a lawyer to fight him, and I hadn’t worked since I had the children, didn’t even have a college degree.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“Symmes was always adamant that he didn’t want his wife to work outside the home. His own mother was widowed when he was a young child, and she’d had to go to work at a textile mill here. He wa
s ashamed of that.”
“You were what, nineteen, when you married?.”
“Eighteen. Symmes was a year older. I took some night classes at the community college, before I had kids, and worked days at an insurance company. I’d always wanted to be a veterinarian. Right after we got married, Symmes moved us to Tallahassee so he could finish his undergrad degree. I got another job, but then I got pregnant with Hank during his first year of law school. Two years later, Rebecca came along.”
“Must have been tough times,” Conley said.
“We were as poor as church mice,” Toddie said. “Especially when he was in law school. We lived in married student housing, and he had the GI Bill to pay tuition. My parents helped us out. They even gave us the money for our first house here in Silver Bay. They loved Symmes. Thought he could do no wrong.”
“How did he get into politics?” Conley asked.
“Symmes always had a knack for making friends with the right people, for making you think you were important. His law practice in Silver Bay took off right away. He got the job doing all the legal work for the railroad. That was huge for a young lawyer. He ran for an unexpired term in the state senate and won easily, because he had the backing of people like Miles Schoendienst. So then he was in politics, and the law practice was thriving, and he was making a good living. For the first time in our marriage, he bought me a new car of my own.”
Conley raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“It sounds absolutely quaint today, but back then, I had a weekly allowance. I didn’t even have my own checking account or credit cards.”
“And then he decided to run for Congress,” Conley interjected. She was aware of the minutes ticking by. She needed to derail Toddie’s sentimental journey and steer her back toward current events.
“People were telling him he was a ‘rising star on the political firmament.’ For his birthday that year, I got him a sterling letter opener engraved with that,” Toddie said. “I wonder what ever happened to that? Probably Vanessa melted it down years ago.”
“What happened when Mr. Robinette went to Washington?” Conley asked.
“It was the biggest fight of our marriage. The only fight, really. I thought we had a good marriage. Not perfect, but good. Solid. I was an idiot.”
“According to Vanessa, you hated Washington and refused to step foot there.”
“Another lie,” Toddie shot back. “Symmes didn’t want me there. The children were still there, and we’d just bought the house in town. It was such a financial stretch that my parents gave us the down payment as a gift. Symmes said we couldn’t afford the house here and a place in D.C. that would be big enough for the whole family. We fought over it, but he won.”
Conley nodded as she scribbled another note. “When did you find out about Vanessa?”
“Ahhh,” Toddie said, thinking back. “I’d gone up to D.C. for the National Prayer Breakfast. I flew up a day early because I wanted to surprise Symmes. He was renting a pretty drab ‘bachelor apartment,’ so I even booked us a room at the Willard, thinking we’d have a sort of lost weekend.”
Conley paused from her note taking to watch Toddie’s face, anticipating the story to come.
“I cabbed over to his place and talked the maintenance guy into letting me in, which he was clearly reluctant to do. I had to show him my driver’s license to show him that I really was Mrs. Robinette—which should have been my first clue.”
Conley waited.
“The place was neat as a pin—which was my second clue. Symmes was always a slob. His clothes were hung up, and the bed was made.” Her lips twisted into a bitter smile. “There was a makeup bag in the bathroom and a filmy pink nightgown hanging from a hook on the back of the door. And a bottle of prenatal vitamins on the bedside table.”
“You must have been devastated,” Conley said.
Toddie’s eyes welled up with tears. “Sorry,” she said, dabbing at them with a tissue plucked from her pocketbook. “You know, this is the first time in all these years I’ve ever talked about this.”
“You didn’t tell your girlfriends? Or your mom? Or your lawyer?”
“God, no. It was so humiliating. At first, I didn’t know what to do. I kept thinking there had to be a rational explanation.”
“And then?”
“I kind of lost my mind. I threw her stuff in a bag and cabbed over to the House office building. I walked into Symmes’s office unannounced, and his secretary’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. She said the congressman was in a committee meeting, and I told her I wasn’t looking for my husband. But I did have urgent business with Vanessa Monck.”
“How did you know her name?” Conley asked.
“It was on the label of a bottle of antibiotics. Right next to the prenatal vitamins. That poor secretary! She babbled something about Vanessa not being available, so I said I’d wait. Two hours later, Symmes showed up, and he was even more flustered than the secretary.”
“Did he try to deny the affair?”
“Not after I threw the nightgown and pills in his face,” Toddie said. “It was all so ugly and sad. He said he’d made a mistake and let things go too far with Vanessa. Claimed he still loved me and the children. He said he wanted to do the decent thing by her. I think he actually believed he could stay married and keep me and the children down here in Florida and be a D.C. daddy to Vanessa and their baby.”
“Have his cake and eat it too?” Conley asked. “I’m still astonished how this didn’t cause more of a scandal. I mean, a sitting, married U.S. congressman impregnates an aide nearly half his age?”
“It was a different time back then. This was way before the Bill Clinton scandal. Before social media. I’m sure the Washington press corps knew about the baby, the same way they knew about all the other politicians who’d had affairs, but I guess that wasn’t considered fair game.”
Conley’s phone dinged softly. She glanced at the screen. It was a text from Roger Sistrunk.
How’s my story coming?
As fascinating as this interview was, she needed to wrap things up.
“After the divorce, did Symmes see the children? Did you share custody?”
“Not really. They were teenagers by then. For the first couple of years or so, he’d come out to the farm and see the children occasionally when he was back in the district. Bring them birthday gifts, maybe take them out to dinner. He’d drop off gifts on Christmas Eve, always alone. Then the visits tapered off. Hank pretended not to care, but in fact, he resented Symmes so much that he’d refuse to talk on the phone or even see Symmes on his irregular visits, which infuriated Symmes. The whole situation broke Rebecca’s heart. She’d always been such a daddy’s girl.”
“And then the visits stopped?”
“Yes. There was one last Christmas Eve, probably in the late nineties; he called the day before to say he was coming. Even Hank was looking forward to it. They waited all day, and finally, at ten o’clock, we all realized it wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t coming. No call, no show.”
“You said earlier that your children weren’t estranged from him. But it certainly sounds like…”
“Everything changed after his cancer diagnosis last year,” Toddie said.
“Who told you about the cancer? Both Charlie and Vanessa said it was a closely guarded secret.”
“Charlie’s fiancée reached out to me,” Toddie said.
“Kennedy McFall?”
“That’s right. It was back in March. Out of the blue. She told me about Symmes’s diagnosis and said that she’d been nagging Charlie to let Symmes’s other children know how sick he was.”
“Did you talk to Charlie?”
“Eventually, yes. I guess he listened to his girlfriend. Until that day, I’d never spoken to him. I’d seen photos, of course, over the years, but that was all.”
“Did Vanessa know you were in touch?”
Toddie hooted. “God, no! She never would have allowed that. As I say, Kennedy p
rivate-messaged me on Facebook, and after I said I was willing to talk to Charlie, he called.”
“How did that go?”
“Surprisingly well. Charlie said he thought his half brother and half sister should know that their dad was diagnosed with cancer and that the prognosis wasn’t great. He didn’t want either of his parents to know he’d reached out to us.”
“What did you do next?”
“Nothing. I told Hank and Rebecca. The news made them sad, but I don’t think it really hit them that Symmes was going to die. Then six weeks later, my cell phone rang, and it was Symmes. You could have knocked me over with a feather. It had been so long, I didn’t even recognize his voice.”
She slid the wedding band up and down her ring finger. “He told me Vanessa had moved him back down here, to their house on Sugar Key. He said the doctors at Walter Reed were opposed to that, but she insisted she could take care of him better at home. And he asked if I thought the children would be willing to see him. He said he wanted to make amends.”
“How did your kids react to that?” Conley asked.
She let out a deep sigh. “Hank wanted nothing to do with his dad. We’ve always been really close, and I think he thought it would upset me. Rebecca, on the other hand, agreed right off the bat. Charlie agreed to act as the go-between to make it happen.”
“How did you work around Vanessa?”
“When they first moved back down here, it wasn’t that difficult. Symmes would make up some excuse to Vanessa, and Rebecca would meet him in some out-of-the-way spot. She was ecstatic! She’s a single mom these days, and it meant the world to her to reconnect with her dad.”
“What about Hank?”
“He was a much tougher sell. So stubborn!” Toddie said. She laughed. “But Rebecca guilt-tripped him into going with her for a meet-up. Hank works with me on the quail plantation, and Symmes was a big hunter back in the day, so I think they were happy to discover they still had something in common.”
The minutes were ticking away, and Conley still had so many questions.
“Toddie, I have to ask. How did Symmes come to deed Oak Springs Farm over to you? And only two weeks before he died?”
Hello, Summer Page 32