This morning Ida seemed clearheaded. She walked over and stood next to Rose, hands on her hips, dainty sweat beading on her top lip. Estée Lauder perfume rolled off her in waves, and Rose turned her head for a quick moment to take a breath.
“They’re lovely, Rose. You really have the touch.”
“Well.” Rose swallowed the compliment as if it were vinegar. “I don’t know how far that touch will get me later in the summer when these leaves are coated in black spot.”
“But you won’t let that happen. You work your roses like Ginger Rogers danced.” When Ida leaned down to smell a Sweet Juliet, Rose lifted her eyes to Peter, who smiled and shrugged. He checked his watch.
“You’re usually already gone by the time we pass your house,” he said. “Are the Bubbas not meeting this morning?” The Bubba Club was the group of men who met weekly in the main clubhouse to discuss everything from politics to prostates over coffee and Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
“Fred had an early doctor’s appointment in Mobile. I’m heading up there soon to open the door for the rest of them.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if you just gave them a key?”
“I can’t hand out keys like candy. Someone has to make sure no one tries to pull any funny stuff.”
Peter’s laughter was booming and jovial. “Some funny stuff is good for the soul every now and then. You should give it a try.”
Rose snorted.
He touched Ida’s shoulder. “We need to get moving if we want to be back in time for Kelly and whichever young man is sitting in the chair next to her these days.”
Ida straightened up. “Oh, it’s that Ryan Seacrest. I could listen to him talk all day.”
“Well, let’s get you on home then. He’s on in twenty minutes.” Peter put his hand on the small of his wife’s back as she turned and blew a kiss back to Rose.
Rose watched them as they walked away, and something in her heart clenched. So many residents had found community within the gates of Safe Harbor Village. Enjoying life together with other people had never come naturally to Rose. More often than not, she found herself on the outside of everyone else, wishing she could be a part of things, never willing to admit it bothered her that she wasn’t.
Maybe it was time she moved on. Hang up her visor, hand over her keys, and watch as a well-oiled company came in, rewrote her handbook, and took control. No one would miss her one bit.
Five
After a quick bite to eat, Rose changed clothes, then hopped on her bicycle—a navy blue Schwinn she’d had for decades—and headed for the clubhouse situated near the entrance to the village. As a common area for residents, the clubhouse served as the backdrop to daily game show viewings, intense chess matches lasting for hours, and all manner of book clubs, card games, recipe swaps, and general gossip sessions.
With the village office attached to the clubhouse, separated by only a thin wall and a glass door, Rose was literally in the middle of the hubbub whether she wanted to be or not. “Not” was her standard preference.
She opened the door and winced as the bell clanged, announcing her presence to absolutely no one. On a whim, she untied the ribbon attaching the bell to the door and dropped the whole thing in the trash can. The clang was satisfying, but it felt even better to see the bell sitting there at the bottom of the plastic bag, the gong silenced by a ball of tissue.
Rose flipped on the lights and twisted the plastic rods on the blinds. There. The place looked a little less barren with some sunlight streaming in. Rose preferred to work with minimal distraction, and therefore the small office held only two desks, a computer and printer, a telephone, and a file cabinet. The white walls were bare except for a framed print from a 1950 Farmers’ Almanac showing the phases of the moon from the month of her birth.
If the office was stark, the clubhouse just on the other side of the glass door was its polar opposite. Over the years, residents had filled the space with countless kitschy beach baubles and decorations. A wooden replica of a shrimp boat and multiple dolphin statues and coral reef snow globes dotted side tables, and several old printers’ boxes hung on the walls holding a beach-worth of seashells. A huge, chemically shined sailfish adorned the wall over the TV, and the tabletop lamps were in the shape of seahorses.
Facing away from the riot of color, Rose settled into her ergonomic desk chair behind the larger of the two desks and flipped on the computer. When she opened her email, she was dismayed by the number of new messages that had come in overnight. A small group of residents—mostly new, and therefore unaccustomed to the way things worked at the village—were in the middle of a spat over whether they had the right to drape beach towels over the lounge chairs by the pool to save them for later use. Now everyone was up in arms about one neighbor’s use of the word entitled.
Occasionally she wondered if the work was too much for one woman. She wasn’t above admitting her mind wasn’t quite as sharp as it used to be when she and her husband—ex-husband—Terry, had first started out, but she hadn’t had the best luck with office help. Their first receptionist, Joan, turned out to have questionable morals and fled the village with Terry without a care in the world, her hair blowing in the breeze.
A few years ago she hired another assistant who, thankfully, was fifty years old and built like a Ford F-150. Aside from being an ace on a riding lawn mower, Marge helped with office duties—mostly fielding questions, complaints, and suggestions from the residents in the village and scheduling appointments with electricians and plumbers.
The job also involved the more delicate work of keeping up with the village calendar, but Rose always reserved this particular duty for herself. It was one thing to answer phones. It was another thing to work the schedule in just the right way to make sure groups like the Jesus and Jewelry crafters didn’t meet at the same time as the Rowdy Romance Readers. The atmosphere in the clubhouse could deteriorate rather quickly if the schedule was not handled properly.
After Marge moved away, Rose took on the bulk of the responsibilities herself. She could have hired someone else, but there were very few people in the world whom she trusted—especially when it came to fine-tuning the inner workings of her business—and none of them resided in Safe Harbor Village.
She’d been working through the emails for an hour when the phone rang. The voice on the other end was young, which was unusual. When the woman asked about the hairstylist position, Rose propped an elbow on the desk and rubbed her eyes. As if the village needed a hairstylist. An on-site hair salon had never been in the plans, but back when the village was pristine and new, a group of residents—mostly female, though there were some vocal men in the group too—had lobbied for one, saying when they decided to buy homes here, it was under the agreement that the village would provide many of their daily needs.
“That means shelter,” Rose had patiently explained. “Access to food. Medical care. Those are your basic necessities, and you have them here. Hair care is just . . . luxury.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” one woman had argued. “We’re in the prime of our life, with retirement dollars to spend, and if I want to be able to get my hair done twice a week, is that too much to ask?”
Rose had finally caved and recruited Beverly, a hairdresser from the Supercuts down Highway 59, to be the village hair guru. At the residents’ insistence and under Beverly’s direction, Rose agreed to outfit the bottom floor of one of the empty cottages with a hooded dryer, a swivel chair, and a basin sink for hair washing. Rose thought the matter was closed, but it wasn’t long before the residents started complaining of Beverly’s manner of work.
“She washes hair like she’s scrubbing a casserole dish and chops like a drill sergeant.” And that came from a male customer.
“You asked for a hairdresser and you got one,” Rose told them all. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
They’d accepted Beverly’s particular manner of scalp cleansing and her back-to-basics haircuts because they had to, but when Beverly
started talking about moving away to be closer to family, no one tried to talk her out of it.
After almost a year of no hair service, Rose agreed to hire another hairdresser, if only to quiet everyone’s ranting and pleading. Tiny Collins wasted no time slapping up flyers on every window and bulletin board from Loxley to Orange Beach. And now someone had answered the call.
She wanted to ask the woman on the phone what her qualifications were, but she’d included right there on the flyer, in black-and-white, “experience necessary.” The woman did say she used to cut hair, but Rose wouldn’t put it past a person in desperate need of a job to inflate trimming one’s own bangs into a full-fledged hairdressing career. If the woman was applying with no experience, then that was her own bag of bad apples.
With a hard knot in the center of her stomach, Rose agreed to see the woman at two o’clock.
* * *
Rose waited on the porch of the office at 1:55, cup of coffee in hand. When she saw the unfamiliar white car pull slowly into the small parking lot, she stepped behind a wide sago palm so she could get a stealthy look at the prospective employee.
The woman sat in the car for a long moment with the engine running. Sunlight glinted off the windshield, making her face a mess of shadows and light. All Rose could tell was that the woman was sitting very still. Finally she cut off the engine, opened the door, and stood.
Rose sighed. She didn’t know what she’d been hoping for, but it wasn’t this. Demure white blouse with short sleeves fluttering in the breeze, pale blue skirt, flat shoes. Hair the color of burnished copper pulled partly up on one side, revealing a curve of cheek and the soft scoop of neck. Young. Lovely.
Of course, Rose thought.
Rose watched her for a moment, then stepped out from behind the palm. “Over here,” she called.
The woman shielded her eyes from the sun with her free hand. “Rose Carrigan?”
“That’s me. I assume you’re the one who called about the hairdresser position.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Rose opened the glass door, but when she looked behind her, the woman wasn’t following. “We can’t very well do the interview out here in the parking lot. It’s too hot. You might as well come on in.”
Inside, the woman stood behind the chair across from the desk. “I’m Lily Bishop. Thank you for letting me come,” she said, lowering herself to the seat.
Rose brushed nonexistent dust off the surface of her desk, then clasped her hands together and sat back in the chair. She anchored her feet firmly to keep the chair from swiveling and aggravating her vertigo. “I have to admit, you’re not quite what I expected.”
Lily’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “Why’s that?”
“It just seems that someone so . . . young . . . would want to work with people your own age. Most of the people who live here are more than twice as old as you. You’re, what—twenty-five?”
It was probably frowned upon—if not downright illegal—to ask a potential employee her age, but Rose needed to know. She had a knack for correctly assuming other people’s ages, as well as their personality type, and the only time she’d been wrong on both counts was with the original Safe Harbor Village receptionist, the scandalous Miss Joan Temple. She was not going to be wrong again.
“Twenty-eight.”
Rose lifted her chin. “Ah.” Close enough. “As I was saying, the residents here are all decades older than you. Most are over sixty. We have one who just celebrated his ninety-first birthday. Are you sure you would be comfortable cutting hair in this environment?”
Lily opened her mouth, but it took a moment for her to formulate words. “So this is . . . What type of village is this?”
“Did you not see it on the sign? Safe Harbor Village is an active lifestyle community.” Rose enunciated carefully to make sure the girl understood. “There are no rules per se dictating that people must be over a certain age to apply for residence, but you would be the youngest face around here by . . . well, by a large margin.”
Lily nodded. Her hands were in her lap and she was twisting a thin gold band around her ring finger. Rose could already tell what was going to happen. Any second now Lily would stand, thank Rose for her time, and walk out. Why would a woman like her choose to work among a bunch of old coots in a moss-draped spit of land miles away from any kind of activity frequented by the young? Nope. Lily Bishop was not it. Rose had a hunch for these things.
Lily took a deep breath and sat up straighter in her chair. “That doesn’t bother me at all.”
Rose cleared her throat. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself. Your family, where you live . . .”
She smiled. “I’m from Georgia. Fox Hill. But more recently I lived in Atlanta. I moved here with my—” She stopped, as if the words froze on her lips, then exhaled.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She gave a little shake of her head. “I moved here with my husband—Worth—but . . . well, I’m on my own now.”
She waited, as if to give Rose a chance to comment, and when Rose remained silent, Lily continued. “My mother had a hair salon at the back of our house when I was young, and I started cutting hair when I was a teenager. My mom passed away five years ago. I kept the salon going as long as I could, but I ended up having to sell it, and I moved to Atlanta to look for another job. A way to support myself a little more securely. Instead, I met Worth.”
“I see,” Rose said, although she didn’t see anything clearly. Not yet, anyway. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
A small smile and a quick nod. “Thanks. It was quick. Unexpected. At least I didn’t expect it.”
“Yes. Death is always unexpected, even when we know it’s coming.” The words slipped out before Rose had a chance to bite them back. Lily’s eyebrows rose, recognition flooding her face. Rose mentally chastised herself for letting her guard slip. There was no need to invite personal confidences in a business interview.
She cleared her throat. “So you’re from Georgia, and you moved down here for . . . work?”
Lily nodded. “Worth took a new job in Gulf Shores—well, he said it was in Gulf Shores, but it was actually in Foley. I haven’t had a chance to see much of the beach.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Just a few weeks.”
Rose raised her eyebrows. “You’re very new in town. And your husband isn’t with you?” Something was going on—Rose could smell it. She wondered if she should be entertaining the idea of hiring someone with so much obvious baggage.
“It’s . . . it’s a bit of a complicated story, Mrs. Carrigan. If it’s okay with you, I’ll tell you about it at another time. If you decide to offer me the job.”
“Okay. Well, if you can’t tell me anything else about yourself, why don’t I tell you a little more about our village here. My ex-husband and I built this place from the ground up a little over forty years ago. I’m the owner—well, co-owner. Terry is considered a silent owner. But for all practical purposes, I’m in charge. I’m also the manager, and as such, I do all the hiring and oversight. We do have a homeowners’ association to take care of things like landscaping, collection of dues, facilities maintenance and upkeep, and rule enforcement. However, I’m the head of the HOA, so I still have the final say-so.”
There. Rose always felt better once she’d established she was the boss.
“We had a hairdresser here until about a year ago. Beverly. She was . . . sufficient. But she moved away to be closer to her grandkids and I, for one, don’t blame her. I imagine grandchildren far outweigh the joys of washing and setting Roberta’s curls once a week.”
Lily smiled. “I think I met her in the grocery store. Does she work at a café?”
“She doesn’t work at a café. She owns Sunrise Café. She has one employee, a young man who takes food orders and tends the bar. Roberta does the rest, including cooking the food. She’s a very capable woman.” Rose liked capable women, though most of the ladies she met did
not qualify as capable. Capable of backing their cars into mailboxes, maybe, giving Rose one more thing to have to fix, but at the first sign of turmoil or trauma, most of the women she knew would crumble and break.
“Do you have grandchildren?” Lily asked.
“Excuse me?”
“You said grandkids would be better than doing hair. I was just wondering if you have any.”
Rose shook her head. “No. I don’t. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like some time has passed since you’ve given a proper haircut. Is that right?”
Lily paused. “Well . . . yes.”
Rose sat back in her chair just as Lily leaned forward. She rested her hands flat on Rose’s desk, fingers spread. Her nails were short, stubby, the skin around the edges pink and raw. A small Band-Aid wrapped her left pinkie nail. When Lily noticed Rose staring at her hands, she pulled them back into her lap. Rose looked up and met Lily’s gaze.
“I need this job, Mrs. Carrigan.”
Rose shook her head. “It’s Rose. Just Rose.”
“I can cut hair, Rose. It’s like riding a bicycle. If you have the skill, it’s not something you forget.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. Her face was bare, just a hint of pink in her cheeks and smudges of deeper pink just under her eyes. So many emotions were written across the peaks and valleys of her face—anxiety, sadness, hope. Desperation, stark and familiar. Rose fought the urge to reach across the desk and take Lily’s hands in hers.
Instead, she opened a file folder sitting on the edge of the desk, just to have something to do. “I assume you’ve kept your license to cut hair current and up to date?”
“Yes. It’s current. It’s in the car— I can run out and grab it if you’d like to see it.”
“It’s not necessary at this point.” Rose exhaled and stood up. Lily followed the older woman’s movements, her eyes piercing. For a brief moment, Rose saw a flare of determination. It had bubbled up from somewhere, and Rose was glad to see it.
She closed the file folder on the table in front of her and slid it back to the edge of the desk. “Let’s take a walk.”
The Summer House Page 4