With a grin, Callie picked up the scorer and started dragging it across the wall in little circles.
“You two are going to be tired tonight after all this work. I think you need to put your feet up and relax. Why don’t you let me make you some dinner and we’ll spend the evening together?” Gladys asked, shifting to get comfortable. She was smiling, waiting for an answer with that familiar look of motherly concern in her eyes.
“Check with Olivia, but that sounds amazing to me!” Callie picked at a piece of loose wallpaper and then scored some more. “Don’t go to too much trouble for us, though.”
“Keep scoring that spot. And it’s never any trouble. How’s the patio out back? There’s still a table out there, right? We could eat outside tonight; I hear the weather is going to be just glorious all day.” Gladys sat for a few minutes more, offering pointers before going out to help Olivia with Wyatt.
Callie clapped her hand over her mouth as she walked outside. She couldn’t believe what Gladys had done while she was in the shower. Her shoulders ached and her arms were weak from stripping wallpaper all day, but she’d gotten almost all of it off in one day, barely even stopping to eat. The wind cool against her wet hair, she looked over at Olivia who was smiling in one of Gladys’s rocking chairs.
“Y’all have been working so hard. I just thought you needed this.”
Gladys had draped the pergola above the patio with a couple of strands of white lights, she’d brought over three rocking chairs, and she’d cleaned the old rectangular picnic table, covered it in a blue and white gingham cloth, and filled it with candles down the middle. Callie took a step toward the table to admire the enormous centerpiece.
“It was easy,” Gladys said. “My favorite way to decorate a table outside. It’s just a bunch of glass mason jars and vases. I fill them with sand about a third and plop a candle right in. I like white candles for the beach—it’s dramatic.” She winked at Callie and started pulling covered dishes out of warming bags. “Sit down in the rocking chair, Wyatt and I will take it from here.”
Wyatt, his chest filled with pride, stood with a seashell-design oven mitt on each hand, ready to set the dishes on the table.
“You sure you don’t need any help?” Callie offered, taking a seat in one of the rocking chairs. The sand gritted beneath it as she rocked.
“Wyatt’s got it all under control.”
Olivia pulled a bottle of wine from a bucket of ice by her feet. “My sweet grandmother has thought of everything,” she said, holding it up. “Want a glass?”
“Absolutely!” Callie said with a laugh, scooting the rocking chair beside her friend while Olivia tipped the bottle over one of the glasses Gladys had brought from inside. “Did you know she was doing all this?” Callie asked, taking the glass from Olivia with a nod of thanks.
“No. Apparently, she and Wyatt were up to this while we were working today. He’s earned twenty bucks already.”
“She paid him?” Callie said with a giggle.
“Of course I did,” Gladys piped up. “Young man’s got to earn that new fishing equipment he wants at the bait and tackle shop.” She set the last dish onto the table while Wyatt got out plates and silverware, setting them down gently. “Now, you know I really brought that wine for myself, right? Better pour me a glass before you two drink it all,” she teased. “I’ve got more.” She clicked on a small radio and turned it up before sitting down.
Olivia handed her a glass.
“Wyatt, I hear you have a magazine with all that fishing gear you want in it. Why don’t you run get it and show me what my twenty dollars is going to buy you?”
“Okay, Gram!” Wyatt slid off the mitts and set them neatly by the warming bags at the edge of the patio before running off to his room to get the magazine.
“That boy helped me cook all day, did you know that?” she said with an affectionate shake of her head. “It probably didn’t hurt that we baked dessert first and he got to nibble on chocolate chip cookies the whole time.”
“Gram, you spoil him,” Olivia said. “But I’m so thankful for it. What would we do without you?”
Gladys raised her glass. “To family,” she said, the late evening sun making her cheeks rosy. Olivia and Callie joined in the toast.
Callie was so thankful for Gladys. When her own grandmother had passed away, there’d been a hole in Callie’s life, an empty spot that used to be filled with old stories and gentle laughter. Her grandmother was the grounding force in her life that held everything together, and when she was gone, it seemed like the pieces of Callie’s life and her family just floated away, all going in haphazard directions.
She could still remember the first time it had hit her that Gladys could fill that void. Callie was only about nine. She was running up the walk to Gladys’s house when she tripped and fell, skinning her knee. Gladys took her inside and sat her on a chair in her kitchen. As she bandaged it up, Callie thanked her. Without a flinch, Gladys said, “But that’s what family does; we take care of each other.” With the loss of her own grandmother still fresh, those words had been a welcome relief for Callie, her little heart aching for someone who could take care of her.
Even now that they were grown, Gladys still managed to take care of them.
They were on their third bottle of wine, amidst empty plates with remnants of shrimp and sausages, bacon, wrapped asparagus, and homemade crusty bread, Wyatt’s fishing magazine held down with the wine bucket so it wouldn’t blow away. Callie leaned her chin sleepily on her hand, her elbow on the table, the soft lull of the ocean and the wine making it difficult to keep her eyes open. Wyatt was fiddling with the radio while the three women sat chatting at the table.
“Oh!” Gladys said, holding out a hand to Wyatt. “Stop there.”
Wyatt stilled his hand on the tuning knob.
“Turn it up. That’s Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.” Gladys closed her eyes and swayed to the song. “It’s one of my favorites: ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’; do you know it?”
Callie nodded. Armstrong’s raspy voice and Ella Fitzgerald’s sailing pitch were powerful, taking her away, the music consuming her. A gust of wind wrapped around her, rippling the gingham tablecloth, the heavy plates holding it in place.
“I met her in an airport once,” Gladys said, her nearly empty glass of wine swinging between her fingers. “Did you know she was born in Virginia? I miss Virginia sometimes, but the magic of this place always calls my thoughts right back. How could anything be lovelier than this?”
“We should look for stardust,” Wyatt said, perking up.
“Looks like it’s all out at sea tonight.” Gladys pointed to the glistening Atlantic, where the moonlight danced off the ocean, making it sparkle.
The sun had gone down; the candles were dripping onto the sand in their vases, the white lights twinkling around them. The old wood from the pergola was hidden in the darkness of night.