Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay, Babette Jongh [book club books txt] 📗

separated the parking lot from the blue clapboard farmhouse, the petting-zoo animals rested in the big, red barn. Down the hill toward the bay, an owl hooted, answered by its mate a short distance away.

If Reva had been here, she would have told Abby what the owls were saying. “I’m here,” probably. And “I’m here, too.” Animals weren’t always running off at the mouth like humans. Most often their calls back and forth were quick check-ins establishing location and well-being.

Family keeping up with family.

Something her parents had never seemed interested in. When Abby spent summers with Reva and Grayson, her parents hardly ever called. When Abby graduated from high school, they exchanged their three-bedroom house for a top-of-the-line home on wheels and offered to pay a year of storage fees for her stuff until she could “get the hang of adulting.” When she graduated from college with a business degree, they didn’t come; they’d been too busy avoiding the hot Louisiana summer by touring every campsite in Oregon.

When Abby cut herself adrift from her own life, she should’ve known to ask Reva for help first. Reva was a generous and forgiving Mother Earth, while Abby’s father (Reva’s brother-in-law) made Narcissus look like a philanthropist. Abby’s mother, well, she was more like a ghost. Even when she was there, she wasn’t really. Winston Curtis was the dense magnetic planet that kept his wife’s dimming star from spinning off into oblivion. Whatever he said, she echoed, because she wasn’t a whole person without him. Full of their customary thimbleful of compassion, they had advised Abby to tighten her bootstraps.

So when she found herself sitting in a leaking dinghy watching her bridges burn behind her, and her parents had given unhelpful advice but no actual help, Abby had asked her aunt Reva for a patch of uncharred earth on which to land. “Yes, of course,” her aunt had replied without skipping a heartbeat. “You’re welcome to stay for as long as you like.”

Family taking care of family.

Abby thought of the little girl she’d met today—Angelina—and hoped that if the child couldn’t be with her family, at least she lived with people who loved her. Everyone, human or animal, deserved a home in which they knew unconditional love and acceptance. Abby thought of the child she’d had to leave behind in order to save herself, and swallowed a mouthful of wine along with the worry and regret that never left her mind. That it wasn’t her child didn’t make it better.

With the comforting bulk of the house behind her, Abby leaned her head back and let her feet float up. A couple of early stars winked on in the deepening sky, and solar lights glittered off to the left, lighting a flagstone path to the aviary and the pavilion. Straight ahead and down the hill, a fenced pasture surrounded the swimming hole whose brown water glittered dimly as the sun’s last ray disappeared beyond the horizon.

The granddaddy oak Abby remembered from every summer of her childhood stood guard over the wooden dock. Fifty feet up into its fern-covered branches, a tire swing’s hefty rope was tied so older kids could swing far out over the pond before letting go.

Beyond, rolling pastureland led down to a wide strip of marshland that bordered the bay a few miles away. A boat’s motor made a whining sound in the distance; someone night-fishing or checking trotlines.

Abby heard a munching sound and peered into the gathering shadows. At the property line between her aunt’s farm and the new neighbor’s estate, two long, curving horns bobbed in rhythm—a goat with his head buried in the privacy hedge. “Gregory.” Out again, that bad, adventurous goat. “You could teach Houdini a thing or two.”

Ignoring the goat—she could figure out how he’d gotten out of the pasture and into the yard tomorrow—Abby stood and set her empty wineglass next to her towel. The cooling night air tingled on her bare skin, raising goose bumps. She stepped onto the diving board, bounced a few times, and dove into the cool water.

* * *

Quinn sat by the pool in the gathering dusk. The frogs’ mating song blended nicely with his new favorite song, “Any Man in America.”

He felt kind of bad that tomorrow he would destroy the frogs’ happy habitat with pool chemicals and a scrub broom. But maybe frogs also needed to learn about getting too comfortable and feeling too safe.

The Blue October song ended. Silence…then a strange rustling noise in the privacy hedge. Was crazy Old Ms. McDonald snooping on him? He eased to his feet and padded over, planning to surprise the old bat.

The hedge shook. He pulled apart a couple branches and met two blue eyes with strange-shaped pupils. He jumped back. What the fork?

He bent down and encountered a devil’s face, complete with horns. “Maaa,” the thing bellowed.

“I’ll be damned.” Quinn picked up a stick and poked it through the hedge-covered chain-link fence, right into the goat’s nose.

“Maaaaa…” The goat bolted, leaving a perfect, goat-head-sized peephole into his new neighbor’s backyard.

The sparkling-clean pool glowing blue, lit from within.

The kidney-shaped patio surrounded by globe lights.

His next-door neighbor’s perfectly proportioned body diving naked into the swimming pool.

“Whoa.” Quinn stumbled back, tripped over something, and fell on his ass.

He wouldn’t be able to think of her as Old Ms. McDonald anymore.

Chapter 4

It didn’t surprise Quinn that he had trouble falling asleep that night, even though he had worked hard all day. Visions of his neighbor’s slim, toned body and wavy brown hair followed him into fitful dreams.

In the first dream, she popped up from his frog-filled pool and wrapped her green-scaled mermaid arms around his neck. Pulling him into the murky depths, she showed him her magical cave of hidden delights. He knew she intended to keep him there forever, and he wanted to stay, until he realized with a shock that he couldn’t breathe underwater.

Lungs convulsing, he broke free and kicked for the surface, but strong tendrils of seaweed dragged him