Stay Sweet(62)

They drive past a few smaller buildings. One or two cottages, and then a big garage with four barn-style doors. The driveway curves and then reveals an enormous house in the distance. It is the biggest, most opulent house Amelia has ever seen.

“This is your beach house?”

“Not mine, my dad’s. And not for much longer. It’s for sale,” Grady explains. “He bought a place in Palm Beach that’s near my stepmom’s family two summers ago. He hardly comes here anymore.”

As they climb the front steps, little motion-sensor lights click on. There are beautiful succulent plants and window boxes bursting with vibrant petunias and dripping in sweet potato vines.

They reach the front door, which is also oversize. Grady takes out his phone and taps some app, and it clicks open.

As they walk in, the lights around them automatically turn on. He types a code into another small panel. Window shades roll up, exposing floor-to-ceiling two-story windows.

Amelia slips off her espadrille wedges, leaving them by the door. It’s a beautiful house for sure, but it has about as much cozy feeling as a hotel lobby. It’s ornate, well decorated, but without a single homey touch.

She follows Grady into the open kitchen, which has a huge island topped by marble—swirling blue like ocean water—and a dining table with twelve chairs, crowned by a driftwood chandelier. Grady opens a cabinet door that camouflages a fridge. Inside, soda cans are lined up, and bottles of Snapple, too. There’s also Gatorade, all orange, the flavor Grady drinks. There aren’t any groceries, but below is a pull-out freezer full of frozen pizzas and burritos.

“Are you hungry?”

Amelia shakes her head no. She can’t believe that the ice cream recipes might be here. This place is so unlike the Meades’ farmhouse in every way.

She turns around and sees watercolor streaks of pinks and blues through the windows, the ocean shimmering, the caps of the waves dusted in the glitter of dusk. Grady pulls open a sliding glass door for her. The air is sticky and salty outside, thick and still hot despite it being evening. There’s an outdoor shower and a hot tub and a wet bar, which they pass to get to the railing. Amelia focuses past the grassy dunes to the beach. No footprints on the sand, the lifeguard chair tipped over, an old man walking a small dog right where the waves break, and pipers poking their long thin beaks into the wet sand.

She has only ever been to the ocean once. Down in Florida, visiting a cousin of her father’s. The waves scared her off from going in deeper than her knees. Aside from that, every summer has been spent swimming in the smooth, still waters of Sand Lake.

“Sometimes you can see dolphins out there,” Grady says, pointing off toward the ocean.

“Grady, this house . . .”

“I know.” Something tightens in his face. “My dad is really good at making money.” His eyes move slowly across the horizon, as if trying to capture something, a panoramic picture. Then he turns his back to the water. “Far less successful at being a dad, unfortunately.” He pushes himself off the railing and heads inside.

“It’s okay. If you need more time.”

“No. I just want to get this over with.”

He leads her back through the kitchen, and then down a staircase. They pass a gym, a home theater. “Her stuff’s in this room.” He takes a deep, shivery breath. And then he shakes out his arms and legs, like an athlete psyching himself up for a race. He doesn’t want to be here, doing this.

Though she feels excited, hopeful that they are so close now, she wishes it wasn’t coming at Grady’s expense.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


THE ROOM IS THE ONLY one Amelia has seen that has no furnishings. There are no beachy decorative accessories, like glass vases filled with alternating layers of sand and shells, or starfish cast in silver.

No. The light is harsh, the walls lined with stacks of cardboard moving boxes, all the same size, four tall. Each one has a white sticker in the bottom left corner, the size of an index card, listing the contents. Printed out on a computer, not even handwritten.

Grady approaches the stack nearest to him. It’s as tall as he is. He presses his hand flat against the topmost box, as if he’s searching inside it for a heartbeat. The sticker reads: Clothes: semiformal. The one below that, Fiction E–La. Below that, Handbags, hosiery, scarves, socks. Below that, Desk accessories, stationery. Then the floor.

Amelia can see the redness creeping up his neck as he tells her, “We’ve owned this place for six years. Before that, he had them in our old beach house, which is maybe a mile away from here.”

Amelia struggles to make sense of this. Clearly Grady’s dad loved his mom. If he didn’t, he would have thrown this stuff away years ago. “Well . . . he took a lot of care in packing it up.”

Grady turns away from her. “He paid someone to do this. Probably one of his assistants.”

Amelia says, “I’m sure it was hard for him.”

“Yes, I’m sure it was,” Grady says, every muscle in him tightening.

“Do you want to wait outside?”

He seems to be summoning something from deep within himself. “No,” he says, jaw set. He shimmies the stack out so he can see the labels on the ones stacked behind it.

And that’s how they go through the room, with Grady pushing, restacking, and shifting boxes until he finds ones to open.Amelia’s not sure if his picks are because something on the label has him thinking the ice cream maker might be inside, or if something she can’t account for piques his curiosity. Whenever it happens, though, she makes sure to turn her back to him, to allow him that little bit of privacy.