"Tess!"
"Do you want your underwear folded or not?"
Sara smoothed out a shirt, not answering.
"Y'all've been seeing each other for two months."
"Three."
Tessa tried again. "You have to be sleeping with him or he wouldn't have invited you to the beach."
Sara shrugged off a response. The truth was that she had slept with Jeffrey on their first date. They hadn't even made it out of her kitchen. Sara had been so ashamed the next morning that she sneaked out of her own house before the sun came up. If not for a robbery-homicide that forced them to work together three days later, she probably would never have spoken to Jeffrey Tolliver again.
Tessa turned serious. "Was he your first time since…?"
Sara gave her sister a sharp look, making it clear that topic was off-limits. "Tell me what else Jill-June said."
"Uh…" Tessa dragged it out, giving a sly smile. "That's he's got a great body."
"He's a runner."
"Mmm," Tessa approved. "That he's tall."
"He's three inches taller than me."
"Look at that grin," Tessa laughed. "All right, all right, you don't have to give me the speech about how horrible it was being six feet tall in the third grade."
"Five eleven." Sara threw a dishrag at her sister's head. "And it was ninth grade."
Tessa folded the rag, sighing. "He has dreamy blue eyes."
"Yes."
"He's incredibly charming and has very nice manners."
"Both true."
"Extremely good sense of humor."
"Also true."
"He always pays with correct change."
Sara laughed as she pushed more clothes toward her sister. "Talk and fold."
Tessa picked the lint off a pair of black slacks. "She says he used to be a football player."
"Really?" Sara asked, because Jeffrey had never told her this. As a matter of fact, he had told her very little about himself. His general dislike of talking about the past was one of the things she enjoyed about him.
"I hope he's worth it," Tessa said. "Is Daddy talking to you yet?"
"Nope," she answered, trying to sound as if she did not care. Though her parents had never met Jeffrey, like everyone else in town they had already formed their own opinions.
Tessa pressed on. "Tell me some more. What do you know about him that Jill-June doesn't?"
"Not much," Sara admitted.
"Come on." Tessa obviously thought she was teasing. "Just tell me what he's like."
From the hallway, Cathy Linton said, "Too old for her, for a start."
Tessa rolled her eyes as their mother walked into the room.
Sara said, "You'd never guess this was my house."
"You don't want people walking in, don't leave your front door unlocked." Cathy kissed Sara's cheek as she handed her a green Tupperware bowl and a grease-stained paper bag. "I brought this over for your drive down."
"Biscuits!" Tessa reached for the bag but Sara slapped her away.
"Your father made cornbread, but he wouldn't let me bring it." Cathy gave her a pointed look. "Said he didn't slave over a hot stove just to feed your fancy man."
Her words hung in the air like a black cloud, and even Tessa knew better than to laugh. Sara picked up a pair of jeans to fold.
"Give me those." Cathy snatched the jeans away from her. "Like this," she said, tucking the cuffs under her chin and magically working the jeans into a perfect square, all in under two seconds. She surveyed the mountain of laundry on Sara's bed. "Did you just wash this today?"
"I haven't had -"
"There's no excuse for not doing laundry when you live alone."
"I have two jobs."
"Well, I had two children and a plumber and I managed to get things done."
Sara looked to Tessa for help, but her sister was matching up a pair of socks with the kind of focus that could split an atom.
Cathy continued, "You just put your dirty clothes right in the washer, then every other day or so you run a load, and you don't ever have to deal with this again." She snapped open one of the shirts Sara had already folded. Her mouth turned down in disapproval. "Why didn't you use a fabric softener? I left you that coupon on the counter last week."
Sara gave up, kneeling down on the floor in front of a stack of books, trying to figure out which ones to take to the beach.
"From what I've heard," Tessa volunteered helpfully, "you won't have much time for reading."
Sara was hoping the same thing, but she didn't want it announced in front of her mother.
"A man like that…" Cathy said. She took her time before adding, "Sara, I know you don't want to hear this, but you are in way over your head."
Sara turned around. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mother."
Cathy's frown deepened. "Are you planning on wearing a bra with that shirt? I can see both your -"
"All right." Sara untucked her shirt as she stood.
Her mother added, "And those shorts don't fit. Have you lost weight?"
Sara looked at herself in the mirror. She had spent nearly an hour choosing an outfit that looked both flattering and like she had not spent an hour picking it out. "They're supposed to be baggy," she said, tugging at the seat. "It's the style."
"Oh, Lord's sake, Sara. Have you seen your ass lately? I sure haven't." Tessa cackled, and Cathy moderated her tone if not her words. "Honey, there's just your shoulder blades and the backs of your calves. 'Baggy' wasn't meant for women like you."
Sara took a deep breath, bracing herself against the dresser. "Excuse me," she said as politely as possible, and went into the bathroom, taking great pains not to slam the door behind her. She closed the toilet lid and sat down, dropping her head into her hands. She could hear her mother outside complaining about static cling, and asking again why she bothered to leave coupons if Sara wasn't going to use them.
Sara slid back her hands to cover her ears, and her mother's complaining subsided to a tolerable hum, slightly less annoying than a hot needle in her ear. From the moment Sara had started dating Jeffrey, Cathy had been riding her about one thing or another. There was nothing Sara could do right, from her posture at the dinner table to the way she parked her car in the driveway. Part of Sara wanted to confront Cathy on her hypercriticism, but another part – the more compassionate part – understood that this was the way her mother coped with her fears.
Sara looked at her watch, praying that Jeffrey would show up on time and take her away from all of this. He was seldom late, which was one of the many things she liked about him. For all of Cathy's talk about what a cad Jeffrey Tolliver was, he carried a handkerchief in his back pocket and always opened the door for her. When Sara got up from the table at a restaurant, he stood, too. He helped her with her coat and carried her briefcase when they walked down the street. As if all of this was not enough, he was so good in bed that their first time together she had nearly cracked her back molars clamping her teeth together so that she would not scream his name.
"Sara?" Cathy knocked on the door, her voice filled with concern. "Are you okay, honey?"
Sara flushed the toilet and ran water in the sink. She opened the door to find her sister and mother both staring at her with the same worried expression.
Cathy held up a red blouse. "I don't think this is a good color for you."
"Thanks." Sara took the shirt and tossed it into the laundry basket. She knelt back down by the books, wondering if she should take the literary authors to impress Jeffrey or the more commercial ones that she knew she would enjoy.
"I don't even know why you're going to the beach," Cathy said. "All you've ever done is burn. Do you have enough sunscreen?"
Without turning around, Sara held up the neon green bottle of Tropical Sunblock.