Free The Girls of August by Anne Rivers Siddons

three with private baths and two with fireplaces.
     They all had four-poster beds and chifforobes. Chenille was everywhere.
    “This is unbelievable,” Rachel said, poking her head into first one room and then
     another.
    “ Très magnifique !” Barbara said, her college French slipping off her tongue.
    “I thought you guys could take these three. They’re side by side. The first two
     have their own baths. The last one…its bath is just across the hall. And I thought
     I’d sleep in the porch room—that’s what we call it—because we made that part of the
     porch a bedroom after my little brother was born. I like that it’s on the southeast
     corner. I dunno why.”
    “I’ve got dibs on this one!” Barbara said, walking into the first bedroom.
    “Which one has the bathroom across the hall?” Rachel asked.
    “Third one down. And it has a key if you want to keep everyone else out of it.”
    “All right. That’s mine.”
    “Are you sure?” I asked. “I don’t mind walking a few feet.”
    “I prefer it,” Rachel said. And that was that. There was no talking Rachel out of
     something once she had made up her mind.
    We spent the rest of the afternoon taking wine breaks and slowly getting our stuff
     up to the house and situating our rooms, which were lovely in every way, including
     their private exits onto the second-floor wraparound porch. Baby was helpful as could
     be, lugging our stuff and offering advice and saying things like “Lookee there! It’s
     a dolphin!” and “That sure is a handsome osprey!” and “Hmmm, looks like that ol’
     coon got the turtle eggs. Blast his soul!”
    Barbara was patient with Baby’s constant chatter; she was a seventh-grade teacher,
     after all. But Rachel of Little Tolerance was having a tough time and would walk
     several feet ahead of us as we trundled from the dock to the house with our provisions.
    When we were finally done, we sat in lounge chairs on the second-floor porch, wine
     in hand, enjoying the sea breeze that felt both cool and salty on our skin, and Barbara
     said, “I am pooped!”
    “We oughta go swimming,” Baby said, gazing out at the water, picking at a zit on her
     chin.
    “I’m sitting right here. I am too exhausted to move a muscle,” Rachel said, and then
     she yawned as if to prove her point.
    “Why don’t I fix us some sandwiches and we can eat them up here and then just fall
     into bed,” I said.
    “Can I help?” Baby asked, jumping up, her halter going askew so we all saw way more
     of her left boob than we had a right to.
    I knew she was trying to be nice, helpful even. And sharing this house with us was
     wonderfully generous. But I just could not bring myself to take her up on her offer.
     I suppose that by then, I’d had enough of her prattle too.
    “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you go take a dip, these two can relax,
     and I’ll fix us something to eat. I’ll call you when dinner is ready.”
    “Great!” she said, throwing her arms around me.
    Rachel mouthed the word flake and Barbara waved her hands in a move-her-along gesture.
    Then Baby literally ran into the house, down the stairs, and onto the beach, where—to
     our profound surprise and dismay—she looked first left, then right, disrobed, and
     plunged buck naked into the ocean.
    “Jesus H. Christ,” Rachel said. “She thinks she’s a freaking sea nymph.”
    “Two weeks? Two entire weeks?” Barbara reached for the wine.
    “What did you say back in Charleston, Barbara? About killing her?” Any guilt over
     being mean about Baby was erased by my astonishment at her stark nakedness.
    Rachel stood and rested her hands on the rail, not taking her eyes off Baby, who
     was doing the backstroke, boobs up. “Well, ladies, we might not have any choice.”
    *  *  *
    I threw together a light dinner in that truly wonderful kitchen. There was something
     about this place, something to do with the generational comings and goings of a