Stranger on the Shore (Mirabelle Harbor, Book 4) Read online

  Whatever had happened, it was just a fluke. She was sure of it.

  Nevertheless, she stopped at a corner pharmacy on the drive home and picked up a bottle of chewable baby aspirin—that chalky orange-flavored stuff she’d hated as a kid—and forced herself to take a couple of tablets, along with a few swigs of Evian. She washed both down with a small pack of almond M&Ms (she liked to strive for variety in her snacking—everyone knew how different almonds and peanuts were from each other—and, besides, nuts were good for you) and ordered some freshly rolled sushi for dinner from Tasty Tokyo’s “lite menu.” There were heart-healthy Omega-3s all over the place with that meal. Although, maybe not so much with the side order of fried calamari.

  She was fine. Totally fine.

  When the doctor’s office called and Dr. Cole himself left her a personal message on her cell’s voicemail, Ellen ignored it.

  Instead, she picked up her carryout, drove home and crashed on the sofa.

  But not before changing out of her cream silk blouse, so revoltingly drenched in sweat that she doubted even the drycleaners would be able to get the stains out. That she threw in the trash, wrapping it in a plastic bag first so Jared wouldn’t see it.

  She had other blouses she liked better anyway.

  Chapter Four

  Lobster

  I slipped into my beach-life routine as effortlessly as I slipped into my bathrobe.

  Morning shifted into afternoon. Afternoon slid into evening. Evening dissolved into night...and then, magically, the hot Florida sun rose and it was morning again.

  A couple of days passed like this, with me going nowhere but to the beach and back. I dutifully wore sunscreen to avoid the lobster-red sunburns of my youth. (My sister forced a vow from my lips: “Repeat after me—‘I, Marianna Gregory, promise to apply and reapply SPF 50 sunscreen every day I’m in Florida.’ I wanna hear you say it. Now,” she insisted in her bossiest voice.)

  I walked further toward the extreme edges of the available shore, making it all the way down to the southern rocks on my next trip. And then, on the following visit, going all the way up to the northern ritzy high-rise resorts. My circle was ever-widening, like those ripples that formed when you threw a pebble into the water and watched the expanding waves.

  After a few meals consisting of only what I could scrounge from the laundry room’s vending machine, however, I ventured on foot to the corner grocery mart—a little family-owned store about a block away—and found a treasure trove of mini cereal boxes (Froot Loops, Cocoa Puffs and Trix, oh, my!), milk in quart bottles, all-veggie frozen pizzas, and iced tea mix. They had sunscreen, too, thank God—I was running low already—cheap sunglasses, and postcards from all around Sarasota and the Sunshine Coast. I noticed one for nearby St. Armand’s and studied it.

  Pretty place. Palm trees lining the streets. Restaurants. And lots of stores. It would be an interesting area to window shop.

  But, still, a visit there would require me to actually get in my car and drive a few miles from the bungalow. It would also most likely require that I spend money I didn’t have. So, I decided to stick to my explorations on the free beach for the moment. And, anyway, there were still so many things to discover right there on the shore...

  After unloading my groceries and reapplying my sunscreen yet again, as best as I could alone (how did anyone get their mid-back by themselves?), I trekked down to the sand and water in my navy one-piece swimsuit with a built-in skirt, relieved to have the extra cover up when I saw the skimpy bikini-clad girls again.

  Turned out I was half right in my prediction about running into beach people. While I didn’t see The King again, I’d crossed paths with Vivian every day like clockwork, and today was no exception. As usual, the older woman was dressed from head to toe in white, which made her easy to spot.

  I waved to her, and we chatted for a few minutes about her exercise routine (“Been speed walkin’ on the sand for a half hour already,” she told me with pride) and the unrelenting summer heat and humidity.

  As we were talking, I tried to keep pace with Vivian, who was clearly not kidding about the speed walking thing. However, when she saw a pelican alight on the beach, she stopped abruptly and I immediately halted, too, managing, of course, to step hard on another shell.

  “Ow!” I cried out.

  “Girlie, if you’re not gonna watch where you walk, you need to get yourself some water shoes.” Vivian took the tone of scolding camp director Miss Garwood, but it didn’t suit her. She was way too Earth Mother to pull it off.

  I laughed, despite the pain in the soft arch of my bare foot, and said, “Yeah, yeah. I know.”

  The older woman scowled at me.

  I rubbed my foot then scooped up the new shell and handed it to Vivian. “Here. Take a look at this one. I know you’ll be able to identify it, and I have no idea.”

  “Lace murex,” Vivian said, as instinctively as if I were asked to differentiate between dark, milk, or white chocolate. She bounced the shell in her palm then ran her thumb along the perfect architecture of the shell’s dome. It was spiked on the side in a way that reminded me of the head of a triceratops. “You wanna add it to your collection?” she asked.

  I shook my head and watched as Vivian shrugged and pitched it deep into the Gulf. The woman had a good arm.

  “I’m trying to leave most of what I find here on the beach,” I explained, “but I really love that lightning whelk, and I’m sure I’ll want to keep a special shell every now and then.”

  Vivian nodded approvingly, all trace of the scolding camp director having already dissipated. She walked along the shore with crane-like steps, careful and angular, yet—similar to the bird—still very much at one with nature. She and Mr. Niihau both seemed to be descendents of the beach life. It was as if their human bodies had been formed, like Adam and Eve, from sand, mud, and water...built on the shore as a sand sculpture and, then, touched by the divine.

  “So, you’re stayin’ the summer?” the older woman asked, tilting her big sunhat to block out the most direct rays.

  “Yes. Until the end of July or beginning of August, anyway.”

  “What d’ya do up North before you came here?” She studied my face silently for a second and drew a surprising conclusion. “Salesgirl?”

  “No. Secretary.”

  Vivian squinted at me. “Really? Typing and filing stuff? Did’ya answer phones, too?”

  “Lots of typing. Lots of filing. Not so many calls. I was with an insurance company for sixteen years, but the man that hired me—my real boss, Mr. Morris—was let go around Christmas. The new management—” The evil fiends! “They, uh, started bringing in their own people after that, and the few of us who remained were seen as expendable. So, I, um, lost my job last month.”

  I tried to gulp down the bitterness that rose at those words. A decade and a half of my life spent working at the insurance offices on Carraway Street, and only two weeks’ severance pay and ten minutes’ notice that I was being laid off this spring. I remembered that horrible early day in May. Cleaning out my desk with the new secretary posted at my door, arms crossed, assigned to “watch me” so I didn’t steal or destroy anything as I packed up.

  “Huh,” Vivian said. “I’m real sorry to hear that, girlie.” She cocked her head and scrutinized me again. “But you don’t look like someone who’d be happy just typin’ and not talkin’ much. You’re too...interested in people.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to this. “I—I did get to talk to people,” I explained, “just not constantly. It was more of a break-time thing.” And, although I didn’t say this aloud, I had to admit to myself at least that those were by far my favorite times. The interacting with others. The laughter and even the tasteless jokes. The funny expressions my coworkers would make while small-talking. It gave me a sense of family while at work.

  “Huh,” Vivian said again. “Well, what’cha gonna do now?”

  “Look for another secretarial type of position in Ill
inois when I get back,” I told her. I could hear the forced conviction in my voice as I said these words. The steely determination of them, which I’d artificially inserted, of course. I just hoped they didn’t sound as hollow as they felt. “I’m sure some company or firm will want me somewhere in the Chicagoland area,” I stated, continuing with the chin-up optimism. And, though I didn’t verbalize this, I mentally added: I’m reliable, personable, a really fast typist. I have a solid associate’s degree and an unblemished work record. Just because I didn’t find a job right away in my first month of looking doesn’t mean I won’t when I start searching again in August. My well-rehearsed internal monologue, bordering on a mantra.

  Vivian smiled kindly. “Well, then, it won’t kill ya to get yourself some decent Beachwalkers while you’re here, so you can relax good and proper without getting yourself cut and scraped. Don’t want you settlin’ down to your new job with bandages on your feet. Right, girlie?”

  In spite of myself, I had to laugh. “Fine, Vivian. You win. I’ll go shopping for some water shoes tomorrow.” And because I was certain I’d see Vivian soon and would face a stern lecture from the Earth Mother if I didn’t follow through, this was a promise I knew I’d need to keep.

  We parted ways for the afternoon and, a few hours later, when it began to downpour like crazy and I could no longer justify staying away from the silent tomb of the bungalow, I returned to #26 and begin to make the place my own.

  I dried off, flicked on a few lights, turned the TV on, and flipped channels until I got to some loud game show. To the comforting sounds of a squealing woman, who was playing for a $25,000 cash prize, a new Honda Accord and, possibly, a trip to the Caymans.

  As I changed into a fresh t-shirt and shorts, I imagined how loudly I’d squeal if I won the cash and the car. I already had Siesta Key Beach, though, so I supposed I could probably live without the Caymans.

  I WILL find a job. I’m reliable, personable, a really fast typist, I reminded myself again.

  Then I rooted around in the kitchen, trying to decide on the meal option that appealed most at the moment: kiddie cereal or frozen veggie pizza?

  I got as far as dumping one mini box of Trix into a bowl and considering adding another half box of Froot Loops, just to see what that would taste like (complementary flavors, yes?), when I heard a melody that was, at once, very familiar but, also, discordantly clashing with the beeping coming from the game show.

  Ah, my cell phone.

  I hadn’t used it much since I’d arrived in Florida—it was a wonder I’d even remembered to keep it charged. I’d already spoken with both my sister and my daughter this morning from the landline, and they both knew better than to call my cell phone if I had another option. So, who could it be? Olivia Michaelsen, maybe?

  I raced into the bedroom to grab it, clicking to answer even though the number on the display wasn’t Olivia’s or anyone I recognized. “Hello?” I said, just a hint breathless.

  “Marianna?” a man’s voice said, and I had to sit down. Immediately. Good thing I happened to be right next to a bed, huh?

  “Uh, Donny?”

  There was a pause. “Yes.” There was another pause. “I heard you sold the house.”

  There was no preamble to this statement. No working up to it with niceties and polite chitchat. No mention of the twenty-seven months that had passed since last I’d heard from him. Then again, Donny had always sucked at foreplay.

  “Yes, I did.” I refused to make any apologies for this. The house had been mine to sell.

  Since he’d cleared out our bank account when he left us—and moved to the West Coast, for God’s sake, to surf and sell Camaros to the ultra wealthy—ownership of the house was the only bargaining chip he’d had. The only thing he could give his ex-wife and daughter to get the divorce lawyers and the judge off his back when, in violation of having never made a single child-support payment, my attorney (a genius woman and friend of Ellen’s) finally managed to track him down and confront him. He claimed he wasn’t making much money selling cars yet, so he couldn’t afford child support. And being out of state and having moved a lot in California, no one could pin him down long enough to enforce it.

  But the lawyer got him to sign over the house to me. I had the legal documents in a safety deposit box with his autograph on every freaking page.

  “That was my parents’ house, Marianna,” he whined. “My childhood home.” I heard a sharp intake of breath on the line, as if he was barely holding back a sob.

  “Been taking acting classes in Hollywood?” I asked, biting down on my bottom lip so hard, I drew the metallic taste of blood.

  Unlike a lot of people I knew, I had no nasty in-law stories to report. Donny’s parents had been nothing but loving and generous toward me, teaching me to play backyard croquet, showing me how to grill the perfect cheeseburger, and sharing their deep love of classic movies. They even sold us their small three-bedroom house a few years after our marriage for thousands less than the market price because we’d given them Kathryn, their beloved granddaughter. Donny’s folks—God rest their souls—had been committed to making life easier for us.

  Their son, unfortunately, hadn’t been nearly so committed.

  Donny’s voice on the phone turned cold. “Look, when I gave you that house, it was all I had. I didn’t think you’d sell it. That you’d cash in on my family’s legacy.” I could almost hear him spit out the words. “What are you gonna do with all that money now, huh? Live the high life in Florida for half the year like that rich bitch sister of yours?”

  In that instant, I saw several shades of red—the full spectrum from scarlet to crimson to burgundy—before I could even focus on the soothing calm and fluff of the bedroom. I grabbed one of the puffy pale-blue pillows on the bed and squeezed.

  The real-estate market was still depressed, so I knew I was incredibly lucky to have sold the house at all, let alone as quickly as I had, even at a loss. I’d priced it to sell, though. Most of the money from the sale was already spoken for—paying off years of credit card debt and setting aside a chunk to help Kathryn with some of her college costs not covered by her scholarship or her summer job. The rest I knew I’d need as a tiny cushion against the possibility of not immediately finding work when I got back home. To pay my expenses while I was in Sarasota, and to rent a small apartment in Mirabelle Harbor this coming fall.

  “First of all, don’t insult my sister,” I managed to tell him, struggling not to raise my voice. “And, second, how did you know the house was sold and that I was in Florida?” There was a long pause and, in it, my head cleared enough to make the proper deduction. “Oh, wait. Let me guess. You’re still in touch with Vince Jordy, aren’t you? Still spying on us through him? I take it he hasn’t found anything better to do than watch the neighbors through his mother’s attic window and play ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ online with his imaginary playmates.”

  “They’re not imaginary,” Donny said with a huff. “They’re real people. They just live in different cities.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There’s no reason for you to get all judgmental. Just because Vince likes an activity you don’t approve of, it doesn’t make him a bad guy.”

  This was one of Donny’s old refrains: That I “looked down” on his friends. That I was hypercritical. That the people in his neighborhood weren’t up to the standards of my old neighborhood. The first two were true (Donny had a talent for choosing scumbag friends and I’d stopped keeping my opinions about them to myself a decade ago), but the last one was a blatant falsehood that always pained me to hear.

  “Donny, I don’t care about the virtual games Vince plays. But I guess it always bothered me that your best buddy from the neighborhood is a voyeuristic thirty-eight-year-old man that never held a full-time job, despite his parents paying for his college education more than once—” Vince switched majors five times, “—and who still sponges off his elderly mother.”

  He sniffed. “I’ve known Vince
since we were kids. And stayed his friend even in hard times. Guess I can’t expect you to understand lifelong friendship. You came into the neighborhood, lived in my parents’ house, and never really appreciated it ‘cuz you just compared everything to your parents’ neighborhood. Not that they ever cared about you or visited you or even remembered you in their will. So now you’ve got to grab onto my inheritance instead.”

  Donny knew how to rip at my old scabs but, unfortunately, this was another half truth where the untruth part of it really wounded. But so did the truth part.

  To say my parents were displeased by my marriage to him would be a gross understatement. They thought I was short-circuiting my future, told me so and, basically, left me to sink or swim after I moved into his parents’ basement. My mother and father were snobs to a degree, yes, but that was some of what I’d thought I was running away from in marrying him. And they were dead wrong about Donny’s parents and their neighborhood. Sure, it was slightly more rundown and not as ritzy as their side of Mirabelle Harbor, but there were lots of people with hearts of pure platinum who lived on the block—including Vince’s mom. Donny’s parents were at the top of that list, too—generous, caring, thoughtful, and compassionate. I’d loved them as much as any blood relation.

  My parents’ assessment of Donny, however, was sadly correct.

  Dad didn’t live long enough to witness the collapse of my marriage, but Mom watched—from the distant sidelines—and she had the satisfaction of seeing all of her dire predictions about my life come true before she, too, passed away.

  “I’m making dinner now,” I informed Donny, still slumped on Ellen’s queen bed and squeezing that poor pillow. “I need to go.”

  “Oh, no, you might burn something,” he remarked sarcastically. “Don’t want you to ruin your lobster tail. Or is it filet mignon tonight?”

  I didn’t bother to answer. Kiddie cereal with skim milk was always a good choice, but it wasn’t exactly on par with fresh lobster or filet. Honestly, I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d eaten either one.