The Night Mark(7)

Twice she reminded herself of that fact.

“Are you Ty?” she asked, pulling a mason jar—Miss Lizzie’s version of iced tea glasses—from the cabinet.

“I am if you’re asking.” He gave her an appraising look and the appraisal came in high.

“I’m asking,” she said. “Faye Barlow. And don’t flirt with an old lady. Our hearts can’t take that much excitement.”

“If you’re old, I’m Drake. What can I do for you?”

“I heard you have a boat? Or access to a boat?”

“I might have access to a boat,” he said between bites of scrambled eggs and sausage. He sat on the counter, not at the table. When was the last time she’d sat on a kitchen counter? High school?

“Would you let me pay you to take me out somewhere on your boat? I need to take some pictures of a lighthouse.”

“You can drive to the lighthouse. Best beach in the state. Don’t tell anybody that, though. I wanna keep the tourists at Myrtle Beach, where they belong.”

“Miss Lizzie said there’s another lighthouse, one on some place called Bride Island. Do you know it?”

“I know it. Hard to get near it, though. There’s a sandbar in the way.”

“Guess that’s why they needed a lighthouse. Can you get into the area at all? I have a long-range lens on my camera.”

“I can probably do that.”

“Today? Tomorrow?”

“This evening? Five?” He hopped off the counter and poured himself a massive glass of orange juice, so big it made her teeth hurt and her blood sugar spike just looking at it. Did college kids know that their days of eating and drinking like that were numbered? She wanted to tell him, then decided to spare him the awful truth that time was a thief, and a metabolism like his would be the first thing it stole.

“What’s the charge?”

“Dinner. With me. You know, after we get back from the boat.”

“You’re too young for me, and I’ve been divorced for about—” she pretended to check her watch “—ten days.”

“You celebrate the divorce yet?”

“Is that a thing people do? Celebrate the painful dissolution of a marriage?”

“Who wanted the divorce?”

“I did.”

“You love him?”

“No.”

“Like him?”

“No, but he didn’t like me, either.”

“You have kids?”

“No.”

“Good in bed?”

“Fair to middling,” Faye said, shrugging.

Ty laughed. “Then hell, yeah, it’s a thing to celebrate.”

“I will have an age-appropriate celebration. You’re too young for me.”

He looked at her, tight-lipped and disapproving. “I’m twenty-two.”

“I’m thirty.”

“Thirty? Oh, my God, Becky, where were you when JFK was shot?” he asked in a Valley girl voice.

She glared at him.

“You flirt weird. Did you learn this in one of those men’s magazines with a woman in a metallic bikini on the cover?”

“Possibly. Is it working?”

Faye sighed. “It’s working. But just dinner. I’m not sleeping with you. I’m supposed to be sad.”

“Are you sad?” he asked, stepping up to her and looking her right in the eyes. She couldn’t remember if Hagen had looked her in the eyes the entire last year of their marriage. She’d forgotten how scary it was to be seen.

“Yes,” she said.

“Because of the divorce.”

“No, not that.”

“Then why?”

Faye smiled. “Who knows?” A rhetorical question. She knew why she was sad, but Ty didn’t need to know.

“We’ll go to the ocean today,” he said. “It knows things. Maybe it can help you.”

Okay.

So.

Faye had a date with a twenty-two-year-old college student. That was unexpected. Probably a very bad idea, as well. Maybe a terrible idea. Then again, he did have a boat. And he was cute. And she was single again.

And... For a split second while flirting with Ty, Faye had been almost okay. The saltwater cure seemed to be working already. And for a woman who’d been in mourning for four straight years, Faye knew “almost okay” was as good as it was probably ever going to get.

But she would take it.





3


Ty had the boat, but Faye had the car. Unless she wanted to ride twenty miles on the back of Ty’s scooter, she would be driving herself on her own date. It was nice. She felt very modern. Old but modern.

Ten minutes into the drive to the dock on Saint Helena Island, Faye pulled over in a church parking lot and gave Ty the keys.

“You want me to drive?” he asked, cocking his pierced eyebrow at her.

“I can’t drive and location scout at the same time without getting us in a wreck. I assume you can drive?”

“I have my learner’s permit,” he said, taking the keys.

“You’re cute.”

“The goddamn cutest,” he said as he opened the door and got behind the wheel.