Sunset Beach(137)

Aliyah nodded solemnly.

“For your next lesson, I’ll show you how to stroke with your arms, and kick with your feet,” Drue said. “But in deeper water. Okay?”

“How much deeper?”

“It won’t matter how deep,” Drue said. “Because your body just naturally floats. It’s okay to be afraid at first, but then, after a little bit, I’ll let go of your hand, and the next thing you know, you’ll be in the water and you’ll be swimming like a mermaid.”

“Okay,” Aliyah said.

“Are you hungry?” Drue asked. “Do you happen to like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as much as I do?”

“I only like strawberry jelly,” Aliyah said. “And chunky peanut butter.”

“Me too!” Drue exclaimed. “Let’s eat!”

They had lunch on the deck, eating off paper plates and enjoying the stiff breeze coming off the beach.

“Look!” Aliyah said, pointing at a billowing orange and green kite floating through the sky just past the treeline. “What’s that?”

“Let’s go see,” Drue said.

They walked hand in hand down to the beach. A sun-browned teenage girl stood with her back to the wind, both hands grasping the control bar of a trainer kite. Her long blond hair streamed out behind her as she walked down the beach, and the kite swooped and dipped and fluttered at a forty-five-degree angle over the waves as the girl expertly turned the bar.

Except for the girl’s blond hair, Drue thought, that could have been her, twenty years ago.

“What’s she doing?” Aliyah asked.

“She’s learning how to fly with that kite. And she’s pretty good already.”

Aliyah looked up at her. “Do you know how to fly like that?”

“I used to,” Drue said. “A long time ago.”

“Why did you stop?”

Drue gazed down at her knee. There was no swelling today, and the incision was no longer an angry red.

“I hurt myself, and then I was too afraid.”

“Are you still afraid?” Aliyah asked.

Drue thought about the spare bedroom in the cottage, and the door she thought she had so firmly closed on her past.

“A little bit,” she said. “But I think I’m getting over it.”





65


She’d called ahead to tell Yvonne that a courier from the law firm would be dropping off some legal papers on Saturday morning. “Will you be home then?” Drue asked.

“Ain’t got no place else to be,” Yvonne said.

Drue followed Jonah to Yvonne’s house in his Audi, and he was at the wheel of the ten-year-old Acura, which they’d washed and vacuumed and waxed until it sparkled like it was new.

She waited in the Audi while Jonah got out and knocked on Yvonne’s screened door.

The rusted-out Plymouth was in the same place it had been on her last visit. The hood was still raised, and the same two tires were still missing.

When the grandmother appeared in the doorway, Drue sank as far down in the seat as she could. After a moment’s discussion, Yvonne came out onto the front stoop. Jonah handed her the keys, then pointed at the gleaming silver Acura.

Yvonne’s hands flew up to her face and she screeched something unintelligible. Then the screen door flew open. Aliyah walked slowly over to the car, her face enveloped in a wide, blissful smile, followed by her grandmother.

Yvonne ran her hands over the hood and and then the doors and the trunk of the car, exclaiming so loudly that the neighbors across the street emerged from their homes to see what all the fuss was about.

Jonah made a dash for the Audi, and before Yvonne had time to react or ask questions, Drue had already driven away and was halfway down the block.

“That was fun,” Jonah said. “We should give away cars bought with ill-gotten gains every week.”

“What was Yvonne hollering?” Drue asked. “She was so excited, I couldn’t quite make it out.”

“‘God is good,’” Jonah said. “I bet she said that a dozen times.”



* * *



After they got back to the cottage, Jonah suggested lunch at Sharky’s.

“Really?” Drue wrinkled her nose. “The food’s not even that good.”

“That’s not the point,” he said. “Sharky’s is our place now. The place where it all began. Just humor me, okay?”

They ate mediocre grouper sandwiches and were about to walk back to the cottage when they noticed a crowd gathering a few hundred yards up the beach at the Gulf Vista.

“Wonder what’s going on?” Drue asked.

“I know,” Jonah said. “Today’s the day they start demolition of the original wing of the hotel, to make way for the new spa. Let’s go watch.”

“Why?”

“It’s the little kid in me,” Jonah said. “I love that stuff. Dump trucks and backhoes and excavators.” He tugged at her hand. “Come on.”

She reluctantly followed him up to the point where the beach ended and the resort’s property line began. The crowd had swelled to nearly a hundred people, and the gate had temporarily been replaced with orange plastic construction netting and DANGER—KEEP OFF signs.