Sunset Beach(21)

Drue opened the bag and lifted out a sugary pastry. She took a bite and smiled despite herself. “Apple fritter from Publix? I can’t believe you remembered.”

“I remember more than you give me credit for,” he replied evenly.

Brice changed the subject. “I saw all the trash bags piled at the curb,” he said, looking around the living room. “You must have worked your tail off last night. Okay if I look around?”

“Help yourself,” she said, still chewing.

His footfalls echoed in the empty rooms as he took the brief tour. “The bathroom doesn’t look too bad,” he commented, sitting down on the upturned bucket and taking a sip of his own coffee.

“You should have seen it when I got here,” she said, shuddering at the memory. She squared her shoulders and finished off the fritter. “I want to get the carpet pulled up in the bedrooms today, and then tackle the kitchen.”

Brice pointed up at the patch of exposed lath and plaster in the water-stained ceiling. “I’m thinking you are going to have to replace the roof.”

“I can’t think about that right now,” Drue said. “Definitely not in my budget.”

He started to say something, but a faint chirping noise emanated from his phone. He looked down at the incoming text message. “Wish I could hang around and help, but we’re meeting some out-of-town friends for brunch.”

He handed her a small envelope. “That’s the key to the storage shed. Take all or as much as you need.”



* * *



At noon, Drue changed into a tankini and walked out onto the deck. She could feel the heat of the sand beneath the rubber soles of her flip-flops as she made her way along the dune path to the beach. She dropped her towel and shoes and waded through the shallow water until it was up to her neck. The Gulf was warmer than she’d remembered. She floated on her back and forced herself to just breathe, letting the gentle waves pull her back toward the shore before paddling back out and washing ashore a dozen times.

For a moment, she wondered when the last time was that she’d actually felt the balm of salt water on her skin. And then she remembered. It was the day of the accident.

Hundreds of people were scattered across the beach today, huddling under umbrellas or stretched out on blankets and chairs. Music drifted through the air as she sat on the hard-packed wet sand, her legs stretched out in front of her.

Drue guessed that an hour passed before she walked back to the house. Papi had rigged up an outdoor shower stall on the side of the shed, enclosing it with wooden shutters he’d found on somebody’s trash pile. She struggled out of the swimsuit, slinging it over the top of the stall, then stood under the showerhead and let the shockingly cold water sluice over her body. She dried off, then wrapped the towel around her body and went back to work.



* * *



The kitchen had been Nonni’s kingdom. She’d painted the walls a soft, buttery yellow, and the wooden cabinets, hand-built by Papi, were white enamel, with chrome knobs and pulls.

The Formica countertops were yellow with mica flecks, and the linoleum tile floor was a green and white checkerboard pattern.

Now, of course, everything was coated in years of grease and dirt. She opened every cupboard and drawer and scrubbed them inside and out, sweeping away the dried corpses of a village of cockroaches.

Grease spatters flecked the walls and the boxy old white range. She used an entire bottle of spray cleaner and two rolls of paper towels to scrape off the accumulated layers of grunge.

The unmistakable roar of a motorcycle engine pierced the afternoon quiet. She ran to the front window and peered out in time to see her father dismount from a gleaming red Harley-Davidson. “What the…?”

Drue met him in the driveway.

“Nice bike.”

Brice pulled off his helmet and tucked it under his arm. “This was my birthday present.”

“Wendy bought you a Hawg for your birthday? Is she the beneficiary on your life insurance?”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “For your information, Wendy hates the Harley. This was my present to myself. For outliving all the other bastards.”

“Never would have pegged you as a biker,” Drue said.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Brice said. He unzipped a hard-shelled saddlebag on the back of the bike and lifted out a six-pack of beer, which he handed to her.

“That stands to reason, since you haven’t been a part of my life since I was fifteen,” she shot back.

“Christ!” Brice exploded. “Did you ever stop and ask yourself why that was?”

Drue shrugged. “You and Joan made it pretty clear at the time that you wanted me out of your hair. So I got out. I moved back to Lauderdale. And that was that. Birthday and Christmas cards, sure, but let’s not forget that until the day you showed up out of the blue for Mom’s funeral, you pretty much ghosted me.”

“Did your mom ever mention I never once missed a child support payment? And that every year, without a court order, I upped the payment because I thought that was fair?”

“No.”

“Did she tell you about all the times I offered to buy you a plane ticket to St. Pete?”

“She told me, but what was the point? You could have come to Lauderdale to visit me, but you never did.”