Beach House Reunion (Beach House #5)(26)
The young man she’d come home to was a different person. His smile was there, but his usual good humor was missing. He was drinking a lot too. Way too much. Her parents were right to be upset, but yelling at him wasn’t going to help. They had to loosen up on the pressure. They had to listen to him.
Linnea squeezed her hands into fists. She wanted to help but felt powerless. It reminded her of when Cooper was little and got sick. She’d hung around his room and worried. There wasn’t anything she could do. Except watch and wait.
She would watch and wait now too. She wouldn’t leave him. She made the only decision she could. She wouldn’t go to the beach house tomorrow. She’d call Cara and tell her she’d come when she could.
Chapter Seven
Loggerheads are found all around the world. They are the most abundant of all sea turtle species in U.S. waters and nest on the southeastern coast of the United States, mostly Florida. But their numbers worldwide are decreasing. Pollution, trawling, and development have kept this ancient mariner on the threatened species list since 1978.
WHERE DID THE week go? Cara wondered as she ran her hand through her hair. She stood staring at a wall calendar made by a member of the turtle team. Each month featured a color photograph of the loggerhead turtle season. For June it was a photo of a woman’s cherry-red-painted toes in the sand beside two tiny hatchlings as they scrambled to the sea. And Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island already had nineteen nests. It gave her hope that the loggerheads were trending upward. She paused, thinking again of the irony that nothing made her feel more like she’d arrived home than the sea turtles. As a girl, she’d been jealous of her mother’s devotion to the turtles. As a woman, she’d taken her mother’s place on the team.
The sea turtle nesting season heralded summer on Isle of Palms. Across the marshes, schools had released the children. Teachers and parents both sighed in collective relief that another year was done. Colleges were out, and families from across the country—the world—were planning vacations to the lowcountry. The floodgates were open, and already the bridges to the islands were jam-packed with traffic. Colorful towels lay scattered on the beach like confetti.
When Linnea had called and said she’d begin working the following week instead of immediately, Cara was disappointed. She’d been so eager to start the new routine. She had so much work to do. On reflection, however, she’d decided to take this gift of a week as vacation time with Hope. She’d been so frazzled when she’d arrived: the move, the drive . . . all while learning to be a mother. Yet day by day, she’d fallen into island time and felt more relaxed. Plus, she’d discovered that when she was relaxed, Hope was too. She wasn’t as clingy now as she had been those first days.
“You’re going on your first turtle duty,” she’d told Hope when she lifted her from the crib that morning. The sun was barely up, but Cara had volunteered for today’s walk to help a fellow turtle team member who was ill. She applied a heavy dose of baby suntan lotion on Hope’s body, put on a broad-brimmed sun hat, and packed up a beach bag with lotion, water, sippy cup, towels, and snacks.
Cara made her way down the narrow beach path as nimble as a pack mule. All around her the dunes were cloaked with colorful wildflowers and vines. When she was young, these dunes had stretched far back to her beach house and she would be able to see the great expanses of the ocean from the street. After Hurricane Hugo in 1989, new mansions had formed a glamorous wall along the street and nary a peek of blue ocean could be spied between them. It seemed to her that constructing the houses even closer to the water was a dare from the builders to the ocean to strike again. She chuckled to herself. She knew who’d win that contest.
Which was another reason she was so grateful to Russell Bennett for purchasing the plots of land in front of her beach house. She pushed the stroller along the beach path that traversed the property. Russell Bennett had cleverly, deliberately set aside two plots on the island for conservation. No one could build on them. He’d done it to set an example for others. The fact that he’d purchased them in front of her beach house wasn’t lost on her. Russell Bennett had been the love of her mother’s life. And she was his. She liked to believe that, had he lived, they would have found a way to be together. Fate was against them. As were the constraints of their time. They were both married to others when they fell in love, and divorce was a scandal. That he loved her, there could be no doubt.
For he’d left a third plot of land in Lovie’s name with enough money in an offshore trust to provide for it. It was all very neatly done. Very hush-hush. And it was her mother’s greatest secret. One she’d kept all her life for fear of scandal. She wouldn’t allow her love affair with Russell to appear tawdry. The only ones who knew of the land were Cara, Flo, and the offshore bank. After Lovie’s death, that plot of oceanfront land had been inherited by Cara. Along with the beach house.
Cara reached the beginning of the beach path and paused to catch her breath before hiking the sandy path with Hope in her arms. She looked back over her shoulder. Across the lot she could see the beach house, sitting prettily in the distance, surrounded by waving sea oats and wildflowers. She chuckled. If her brother ever found out about the land she’d inherited, he’d split a gut. Palmer had been searching for ways to buy the land given to conservation for decades, and failing that, he’d been angling for Cara to sell the beach house. His plan was to build a house on the site and make big profits for both of them.