An Unfinished Story(68)

Driving over the bridge from Deadman Key to St. Pete Beach, Claire asked, “Are we getting ahead of ourselves? Assuming the boy in the picture is Orlando is a pretty large leap. It could be anybody.” The possibility felt too much like a fairy tale.

Whitaker was infectious with his recovered excitement. “If that is not Orlando, I will go to work for my father, and I’ll never write another word. The rest of my life. And I will never complain about it again.” He leaned in toward her. “I know with everything that I am that that boy is Orlando.”

Claire weaved past a slow Jeep. She had to agree with Whitaker and continued his argument. “Why else would he have the photo in his desk? The desk where he was writing the story.”

“Exactly.”

Whitaker followed her inside her bungalow. “This place is so you.”

“What does that mean?”

“I love it, quirky and artsy. Feels nice in here. And look who we have here.” Whitaker reached for Willy, who was rubbing his back on Whitaker’s leg. “You must be the infamous One-Eyed Willy.” He held him up and looked at his face. “Yep.”

Whitaker hung out with Willy on the couch while she packed. When she returned to the living room, he was dangling his fingers above, and Willy was trying to paw him. “He’s a good one, an old soul.”

“He’s my little buddy. Pretty much saved my life.”

“I believe it.” He changed the subject. “You know, I’ve driven by this house so many times. It’s funny how two people are meant to cross paths, and it’s inevitable, but they might only be feet away from each other for years before the uniting. How crazy is it that I used to write in your café and now we are here together solving what could turn out to be a real mystery?”

Claire looked around to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. “It was your book that brought us together.”

Whitaker nodded. “And then David not wanting to read it.”

Claire smiled at the memory. “David was never someone to like pop culture.”

“Pop culture?” Whitaker said dramatically, standing from the chair. “Napalm Trees is a literary behemoth. There was nothing pop about it.”

“Pop means popular. Your book and your movie were popular.”

“Taylor Swift is popular. John Grisham is popular. What I wrote is a Tom Waits album of literature. And believe me, not everyone loved it. I’ve read every review ever written, and some people don’t agree on its merits.”

“I stand corrected, Mr. Waits. What I was trying to say was that David didn’t like to be a follower. To read your book was to follow everyone else.”

“Anyway . . . before I cower into the fetal position at the thought of writing pop, are you ready? It looks like you packed for several months. Are we going on a cruise around the world?”

Claire looked down at her bag. “I wanted to be prepared.”



While driving toward the bottom of the peninsula, Claire called one of her managers, making sure things would run well at the café in her absence. The more she and Whitaker talked, the more she believed in their mission. She needed to know who this boy was, how he and David knew each other, and how much of the story was true. Had the man she’d married and grown to trust actually been living a second life? Once again, she found herself angry at him, but this time she had just cause. And what else was there? What else had David been hiding?

Claire turned up the reggae as they left St. Pete and crossed the vast stretch of Tampa Bay on I-275, which separated St. Pete and Bradenton. The wind picked up immediately, but it was too beautiful a day to put the top up. Slivers of thick jungle dotted with oak trees and several varieties of palms bordered the highway, and, beyond that, the sparkling blue of Tampa Bay on both sides.

Rising high over the water on the new cable-stayed bridge, Claire looked at the gangly mangroves of the Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve and then the northern finger of Anna Maria poking out into the blue. How many times had David crossed this bridge?

After their descent, she looked over and noticed Whitaker reddening from the sun. “Do I need to put the top up? You’re looking like a steamed crab.”

Whitaker smiled. “I’ve been hiding in my dungeon for months.”

“I can see that!”

“So before you called my book pop culture, we were discussing how often our paths have crossed. Think about every step that has led us to this drive. At some point, you decided to open up a café on Pass-a-Grille.”

Claire turned down a Raging Fyah tune. “That was about ten years ago.”

“Ten years ago,” he emphasized. “Think about that. You opened the café about the same time I published my book.”

“That’s right,” Claire agreed. “Books were my escape from all the stress of starting a new business.” As the words left her mouth, she realized how much of her life had been a giant escape. Opening Leo’s South had been an escape from the sad reality of living a parentless life. David had been making plenty of money, but what the heck else was she going to do with her time? How else accept the death of her potential motherhood?

“I remember you coming up to me that day at the café. I thought you were just another girl hitting on me.”

“You’re such a dirtbag.” She hit him on the leg. “I most certainly wasn’t hitting on you. I was happily married.”