BooksBarbecue
Back Parting Shot Save as PDF
Chapters (68)
  1. Dedication
  2. Title Page
  3. Contents
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-One
  34. Thirty-Two
  35. Thirty-Three
  36. Thirty-Four
  37. Thirty-Five
  38. Thirty-Six
  39. Thirty-Seven
  40. Thirty-Eight
  41. Thirty-Nine
  42. Forty
  43. Forty-One
  44. Forty-Two
  45. Forty-Three
  46. Forty-Four
  47. Forty-Five
  48. Forty-Six
  49. Forty-Seven
  50. Forty-Eight
  51. Forty-Nine
  52. Fifty
  53. Fifty-One
  54. Fifty-Two
  55. Fifty-Three
  56. Fifty-Four
  57. Fifty-Five
  58. Fifty-Six
  59. Fifty-Seven
  60. Fifty-Eight
  61. Fifty-Nine
  62. Sixty
  63. Sixty-One
  64. Sixty-Two
  65. Sixty-Three
  66. Sixty-Four
  67. Sixty-Five
  68. Copyright

At one of our pit stops along the interstate, I studied the directions to the East Sandwich beach house Madeline Plimpton had sent me in an email. I entered them into the GPS gadget that normally sat in the glove box, but which was now to take a prominent position atop the dashboard, with the aid of a suction cup device.

“You should have a nav system built right into the dash,” Jeremy said, coming out of his self-imposed vow of silence.

“I don’t think they knew what a nav system was when they built this car. I’m just happy it has a radio.”

“How long are we going to this place for?” he asked, not for the first time.

“We’re taking things a day at a time, pal,” I said.

I was pretty good with my trip estimate. Three hours and fifty-eight minutes after we’d left the restaurant in Kingston, we were turning off Old King’s Highway, also known as 6A, onto Ploughed Neck Road, heading for North Shore Boulevard. Grey shingled beach houses dotted the horizon. We turned onto North Shore and Jeremy helped me look for the number Ms. Plimpton had given me.

“There it is,” he said.

I hit the brake and cranked the wheel to turn into the driveway. The tires crunched on a mix of gravel and seashells. We parked at the back of a two-story house with a set of steps going up the side. I found a key under a mat where Ms. Plimpton had told me in her email the rental agent would leave it. While I opened the first-floor door, Jeremy disappeared up the outside flight of open-backed stairs.

The first floor consisted of two bedrooms, a decent-sized kitchen, a living room and a bathroom. There was the usual Cape Cod kitsch one might expect. Ship models on shelves and atop the fireplace mantel, paintings of the sea, a fisherman’s net artfully hung on one wall. Bookshelves were jammed with old paperbacks and board games. There was a circular metal staircase at the other end that led up to the second floor, where I found another bedroom and a sitting area with sliding glass doors that opened onto a spacious deck.

That was where I found Jeremy. He’d accessed it from the set of steps that ran up the outside of the house.

I unlocked and slid open the doors and felt the cool breeze from Cape Cod Bay blow over my face. About sixty feet of tall grasses separated the house from the beach, and beyond that, blue water that seemed to go on forever.

“The ocean is beautiful,” Jeremy said, hands on the railing taking in the view.