Contents ( 66)
- Cover
- Books by Valerie Fraser Luesse
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Map of Florida
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- forty-one
- forty-two
- forty-three
- forty-four
- forty-five
- forty-six
- forty-seven
- forty-eight
- forty-nine
- fifty
- fifty-one
- Epilogue
- Keep Reading for a Preview of Valerie Luesse’s Next Book!
- Prologue
- one
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Back Ads
- Back Cover
“It’s a beautiful thing to swim with a mermaid,” Peyton said as he leaned back and floated beside her, reaching out to hold her hand. Gentle swells calmly undulated beneath them and kept them aloft.
“I don’t have the fins for it,” she said with a dreamy sigh.
The Florida sun was warming them from above, the water cooling from below. Peyton once again imagined an aerial image: he and Lisa lying on the ocean, her red hair fanned out behind her, his hand holding hers.
“Hey, Lisa?” he said. “What do you think we look like from the sky?”
A swell lifted them and gently laid them back down before she answered. “Are you going to ask me that every time we get near water?”
“Probably.”
“Well, I think we look like there’s no place else we’d rather be,” she said, “and nobody else we’d rather be with.”
Peyton and Lisa had finished an early supper and were walking back to the marina when a delivery truck caught her eye. “Well, now that’s an appropriate name for an orange grove,” she said. “Paradise Fruits.”
They heard a loud voice and saw a burly man who looked like a prizefighter herding about thirty adults and children out of the marina store and onto the back of the truck. “You got your crackers and baloney, now get back in!”
The people climbing into the truck looked miserable, dirty, and ragged. More than that, they looked hopeless.
“What a horrible man,” Lisa said. “We shouldn’t stare at those poor people, Peyton.”
Just as they were about to turn away, Peyton saw Bonnie and Jasper at the end of the line. “Oh, no,” he groaned as he pointed at the children. “Lisa, that’s them—the kids I told you about. That’s Bonnie and Jasper at the end of that awful line!”
Lisa gasped at the sight of them. Jasper was clutching his sister’s hand. Their legs were covered with scratches, and their clothes were filthy. Their parents were nowhere to be seen.
Peyton and Lisa stared at the children inching their way toward a truck filled with destitute, desperate-looking people who didn’t seem to pay the other kids on board any attention at all. Peyton thought Lisa was about to cry. “We have to get them,” she said. “We can’t let them get on that truck.”
The line was moving slowly, as one exhausted, defeated soul after another climbed aboard. Peyton and Lisa didn’t have much time. No doubt convinced his charges had no energy to run and no place to go even if they did, the driver had taken his seat behind the wheel and cranked the truck, which was backed up to the front of the store. Jasper and Bonnie were standing on the porch that stretched across the front of the grocery, waiting their turn to climb on.
“Let’s go around back.” Peyton took Lisa by the hand, and they ran to the back of the store, through a small door, and up one of the side aisles to the front. The clerk, who was busy stocking his shelves with canned goods, paid them no mind. Peyton cracked the front door just enough to get Bonnie’s attention. There were only three more workers ahead of her in line.