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
In fact, such a momentous day should be marked somehow, but Peyton couldn’t think of any way to do it. On Aunt Gert’s dew-covered step, he wrote the date with his fingertip: May 23, 1947. It was a temporary monument, soon to evaporate, but at least it was something.
“Well, Pirate, I guess this is it,” he said to Aunt Gert’s enormous cat, which occasionally glanced up at Peyton as it lazily groomed itself in an Adirondack chair on the lawn. “Look after the ladies for me.”
Peyton pushed the bike across the yard and down the driveway. Then he climbed on and pedaled down the street toward A1A. Only when he crossed the bridge onto Anastasia Island did it hit him: I’m really doing this.
Just below Crescent Beach, where Anastasia narrowed so much that you could just about throw a rock from the Matanzas riverbank on the western side of the highway and hit the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Peyton pulled onto a boardwalk and stopped to take it in. The sun, rising over the sea, was bathing the morning sky in golden light. Boats were already heading downriver, bound for the St. Augustine and Matanzas Inlets and the fishing grounds that lay miles out to sea. What had his father seen when he pedaled this very road? And what was he himself expecting to find on it?
He had no answers—not yet anyway. He wasn’t even sure what the questions were. He just knew it was time to go, whether he was ready or not.
twenty
Kate lay curled up on Peyton’s bed, wishing for a thunderstorm as a light breeze blew across the sleeping porch. Marshall always loved the rain. He said it calmed his mind. That’s the thing about quiet people—their minds are often noisy. It’s as if their taciturn nature is a way to balance the internal roar.
She reached down and ran a finger over the lid of a shoebox—one of two she had brought with her. Ida Buck, who knew the back way to her house, had slipped in, fetched them for her, and mailed them to Atlanta. By now, Kate knew, Julian would’ve emptied the lake cottage of anything that belonged to Marshall, claiming what he wanted and destroying the rest. Her brother-in-law was so predictably spiteful. Besides her wedding ring—and Peyton—these boxes were the only physical reminders she had of her husband.
Opening the one closest to her, she took out a bundle of postcards tied with string. The one on top read, “Meet Our Lovely Mermaid, Sue!” The “y” in “Lovely” was a mermaid tail. On the back, Marshall had written a short note:
I’m pretty sure that was an oxygen tank Sue kept swimming around.
Just came through Daytona and rode my bike by the ocean. It’s beautiful—at least it would be if you were here.
Don’t forget about me, okay?
Love, Marshall
Don’t forget about me.
Forgetting Marshall would be impossible. Living with the memories—with only the memories—that was what Kate couldn’t fathom.