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
“I do have a girl. If I didn’t, though, I’d be honored to meet your sister.”
“All the good ones are taken,” Gina said with a shrug.
“How do you know I’m a good one?”
“I work in a fish camp,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I know. I will be back with your Coke and your food.”
Peyton looked out the window toward the river and could see fishing boats beginning to make their way in. Watching them dock made him oddly homesick—not for Savannah or any other place in particular, but for the sense of being home, of being right where he belonged. Turning his palms up, he studied his hands, where early blisters had now become calluses. Finn would say he finally had fisherman’s hands.
He wondered why there was a small bowl of thumbtacks and a pen on his table but then noticed all the dollar bills people had signed and tacked to the wall. He was reading the ones next to his booth when something on a dollar about three feet above the table caught his eye—the neat, almost architectural handwriting. He climbed onto his knees in the booth so he could see the dollar better. And there it was: “Marshall Loves Kate.”
He ran his fingers over the signature. Even scattering his father’s ashes hadn’t delivered the gut punch he felt from this penciled declaration of love on a worn dollar bill tacked to the wall of a fish house. Maybe riding his father’s road had made him appreciate both the adventure and the loneliness of it. His dad had sat in this very booth, thinking of his mother. And now here Peyton was, thinking of Lisa. He pulled out the tack and took down the dollar bill, then slid back into his seat just before Gina arrived with his food and a bottle of Coke.
“What are you doing?” Gina frowned and pointed at the dollar he had taken down.
How would he ever explain—that his parents fell in love at first sight, that they would’ve given their lives for each other, that family dragged them off of their idyllic island and a war drove a bottle between them, that his father had suffered in silence and his mother never gave up on him . . .
“My parents,” he said, pointing at the names on the bill.
Gina looked at the dollar, then back at Peyton. “They still alive?” she asked.
“My mother is. Not my father. Not anymore.”
Gina kept looking at him. “You keep it. You need anything?”
“No thanks,” he said as Gina backed away from his table. He carefully tucked the dollar into his pocket, took another from the money roll tucked inside his shoe, and wrote “Peyton Loves Lisa” on it. He tacked it to the wall where his father’s dollar had been. Then he ate the food Gina brought and waited for her to come back with his check.
He had been so preoccupied with the dollar—and so shaken by it—that he hadn’t noticed the café filling up. Every booth, table, and barstool was occupied, and there appeared to be only one other waitress helping Gina, who was waiting tables and tending bar, practically running back and forth between the two.