"Aw, come on." He grinned. "It was obvious you wanted me from the moment you saw me." I rolled my eyes. "It"s okay. It happens all the time. That"s why you walked over to the rocks, so I would have to talk to you."
I had to laugh. Partly because it was true. "actually, my dad sent me down there to make sure you were doing your job and keeping people off the rocks. You didn"t get a very good report, sorry to say."
He shrugged again. "Last week of summer. What can I say?" There was a long pause, and we both looked out at the water. The large fog bank that had been sitting on the horizon was now creeping closer.
Tyler nudged my shoulder. "So come on. What"s one thing that"s different here-in a good way?" I thought about it. "I guess that people aren"t exactly what I expected." He motioned for me to go on. "Well, look at Ashley. She seems like kind of ..."
"Clueless?"
"No. I was gonna say *prissy rich girl." But she"s actually really sweet and generous." Tyler nodded like he"d give me the benefit of the doubt on that one.
"And Jillian-the first day I met her, all I wanted to do was beat her at running because she seemed so smug about it. But I kind of like that about her now." I paused for a sip of my soda. "And then you. well . Jury"s still out on that."
He grinned. "Fair enough. Maybe a tour of the cottages will help you decide. Eat something. Then I"ll give you the grand tour. Your choice-pick a piece of history."
CHAPTER 17.
The sun melted into the mist all around us, and I shivered in the breeze that had carried it in. I wished I"d grabbed a sweater. Or that he"d just pull me in close to warm me up. We stood in front of a smattering of condemned cottages-all practically falling down, but each one unique. Behind the waist-high fence the state had put in, there was a boardwalk that now rolled and waved over sand and under the ice plant that had taken over. I wondered if the boardwalk had at one time spanned the length of the beach, but it didn"t seem likely.
"Well ?" Tyler faced the cottages. "Which one?"
I swept my eyes over the worn wood of each cottage and settled on one a few steps away. In front of it, half-buried, lay a small blue rowboat that looked like it had sunk into the sand.
"That one." I pointed. "It looks like a postcard."
"It is, in the general store. The Carter Cottage. It"s also been painted a million times or so. Originall choice." He stared straight ahead at the Carter Cottage, and though I did too, I could feel him smiling.
"Hey, you said it was my choice. That one looks the most ..."
"Friendly?" he finished.
"Yeah. I dunno if it"s the fog or what, but they all look a little creepy right now." He turned to face me and shrugged. "We don"t have to go in if you don"t want. It"s mainly spiderwebs and mouse c.r.a.p, anyway." I scrunched my nose. "But in a few you can find stuff that the people left behind when they had to leave." automatically my eyes went way down the beach, to my mother"s cottage. "When did they leave again?" I asked casually.
"The state gave them their first eviction notices back in the seventies, but they fought it until around fifteen years ago." He kicked at the sand in front of him with his toes. "In these ones that haven"t been redone, there"s still a lot of their stuff. That"s what makes the cottages kind of creepy. This one"s that way.
Has a story, too."
I was still looking down at the beach cottage. My mother"s cottage. The possibility of anything of hers still inside made me feel heavy and slow. I swallowed and forced myself to turn my eyes back to Tyler. When I did, he grinned and nudged me.
"still in? If you get scared ... you know, feel free to just grab on to me, and I"ll fight off the cottage ghosts." He puffed up his chest in exaggerated toughness.
He meant it as a joke, but it took everything I had to offer a smile.
I stepped over a low point in the fence. "All right then. The Carter Cottage."
In the dark the smell of damp wood was the first thing I noticed. That, and that the floor felt like it was gonna give. Both were unsettling.
Tyler grabbed my elbow lightly. "Watch your step. There"s holes all over the place." He flicked on the flashlight. "There." My eyes followed the beam of light as it circled the small room. He had been right about a few things. Cobwebs hung heavily from the ceiling corners and window frames, the wood floor was dotted everywhere with tiny brown pellets, and everything was still there-a sagging couch facing the ocean, a coffee table, shadowed picture frames on the walls. I didn"t move.
"It"s darker in here than I thought it would be," I said, looking back toward the cracked door.
"All the shutters are closed up. These things are pretty dark even in the daytime." He stepped past me, avoiding a broken floorboard. "This one is small.
Living room right here, kitchen, bathroom, and one tiny bedroom. I think it must have been where the kids slept, because there"s still a set of bunk beds in there. Wanna see?"
I thought of every horror movie I"d ever watched. The ones with kids in them were always the creepiest. I tried to stall. "How do you all of a sudden know so much about these places? And why"d you play dumb about them at the bonfire?"
He led me through a narrow doorway. "Rookie hazing. Remember? We have to go through all the ones on the north side. Except that when we do it, there are dumb-a.s.s old guards hiding everywhere, jumping out at you like idiots. James actually put his foot through the floor back there last summer."
We went into the tiny bedroom, which held the bunk beds and not much else. Tyler shined the light on their red metal frame. "What was your other question?"
I rolled my eyes in the dark. "Why you played dumb at the bonfire," I answered with feigned annoyance. Despite the overtly creepy atmosphere, I was starting to enjoy myself.
"Oh, that. If I"d told you all about it then, you wouldn"t have gotten curious and tried to rope me into a guided tour." He put the flashlight under his chin and widened his eyes. "Guess it worked. I"m good."
"And modest." I rolled my eyes again, this time sure that there was enough light for him to see me. Then I looked around the room, which was mostly empty, aside from the beds. In the corner was a tiny wooden picnic table. I pointed to it. "Shine the light over there for a second." He did, and I stepped over another hole in the floor, then stood over the table.
Tyler came up behind me and curved his arm around me to put the flashlight directly over the table. It took everything in me not to lean back into him.
"I wasn"t gonna show you this, cuz I thought it might freak you out. It"s actually the best thing I"ve found in all the cottages. Kind of the saddest, too, though." I stared at the tabletop below me. Underneath a clear layer, probably surfboard resin, black-and-white images of two kids, a boy and a girl, smiled up at us. The entire surface of the table was a col age of the two light-haired kids at different ages, all over the beach. In one I recognized the cottage in the background. The kids sat on the boardwalk in front of it, hanging their tan legs over the edge. In another they stood proudly in front of a little boat, with their dad, I a.s.sumed. He had the same light eyes and crinkly smile. I ran my hand over the smooth surface.
"I can"t believe they didn"t take this when they left. It"s like their whole childhood down here."
"I know," Tyler said.
I leaned down and looked at another image of the kids, who stood silhouetted side by side, looking out the living room window at the ocean. "They must have hated leaving here."
Tyler kept the light over the table. "Well, according to James, they didn"t really leave."
"What do you mean," I asked tentatively.
"I thought he was just messing with us when he told it, but he swears up and down that those two kids and their mom drowned under that little blue boat out there."
Chill s went through me, and I stared at the picture of them in front of the boat. "Under it?" Something about this sounded vaguely familiar.
"Yeah. In, like, three feet of water. On a sunny day with small surf." My stomach went queasy. I knew this story. I"d heard my dad tell it to rookie guards during training, to keep them from being complacent. I"d had no idea it had happened here. Tyler went on. "The dad took them out, just to go paddle around. It was a calm day, but a big set wave came and flipped the boat." I bit my lip, knowing what was coming, unable to take my eyes away from the smiling faces of the kids and their father. "The dad got thrown from the boat first." Tyler paused and looked down at the pictures.
I nodded, the scenario playing out in my head, now with faces to put to it. I knew from my dad"s story that the father had been thrown from the boat, and that while he"d struggled in the sh.o.r.e break, a second wave had pounded his wife and kids, and that, unfortunately, they"d clung to each other and the boat before it had flipped over. I could hear my dad"s voice as he told the story of the family trapped beneath their little boat in three feet of water. A freak accident on a placid day.
I interrupted Tyler. "That was one of my dad"s first rescues. He was the first one to get to the boat, then the dad was there too, and he said they could hear the kids and the mom yelling from under it." When my dad told the story to the rookie cla.s.ses, he spoke about how the boat had landed in a depth of water, at such an angle, that it was Literally suctioned to the sand. He told them about how the strength of all the people on the beach who rushed into the water to help wasn"t enough to loose it from the sand. How eventually, they"d had to wait for the tide to come up, and the inevitable. And he told them how they could never take the ocean for granted and how he would always be reminded of that fact by the memory of m.u.f.fled voices from beneath that boat, on a sunny day, in water that barely covered his knees. There weren"t many things that could stun a group of c.o.c.ky new guys into silence, but my dad"s voice when he told that story was one of them.
That same silence fell over Tyler and me now, and I searched for a way to break it. "So the dad just left after that? Left everything here?" Tyler swept the flashlight around the room. "Yeah. I would have too. There"s no way I could stay and look out at the place where my whole family died right in front of me."
My chest squeezed hard, forcing the air out of me slowly. I had. For nine years. I"d stared straight out at cold, black water, apologizing for whatever it was I"d done and willing her to come back, wondering what I could have done differently.
Tyler turned to me. "You okay? You wanna get outta here?"
"Yeah. I ... I need some fresh air, I think." He looked at me for a long moment, trying to decipher what had changed. I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried to sound normal. "Let"s go." I ushered him in front of me and tentatively put my hand on his shoulder as we made our way back out to the door.
It was lighter than I expected it to be when we stepped onto the porch of the Carter Cottage. The tang of the salt air, coupled with the smack of a wave, opened my chest up and I breathed in deeply. Tyler was looking at me, his flashlight pointed at our feet. I raised my eyes to meet his and hoped that he couldn"t see what I had felt.
"You get a little spooked in there?"
"Yeah. Sorry. That was ..."
"It"s okay. I don"t blame you." We were quiet a moment, and he smiled. "Although I did warn you it was creepy." A stray strand of my hair rose with the breeze, and I shivered, then tucked it away behind my ear.
"You cold?" Tyler unzipped his hoodie and took a step closer, offering it. It was, of course, a nice gesture. In a different moment I might have thought of it as cliche, maybe even laughed it off or teased him a little. Now, though, it felt like a prelude to a moment of possibility, and the thought made me tingly with antic.i.p.ation.
"Thanks." Smiling, I slid my arms into the too-big sleeves that were still warm, and pulled it tight around me.
"Wanna walk a little?"
I nodded, and we stepped off the porch and back over the fence onto the sand. The fog had risen to form a hazy white ceiling above us, and the few nearby lights reflected off it, creating a pale glow. We walked in the wet sand at a slow, meandering pace with no destination other than, in my mind, the moment we had missed out on more than once before. I glanced over at Tyler, who picked up a pebble and rubbed the sand from its surface with his thumb. He stopped abruptly, then raised his eyes to mine and opened his mouth like he was going to say something. I waited. Breathlessly would be only a slight exaggeration. Then he turned and chucked the pebble into the water, where it skipped over the surface twice before disappearing. "So is your curiosity satisfied now?" Tyler asked, taking a step to keep going.
I wanted to be bold. tell him no, it wasn"t. Stop him, turn, and lean in close-so close, he couldn"t mistake it for anything else.
"Maybe," I managed. "I might want to see some of the other ones, though, another time." Not quite as bold as I"d imagined, but it still left an opening. We walked side by side.
A smile, not a smirk, spread over his face, and he looked over at me, our footsteps slowing. "I think that could be arranged." In the pale light reflected off the water and the clouds, I could just make out his eyes, looking at me intently, and I knew we were close. All it would take was a step forward, a tilt of the head, a tiny risk. The seconds stretched out between us.
I stopped walking and turned to face him. "Good. Because I ... You ..."
I saw his head tilt slightly as he leaned in, and before I had time to think about it, his hand was warm on my cheek. And he kissed me. A slow, sweet kiss that was confident and gentle at the same time, that tasted like salt, and mint gum, and perfection, and that seemed to ask a question he already knew the answer to. I melted into it entirely, and in that moment nothing else existed. We lingered there after, our foreheads tilted together, not sure what to say.
Then Tyler whipped his head back abruptly.
"s.h.i.t." He was looking past me, down the beach. "Headlights."
I spun around. "That"s my dad." We watched the beams rise and fall over the sand at the south end of the beach, definitely coming our direction. "He"s going to my house. Dinner."
Tyler was taking off his shoes. "Run. You need to run home. Now. Go."
I burst out laughing and slid my sandals off. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah, I"m serious. What do you think he"s gonna do if he gets home and you"re not there? Go." He was laughing too, shaking his head. "s.h.i.t."
"Okay, okay." I took a step, then turned around. "Where are you going?"
"Home. I"ll see you tomorrow." He stood barefoot in the sand, holding his shoes and the flashlight.
I didn"t move.
He pointed at the light beams still making their way up the beach. "Go, or he"s gonna have Newport Beach PD out here looking for you."
"All right." I smiled. "I"m going."
I turned, then glanced back to see Tyler, in the lights of the dirt road, making his way slowly onto the beach behind me, to where he would take the road up to his car. I looked around. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, but once they did, I found the water"s edge and broke into a run.
I couldn"t remember ever having run at night. It was a different sensation altogether. I wasn"t conscious of my breathing or steps at all. Just the sounds of the night as I pa.s.sed them by-a wave crashing, the voices and clinking of silverware that drifted down from the restaurant, and the literall symphony of frogs in the creek bed I had heard the night we"d arrived.
I kept my eyes on the headlights as they rounded a point and then disappeared into the cove south of our house, right as I reached the bottom of our steps. I took two at a time, then all in one motion I burst through the door, flipped on the light, and threw myself into the green chair, swooping up my book on the way down. Light splashed onto the sand in front of our house, followed by the low hum of my dad"s engine working its way over the dips and hill s.
He slowed the truck and flashed his spotlight up at the living room window. I sat up in the chair and waved enthusiastically, and he cruised right on by, continuing his patrol of the beach.
I exhaled loudly, leaned my head back on the chair, and replayed the kiss, over and over, until my breathing returned to normal. Tyler was interested. And an amazing kisser. Definitely worth missing the party for. Smiling, I snuggled down into his sweatshirt and rolled my head over to the side so I could look out the window. But I stopped abruptly when I found myself staring straight at my mom"s cottage. The windows were dark, but not boarded up like the ones in the Carter Cottage. In one spot the fence leaned enough so that a person could just step right over it and find their way to the door, which was probably unlocked. I sat for a moment, wondering what it would be like to step inside it, just to see if there was anything left of her there.
I shivered and sat up, flipped to the first page of the book in my lap, and felt in my chest that same heavy sinking feeling when I read the opening sentences.
All sea G.o.ddesses inherit the sea"s qualities. Just as the sea can be gentle and nurturing, or violent and deadly, so can they. They are at once beautiful and cruel, tender and selfish, vulnerable, yet unattainable. Above all, they offer shimmering glimpses into the deep ocean of secrets that is a woman"s heart.
My mother had always been a mystery to me, even when she was alive. She"d been all those things, all at once, and we"d tiptoed around her even then.
And now, here, she"d stirred up the placid surface of my life and thrown me into rough, dark water-a deep ocean of secrets.
I couldn"t tell anyone I was flailing.
CHAPTER 18.
"Wake up, sunshine. We"re goin" surfin". Your board"s in the bus, coffee"s made, and we leave in five minutes." I pulled my covers up over my head.
"I"m not taking no for an answer. It"s good out there."
"Where are we going?" I mumbled.
"South parking lot. Ab Rock. You know the place, I"m pretty sure." I could hear the smiling sarcasm in my dad"s voice. Apparently enough time had pa.s.sed that we could now joke about my misadventures. I waited for his feet to pad away down the hall, and replayed kissing Tyler for the millionth time before I got out of bed. I hadn"t dreamed it. It had really happened.
A few minutes later I was pouring enough cream into my coffee to make it the same color as the sand outside. I didn"t much like to drink it, but I did like the feel of the warm cup in my hand as we drove down the highway and then stood on the cliff, checking the surf. n.o.body else was out yet, and the sun sparkled on the water, inviting us to be the first ones. My dad put his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed. "Seems like I haven"t seen you all week. It"ll be nice to get out there together. We can go get a big breakfast after."
I smiled over at him. "Sounds good." It did, but I was wary. We were going to have to talk about things at some point, and I could tell it was gonna be today, out in the water.
He took a slow sip of his coffee and watched as a set lined up. Aside from the waves, it was so quiet I wondered if he was thinking the same thing. He swallowed and nodded decisively. "All right. Let"s go."