Page 123 of Ten Beach Road

Forty-two

On the morning of their last day on Pass-a-Grille, Nicole woke early. Like she had so many other mornings, she pulled on her running clothes, which now sported dabs of pink paint and blobs of polyurethane, and walked outside to stretch.

The sky was once again a soft powder blue, the sun pale and gentle in its initial ascent, as she stepped out onto Beach Road and headed resolutely past Bella Flora and toward the beach. Chiding her inner wussiness, she barely glanced at the battered façade, then took the path to the jetty with its pierless pilings, picking her way around the newly formed dunes and mountains of still-damp sand.

Drawing in a breath that carried scents decidedly less attractive than the normal tang of salt, she began a slow jog, careful to keep her gaze on the pink castle-like walls of the Don CeSar, already debating whether she would turn around before she got close enough to see any indignities it might have suffered.

Her focus was so inward that it took her a few moments to notice the shadow coming up from behind to obliterate her own. At the sound of footsteps coming up beside her, she glanced over to see Joe Giraldi. He looked much as he had the first time he’d joined her on this beach: T-shirt tucked into the waistband of his running shorts, bare chest sunkissed but not yet glistening with sweat. They ran for a time without speaking, sidestepping drifts of seaweed and dead fish, sticking to the hardest-packed sand, their shoes crunching on broken bits of shell.

“Did you come to gloat?” she finally asked, her focus still locked on the Don in the distance.

“No,” he said, turning his head. Even behind the sunglasses she could feel the intensity of his gaze. “I came to thank you. I know it couldn’t have been easy. But you did a good thing.”

Nicole snorted. She’d given up all the second-guessing. Malcolm had left her no choice and she couldn’t, in good conscience, have kept the money from the Florida accounts. She knew that ultimately she’d done the right thing. But the fact that it was right didn’t make it feel good.

She turned to study Giraldi, the beak of a nose, the strong jaw and even stronger shoulders. “So, this is good-bye then?”

“Oh, I may not disappear completely,” he said. “The accountants and the prosecutors take over now, but I won’t be completely out of the loop.” He paused for a moment though there was no hesitation in his stride. “The report I filed indicates that you were working with us when you went into the park. It’s not everyone who would have turned over that money.”

They ran for a time in silence, reaching the Don, where workers were still clearing away debris and setting things to rights. From here it appeared the hotel had fared better than Bella Flora. It was bound to be better insured.

Without discussion they turned back, Giraldi matching his pace to hers. Questions flitted through her mind as they ran, but the answers no longer mattered. They neared the shuttered Paradise Grille, many of its tables buried under mounds of sand. The marauding seagulls would be forced to maraud elsewhere.

“Off to play Peeping Tom again?” she asked after they’d neared the jetty and slowed to a walk. Her gaze was on his face now, but the sunglasses hid his eyes along with his thoughts.

“I always have my trench coat in the car, just in case,” he said, flashing her a white-toothed smile. “But I doubt I’m going to get a shot at anything anywhere near as enjoyable as keeping tabs on you.”

It was maudlin and showed her age, but “Leaving on a Jet Plane” played in Maddie’s head that afternoon as she set her suitcases next to the cottage door and cleaned out the van for the drive back to Atlanta in the morning. Over and over she told herself that everything would be all right. That Steve was back, the kids were okay, their family was intact.

Still, she had to force a smile as she waved Steve and Andrew off for their guys’ cookout at the Hardins’, then dragged herself to Bella Flora to meet Avery and Nicole and Deirdre and Kyra for their very last sunset.

She didn’t walk through Bella Flora; she simply couldn’t face her gouged walls and gaping wounds, the pungent wet salt smell that didn’t complement the smell of plastic tarp, the dark injured rooms with their sodden floors and plywood Band-Aids. Instead she followed the brick drive around to the back where she set out their neon-strapped aluminum beach chairs, which had been unearthed in the garage closet. Their “cocktail table” was an electrical cable spindle delivered by Hurricane Charlene and turned on its end.

From a grocery bag Maddie pulled the family-sized bag of Cheez Doodles and a foil-covered plate of the tiny hotdogs in blankets that had been a sunset staple and which Kyra now craved. Nikki arrived carrying a blender of margaritas. Kyra, her assistant, followed with her camera bag over one shoulder and a second pitcher in her hands. Avery and Deirdre brought the plastic margarita glasses, which they passed around. Bella Flora hunkered beside them dark and abandoned. After all the rain she’d absorbed she was probably not thirsty.

“Ah,” Avery said when she spotted the beach chairs. “I never really felt comfortable with all that fancy wrought iron.” She cast a glance at the cushionless furniture that had been dragged out of the pool much the worse for the experience.

“No, aluminum and corrugated cardboard is definitely more your style,” Nikki said automatically, but without heat.

They fell silent as they sipped their drinks and nibbled on the snacks. Their gazes were focused on the sky like strangers in an elevator watching the floor numbers go by. They’d been just those kind of strangers when they’d arrived back in May, Maddie thought. Since then they’d slept, sweated, laughed, and cried together, and of course, they’d fought with each other. They’d survived some of the worst things life could throw at them. Together.

The sun glowed golden red as it inched toward its resting place beneath the now-calm water. The concrete pilings of the fishing pier stood as silent testament to all that had been ripped away. Just as Bella Flora did.

“I can’t believe it’s ending like this,” Avery said. “I can’t believe we’re leaving Bella Flora worse off than we found her.”

Kyra had begun shooting after just a few sips of her nonalcoholic margarita. No one thought to ask her to stop; she’d captured and shared much worse than this final good-bye, though Maddie didn’t think she’d shot anything sadder.

No one talked about where they would go in the morning or what they would do next. Maddie could feel all of them straining to stay in the moment, but it was impossible not to think about the fact that she might never see these women, who knew her in ways no one ever had, again.

“I hope to hell you’re not expecting anyone to come up with anything good tonight, Maddie,” Avery said, her gaze fixed on the sun, which now hovered above the Gulf, its reflected brilliance shimmering beneath it.

Deirdre drank silently, but Maddie noticed the way the designer kept studying her daughter as if recording each feature and expression for playback at a later time.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Maddie acknowledged. “But we’re all going to have to come up with . . . something.” She smiled and felt her heart twist. “We wouldn’t be ‘us’ without our ‘one good thing.’ ”

There was another silence as she imagined them thinking, as she was, that after tonight there wouldn’t be an “us.”

“I’ll go first,” Maddie said, pushing the thought away. “I’m incredibly glad that Steve’s found himself and made it here. I’ll be forever grateful for that.” She raised her glass not toward the setting sun, but toward them. “But my one good thing, my best thing, is all of you.”

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