12. The Record
Chapter twelve
The Record
By seven-thirty the sun was already warm on Lila’s shoulders.
The Gulf flashed blue between the palms to her left while early beachgoers moved slowly along the shoreline carrying folding chairs and coffee cups. Somewhere farther down the trail someone laughed, followed by the sharp metallic rattle of a bicycle crossing the wooden bridge near the marina.
Lila walked with her travel mug in one hand and her sunglasses pushed up into her hair.
The path curved ahead through sea grape and scrub palms before opening briefly toward the water again. She had walked it often enough now that her body knew the rhythm without thinking about it. Forty-five minutes if she kept moving. Longer if she stopped at the overlook near the point.
She heard Biscuit before she saw him.
A low suspicious whine came first, followed by the sound of something rustling aggressively inside the sea grape beside the trail.
Wade appeared around the bend a second later holding the leash loosely in one hand.
“Leave it,” he said calmly.
Biscuit left it with obvious reluctance, then spotted Lila and immediately redirected his entire emotional life toward her in the space of approximately one second.
She laughed and crouched to scratch behind his ears while he leaned dramatically against her knees like a dog greeting someone after a war instead of twenty-four hours.
“He’s been acting like this since the marina,” Wade said. “Something moved in the bushes back there and now he’s convinced we’re under attack.”
“What was it?”
“I chose not to investigate.”
“Smart.”
Biscuit sneezed once in disagreement.
Lila stood and fell into step beside Wade while Biscuit ranged ahead on the leash with the determined focus of someone conducting important field operations.
The Gulf rolled steadily beyond the palms beside them. A great blue heron stood motionless near the shoreline ahead.
“I’m not going back to Charlotte,” Lila said.
Wade glanced over at her. For a second, he didn’t say anything.
“That’s great news,” he said finally, trying to keep his voice even.
A small smile tugged at the corner of Lila’s mouth. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He looked back at Biscuit, then over at her again. “What made you decide to stay?”
Lila was quiet for a moment.
“I listed the house yesterday morning,” she said. “Patricia sent the photographs over.”
Wade waited.
“And while I was looking at them, I realized I didn’t want to do it.” She glanced out toward the water through the palms. “Somewhere along the way it stopped feeling like I was just passing through.”
“What did Claudia say?”
“She took it well. I’ll continue to work remotely from here.” Lila looked ahead at the trail curving through the sea grape. “Apparently she’d suspected it for a while.”
He nodded once.
Biscuit stopped abruptly and stared into the bushes again.
“There’s nothing in there,” Wade told him.
Biscuit remained unconvinced.
“There’s nothing in there,” Lila agreed.
Biscuit looked back at her like betrayal from Wade was expected but betrayal from her felt personal. Then he moved on.
The split in the trail appeared a few minutes later, the left fork cutting back toward Wade’s neighborhood while the right continued toward the overlook and eventually looped back toward town.
Wade slowed.
Biscuit looked between them with immediate concern.
“Dinner tomorrow?” Wade asked.
“I’d like that,” Lila said.
For a second neither of them moved. Then Biscuit made the decision for everyone by turning confidently down the left fork toward home.
Wade smiled once and followed him.
Lila watched them disappear around the bend before continuing down her side of the trail alone.
She walked farther than she’d intended, enjoying the warmth of the morning and the steady sound of the water against the seawall. By the time she turned back toward town, the haze had burned off and the sidewalks were beginning to fill.
Back at the house, she settled easily into work.
She finished the July financial reports she’d been putting off, answered a handful of emails, and cleared two small items from her calendar that had been lingering for weeks.
By evening she was back at the table with the file open, scrolling through public records.
Sugar Sand Point property records.
Tax filings.
Utility accounts.
Adjacent parcels connected through ownership transfers and archived county maps.
For weeks she’d been trying to find a physical address for Thomas through the side door since the front door kept routing her back to the same post office box.
Thomas had been careful for thirty-eight years. He wasn’t going to make this easy.
Around six she made herself something simple to eat and brought the plate back to the table, scrolling one-handed through another county database while she ate. The search results had been mostly noise all evening—wrong parcels, dead ends, ownership trails that looped nowhere useful.
She was reaching for the trackpad to close another window when something made her stop.
Not an address. Something else entirely.
A birth record. Florida Bureau of Vital Statistics. Sugar Sand Point County. She had pulled it up from a linked record in a parcel filing—not what she’d been looking for, two steps removed from anything she’d been searching for.
Something made her stop.
Father: Simeon Thomason.
She sat forward.
The mother’s name—a name she didn’t recognize.
She opened a second tab immediately and searched marriage records.
Nothing.
She checked again under Thomason. Then Simmons.
Then both names through two additional databases she’d bookmarked weeks earlier.
Nothing.
No marriage record anywhere.
Lila went back to the birth certificate.
She saw the birth year and did the math automatically.
Twelve years after Thomas Simmons disappeared from Salt Flower Bay, Simeon Thomason fathered a child in Sugar Sand Point.
Her eyes moved to the child’s name.
Julia.
To be continued...
Just one click here to keep reading.