Chapter Eight
EIGHT
“YOU were supposed to bring a six-pack, not fancy wine, big shot.” Already disposed to complain, Lexy loaded her sleeping bag and gear into Jo’s Land Rover.
“I like wine.” Jo kept her voice mild and her sentences short.
“I don’t know why you want to spend the night dishing in the woods anyway.
” Lexy scowled at Jo’s tidily rolled and top-grade sleeping bag.
Always the best for Jo Ellen, she thought sourly, then shoved her two six-packs of Coors into the cargo area.
“No piano bar, no room service, no fawning ma?tre d’. ”
Jo thought of the nights she’d spent in a tent, in second-rate motels, shivering in the cab of her four-wheeler. Anything to get the shot. She muscled in the bag of groceries she’d begged off of Brian, shoved her hair back. “I’ll survive somehow.”
“I set this up, you know. I set it up because I wanted to get the hell away from here for one night. I wanted to relax with friends. My friends.”
Jo slammed the rear door, clenched her teeth as the sound echoed like a gunshot. It would be easier to walk away, she thought. Just turn around and go back into the house and leave Lexy to find her own way to the campground.
Damned if she was going to take the easy way.
“Ginny’s my friend too, and I haven’t seen Kirby in years.” Leaving it at that, she circled around to the driver’s side, climbed behind the wheel, and waited.
The pleasant anticipation she’d felt when Brian had relayed Kirby’s invitation had disappeared, leaving a churning pit in her stomach. But she was determined to follow through, not to be chased away by her sister’s bitchiness.
She was bound to have a miserable time now, but by God she was going. And so, she thought when her sister slammed in beside her, was Lexy.
“Seat belt,” Jo ordered, and Lexy let out an exasperated huff of breath as she strapped in. “Listen, why don’t we just get drunk and pretend we can tolerate each other for one night? An actress of your astonishing range shouldn’t have any trouble with that.”
Lexy cocked her head, aimed a brilliant smile. “Fuck you, sister dear.”
“There you go.” Jo started the engine, reaching for a cigarette out of habit the minute it turned over.
“Would you not smoke in the car?”
Jo punched in the lighter. “My car.”
She headed north, her tires singing musically on the shell road.
The air rushing in the windows was a beautiful balm.
She used it to soothe her raw nerves and made no complaint when Lexy turned the stereo up full blast. Loud music meant no conversation, and no conversation meant no arguments. At least for the drive to camp.
She drove fast, the memory of every curve in the road coming back to her. That too, soothed. So little had changed. Dark still fell quickly here, and the night brought the sounds of wind and sea that made the island seem a huge place to her. A world where the tides ruled dependably.
She remembered driving fast along this road with the wind rushing through her hair and the radio screaming. Lexy had been beside her then too.
The spring before Jo had left the island, a soft, fragrant spring.
She would have been eighteen then, she remembered, and Lexy just fifteen.
They’d been giggling, and there’d been the best part of a quart of Ernest and Julio between them to help the mood along.
Cousin Kate had been visiting her sister in Atlanta, so there’d been no one to wonder where two teenage girls had gone off to.
There had been freedom and foolishness, and a connection, Jo thought, that they’d lost somewhere along the way. The island remained as it was, always. But those two young girls were gone.
“How’s Giff?” Jo heard herself ask.
“How should I know?”
Jo shrugged. Even all those years back, Giff had had his eye on Lexy. And even all those years back, Lexy had known it. Jo simply wondered if that had stayed constant. “I haven’t seen him since I’ve been back. I heard he was doing carpentry and whatnot.”
“He’s a jerk. I don’t pay any attention to what he’s doing.” Lexy scowled out the window as she remembered the way he’d kissed her brainless. “I’m not interested in island boys. I like men.” She turned back, shot a challenging look. “Men with style and money.”
“Know any?”
“Quite a few, actually.” Lexy hooked an arm out the window, easing into a pose of casual sophistication. “New York’s bursting with them. I like a man who knows his way around. Our Yankee, for example.”
Jo felt her spine stiffen, deliberately relaxed it. “Our Yankee?”
“Nathan Delaney. He has the look of a man who knows his way around ... women. I’d say he’s exactly my type. Rich.”
“Why do you think he’s rich?”
“He can afford a six-month vacation. An architect with his own company has to have financial substance. He’s traveled. Men who’ve traveled know how to show a woman interesting pieces of the world. He’s divorced. Divorced men appreciate an amiable woman.”
“Done your research, haven’t you, Lex.”
“Sure.” She stretched luxuriously. “Yes, indeedy, I’d say Nathan Delaney is just my type. He should keep me from being bored brainless for the next little while.”
“Until you can get back to New York,” Jo put in. “Shift hunting grounds.”
“Exactly.”
“Interesting.” Jo’s headlights splashed the discreet sign for Heron Campground. She cut her speed and took the turn off Shell Road into a land of sloughs and marsh grass. “I always figured you thought more of yourself than that.”
“You have no idea what I think about anything, including myself.”
“Apparently not.”
They fell into a humming silence disturbed only by the shrill peeping of frogs.
At a sharp cracking sound, Jo shuddered involuntarily.
It was the unmistakable sound of a gator crunching a turtle between its jaws.
She thought she understood exactly what that turtle felt in those last seconds of life.
The sensation of being helplessly trapped by something large and feral and hungry.
Because her fingers trembled, she gripped the wheel tighter. She hadn’t been consumed, she reminded herself. She’d escaped, she’d bought some time. She was still in control.
But the anxiety attack was pinching away at her with insistent little fingers. She made herself breathe in, breathe out, slow, normal. God, just be normal. She turned the radio off.
She passed the little check-in booth, empty now as the sun had set, and concentrated on winding her way through the chain of small lakes.
Lights flickered here and there from campfires.
Ghost music floated out of radios, then vanished.
Where the hillocks of grass parted, she could see the delicate white glow of lily pads in the moonlight.
She would walk back, she told herself, take pictures, focus on the silence and the emptiness. On being alone. On being safe.
“There’s Kirby’s car.”
Too much roaring in the ears, Jo thought, and forced out another breath. “What?”
“The snazzy little convertible there. That’s Kirby’s. Just park behind it.”
“Right.” Jo maneuvered the Land Rover into position and found when she cut the engine that the air was full of sound.
The humming and peeping and rustling of the little world hidden behind the dunes and beyond the edge of the forest. It was ripe with scent as well, water and fish and damp vegetation.
She climbed out of the car, relieved to step into so much life.
“Jo Ellen!”
Kirby dashed out of the dark and grabbed Jo in a hard hug. Quick, spontaneous embraces always caught Jo off guard. Before she could steady herself, Kirby was pulling back, her hands still firm on Jo’s arms, her smile huge and delighted.
“I’m so glad you came! I’m so glad to see you! Oh, we have a million years to catch up on. Hey, Lexy. Let’s get your gear and pop a couple of tops.”
“She brought wine,” Lexy said, pulling open the cargo door.
“Great, we’ll pop some corks too, then. We’ve got a mountain of junk food to go with it. We’ll be sick as dogs by midnight.” Chattering all the way, Kirby dragged Jo to the back of the Land Rover. “Good thing I’m a doctor. What’s this?” She dived into the grocery bag. “Paté. You got paté?”
“I nagged Brian,” Jo managed to say.
“Good thinking.” Kirby hefted the food bag, then hooked Lexy’s six-pack. “I’ve got these. Ginny’s getting the fire going. Need a hand with the rest?”
“We can get it.” Jo shouldered her camera bag, tucked her bedroll under one arm, and clinked the bottles of wine together. “I’m sorry about your grandmother, Kirby.”
“Thanks. She lived a long life, exactly as she wanted to. We should all be that smart. Here, Lexy, I can get that bag.” Kirby beamed at both of them, deciding she’d just about cut the edge off the tension that had been snarling in the air when they’d arrived.
“Christ, I’m starving. I missed dinner.”
Lexy slammed the rear door shut. “Let’s go, then. I want a beer.”
“Shit, my flashlight’s in my back pocket.” Kirby turned, angled a hip. “Can you get it?” she asked Jo.
With a little shifting and some flexible use of fingers, Jo pried it out and managed to switch it on. They headed down the narrow path single file.
Site twelve was already set up and organized, a cheerful fire burning bright in a circle of raked sand. Ginny had her Coleman lantern on low and an ice chest filled. She sat on it, eating from a bag of chips and drinking a beer.
“There she is.” Ginny lifted the beer can in toast. “Hey, Jo Ellen Hathaway. Welcome home.”
Jo dumped her bedroll and grinned. For the first time, she felt home. And felt welcome. “Thanks.”
* * *
“A doctor.” Jo sat cross-legged by the campfire, sipping Chardonnay from a plastic glass. One bottle was already nose down in the sand. “I can’t imagine it. When we were kids, you always talked about being an archaeologist or something, a female Indiana Jones, exploring the world.”
“I decided to explore anatomy instead.” Comfortably drunk, Kirby spread more of Brian’s excellent duck paté on a Ritz cracker. “And I like it.”