Chapter 7 #3
"Thank you all for coming," he said, and the patio quieted.
"For those who don't know me, I'm John. I own Tidewater Books in Sea Isle, and a few years ago I started this series to bring together the people who understand this place best, not just writers, but historians, naturalists, anyone with something worth sharing.
" He looked out at the crowd. "Tonight, we're continuing with one of the best."
He introduced the speaker without notes. Dr. Scott Shiles, retired professor from Stockton, thirty years studying the ecology and history of New Jersey's barrier islands. Author of two books Lori had never heard of and now wanted to read.
"Scott knows more about this stretch of coastline than anyone I've ever met," John said. "And he tells it better than most novelists. So without further ado."
Scott took his place at the podium. He was smaller than he'd looked from a distance, but his voice carried easily across the patio, steady and warm and practiced.
He didn't start with facts. He started with a story.
September 1944. A hurricane that the locals still called the Great Atlantic Hurricane, though most history books had forgotten it.
How the storm had reshaped the coastline, washing away what people thought was permanent.
Boardwalks, piers, whole stretches of dune.
How the beaches that everyone took for granted had been rebuilt by hand in the years after, crews of men with shovels planting beach grass one clump at a time.
How the islands themselves were moving, always moving, sand shifting with every storm, the whole coastline slowly reshaping itself.
Lori forgot about her wine. Forgot about the uncomfortable folding chair, the heat that still hung in the evening air, even the dog on her feet.
She'd walked this beach a hundred times. She'd never thought of it as something that moved.
"Seventy-five miles," Scott said at one point, gesturing east. "That's how far out the coastline was during the last ice age.
Past the continental shelf. When the glaciers melted, the sea rose nearly four hundred feet.
Swallowed everything in its path. The barrier islands we see now?
They're just the latest version. The ocean's been remaking this coast for ten thousand years. "
He talked about the inlets that had opened and closed over centuries.
Places where the ocean had simply punched through, rearranging the map until someone filled it back in.
The forests that had once stood where the bay now sat, drowned when the sea level rose.
The shipwrecks still buried in the sand offshore, and the hotels that had washed away in storms nobody remembered, and the way the coastline in old photographs bore no resemblance to what stood today.
"The shore isn't permanent," he said, near the end. "That's the thing people don't understand. We build on it like it's solid ground, but it's not. It's a negotiation. Between the land and the water, between what we want and what the ocean allows. And the ocean always wins eventually."
When he finished, the applause was warm and genuine, the sound of people who hadn't expected to learn something and had. One attendee asked about climate change and what it meant for the islands. Another asked about the best places to see the old foundations, whatever remained of them.
A man in the front row raised his hand. "Dr. Shiles, I have a question about the 1944 hurricane."
"Of course," Scott said.
"Do you think the government covered up the actual damage because of the war effort? Because I've been researching this, and the official reports seem inconsistent with eyewitness accounts I've found in my aunt's attic."
Scott blinked. "I... haven't encountered evidence of a cover-up, no. Though wartime reporting was certainly limited—"
"Because my aunt's neighbor's cousin was there, and she said the waves were sixty feet high. Sixty feet. That's not in any official record."
"Wave heights can be difficult to estimate in the moment—"
"I'm just saying. Something doesn't add up."
Scott nodded slowly, with the weary patience of a man who had fielded stranger questions in his career. "I'd be happy to look at any documents you've found. Primary sources are always valuable."
The dog, still planted on Lori's feet, chose this moment to let out a long, groaning sigh that expressed what everyone was thinking.
John moderated from the side, steering the questions back on track, stepping in when the conversation flagged. He caught Lori's eye once, briefly, and almost smiled.
She looked away first. Took a sip of the wine she'd forgotten she was holding.
After the Q&A, the formal part dissolved into mingling.
People clustered around Scott, asking follow-up questions, mentioning properties they owned and whether they should be worried.
Others made their way to the bar for refills.
The sun had finally dropped below the tree line, and the string lights along the patio fence glowed brighter now against the darker sky.
She reached down and gave the dog a scratch behind the ears before getting to her feet.
He gave her a reproachful look anyway, then wandered toward the refreshment table.
She drifted to the far end of the patio, looking out at the vineyard rows.
The vines were thick with new growth, small clusters of flowers just giving way to the hard green pinpricks of forming grapes.
"What did you think?"
John was beside her. He'd rolled up his sleeves against the heat, and she noticed for the first time a tattoo on his forearm, a compass rose, faded with age.
The dog had roused itself from under the refreshment table and was making its way toward them with determination. It sat down on Lori's feet again, reclaiming its territory.
John looked down at the dog then back at Lori. "That's Gus. He doesn't usually take to people this quickly."
"We bonded during the sixty-foot wave theory."
John grinned. "Ah. That was Maurice."
"The conspiracy guy?"
"Maurice Englebert. He comes to every event. Always has a theory." John rolled his eyes, but fondly. "He once asked a memoirist if she thought her childhood memories had been implanted by the CIA. She handled it beautifully."
Lori laughed, surprising herself.
"I think I need to buy his books," she said, nodding toward where Scott was still chatting with attendees.
"High praise."
"I had no idea. About any of it. The storm, the inlets—" She shook her head. "I've been coming to Sea Isle since I was a kid, and I never knew the island was actually moving."
"Most people don't. They see the beach and the houses and they think it's always been this way.
" He poured himself a glass from the bottle on the nearby table.
"That's why I wanted to do this. Not just book readings, those are fine, but everyone does those.
I wanted talks that made them see the place differently. "
"Is that what the bookstore is for too?"
He smiled at that. "I opened the bookstore because I burned out on corporate life and needed work that mattered. But somewhere along the way it grew into more than a shop. It became about building a place where people could stumble onto things they didn't know they needed."
She turned her wine glass in her hands.
"What about you?" John asked. "What brings you to Sea Isle for the summer?"
"Friends. A group of us rented a house. Our kids are all around the same age, so it seemed like a good idea." A beat. "My son is seventeen. I'm not sure he'd use those words for it."
"Seventeen is a hard age."
"You have kids?"
"Two. Both grown now, living their own lives in cities I need a GPS to navigate." He lifted his glass. "They turned out fine despite everything. That's the only parenting metric I'm confident about."
That got a real smile out of her.
The crowd had thinned. Scott was packing up his notes, shaking hands with the last few people who'd lingered. Gus was sprawled under the refreshment table, twitching through some dream.
"I should let you close things out," Lori said.
"I should." But he lingered. "I'm glad you came. It means something, when new people find their way here."
"I'm glad I came too."
He turned to go then looked back. "We do these weekly. I've got a fisherman lined up in a few days—wrote a memoir about fifty years on these waters. Different topic, same idea." His eyes held hers. "If you're still around."
"I'll be here all summer."
"Then I hope to see you."
He returned to the podium, and Lori watched him go. The air had softened with dusk, carrying the green scent of the vineyard and something faintly sweet from the last of the day's heat. The knot in her shoulders had loosened without her noticing.
She was reaching for her bag when her phone buzzed.
Kevin, the screen said. Her ex-husband.
For a moment she considered not answering. Letting it ring through to voicemail, dealing with whatever it was later, when she wasn't standing in a vineyard feeling lighter than she had in months, something bright and unfamiliar just starting to take shape.
But Kevin never called without a reason.
She stepped away from the remaining guests and answered.
"Lori." Kevin's voice was clipped. "We need to talk about Ethan."
"What about him?"
"He still hasn't responded about the wedding. I need to finalize the groomsmen list by the end of the week, and he's the only one who hasn't given me an answer."
Lori pressed her free hand to her forehead. The air that had felt so pleasant a moment ago now hung heavy. "Have you tried calling him directly?"
"He doesn't answer my calls. You know that."
"Then maybe that's your answer."
Silence. When Kevin spoke again, his tone had hardened. "This is what I'm talking about."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You're poisoning him against me. You have been since the divorce. Every time I try to have a relationship with my son, you're there in the background, whispering in his ear—"
Poisoning. The accusation landed like a slap. She knew he used it on Ethan too—she'd heard it secondhand, filtered through a son who'd stopped talking.
"I haven't whispered anything." Lori kept her voice low, conscious of the people still mingling on the patio. "Ethan's not a child. He's capable of forming his own opinions. Maybe if you talked to him instead of at him—"
"I've tried talking to him. He shuts down. He walks away. He acts like I'm the enemy."
"And you think that's my fault?"
"I think you could help if you wanted to. You could tell him that being in my wedding isn't a betrayal. That supporting his father doesn't mean taking sides."
Lori's jaw ached. She'd been clenching it. "Kevin, I can't make him feel something he doesn't feel."
"You could try."
"He's dealing with a lot right now. The divorce, the engagement—"
"The engagement happened six months ago. He's had time."
"Time doesn't work like that."
"Meaning what, exactly?"
"It means you can't put a deadline on grief."
Kevin exhaled sharply. "This isn't grief, Lori. This is stubbornness. This is a seventeen-year-old being difficult because he knows he can get away with it. And if you won't help me reach him, then I'll have to do it myself."
"What does that mean?"
"I'm coming down there. This weekend. I'll talk to him face-to-face, and we'll settle this once and for all."
The air went out of her. "You're not—Kevin, you can't just show up."
"He's my son."
"And I'm his mother. And we're on vacation. This isn't the time."
"The wedding is coming up fast. When exactly would be the time?"
She didn't have an answer for that.
"I'll text you when I'm on my way," Kevin said. "Make sure he's there."
He hung up before she could respond.
Lori stood among the vines, phone still pressed to her ear, listening to nothing.
Around her, the evening continued. Guests drifting to their cars, laughter floating from the patio, the soft crunch of shells underfoot.
The string lights swayed slightly in the breeze, and somewhere in the fields a bird called out and went quiet.
Back on the patio, John was stacking chairs. Scott was loading a box of books into his car. The night had felt so full of possibility. Now it was just a night.
She thought about going back. Thanking John for the event. Lingering a little longer in that other version of the night, the one where Kevin hadn't called, where she was just a woman at a vineyard, learning about barrier islands.
But the call had happened. Kevin was coming. And she'd have to go to the house and figure out how to tell Ethan.
She walked to her car with her hands in her pockets, the evening's warmth already fading.