Caroline examined the set expressions on her family’s faces. What had she expected? What else did she deserve?
“She never returned after her mother died,” Seth growled. “Not for her sister’s funeral. Not during Max’s chemo. Not after the storm almost leveled our home.” He clenched his fist against his jeans. “Not for a wedding. Or a birthday. Not even a postcard, much less a phone call.”
And Caroline suddenly understood that nothing she could ever say would erase the damage she’d inflicted. Nor wash away the hurt of the past. This... This illadvised, ludicrous attempt at reconciliation was for naught. She spun on her heel.
“Don’t go,” Honey called.
“Let ’er go,” Seth grunted. “Let ’er run away like before. It’s what she does best.”
“Daddy... Stop it,” barked Amelia.
Caroline wrested the car door open and flung herself into the driver’s seat. Whereas she’d found mercy and forgiveness in God, with her family there’d be none of either. She jerked the gear into Drive.
In a blur, she fishtailed onto Seaside Road. She pointed the car south and drove until the shaking of her hands wouldn’t allow her to drive any farther. She pulled over on the other side of the Quinby bridge and parked.
Her shoulders ached with tension. Spots swam before her eyes. She leaned her head on the headrest, and struggled to draw a breath as her throat closed.
This had been a mistake. A terrible, perhaps unredeemable, mistake. She felt the waves of the darkness she’d spent years clawing her way out of encroaching. Like an inexorable tide, ever closer. A headache throbbed at her temples.
Her breathing came in short, rapid bursts. Hand on her chest, she laid her forehead across the steering wheel. Willing the anxiety to subside and the blackness to erode.
But the waves mounted and towered like a tsunami. Cresting, waiting to consume her whole. To drag her under for good this time into the riptide of blackness.
God. Oh, God. Oh, God.
Where was her purse? She fumbled for the tote bag in the passenger seat. The pills. It’d been so long since she’d relied on them.
She hadn’t suffered an anxiety attack in several years. But with her so-called reunion facing her this morning, surely she’d had the foresight to tuck them inside her purse in case of an emergency.
Digging around through the detritus that filled her life, she came up empty. She slammed her hands on the wheel. Of all the days not to...
She breathed in through her mouth and exhaled through her nose in an exercise she’d learned from the counselor. And she repeated the Scriptures she’d memorized at the suggestion of a friend, a marine biologist working in the Bahamas.
Until the dizziness passed. Until her vision cleared. Until the pain in her lungs subsided.
Dripping with sweat, she took a few steadying breaths before shifting gears. Lesson learned. Despite the size of Kiptohanock, she’d avoid contact with her family.
One summer. The two-month pilot program. She’d lie low. Something she was good at.
And like Thomas Wolfe had said, you couldn’t ever go home again. Or at least, not her.
* * *
“Daddy! Come quick! Daddy!”
Weston dropped the hammer and raced out of the former lightkeeper’s cottage. He ran toward the beach, where the incoming tide lapped against the shoreline. Where he’d left his nine-year-old daughter alone... The librarian pegged him rightly. He was a terrible father.
“Isabelle!”
Panting, he plowed his way to the top of the dune. “Answer me.” The fronds of sea oats danced—taunting him—in the afternoon breeze.
On the beach below, she windmilled her arms to get his attention. He willed his heart to return to a semblance of normal. She’d gotten his attention, all right. He scrambled down the dune toward his daughter.
She clutched the straw hat on her head. “Look, Daddy.” With her free hand, she gestured to a set of tracks stippling the sand from the base of the dunes to where they disappeared around the neck of the beach. “Turtle tracks.”
Izzie bounced in her flip-flops, a redheaded pogo stick. “Maybe turtle eggs on our beach, too.” She clapped her hands together. The hat went flying.
He sighed, and watched it blow out to sea.
“We could have babies. Just like Max.”
His gaze flickered to his daughter. “If there are eggs, they won’t belong to us. Best thing we can do is leave them and their turtle mama alone.”
Izzie’s face fell.
He tickled her ribs. “Even Max will tell you to give new mamas a wide berth. They’re touchy. And ornery.”
“Was Mama touchy and ornery with me?”
“N-not when you were the most beautiful, wonderful baby who was ever born.” He nuzzled her cheek with the stubble of his jaw.
“Daddy.” She giggled and pushed his shoulder. “You are so prickly.”
He caught Izzie in his arms and gave her a bear hug. “Like a porcupine.”
Laughing, Izzie wriggled free. “I’m gonna follow the tracks to the water.” She disappeared beyond the curve of the dune before he could formulate, much less express, a warning.
One day she wouldn’t be so easily diverted from the rest of the story. And he could never tell Izzie the whole truth.
Behind the dune, Izzie screamed. He jolted, his heart palpitating once more.
“Daddy! Hurry...”
Parenting—not unlike certain Coastie jobs—ought to come with hazard pay. Breaking into a loping run, he jogged around the point.
He found Izzie at the edge of the surf, where the waves curled and skittered over her bare toes like a watery sand crab. She crouched beside a prehistoric-looking sea turtle. A metallic hook jutted from the creature’s neck.
“Izzie, get back.” He waved his arm. “Injured animals are dangerous.”
“The turtle mama.” Izzie sank to her knees. “She’s hurt.”
He came closer. The olive-gray carapace on the turtle’s back was gouged and dented.
“She’s just lying in the sand, Daddy.” Izzie’s eyes swam with tears. “I don’t think she can make it back to her babies without our help.”
How to explain this? “Turtles spend their lives in the ocean. Females only come ashore to lay eggs and then they leave.”
Izzie glared at him. “They leave their babies?” Her voice rose. “Mamas aren’t supposed to leave their babies.”
“No, they aren’t,” he whispered. And he wondered what questions about her own mother he’d field later from Izzie.
“It’s the turtle way, Izz.” He ran his gaze over this relative to the dinosaur. “If this turtle didn’t make it into the water by dawn, she’s been baking in the sun for hours.”
He lifted his ball cap, crimped the brim and settled it on his head again. “It doesn’t look good for her, Izz.”
“Please... Help her, Daddy.” In her face, the unspoken belief her daddy could fix everything.
If only that were so.
He pulled Izzie to a safer distance as the turtle’s flippers thrashed in the sand. He’d seen this before when he was stationed in Florida. One of the turtle’s flippers was mangled, probably from a boat’s propeller.
“We’ve