On Sunset Beach (3 page)

F
ORD
Sinclair eased his rental car onto the approach to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in Virginia Beach and reduced his speed. It had been several years since he’d made this crossing, and he wanted to savor it. The bridge—named one of the Seven Engineering Marvels of the Modern World—had been a favorite destination when he was a young boy and his father was still alive. Some days, they would sneak away from the family’s inn, just the two of them, and head south in the old Bay Rider down through Virginia’s Pocomoke Sound. His father would drop anchor off Raccoon Island, where they’d sit for a while and watch the cars passing over the northbound span of the bridge-tunnel—which was still new back then, and attracted attention like a shiny new toy—then they’d head back into Maryland waters, where they’d spend the rest of the day fishing. They’d go home, more often than not sporting a farmer’s tan along with a cooler of whatever had been running that day, rockfish or sea bass or croakers. Once his dad had helped him bring in a tuna that had given him—at ten—the fight of his life. The memory was so vivid that
whenever Ford dreamed of that day, he still felt the rod biting into his hands as he struggled to hold it.

The bridge-tunnel itself was, in fact, a marvel. A little over seventeen miles long from shore to shore, it was exactly what the name implied: a series of bridges and tunnels that crossed the Chesapeake Bay where it joined the Atlantic Ocean, connecting Virginia Beach to Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

Ford stopped at the first of the four bridges and pulled into the parking area. He walked to the rail that overlooked the water, and from there he could see for miles. Below, where the Chesapeake and the Atlantic met, the water was still dark and disturbed from last night’s storm. In the distance, a large navy vessel headed into port at Virginia Beach, and far out in the ocean, another made its way toward the bridge. Noisy gulls circled overhead, hoping for a handout from the sightseers on the pier, while others swooped and soared over both sides of the bridge. Ford closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of salt water, and held it in his lungs for a few seconds before letting it out in a
whoosh
. Chesapeake born and bred, he hadn’t realized how much he had missed the Bay’s scent. In that moment, he couldn’t wait to be home. He climbed back into the car and continued his trek north.

The radio reception was spotty along the back roads—some things, he thought, never changed—so he could only pick up a country station. He’d been away too long to know who was singing; he only caught enough to know it was a girl with a pretty voice singing about vandalizing the SUV that belonged to her cheating boyfriend. He turned it off when the static drowned her out, and drove in silence, the windows
up and the air conditioner blasting against the heat and humidity of the late-summer afternoon.

Before he knew it, Ford was crossing the bridge over the Choptank River and was halfway to Trappe, where he and his high school buddies had proven their manhood by spending the night in the haunted White Marsh Cemetery and living to tell about it. Even now, memories of that night made him grin. They’d been so cocky, all five of them, until they heard the faint tinkling of a tiny bell borne on a breeze around three in the morning. They spent the rest of the night wide-awake, huddled in the car, windows closed and the doors locked, but still bragged that they’d lasted the night because they didn’t drive back out through the cemetery gates until dawn.

Ford’s smile faded when he recalled how far he’d come from that cheeky kid whose most terrifying moments had been spent in a dark cemetery with his friends telling ghost stories. Back then, he’d never imagined what real terrors the world held. The innocent boy—brash though he might have been—would never have understood the things he’d come to see. Even now, Ford was at a loss to really understand what motivated a man to commit atrocities such as those he’d witnessed over the past few years.

He was close to home now. One left turn off Route 50 and he was almost there. He cruised along just under the speed limit so he could take it all in.

If there hadn’t been another car behind him, he’d have slowed even more as he passed the Madison farm. Ford had learned to ice-skate on the pond that lay beyond the cornfield. It had been Clay Madison—now married to Ford’s sister, Lucy—who’d taught him to
skate. Clay had always been sweet on Lucy—even as a small kid Ford had known that. An old pickup was parked near the back of the farmhouse, and he thought briefly about stopping to say hello, but he knew if his mother caught wind of him stopping somewhere other than home first, he’d be in for an earful. And somehow, his mother had always known what he was up to. He’d never really figured out how she knew things, but she did. He thought she must have had a pretty darned good spy network, though she never seemed to keep track of Dan or Lucy the way she’d kept track of him.

Ford hoped that hadn’t held true these past few years. He hated to think she might have somehow picked up on exactly where he’d been and what he’d seen and done.

Though his mother’s phone calls and letters had kept him abreast of the changes in St. Dennis, the development of the town’s center still surprised him. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t the upscale shops he passed. The supermarket was still in the same place, but it’s previously dingy facade had had a significant face-lift. When he left, most of the current storefronts had been boarded up or were still single-family homes. Now the shops he passed told a story of increased prosperity—Cupcake, Book ’Em, Bling, Sips, and on the opposite side of the street, Lola’s Café, Cuppachino, Petals and Posies. Only Lola’s and the flower shop had been there before he left.

A new sign at the corner of Kelly’s Point Road pointed toward the bay and listed the attractions one would find by following the arrow: public parking, the municipal building, the marina, Walt’s Seafood—Ford
was pleased to see that the St. Dennis landmark restaurant was still open—and something called One Scoop or Two.

His mother hadn’t been kidding when she said there’d been a lot of changes in a very short period of time.

Farther down Charles Street he turned right, onto the drive that led to the inn, and stopped the car. A very large, handsome sign pointed the way to the Inn at Sinclair Point. The drive itself had been recently blacktopped, some of the trees on either side had been cut back, and it was now, he realized, two full lanes wide where, for as long as he remembered, it had been one.

What next? Ford wondered as he drove around the bend and got his first view of the inn that had been his family home and business for generations.

The large, sprawling main building had been painted since he left, the fading white walls now rejuvenated. The cabins that faced the bay had been painted as well, and he noted that the front of each sported a window box that overflowed with summer flowers. He parked his car in the very full visitors’ lot and sat for a moment, trying to take it all in. There were new tennis courts, a fenced-in playground, and if he wasn’t mistaken, jutting out into the bay was a new dock—longer and wider—at which several boats were tied. Kayaks and canoes lined the lush lawn that stretched toward the water like a carpet of smooth green Christmas velvet.

And everywhere, it seemed, people were engaged in one activity or another.

“Damn.” Ford whistled under his breath. “Mom
wasn’t kidding when she said they’d made a lot of changes since I left.”

He got out of the car and looked around. While so much was different, the inn still somehow felt the same. Of course, he reminded himself as he gathered his bags out of the trunk of the car, it was still home.

Home. He stared at the building that loomed before him, where a seemingly endless stream of people came and went through the door to the back lobby. No amount of paint or landscaping or added features could change the way he felt when his feet touched ground at Sinclair’s Point. The restlessness he’d felt when his plane landed that morning began to fade, but it was still there, under the surface. He knew that the sense of peace he felt would be fleeting, and could not be trusted.

He barely made it across the parking lot when his sister flew out the back door.

“You’re late, you bugger! We’ve been waiting for hours!” Lucy threw her arms around his neck and hugged him.

“My plane was late.” He dropped his bags and returned the hug for a moment, then held her at arm’s length. “But look at you. You’re all tan and your hair’s long again.” He tugged on her ponytail. “When I left, you had that short do and you were working your tail off out in L.A., and now you’re—”

“Working my tail off in St. Dennis.” She laughed.

“Business is good?”

“Business is great. If we were any busier, we’d be double-booking dates and holding weddings in the parking lot.”

“Well, you must be doing something right, because
you look a million times better than you did the last time I saw you. I’m guessing marriage agrees with you.”

“Totally. Work is good, home life is fantastic. I never thought I’d come back to St. Dennis to live—and me, live on a farm? Ha! But I guess it just goes to show, never say never.”

“I’m glad you’re happy, sis.”

“Never happier.” Lucy took his arm. “Let’s go inside. Mom has been pacing like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I would believe. Mom never changes.”

“I hope not. She’s amazing, with all she does here at the inn, and still she keeps the newspaper going. Of course, that’s her baby.” Lucy chatted away as they walked to the inn. “She still does the features and most of the photographs—though sometimes someone in town will have a great shot of something or other and she’ll use it. She did hire someone to do the ads, though, and someone to handle the books. And of course, the printing and mailing …”

Ford frowned. “Mailing? Since when has she mailed out the paper? Who’s she mailing it to?”

“You
have
been gone awhile. Gone are the days when you could only pick up a copy at the grocery store or the gas station or Walt’s.” Lucy grinned. “The
St. Dennis Gazette
now has out-of-town subscribers, mostly summer people who want to keep up with what’s going on so they’ll know when to plan to come back. She mails the paper every week to places as far away as Maine, Illinois, Nebraska. In your absence, little brother, the family business has become the go-to spot on the Chesapeake. We’re big doin’s, kiddo.”

He paused and looked around. “The place looks
amazing. And busy! I don’t remember ever seeing so many people here, especially this late in the summer. And I see there’s been a lot of work done on the grounds. I don’t remember a gazebo there.” He nodded toward the structure that sat between colorful flower beds and the water.

“We had a professional landscaper in last summer and he suggested the new gazebo and designed the new gardens at my request,” Lucy explained. “I had a big-ticket wedding here and the bride wanted the ceremony out on the lawn overlooking the bay. Since she was dropping a bundle, we did what we had to do to make the area as gorgeous as we could.”

“Well, you succeeded. It’s really beautiful.” He took one more look around before reaching for the door. “Who’d have ever thought the old place could look like this?”

“Dan, that’s who. That brother of ours was determined to make the inn shine, and he did.”

Ford opened the door and held it for his sister. Once inside, he gazed around the lobby, then whistled.

“Nice.”

“Pretty cool, huh?” Lucy grinned. “Not fancy, but just … upscale and cool.”

“Like me.” Dan emerged from behind the reception desk. “Hey, buddy …”

Ford dropped his bags and hugged his older brother. “I can’t believe what I’ve seen here so far. You’ve done a great job. Dad would be so proud.”

“I like to think so.” Dan gave Ford one last pat on the back before releasing him. “But the inn’s old news to us. How are you? Glad to be home?”

“I’m dazzled by the changes, but yeah, glad to be here.”

“I hope you can stay for a while.” Dan picked up his brother’s bags.

“I don’t have any plans right now. I’m just glad to be back in the States, glad to see you guys again.” Ford glanced around the lobby. “Where’s Mom?”

“She’s in her office. She’s been pacing like an expectant father since dawn. Come on.” Dan headed across the lobby, Ford and Lucy following behind.

“Mom has an office here?”

Lucy nodded. “She still has the newspaper office, but she likes to work here sometimes. Says she likes to keep an eye on things, likes to see the comings and goings.”

“There sure seems to be a lot of that going on,” Ford observed.

“Never been busier.” Dan rapped his knuckles on a half-opened door, then pushed it open. “Mom, look who’s here.”

Grace was out of her chair, arms around her son, in the blink of an eye.

“Well, then,” she said as she stepped back to hold him at arm’s length, “let me have a good look at you.”

Grace’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve lost so much weight. Your face is so thin. Are you feeling all right?” She looked around him to address Dan. “Tell the chef he’s going to be working overtime until we put a few pounds back on your brother.”

Ford laughed. “Mom, I’m fine. I might have lost a few pounds, but you know, where I’ve been, fine dining was only a dim memory. A
very
dim memory.”

“And where have you been?” Grace forced him to look into her eyes.

“Here and there,” he told her. “Africa. Mostly.”

“That covers a lot of ground, son,” she said softly.

Ford nodded. He knew she was fishing for details, but right now he wanted nothing more than to savor the experience of being home. He knew there’d be questions to answer, but the longer he could leave the past behind him, the better off he’d be.

“Well, we can get the whole story from Ford over dinner.” Dan stood in the doorway. “Right now let’s get you settled in, then we can get together in the dining room and have a great dinner. We managed to snag a phenomenal chef from a fine D.C. restaurant last year. He’s part of the reason we’re such a hot destination venue for parties and weddings.”