Saving Grace (Katie & Annalise Book 1) (21 page)

I spent the night with Emily at the Peacock Flower, as did Oso, who we smuggled in after dark. He and Emily enjoyed the high life together while I zoned out to
American Idol
and my preferred Peacock Flower dinner of fruit and rum punch.

I poured myself another glass as I chewed a piece of pineapple. I wondered where Ava was. I knew her parents had sprung her, because Anita had called me. Ava had, too. They both left effusively grateful messages on my voicemail. My emotions had redlined, though, and I couldn’t even handle praise.

And they weren’t the only callers I screened. Bart’s calls went to voicemail, too, and I left his texts unanswered. I focused everything I had left in the tank on Emily, until I fell asleep with one inch of rum punch in my plastic cup and the TV and lights still on.

The next morning I rose early again, this time to take Emily to the airport. My body was awake but my mind was numb, my heart black. I would deliver an Academy Award performance of “fine,” though, or die trying. Oso sat tall between us on the drive.

Emily said, “I’m so glad I came. This has been the best vacation ever. And that includes my honeymoon trip to Banff and to see the Calgary Stampede Rodeo.”

My fingers were drumming the steering wheel of their own accord. I stopped them. “You’re kidding, right? This has been a nightmare.”

She laughed, the sound like breaking glass in my head. “Well, it has been for you and Ava. I feel bad about that, but I know Ava is in good hands. And it was exciting, and it was memorable. Really.”

“Do me a favor. When you talk to Collin, how about you use the word ‘peaceful’ instead of ‘memorable’?” An image of Collin kidnapping me and dragging me back to Dallas popped into my head.

“Yeah. I’d better give him the sanitized version.” She pulled out her ticket and passport, reading them for, by my count, the twentieth time.

I noticed I was fanning my knees together. I gripped my left thigh and ordered it to stop. Ten more minutes, and I wouldn’t have to fake it anymore.

She said, “I hate to bring up a bad subject, but I need to tell you something before I leave.”

Perfect. More bad news. “Go ahead.” Oso’s ears rose and he licked my right knee.

Emily caught her lip between her teeth, then released it. “Nick gave notice at the firm the Monday after you left. By email. From his vacation. It was kind of a big deal at the office, even though he wasn’t an attorney. His divorce went through, I hear. But nobody knows for sure why he left.”

Holy crap. She should have just handed me an IV drip of Bloody Marys with her news. My truck hit a sharp-edged speed bump too fast and too hard. In lieu of enforcing speeding laws, St. Marcos put speed bumps across all the roads, as if the potholes weren’t already enough of a danger to tires. How apropos of the day, of my life. Symbolic even. If I had bought all that karma and chi stuff they pedaled at the Peacock Flower Spa, I’d say mine were out of whack. If I bought into them, which I didn’t. The universe just hated me, that was all.

“Ah, so Heathcliff can wander the moors alone now.” It sounded flat even to me.

“I’m sorry, Katie.”

“I’ll be fine.” My phone rang. Caller ID said it was Rashidi. His helpfulness, already amazing, had multiplied by ten when I bailed Ava out. He had promised yesterday to pull together a slate of contractor candidates overnight. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but I owed it to him to answer.

“Do you mind?” I asked Emily.

“Go ahead,” she said.

I put my headset on and pressed Accept. “This is Katie,” I said.

“I got some guys dem for you to meet, to pick your new contractor from,” he said. He sounded excited.

“Thanks, Rashidi. You pick one, please. I don’t need to meet them.” I didn’t care, and it didn’t matter. Who even knew if I’d have a house to finish? I’d bet one point two million on snake eyes at the Lucky Lady Bail Bondsman yesterday. If Ava crapped out on me, I’d bust.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Completely.”

“All right. Crazy Grove good to go then. We come to Annalise this afternoon, four o’clock or thereabouts.”

“That’s his name? Crazy Grove?”

“Nah, it William Wingrove. Grove—short for Wingrove. He go by
either
Crazy or Grove or both.”

Locals loved their nicknames. Even the billboards for senatorial candidates gave them: “Vote for Derek ‘Lefty’ Paul,” or “Now’s the time for Janeen ‘Babyface’ Richards.”

“Interesting name.” I put on my blinker to turn into the airport entrance.

“He gonna do you right, Katie. Everything gonna be fine.”

My throat constricted. “Thanks, Rashidi.” I reached for my phone to press the End key, but he kept talking.

“By the way, I with Ava. She got out just fine yesterday, stayed with her parents. She said she left you messages. I just wanted to make sure you knew she good and she grateful to you.”

“That’s wonderful. Thank you again.” I pressed End and ripped off my headset.

We pulled into the flat airport parking lot that was the size of an Albertson’s grocery store lot back in Dallas. I cracked the window and left my fuzzy friend and one of his rawhide bones in the truck with the windows halfway down. He’d spent a lot of time in this position yesterday and now today, but he had enjoyed his treats.

“Be a good boy. I’ll be right back,” I told him. He didn’t even look at me. All his attention was focused on the bone.

I walked Emily to the ticket counter. My eyes were burning. I needed to make this quick.

I threw my arms around her. “You are such a good friend, Emily. I love you. I’m going to miss you.”

“I love you, too,” she said. “You are going to be fine, Katie. I know you will.” She patted my back as she spoke.

I kept hearing that word “fine” thrown around, but I hadn’t seen it in action yet.

Emily promised to check on my brother and to give Rich a hug for me. And then she left for Dallas. And it was just like the game of pick-up sticks I’d played with my girlfriends as a kid—when a player removed the wrong stick, the whole pile crashed. Emily was the wrong stick.

I needed to find a soft place to land.

I figured I had a choice. I could drive straight to Toes in the Sand and drink until I couldn’t walk, or to the West End beaches and walk until I couldn’t drink. I got in my truck and started driving. I reached the point of no return five minutes later at a traffic light.

Right or left. The direction I turned decided my fate.

I needed expert advice. “Which way, Oso?”

He’d finished his bone, so I got his attention. His tongue lolled, and his tail thumped. No help. I did an eenie meenie miney mo. The answer came out wrong. I turned to the left. I drove until I couldn’t go any further without pontoons on my truck. I parked beside a windowless wooden structure with removable wall panels that housed a beach grill, The Rainbow Club. Rainbows, awesome, and please could I have some fairies and unicorns, too? They were closed, and I was the only one in the dirt lot, but then it was only nine o’clock in the morning.

I slumped on the steering wheel and turned the engine off. I thought I would cry when the world went still, but I didn’t. The silence was loud. Oso panted. A fly buzzed and bumped into the window. My pulse throbbed hot in the tips of my ears. I closed my eyes and imagined I was invisible. I could hide here forever. Or until Oso and I baked off the bone in this oven of a truck once the tropical sun was high. If it was this bad now, we’d broil by noon.

I opened the door and stuck my feet out into the void, halfway expecting I’d fall to the center of the earth. My feet hit solid ground. I had a two-piece navy blue and white bathing suit on under my new uniform of sundress, so I pulled the stretchy green cotton over my head and tossed it back onto my seat. Years of habit made me reach for the sunscreen, but I stopped. It didn’t matter if this redhead burned to a crisp. I grabbed my hat, and I headed for the sand, a leashless Oso behind me.

I walked up and down that beach until the soles of my feet were as smooth as one of the ocean-churned stones. I walked from the rocks at the waterline outside the Rainbow Club down the pebbly shoreline until the sand became grainy again. The beach was narrow here, backed by a two-foot-high sand lip just beyond the surf’s reach. Past the sand heading inland, a thick row of sea grapes and the occasional banyan tree hid the curving West End Road from view. I kept walking. I turned around when I had passed an outcropping of tidal pools, their shallow rock tops teeming with marine life. A strand of beach houses started here, and I wanted a beach all to myself, not to share with rental families who were already outside making the most of their vacations. I ignored the cosmic insult of happy couples and splashing children and returned on the path from which I’d come. I banished all the shiny, happy people in the world from my thoughts. Let misery reign, let the tears finally fall.

God, there was so much noise in my head. I walked up and down the beach for miles without seeing, but somewhere along the way, my eyes began to drink in the details. Near the end of the second hour, I noticed the textures of sand and rocks under my feet. I saw the vinegar walker shells and ghostly crabs scamper across the rocks as the water surged in and out. I smelled the ocean as the silky air inside the breeze skimmed across my skin. I watched the water for fish jumping and saw porpoises cruising the shoreline. I heard the rainstick sound of water rushing over exposed coral. By noon, Oso had bailed and was napping under a banyan tree mid-beach as I paced back and forth along the half-mile stretch of sand. Traitorously rational thoughts crept in, right about the time I recognized that the searing pain in my shoulders was sunburn.

Ava said everybody was either running to or running from something when they came to St. Marcos. I had thought I was the “running to” kind of person. Running to Annalise, running to a connection to my parents. I wasn’t, though. I was smack dab in the “running from” category with all the other losers. It got worse. I was pretty sure I wasn’t running from Nick or from guilt about my parents or even from alcohol, although all three of those were worth running from. No, I was running from me. Me in Dallas, hurting myself. Me here, hurting myself. Wherever I went, there I found myself. Ever ready to wreak havoc on my own life.

Somehow, I had to leave this Katie behind. I had to outrun her self-destructive ways, her bad choices, her crazy leaps. I had to seize control.

That was it. Control. Katie needed to take charge of Katie. She—I—was the only one who could. My fists balled. I looked up at the sky. “Help?” I asked. When I got no immediate answer, I resorted to my go-to control mechanism: planning. Doesn’t God help those who help themselves? Fifteen minutes after I’d started the process, I had decided what I needed to do. Where was a scrap of scratch paper when a girl needed one?

“You can do this,” I said.

Crap. My lips split as I moved them to talk to myself. If I didn’t want to implement my new plan from a hospital bed, I had to get out of the sun, now. I gathered Oso from his shady rest spot. The sand away from the water was hot, and I ran, wincing, back to the truck. I put my dress on and yelled when the cloth abraded my burned skin.

Apparently, I’d burned the old Katie out like the bees at Annalise. That thought made me smile, which hurt. I pointed the rearview mirror at my face. Not too bad, thanks to my hat. Mostly just my lips. And chest, shoulders, arms, stomach, and back. See? It had happened again. Out-of-control Katie on autopilot, and the result was second-degree sunburn. Well, seven days and a gallon of aloe vera would cure what ailed me physically.

I drove back to Ava’s with my foot heavy on the accelerator. When I got inside the house, I surveyed the damage. There, of course, were the ruins left behind by St. Marcos’ finest. But there also were my suitcases, sprung open yesterday with clothes hanging out. My Liz Claiborne suit in a ball, with my panties and bra thrown on the floor where anyone could have seen them. Oso’s spilled food dish, with ants marching in a line bearing spoils back to their queen. Oso was gobbling up the remains and ignoring the ants. My futon was unfolded and unmade. And, most telling of all, the rum bottles I’d accumulated over the last five days stared at me accusingly from the kitchen countertop. I unscrewed their tops one by one, pouring each one down the drain as I went.

“What you doing?” Ava asked.

I jumped, dropping one of the bottles, and cringed, waiting for the explosion. It bounced.

It bounced.

“What the hell?” I marveled.

“They make them out of plastic now,” she said.

What an awesome concept. To be flexible instead of brittle. I held the bottle up in admiration. I emptied it down the drain, too, then took it into my bedroom and set it on the nightstand. A reminder. A souvenir.

Ava followed me. Her long hair was wet, her body wrapped in a towel. “You lost your mind?”

I whirled around. “Yes. I have.”

She stared at me. The seconds ticked by. Then she said, “Me, too.”

I didn’t know which of us started it, but somehow we were hugging each other tight. Ava had one arm around me and was swaying, which pulled on my sunburn. I yelped in pain, then laughed. I felt like a birch tree. Strong. Tall. Rooted. Flexible enough to sway. I could withstand the storms and seasons of my life. I heard ringing. We stopped swaying. Ava cocked her head.

“The kitchen,” she said, and sprinted toward the sound with her towel flapping.

“Hello,” I heard her say on an outward puff of her breath. “Hello?”

And then she was silent. I guessed she’d missed the call. I was wrong.

“What you saying, Eduardo? What you saying?” Her voice was shrill.

I started toward her. She was pacing back and forth between her kitchen and living room, one hand holding her cell phone to her ear, the other hand covering the other ear. She paced and listened for five minutes, punctuating the conversation from her end by occasionally shouting “What!” and “You’re kidding me.” Finally, she said, “OK, I got it. I will. Thank you. I understand. Good luck.”

She ended the call and the phone slipped from her hand, where it clattered to the floor, shattering into pieces of plastic and bits of electronics.