Summer Shadows (2 page)

A
BBY STARED UP
the flight of stairs and mentally kicked herself. The rigors of climbing to the second floor every day hadn’t seemed such an overwhelming challenge when she talked to the realtor over the phone. All Abby had paid attention to was “on the beach,” and that made up her mind for her. That and her desperate need to escape.

Idiot
, she muttered under her breath, though even now “on the beach” tempered her self-criticism to a mild reprimand rather than a blistering diatribe.

Sighing, she grabbed the banister and began the arduous trip up the outside stairs to her new second floor beachfront apartment, pulling herself from step to step, trying to ignore the pain. After all, there was a time not too long ago when it would have been much worse. She gritted her teeth and “pushed through.”

How she hated that phrase.

Her physical therapist had yelled it at her for months. “Push through, Abby,” Helene always called. “Push through. You can do it. I know you can.” Easy for Helene to say as she stood there on two strong legs while Abby with her damaged hip and leg tried to climb one step, then two, walk the length of the room, then back, dripping with sweat and almost retching from pain.

Because Abby had no choice other than a life of immobility, she had pushed through, crying as she pushed. Three times a day, then twice, then once. Then three times a week, then twice, then once, she had pushed through the torture known as physical therapy. As a result she walked without a cane unless she had to be on her feet for a long time or had to traverse an uneven surface.

Tipping her mental hat to Helene, she continued to climb the stairs to her new apartment, step by straining step. She couldn’t help smiling. Sometimes such small things were really momentous victories.

“Excuse me, but just what do you think you’re doing?” The deep voice was cold, the question accusatory. “This is a private residence.”

Abby gripped the banister to steady herself and turned. Even looking down from her vantage point halfway up the stairs, she could tell he was one big man. He was also an irate one. His mouth was pressed thin, and his dark eyes shot sparks. His hands were fists on his hips. In each fist he held a messy sheaf of papers that fanned out on either side of him like a stiff tutu. Abby could see handwritten corrections in bold, black marker scribbled about the typing. She must have disturbed his work, and he didn’t appear to handle interruptions well.

It was sad, his surly attitude, because otherwise he was really quite impressive. A beautiful fallen angel, she thought, struck with a flight of imaginative if theologically incorrect fancy, an angel who lacked civility. She sniffed the air in curiosity. All the supernatural, Peretti-type novels said she should smell the brimstone if he were indeed a fallen angel, but she didn’t catch any hint of sulfur in the clean sea air.

“Well?” he prompted, his fair hair falling across his forehead. The sun struck it so it looked like a gleaming golden halo. He was too handsome by half.

She lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders as she tried to remember his original question. Neither fallen angel nor grumpy man was going to intimidate her. She backtracked mentally from her image of an angel and brimstone through impressive and irate to—She grinned. What was she doing here? That was the question. She even knew the answer, not that he deserved it.

“Marguerite de la Roque,” she said. “Without the moral baggage.”

He blinked. “Well, Marguerite, I repeat, what are you doing here?”

“My name is not Marguerite. She has been dead for several centuries.”

He looked understandably bewildered.

“She sailed from France to Canada in 1541, the first European woman to reach the New World. Like her, I am embarking on a great adventure. I am moving to Seaside today.”
To my New World full of promise
. She smiled brilliantly at him.

“I hate to tell you, but you’re hardly the first woman to reach town,” he said dryly. “And, I’m sure, not the last. Now why are you here? Climbing these particular steps, I mean.”

A loud woof brought her gaze to the dog that stood at the man’s side. The rottweiler stared at her, his brown eyebrows pulled together in an unblinking frown that matched the man’s.

Great. Steps, a grumpy neighbor, and an ugly monster besides. Wait until Puppy sees him. She’ll have a coronary on the spot
.

“I’m Abby Patterson,” she said, remembering at the last minute to look at the man, not the dog. “I’m not trespassing. I’m renting the second floor indefinitely.”

“Oh.” He looked nonplussed, and she was irritated enough at him to enjoy his discomfort. “You’re not coming until tomorrow.”

She shrugged. “Change of plans.” If ever she’d uttered an understatement, that was it. But how could she possibly explain to this glowering man that coming today was her private Declaration of Independence. Her own giant leap for mankind. Her personal strike against tyranny as she raised the banner signaling the belated liberation of Abigail Lynn MacDonald Patterson, aged twenty-nine.

She waved the keys she’d gotten at the realtor’s. Then she turned her back and continued her climb. She was surprised to feel the wood vibrate beneath her feet. She looked over her shoulder. Both the golden man and his monster dog were ascending her steps. Her
private
steps.

She reached the small landing at the top and turned to him, her back against the sturdy wooden railing. He stepped onto the
landing too, followed by the monster. Talk about crowded.

“What?” she asked, voice abrupt. He and the dog unnerved her standing in the tight space with her. As a result she gave him her frostiest stare to prove she wasn’t bothered by his nearness. It was just that he loomed, sort of like her father did.

He stared at her, every bit as frosty as she. It was a wonder snow didn’t fall on this strip of New Jersey beach in spite of the balmy mid-June temperature. “I’m Marsh Winslow.”

She was so busy wishing he would back up onto the porch, which ran across the width of the building, and give her breathing room that it took a minute for the name to register.

“You’re Marsh Winslow? My landlord?” Abby was appalled. She had to share the house with this snarling, ill-tempered person? She glanced down. And his monster dog?

The dog nudged his master’s hand for all the world like he wanted to be introduced too.

The man looked at the monster, his face softening into a smile. “This is Fargo, the wonder dog.”

“I’ve got a cat,” Abby said, staring at Fargo with distaste. He was so big. “Puppy.”

Marsh Winslow blinked again. “You have a cat and a dog? I thought you only had a cat. That’s all we agreed on in the lease.”

This time she blinked. “I do.”

“Er, you do what?”

The man couldn’t even follow a conversation. “I do have just a cat,” she patiently explained. “I’d have told you if I had a dog.” She glanced at Fargo. “They’re hard to hide.”

“But you just said you had a puppy.” Fargo nodded his agreement. “They’re even harder to hide.”

“I said I had a cat named Puppy.”

“A cat named Puppy?”

It was his quick look at the dog that made her angry. It was like the two of them thought she was playing with less than a full deck. It was too much like the way her parents had looked at each other when she told them about her new job in Seaside.

Well, contrary to public opinion, she was not an idiot. Her mental deck was a full fifty-two cards, carefully shuffled and ready to play.

“I suppose naming a dog after a city in North Dakota makes more sense?”

Her landlord scratched his ear like he couldn’t believe he was involved in such a foolish conversation. Fargo sat, lifted his rear leg, and began scratching his ear too.

Fleas? Both of them?

Marsh took a deep breath, the kind you take when you are putting up with someone who has tried you to the limits. “I, um, I need to apologize if I sounded a bit abrupt,” he said abruptly. “I didn’t realize who you were.”

She looked at him a minute without reacting. He didn’t appear sorry. His mouth had the puckered look of someone who’d just swallowed something extremely sour or someone whose mother had forced him to apologize countless time when he didn’t want to.

“Don’t let it worry you,” she said, waving her hand regally in the air. “You couldn’t have known.” Having dismissed him, she turned ninety degrees to look out over the beach and the ocean. “It’ll be a case of Isabella and Ferdinand.”

Fargo woofed in question as Marsh said, “I beg your pardon?”

“Isabella and Ferdinand.” She again waved her hand to shoo him away.

“Of Christopher Columbus fame, I assume? You’re Isabella and I’m Ferdinand?”

She nodded. She was Queen Isabella dismissing the diminutive Ferdinand—except that Marsh Winslow was anything but little and he didn’t seem to realize she’d dismissed him. Still, if they could work out a policy like Isabella and Ferdinand did, they’d probably manage all right. As coregents of Spain, Isabella ruled Castile while Ferdinand ruled Aragon. She would rule the second floor, her Castile, and Marsh the first, his Aragon. If such an arrangement allowed the royal marriage to survive, certainly it would allow the two of them to coexist through the summer and beyond.

“How many miles to the horizon?” she asked suddenly.

He blinked at the change of topic and glanced quickly at the water. “I haven’t the vaguest idea.”

How was he able to convey with just the tone of his voice the idea that she had asked a foolish question? “Oh. I just thought you might know, living here and all.”

He answered with icy cool. “I bought this house three months
ago. I have lived here a total of one week thus far.”

“Oh.” She watched the gentle surf roll onto the sand, a covey of quick-footed sandpipers darting just ahead of the advancing waves, then dashing back to search for food before the next comber came. The gloriously radiant sun bathed the scene, making her squint against the glare in spite of her sunglasses. It was all she could do not to hug herself with delight in spite of her grouchy landlord.

A place at the shore, right on the beach in the southern part of the island that was Seaside. When she’d driven over the Thirty-fourth Street Bridge onto the island just a few miles south of Atlantic City, she’d greedily inhaled the tangy, salty air. She felt like she was coming home though she’d never before been in Seaside longer than two weeks at a time. Still, the feeling of rightness reinforced her belief that she’d made the correct decision in deciding to settle here.

From the top of the bridge she looked down on Egg Harbor Bay. In the marshes she saw a great white heron standing still as a statue, its plumage brilliant against the deep green of the swaying grasses. On a slim strip of beach outlining an islet of shrubs and grasses sat at least ten cormorants, their snaky necks stretched to the sun, their wings spread wide to dry.

Then she’d driven into Seaside, turned right on Central Avenue, and found 4311. Her new home. Her new porch with nothing between her and the sea but the wide strand of soft, golden sand.

When she and her parents had come to Seaside through the years for vacations, they had always rented the first floor of a house that stood three blocks back from the beach. Financial considerations had forced that rental.

As a child, she had thought everyone lugged chairs, umbrellas, towels, toys, rafts, and bottle upon bottle of suntan lotion to the beach every day only to tote it all back every evening, all sandy and sticky, tired and grumpy. One day it dawned on her that people actually lived in the houses that lined the beach. These fortunate few got up each morning, had breakfast on their big, wide porches, and stepped off their decks right onto the sand. They went back to their houses for gritless lunches, then walked back onto the sand for the rest of the afternoon. They even played on
the beach in the evenings after the lifeguards went off duty or sat on their porches and watched the waves.

Nothing was more thrilling than watching the waves, nothing, and it was like they belonged to the people who lived right on the beach. They could watch no matter the weather. Even on a wild, rain-soaked day, they could sit inside all dry and cozy, observing the temperamental sea slapping the sand, waves crashing in fury, spume flying.

Now here she was with her own porch right on the beach. She could eat breakfast on her own deck to the music of the purling sea. She could sit beneath her own awning and watch the sun jewels dance on the ceaseless motion of the water until she was glutted on the sight. If she wanted to, she could lie on her chaise and listen to the waves sigh and break all night long. When the weather turned, she could enjoy the ferocity, the violence, from behind her floor-to-ceiling windows. And she had only to step from the walk beside the house onto the sand, then cross the lovely cream expanse to stand in the cool green water.