Sunset Bridge (38 page)

Wanda and Janya squeezed the children between them on the backseat, and everybody fastened their seat belts. At the end of the driveway Marsh maneuvered carefully around the fallen tree. The road ahead was clear.

They watched the unfolding scenery without much conversation. Even the children were quiet, although Lily insisted on climbing up on Janya’s lap, and Wanda scooped up Vijay so he could see better. Marsh was driving slowly, watching for fallen limbs and other obstructions, and they saw only two cars, the first one parked and abandoned by the local Indian mound where the land was higher. Someone had undoubtedly hoped to protect it in case of flooding. The second car passed them, and Tracy recognized the owner of Randall’s, who had probably gotten up early to see how his store had fared. From the road, it looked fine.

“If he opens up, we can restock our supplies,” Marsh said.

“Look at that old fish camp.” Wanda pointed out her window. “I guess that’ll save the state from having to tear it down. Nothing much left of it now.”

Tracy peered beyond Marsh and saw that Wanda was right. What little had been left of the dilapidated structure was gone now—blown out into the Gulf, most likely.

“And there’s Blake’s house,” she said a minute later, pointing down the driveway that led to it. “It looks okay. I wonder…”

They all wondered but didn’t voice their suspicions with the children in the car. They only knew that someone had tried to kill Maggie, not his identity. But Blake himself was their top candidate.

“That’s a story I’m all ears to hear,” Wanda said, “now that I’ve heard the happy ending first.”

“Things are looking pretty good so far.” Marsh had dodged felled trees, and once a downed pole and all the wires strung from it. There was debris on the road, uprooted bushes, pieces of tin and what looked like siding from somebody’s house or fishing shack. Tracy was encouraged. An osprey nest that she had passed every day on her way to the bridge was still in place on the top of a telephone pole, and as they passed, an osprey was circling, as if checking the nest’s status, just the way they were about to check Happiness Key.

“That’s a good sign,” she said, pointing to the bird. “If a nest made it, our houses probably made it, too.”

“Maybe we’ll be sorry we worked so hard to get all our important stuff out,” Wanda said. “Maybe we wasted a lot of time yesterday.”

But Marsh had slowed again, and Tracy immediately saw why. The road curved here and swung a little closer to the water. They were almost at Happiness Key now, where her property began. Even with some familiar landmarks changed or gone, she knew she should be able to see the houses ahead.

Except that now, a hundred yards in front of them and plainly visible from where she sat, was a pile of rubble blocking the road.

She put her hand to her mouth and stared. Marsh leaned over and put his hand on her knee. “Take a deep breath.”

“What?” Wanda asked, unable to see from the backseat.

“Please. Stop,” Tracy told Marsh.

“I can get us closer.”

“No, stop. Please.”

He did, not a difficult job, since he had already slowed after his first glimpse of the sight ahead.

Tracy unsnapped her seat belt and opened the door. She turned around, blinking back tears. “It’s not good news,” she told the women behind her. But she could tell that now they realized the situation, as well.

“How bad do you think it is?” Wanda asked, unsnapping her belt to get out.

Tracy shook her head, although she was afraid the answer was all too clear, even from here.

“A twister,” Marsh said, getting out, too. “Earl told us they’d tracked some that were spawned by the hurricane. It looks like one of them came right across here.”

Tracy was out of the car now, staring ahead. Not all the rubble was manmade. Something, most likely a tornado, had cleared a path from the bay to the gulfside. Trees lay on their sides. Shrubbery was gone, and so was the road. Erased. Or nearly so, as if nothing had ever occupied this ground.

She began to walk slowly toward what had once been a small beachfront community with the absurd and still completely suitable name of Happiness Key.

“You don’t have to do this,” Marsh said, coming up beside her and taking her hand.

“It was mine.” She heard the past tense, and tears filled her eyes again.

“You made it yours,” he agreed. “In all the right ways. You brought it to life.”

She started to say, “For what? Look where it got me.” But she stopped herself. Because she knew the answer.

Wanda and Janya, each with a child in her arms, joined them, and they walked as close as they dared. There were too many downed wires for them to venture very far. Instead, they stopped and stared.

Wanda’s house had been hit the worst. Where it had stood there was nothing but a foundation and, incongruously, a row of hibiscus that, except for blossoms stripped by the wind, looked almost unscathed. Enough of Janya’s cottage remained to mark the spot where it had been. A wall, holes where windows had adorned it. The roof lay just beyond it, as if it had blown off in one piece.

Tracy’s house was still marked by portions of two walls, but even from here, she could see that everything she had left inside was gone. Somewhere in the Gulf a school of fish was enjoying her take on budget interior design.

Alice’s house was missing its roof, as if someone had reached down and carefully pried it away. There was no sign of the roof itself, but for the most part, the walls were standing. And finally Maggie’s house—the same house where Dana and Lizzie had also lived, the house that had originally been home to Herb Krause, the old man who had left all the women a unique legacy—was just a heap of crumbled concrete.

“Well, damn,” Wanda said. “There’s no place like home.”

“No place at all.” Tracy closed her eyes. “Nothing like home anymore.”

“At least our insurance companies won’t fiddle around.
They’ll have to pay up.” The quaver in Wanda’s voice belied the pep talk.

Janya spoke from behind them. “We saved the things that were important. There was nothing you could have done that you didn’t do.”

It was just like Janya to try to console her friends. Tracy took a deep breath, trying to quell the turmoil inside her, and stared at the ruins of the first happy home she had ever known. Marsh slipped his arm around her waist and lightly rested his fingers on her belly, where his child was cocooned from all life’s disappointments.

“My house is big enough for all of us,” he said. “Everyone is welcome there as long as you need to stay.”

Tracy felt a strange sensation. Not turmoil after all. Not sorrow welling from deep inside her, although there was plenty of that. But movement. A vague fluttering where Marsh’s hand rested.

“Marsh…”

He kissed her hair. “You okay? Do you need to go back to the car?”

“I think the baby moved. Did you feel it?”

He pressed his hand tighter against her belly. Then he laughed. “That’s what it is. She’s making herself known. And what a moment to do it.”

Tracy wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. She was choking on both, and inside, from its place of safety and sustenance, the baby was offering comfort. She had waited for this moment, and it could not have come at a more emotional time.

Then she realized exactly what Marsh had said. She turned to him. “She?”

He looked instantly guilty. “I just think of the baby as a girl, that’s all.”

“You know, don’t you? You asked the technician when I left the room to see the doctor. You found out the sex without me!”

“Trace, there are bigger things to think about today, okay?”

She pressed his fingers harder against her belly, hoping the baby, their daughter, would flutter again. Suddenly she knew she was going to be all right. All of them were going to be all right. “Are there? You’re sure?”

“Doesn’t matter where we live,” Wanda said, setting Vijay on the ground at her feet, then draping her arm over Tracy’s shoulder, and pulling Janya and Lily into line beside them. “You just remember that in the days to come, okay?”

F
ebruary in Palmetto Grove was high tourist season. If they weren’t part of the service industry, residents hunkered down and took cover. If they
were,
they hoarded their tips and smiled brightly. Nobody with any sense planned a major event in February.

Nobody except Tracy and the women of Happiness Key.

“The next ferry’s about to dock,” Wanda said, coming into the bedroom at the old Cracker house where Janya and Alice were helping Tracy dress for her wedding. “Kenny’s on it, and good thing, too. If he’d missed all the hoopla here, he’d of had to get his nookie somewhere else for the next few months.”

“I’m sure he must have known,” Alice said as she took out the pearls she had worn on her own wedding day. They were to be Tracy’s “old” and “borrowed” all in one. “He is…a bright man.”

Tracy was just taking her dress off the hanger. The dress, unlike her sadly clinging slip, was designed to take the emphasis off her expanded middle and prominent baby bump.
It was strapless, white chiffon over ivory silk, and fell from a satin sash positioned right below her breasts to midcalf. Okay, she was still clearly pregnant, but at least she was going to look good. She figured she deserved that, since for the next and final three months of her pregnancy, she was pretty sure she would be mistaken for the Goodyear Blimp.

“Maggie and Felo are with him?” she asked, because Wanda hadn’t said, and Tracy hated to think what kind of punishment Felo would endure from Wanda if he missed Tracy’s wedding.

“Present and accounted for.”

“Relax, dear,” Alice said. “Everything is set.”

There was a knock at the door, and before anyone could answer, Olivia stepped inside. “It’s crazy out there!”

“You look beautiful,” Wanda told the girl. “And am I right? I hear you and Lily match?”

The two girls were sharing the position of flower girl. Lily, who was now toddling everywhere on her own, was to go first; then, when she inevitably wandered off to do something else, Olivia would scoop her up, and together they would finish the job. Olivia’s dress was floor-length and a deep violet color; Lily’s was the same, although hers was a shorter version so she couldn’t trip over the hem.

Olivia did look beautiful. Before too many years passed she would graduate to bridesmaid, then maybe a bride herself. Tracy was glad she would be watching the transformation up close. After the destruction of Happiness Key, Olivia had moved in with Tracy and Marsh and never moved out again. After much conversation and thought, everyone concerned had decided that letting the girl live there permanently was the right thing.

Olivia still spent part of each weekend and one school night
a week with Alice and Roger at Shell Horizon, but her home was now on Palmetto Grove Key, in a former guest room that sported posters of Justin Bieber and Daniel Radcliffe on freshly painted lavender walls. Alice could do what she was best suited to do, enjoy being Olivia’s proud and adoring grandmother, while Marsh and Tracy fulfilled the day-to-day role of parents.

Tracy thought that once Roger and Alice worked out all the details of merging their separate lives and incomes, there would be another wedding for all of them to enjoy. Olivia had already announced that when the time came, she planned to be the one to give her grandmother away.

“Now that everybody’s together, are you finally going to tell us the baby’s name?” Olivia asked.

“Maggie’s not here yet,” Wanda pointed out before Tracy could answer. “And I heard tell from Kenny there’s a surprise guest coming over on that ferry. You just have to wait.”

“This is
so
not fair. She’s practically
my
little sister.”

Tracy smiled sympathetically; then she held out her arms, and Janya, who had taken the dress, slipped it over her head.

Olivia perked up suddenly. “Are Lizzie and Dana the surprise?”

There were secrets the girl didn’t know, and none they could share with her now about Dana’s reasons for leaving Happiness Key. Instead, Tracy shared some good news, because Dana, who was finally beginning to feel safe again, had written to tell her that she could. “No, they can’t be here. But I got a beautiful card from both of them, and Pete, too. And you want to know where it’s from?”

Olivia screwed up her face in thought. “The way they move, it could be anywhere.”

“Australia,” Tracy said, then waited a moment for the
surprised murmur to die down. “Dana said they’ve bought a little cattle ranch there, and they’re very happy. And…” She smiled. “They want all of us to come and visit. They’ll buy the tickets when we’re ready.”

Tracy saw understanding on the faces of the women. Better than anyone, they knew this was a gift Dana could afford and generously offer them.

“Wow! I bet I’m not supposed to tell anybody, right?” Olivia asked.

“You are one smart cookie,” Wanda said.

Janya changed the subject before more questions ensued. “Olivia, was Vijay still clean when you saw him?”

“Rishi is making sure of it.”

“Vijay has taken a particular liking to mud pies,” Janya said. “I am sure he is looking for a source today.”

“A boy can’t start too young on making pies,” Wanda said. “We’ll get him making the real ones soon enough.”

She didn’t add “if the children stay with you.” All news so far had been good. The second set of grandparents had been located and, like the first, seemed unwilling to become guardians. These days none of the women mentioned the possibility that Vijay and Lily could still be moved elsewhere, for fear of jinxing the children’s future.

To accommodate their new family and make the possibility of an adoption more likely, Janya and Rishi had just closed on a comfortable house in a family neighborhood near the bridge, where the children would have plenty of friends, Janya would be close enough to visit hers, and Rishi would have a shorter commute. The Kapurs were moving out of their temporary rental next week, and Janya had been hard at work painting murals based on Hindu folktales on the children’s new bedroom walls.

Wanda and Ken weren’t far away, either. While they debated whether to buy or rent, they had moved into a pet-friendly condo overlooking the Gulf, complete with an Olympic-size swimming pool to entertain their grandchildren and friends, a dog park where Chase could run and a kitchen that satisfied even Wanda’s requirements.

Tracy drew a deep breath so Janya could zip the dress. “Everything has changed so fast! Sometimes I feel like I can’t keep up.”

“Just wait till that baby comes,” Wanda said. “Then we’ll talk about keeping up.”

“I can have her with me at the center. I told you that, right? It’s all set. She can stay in the nursery with our attendant.”

“And when that does not suit, then I will have her with me,” Janya said.

“Her?” Olivia asked. “Who?”

Tracy knew what the girl was up to, but she played along. “The baby.”

“Which baby?”

Tracy winked at her. “You mean…Waverly?”

“Waverly!” Olivia clapped her hands. “Wow, that’s cool.”

“You let Ms. Olivia here twist you around those skinny fingers of yours,” Wanda said, “you’ll deserve everything she gives you in adolescence.”

“You wanted to know, too,” Olivia said. “You
know
you did.”

“Waverly?” Wanda asked, ignoring what was obviously the truth. “How’d you come up with that?”

“Do you like it?”

“I think so. Yeah, I do. Of course you’ll shorten it to…?”

“Way,” Tracy said.

“It is a beautiful name,” Janya said.

Alice, who was fastening the pearls around Tracy’s neck, agreed.

“It’s better than Olive Tree. That’s what Marsh calls
me,
” Olivia said. “That’s so dorky.” But she didn’t look as if she minded.

Wanda took down the rhinestone-and-pearl comb that Tracy planned to wear, and carefully blew off a spot of dust. “When I talked to him just now, Ken said the word’s come down that the bridge will probably open again next week, now that the repairs are about finished.”

No one said anything for a moment. Tracy wasn’t sure if she would ever cross the present bridge comfortably, and she was looking forward to the new one going up next to it. The new bridge would be the most carefully built, state-of-the-art bridge in Florida. In penance, every official remotely involved was making certain of it.

“He also said they’ve reached a plea bargain with that Bournes guy. Life in prison for murder and attempted murder instead of the death penalty, and he rats on everybody who was part of the scam. They’ll clean out Cardrake Brothers real fast.”

“The scam…” Tracy thought how anemically the word described everything that had occurred.

Everyone now knew that the “scam” had started as just that, before it morphed into something darker and murderous. The elite group of engineers under Blake Armstrong’s leadership had convinced themselves that they could skimp on materials for repairs for the old bridge. Assured of the lucrative contract for the new one if they brought the repairs in under budget, they had seen their plan as foolproof. Odds that the repairs wouldn’t hold up were small, so small that in the mind of Blake Armstrong, avid gambler, the scheme was
worth the risk. If necessary, bridge inspectors could be paid off, and so could contractors. Nobody would have discovered the plan, except that on a routine maintenance run, one of the Cardrake team had spotted a crack, a substantial crack that considerably changed the odds of not being discovered.

By then the team had earned reputations as golden-haired boys, the best and the brightest young engineers in the business. Their choices were limited. Do nothing and hope the crack didn’t widen and wasn’t discovered. Make minor repairs without admitting the extent of the problem and hope they could explain things in such a way that their previous actions weren’t unduly questioned. Or confess that they’d made errors, close down the bridge for several weeks, and completely redo what they had done so poorly the first time.

When Harit Dutta arrived at the beach house to cut Blake’s hair two afternoons before he died, several of the men had been in a heated discussion about which avenue to follow. Blake, who had forgotten about his appointment, looked up and found Harit standing in the doorway, and from the expression on Harit’s face, he couldn’t tell exactly what or how much the man had heard. Blake paid him and sent him away, and then the men discussed what to do. Most felt Harit was not an engineer and therefore would not understand what they’d been saying, even if he had overheard some of it. But Blake, who had engaged in several in-depth conversations with the intelligent, well-educated barber, was sure his partners were wrong. He felt certain that when Harit considered what he’d learned, not only would he understand, he would feel obliged to report it.

Overnight Blake brooded about the barber’s involvement, aware that while he himself was trying to figure out what to do, Harit might well be discussing the matter with his
wife. By the next morning, he knew he couldn’t sit back any longer. Well connected to the gambling underworld in his native Miami, he arranged to have Kanira abducted when she left home to do her grocery shopping the next morning, then brought to Miami, where she was forced at gunpoint to call Harit. He was sure from a former conversation that the frantic husband would drive straight to Miami once he knew his wife’s location. The Duttas were immigrants with few ties. They were, in Blake’s opinion, easy targets. He just hadn’t counted on the Kapurs’ insistence that Harit would never commit murder, nor Maggie’s diligence in proving that her neighbors were right.

Blake’s body had never washed ashore, but Ned claimed to have seen his partner floating facedown in the waves after Blake and Maggie went overboard. A skeptical Maggie believed an alternate scenario. She thought that Ned, suddenly rid of both Blake and Maggie, had probably started the engine and taken off for port before Blake could climb back on board. Whichever way it had happened, there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that Blake Armstrong was gone for good.

“Let’s forget scams and bridges and anything that’s not part of this wedding,” Wanda said. “It’s almost time, and you’ve just got this one thing left.” She moved closer to position the comb.

Tracy had decided not to wear a veil. A white dress was probably a bit much, under the circumstances, but she had let herself be persuaded by her friends. Her college roommate, Sherrie, who was in China while her husband consulted at a hospital there, had sent the comb as Tracy’s “something new” and promised she would come for a week in May to help when the baby was born.

Now Tracy sat while Wanda carefully set the comb into the
curls at the back of her head. She was wearing her hair half up and half down, and the comb gave the style the right festive touch.

She stood, straightening her skirt and leaning forward to make sure her makeup was perfect. Then she held out her hand for her flowers, a bright tropical bouquet, heavy on gardenias, that was Florida all the way.

“So what do you think?” She turned so everyone could see her. “Will he run screaming into the night?”

“You look just like a movie star. I want to be
you
when I grow up,” Olivia said, and they all laughed. Everyone kissed Tracy’s cheek and gave her a hug, then followed her to the door.

Olivia peeked into the hallway; then she motioned them forward. Tracy could hear a buzz of voices over the music of fiddles and a banjo. She and Marsh had debated where to have the wedding, or even whether to simply elope right after the hurricane, but now she was glad they had chosen to wait and have a real celebration here, on the front lawn of the house where they were already sharing their lives.

She had invited the rec center staff and the members she worked most closely with; he had invited Wild Florida’s employees and board, as well as their most ardent supporters. Friends from the community had come, as well, and important people from far away, some extended family of Marsh’s, a few old friends of Tracy’s from California. Phillip Callander and the staff of the newly reopened Dancing Shrimp had prepared an elaborate finger-food reception, and the flower arranging club at the rec center had created all the floral displays. A bluegrass band that often played at Wild Florida rallies was providing the music.