by Julie Cannon
The sound of the ocean drifted into her head, and she turned toward it like a horse picking up an unfamiliar scent. Drawn to the ocean, she reluctantly left the sanctuary of the courtyard.
The path led her to another small patio, this one covered by a large green cabana and occupied by a small wedding party. The bride was beaming, the groom looked terrified, and a baby in the front row was crying. She continued past a flat, wide expanse of green grass with the dozens of lounge chairs scattered there supporting resort guests in various stages of dress worshipping the late-afternoon sun. A couple of kids no older than nine or ten were throwing a Frisbee back and forth while another pair tossed a football.
She passed a small restaurant tucked discreetly behind a large hedge. The clink of silverware and smell of seafood greeted her as she rounded the corner. Not particularly hungry, she kept walking past another pool with as many people in the water as out. At several tables guests were relaxing with pitchers of beer. Other vacationers held red or orange beverages and their boisterous laughter indicated they had been drinking for some time. She wasn’t big on alcohol. Rum, the main ingredient of tropical drinks, gave her a headache, but a few mild ones wouldn’t be too bad.
Holding on to a handrail she untied her left shoe, pulled it off, stuffed her sock inside, then removed the other one. Two more steps and she was in the sand. Step after step her toes sank and her calf muscles tightened then relaxed. It was about twenty yards to the water, and in less than a minute the Pacific Ocean was lapping around her ankles.
As she stood there gazing out over the horizon, salt water splashed the legs of her shorts, but she didn’t care. For the first time in years she wasn’t on any timetable. She didn’t have to punch a clock or keep one eye on her BlackBerry for the next meeting reminder to pop up. There was absolutely no place she had to be for the next ten weeks. She was here to relax and work on her new book, but her time was her own. The mere thought of the unending free time, the vast openness of her schedule, her calendar, her life almost overwhelmed her. She seemed to be in the middle of the ocean in front of her with no land in sight in any direction and nothing to hold on to. With no anchor she felt adrift and was suddenly uncomfortable.
Sensing she needed a significant change in her life, when she planned this trip she’d intentionally done nothing more than sketch out how far she wanted to get each day in the research for her book. She could do everything via the Internet these days, which was very different from twenty years ago when she’d gathered information for her PhD dissertation on seventeenth-century tribal warfare in Western Europe. She had spent years in dark, damp rooms in the back halls of musty old libraries digging through volumes of books with pages yellowed with age. She loved books—their texture, their smell, the way they fit in her hands. She missed being able to almost touch the history she knew so well.
Due to technological advances and the green initiative at Embers College, her students didn’t even have textbooks. Everything was digital, either downloaded via the mysterious World Wide Web or uploaded onto their tablet PCs from a flash drive no bigger than her little finger. The college library was small, housing only a few thousand books and reference material that had not yet made it to the digital age. Before leaving for this vacation she had shipped the last case of books to a small college in Nigeria that had asked for books to help their students learn English.
The receding tide tugged at her legs and she looked to her left, then her right, down the shoreline. Two kids laughed as they chased a third, who darted in front of her, forcing her to step back to avoid getting run over. “Sorry, lady,” came a high voice from one of the kids as he raced to catch up with his friends. Smiling at the joy of youth, she turned to her left and started down the beach.
She wandered in and out of the tide, the water soaking her shorts then barely covering her toes as if teasing her to jump in and splash around like a kid again. Because she grew up only an hour from San Diego, Elizabeth had been to the beach as a child more times than she could remember. Her father was the produce manager in a grocery store, her mother a stay-at-home mom tending to the needs of Elizabeth’s two siblings and making magical meals from the various leftovers her father brought home from work every day. Money was tight in the Collins house, so practically every weekend they packed the picnic basket, piled into the station wagon, and headed to Mission Bay, where her brother and sister swam and surfed all day. She preferred to bury her nose in a good book.
She didn’t particularly care for the water. Actually she didn’t like the seaweed brushing against her calves and wrapping around her legs. When she was five, her brother played a cruel trick on her, convincing her that what she felt on her legs was a school of piranhas attacking her. She rarely went into the water again until she was much older. She wasn’t squeamish or frightened anymore, but the feel of seaweed brushing her legs still gave her the creeps. This beach was free of it, though, and she continued walking.
As she passed resort after resort, the tension in her body drained away. “How can you not relax in such a beautiful place,” she said out loud, no one within a hundred yards.
She was surprised when she glanced at her watch to see that more than an hour had passed. Even though it was barely after five, her stomach told her it was definitely past dinnertime. Fighting the urge to keep walking as far as she could around this beautiful island, she turned around and headed back toward her hotel.
A man wearing a scrap of brightly colored material that barely covered his crotch lay prone on a lounge chair to her right. He was far too overweight and hairy for any woman, even a straight one, to consider him the slightest bit attractive. But obviously no one had ever told him, judging by the way he proudly displayed his manliness. He was wearing mirrored sunglasses and she felt his eyes rake over her. She was wearing sunglasses too, albeit much more fashionable, and as much as she tried not to look at him too closely, it was like passing a train wreck. Her eyes kept darting over at him. She quickened her pace and chose instead to look at the adjacent islands off in the distance.
Chapter Two
Grabbing her keys and water bottle, Colby Taylor hurried across the small room and out the front door, closing and locking it behind her. She jogged to the narrow driveway, in a hurry to reach the beach before the setting sun began to dip below the horizon. Her surfboard was already secured on the custom-made rack on the back of her Toyota pickup. She had other cars she hadn’t touched in longer than she could remember, but she chose to drive this vehicle every day.
Colby slowly backed out of the long circular drive. When traffic cleared she crossed the road and headed east toward her favorite surfing spot. Her mind was a jumble, as it typically was at the end of the day. She thought about her classes, how she had managed to convey to her students the sometimes-difficult concept of how to stay upright on a highly waxed, eighteen-inch board rocking up and down in three-foot waves. She tried to spend more time with the students who were unable to stand on the board at all. These were the ones she always recalled. She analyzed everything, especially her failures. Her mind started to drift to a previous life, and before she went too far on that downhill spiral she focused on the conversation between two radio talk-show hosts.
Startled, she looked around and found she was in the parking lot at the beach. All too often she found herself driving on autopilot from point A to point B, which was a good way to die. She didn’t have a death wish. Even after everything that had happened, she wanted to live every day, though lately she’d begun to slip back and remember her old life more often than not. She never wanted to go down that backward path again. During the day she stayed busy, focusing on the task at hand. She could concentrate so fully she wouldn’t be aware of a riot around her. That single-mindedness had made her successful in her other life, but she was afraid of it if she ever returned.
Colby hurried out of her truck, unstrapped her board from its protective case, and within minutes was paddling into the deep blue water.
&nbs
p; “Hey, Breaker, what’s up?” one of the guys on a bright green board asked.
Every surfer had a nickname. The guys on the water with her now were Striker, Paddle Boy, and Pencil. Every nickname came with a story. She had hers within months of returning to Maui. “Breaker” symbolized the way she attacked and conquered the waves of the Pacific Ocean. That and the trail of broken hearts she had left in her wake her first year back on the island. At least that’s what everybody thought, and she didn’t have the energy or interest to correct them.
“Nothing much.” The greetings continued as she paddled farther away from shore. Seeking solace, she maintained enough distance from the others so conversation was impossible but not far enough to be considered unsociable. She wasn’t having a good day. At least not a good afternoon. Before driving to the beach she had finished her monthly call to her mother. It had begun and ended just like all the others—difficult and repetitive.
“Hi, Mom, it’s me.”
“Colby Morgan Taylor. Where are you?”
No matter how many times she told her mother, she continued to ask the same question.
“Mom, I told you I’m fine and I’m safe.” She steeled herself for what was to come.
“Colby, how can you continue to do this to me and your sisters?” Her mother sounded better than last month. Then she’d been suffering from a bad case of laryngitis and Colby could barely hear what she was saying. Unfortunately this conversation was crystal clear.
“Mom, please, we’ve had this discussion. A dozen times, in fact. I know you love me and I love all of you, but you and my sisters would be here in twenty-four hours if you knew where I was. I’m perfectly fine and healthy, and I’m sorry, I do love you. I love everyone. I just don’t want you here.” Colby repeated that same statement to her mother every time she called, which was always on the first day of the month.
She had nothing against her family. She loved them, but she refused to return to a cheerful existence as if nothing had happened. They would try to engage her in life again, encourage her to return to work. She was just not interested. She didn’t have the energy to subject herself to the barrage of questions that her mother and five very nosy siblings would ask.
Her mother and her sisters couldn’t believe she would simply throw her career away. But Colby didn’t care what they thought. It was her face she needed to look at in the mirror every morning. She was culpable in a very ugly part of her life and had no desire to return.
“Colby, please, you’re my daughter,” Jeanette said in a quiet tone, as if that was the perfect reason Colby should dredge all the ugliness of her character to the surface.
Since the death of her father when she was twenty-two, she had maintained a very close relationship with her mother. She missed her. She missed her more than anything. On more than one occasion she had almost called her mother and told her everything about what happened that fateful night. What happened to that child. What happened to Gretchen.
But every time she picked up the phone and started to dial, Colby realized this was her cross to bear, no one else’s. Her mother would feel her pain, her agony, and she would hurt for her daughter. Colby didn’t want anyone else to experience the slightest pain over that night. It was difficult for her mother not to know where she was or what she was doing. Before she left, Colby had given her best friend and her attorney her cell-phone number. She swore them both to secrecy, to not give the information to anyone unless in an extreme emergency. Both had understood what that meant and so far, after three years, had kept their promise.
“It’s just that I worry about you, Colby, you’re my daughter,” Jeanette repeated.
“Mom, please, I’m not having this conversation with you. Now, how is everybody?” She took this approach call after call, month after month. Her mother knew she could be very hardheaded once she set her mind to something and had learned not to push.
“Cindy is about to be a partner, Teresa has more clients than she has room for, and Samantha just hit the million-dollars-in-sales club. Christine still has that same old job at Walmart, and Lindsay is enjoying her summer vacation.”
As her mother spoke, the faces of her five sisters flashed across her closed eyes. The lawyer, the stockbroker, the real-estate agent, the store manager, and the teacher. All six of the Taylor women were successful, accomplished, professional women. Four of them were married to their original husbands, and her baby sister Teresa had not yet found Mr. Right. Colby, well, she was where she was.
The conversation with her mother lasted another ten or fifteen minutes. Her mother did most of the talking, and more often lately it sparked a wave of loneliness, even after three years. Colby was still angry at herself that her thoughtless words and actions had put her here. Her absence was hurting the ones she loved, but she deserved this punishment.
Colby lost track of time like she always did when she was riding the waves. The angle of the sun told her that she had no more than fifteen minutes left before it was too dark to surf safely. Many nights she stayed long into the darkness, hour after hour, until exhaustion finally forced her ashore, where she staggered home and collapsed in bed.
But something was different about this evening. A prickle on the back of her neck told her someone was watching her. That wasn’t unusual. The ratio of male to female surfers was very one-sided, and, all ego aside, none of the guys were as good as she was. Often people stared and pointed. She didn’t like the attention and didn’t know if she should feel uncomfortable or flattered. While she waited for the next wave she scanned the shoreline. It was too dark to see clearly, but someone appeared to be sitting in one of the lounge chairs not far from the entrance to the resort pool area. She had a strange feeling this person had been watching her for quite some time.
Elizabeth looked out at the horizon and accepted a glass of wine from the waiter. The maître d’ must have guessed she preferred patio seating to the boisterous noise inside the restaurant. He had led her to this table at the far end closest to the railing that separated her from the beach retreat below. She glanced at the menu, but was more interested in her surroundings. The large patio still had an intimate feel. The small tables and chairs were arranged to provide maximum privacy. She imagined lovers, newlyweds, or people celebrating monumental anniversaries sitting at these tables and watching the sunset.
Sipping her wine, she observed the die-hard beachgoers. The other tourists had most likely retreated to their rooms to shower or get ready for dinner. By the looks of some she saw earlier, more than a few were probably applying sunburn relief.
She also noticed the surfers in the water and stopped counting at fourteen, deciding she wasn’t here to analyze how many were surfing or what they were doing, but to just enjoy the scenery. Finishing her first drink, she watched the surfers alternately ride the waves or fall off their boards almost as quick as they got up. They all looked about the same in their board shorts that hung down to their knees, their tank tops, and an occasional wet suit. They were various shapes, sizes, and heights, and had very different skill levels.
Her dinner arrived and she ate leisurely, with no pressure from her waiter, which she appreciated. Far too often as a lone diner she felt hurried, the wait staff eager to dispose of her and her small tip in favor of a larger table and a corresponding larger one. Her waiter was cordial, polite, and attentive yet wasn’t a pest.
She ate her fresh tuna fillet, glancing often at the surfers, especially one. The more she watched, the more she sensed something different about this individual other than the bright yellow shorts. This one was better than the three or four remaining surfers. Much better, with a skill obviously practiced over and over. Even from this distance she could sense the surfer’s confidence and mastery of the waves, as if anticipating what the wave would do. No matter how much practice or how many lessons she had, she would never be as good as the one in the yellow shorts.
Transferring her third glass of wine to a plastic cup, she paid her bill and again h
eaded toward the water. No glass was allowed on the beach, and she didn’t mind drinking out of plastic. She was here for the weather and relaxation, and to work, so the ambience was secondary.
Settling into one of the many now-vacant beach chairs, she was intent on enjoying her drink and the sand between her toes. In the time it took to finish her dinner, all but one of the surfers had come ashore. The one remaining was the one who had caught her eye earlier. She couldn’t quite place what was different about this surfer as she watched the form ride the board into shore.
Colby emerged from the water and shook her head several times, flinging salt water from her hair. After she tucked her board under her right arm she headed toward the parking lot. She scanned the few remaining faces of those hardy enough to stay on the beach after the sun went down, and her sixth sense told her that it was the woman in the khaki shorts and navy polo shirt who had been watching her.
Something about the woman drew Colby to her. Maybe it was the way she was lying relaxed, legs stretched out in front of her, the recliner tilted back just a bit. Perhaps it was the casual way she held the rim of the plastic cup in her hand, her wrist dangling over the arm of the chair. Or maybe the long blond hair piled on top of her head in a haphazard way that said it was more for comfort than style. Colby couldn’t put her finger on the reason, but as she headed in her direction she didn’t question it. The woman was still watching her, and for the first time in a long time it made her feel good.
Her body had changed since her return to the island. In her previous life she carried an extra fifteen pounds—not overweight by anyone’s standards. Long hours and strenuous working conditions were more conducive to resorting to fast food than eating three healthy meals a day. However, since abandoning that life and spending almost more time in the water than out, she had dropped close to thirty pounds, and what weight did remain was solid muscle. She wasn’t naïve enough to think that people didn’t look at her because of her body, but she simply didn’t care.
