by Noelle Adams
He watched her from the corner of his eye as she waited. When Uncle Roy noticed her, his eyes widened in surprise. “Cheeseburger?” he asked her.
The girl gave half a nod and stared at the floor.
She must be at least semiregular if Roy knew her order. That meant she was probably local.
Cade wondered why he’d never seen her before. Someone so different would certainly have stuck out.
The girl waited motionless, only moving out of the way at one point when the family vacated the booth and left the shop. When she got her cheeseburger in a Styrofoam container and paid with a five-dollar bill, she left without getting any change.
“Who was that?” Cade asked, still looking at the door she’d left by when Roy came back over to get his keys.
“I think her name is Holly.”
“Yes, Holly,” Mr. Redding agreed.
“What’s her last name?” Cade asked.
“Chaney,” Roy said.
Cade made note of the last name, although it didn’t ring a bell with anyone he’d known in Cape Charles growing up. “Does she come in here a lot?”
“Every Tuesday,” Roy said after turning around to check how the new set of burgers were doing on the grill. “Like clockwork. Don’t know what she’s doing here on a Friday.”
“It looked like she was buying first aid stuff. Maybe someone got hurt at home.”
“She lives alone,” Roy said. “As far as anyone knows.”
“Really? Where does she live? In town?”
“Outside of town. She’s got one of those beach properties to the south. Can’t remember exactly where.”
“Next to Bob Ellis’s old place,” Mr. Redding put in. “That big piece of land to the south of it.”
Cade raised his eyebrows. “Really? I didn’t think there was a house there.”
“There is,” Mr. Redding said. “That’s where she lives.”
“What’s her story?” Cade asked, feeling a spark of interest for the first time in weeks.
Roy chuckled. “No use looking in her direction, boy.”
Cade realized his uncle thought he was romantically interested in the young woman, but there was no reason to correct this mistake. She was certainly attractive, but that wasn’t why he was so interested. There was a mystery to her. A story that begged to be told. He knew how to spot them.
That was the one thing he was really good at.
“Why not?” he asked.
“She doesn’t do men.”
Cade’s eyes widened.
“She doesn’t do women either,” Roy continued. “She doesn’t do anyone.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean she doesn’t talk to anyone.”
“What do you mean she doesn’t talk? Is she mute?”
“I don’t think so. She just doesn’t like people. Doesn’t answer when anyone speaks to her. She only comes into town for supplies. Her mama was the same way.”
“Ethel says she comes into the library to read for an hour or so,” Mr. Redding offered. “But she hides in the corner.”
“Why doesn’t she check out books, if she doesn’t want to be around people,” Cade asked, trying to sort through this information.
“She doesn’t have a library card,” Mr. Redding said.
“I think she’s mostly off the grid,” Roy added. “She doesn’t have a bank account—at least as much as anyone around here knows. She rides that bike everywhere, so I’m sure she doesn’t have a driver’s license.”
“I think she’s on the run from a mob boss,” Joy, one of the waitresses, put in after obviously overhearing their conversation. “She doesn’t want her name anywhere on any computer.”
“But surely utilities,” Cade began.
“Yeah, but she always pays them in cash in person. I have no idea where she gets the cash though.” Roy was putting burgers and fries on plates now, but he was still part of their conversation.
“Mob boss,” Joy said with a flirtatious smile for Cade. She was over fifty, but she flirted with him every time he came in. “She stole his money and is hiding out from him now.”
Roy and Mr. Redding laughed, but Cade was more interested than ever. He’d known there was a story here.
“What’s the history on the property she owns? When did she buy it?”
Mr. Redding said, “She got it from her mama. It’s been in the Chaney family for generations.”
“So where’s her mother now?”
“Just up and left about six years ago. No one knows where she went. What does it matter?” Roy asked, giving his nephew a curious look. “I told you—you might have your share of luck with the ladies, but you’re not going to get anywhere with that one. And I can guarantee she won’t appreciate you nosing around about her. She used to go into the coffee shop to get muffins, but then Vera Hollis asked her where she got her bike one day, and she never set foot in the coffee shop again.”
Cade’s mind was already humming with ideas, so he only listened to this comment with half his mind. “You said she lives on that piece of land south of Bob’s place?”
“Yes. There’s a weird little house there. It’s buried in the trees, so you can only see it if you’re right there.”
“Does Bob still rent out his place for vacation rentals?”
Roy nodded. “Sure does. But he doesn’t get any renters because he refuses to do any updates. Folks don’t want a vacation house with no TVs and no air-conditioning.”
Cade almost cringed at the thought of a hot, television-less house, but he had an idea now, and he was knew it was a good one.
He’d been a journalist in New York before he started writing books. From the beginning, he’d been good at investigation. His instincts were almost always right.
“You got Bob’s number?” he asked his uncle. There was no rational reason to assume there was a story connected to the young woman—certainly not a crime story worthy of one of his books—but all his story-alert signals were triggered, and he wasn’t going to ignore them.
Roy shook his head. “Yeah. I got it. But you’re going to be running into brick walls with this one, you know, boy.”
Cade felt almost excited in a way he hadn’t been in a really long time. “Wouldn’t be the first time. What’s the number?”
He pulled out the little notebook he always kept in his pocket to write down the number, and then he jotted out a few notes to himself on Holly—mostly just descriptive phrases that had come to him instinctively on seeing her.
The only notes he kept were in these little notebooks, and when he was doing research, he could fill one up in a few days. He didn’t write out everything—just enough to trigger his memory.
When he noticed that Mr. Redding had leaned over in a casual attempt to see what he was writing, Cade closed the notebook and slid it back into his pocket.
He didn’t show anyone his notebooks. They might just be filled with random words and phrases, but they were his ideas, raw and unfiltered. Showing them to anyone else would be like opening up his soul, revealing to the world his real self instead of the person he’d worked so hard to become.
Some men might be willing to do that, but people were different. And that was something that Cade just didn’t do.
Three
Monday ended up being a very bad day.
One side of Holly’s property bordered state-owned, protected land, so she was never troubled by any neighbors on that side. She would occasionally see someone traipsing through the woods or beach near the property line, but they never stayed long and she thought they were just inspecting the land and wildlife.
The land on her other side, however, was rented out as a vacation house. Most of the time, the house sat empty. It wasn’t very nice, and people seemed to expect a lot of luxuries in vacation rentals that this particular house didn’t offer. It did have a stretch of private beach though, which was sometimes enough of an appeal to get visitors.
She hated when people were staying nex
t door. The whole time they were in residence, she was stressed and on edge—wondering what they were doing, hoping they wouldn’t venture onto her land.
Monday was very bad.
A family must have rented the house just for the weekend since they arrived on Friday evening. Saturday and Sunday they were out and about, so their presence was just a low buzzing in her mind. But Monday they camped out on the beach all day.
The beach connected to that house was about a half-mile wide, so there should have been plenty of room for them to stay far away from her beach. But for some reason they decided to set up only a few feet away from the dividing line. There were nine of them—including five kids—and they spread out blankets, set up beach chairs, lounges, and umbrellas, and had about three coolers worth of drinks.
They were loud. There were a lot of them. And they were almost—almost—on her beach.
She was making her morning circuit of her land when she saw the first one walking in her direction. Holly quickly ducked behind a sand dune so the woman wouldn’t see her, and she watched with a sinking heart as the woman spread out a towel.
Then another one arrived. Then the kids came running over.
Rationally she knew they were just having fun for Labor Day. They probably had no idea who owned the property next door, and they had absolutely no interest in her personally.
But they felt like invaders, like a violation, almost like she’d felt the few times she’d had sex as a teenager. Like something was inside her that shouldn’t be there. She couldn’t do anything else all day but skirt along the edges of the woods, watching them, making sure they didn’t stray onto her land.
The only reason she felt safe in the world was because she had this piece of property. It was hers—hers alone, now that her mother was gone—and no one else’s. She could protect the boundaries and make sure she was the only human being who set foot on it.
Any sort of intrusion was incredibly troubling.
It was easier to face people in town, although she didn’t even like that anymore. But she never wanted anyone else in her home.
So she spent all of Monday in anxiety, making sure the family didn’t spread out onto her stretch of the beach. It was nine in the evening when they finally packed up and went back to the house. She thought she heard a car about an hour later, so she figured they’d probably had to return home so one or more of the adults could go to the work the next day.
On Tuesday morning, things were much better. All was quiet again.
When she stepped outside as the sun was rising, she breathed in crisp, cool air. The weather had even changed since yesterday, the temperature dropping a few degrees and the humidity breaking some. It made the world feel new.
She’d repaired the wooden walkway on Friday afternoon, but she walked carefully to make sure there were no more cracked or rotted boards. The superficial scratches were mostly healed now, but the deep cut on her thigh still bothered her. She didn’t want to get hurt again. She wasn’t going to visit a doctor.
She had to go back into town today. She should have bought some food when she was in Cape Charles on Friday so she wouldn’t have to go back this week, but she’d been too stressed-out to make any additional stops.
The drugstore had been so crowded on Friday. It was almost never that crowded when she went in on Tuesdays. It had felt like people were staring at her.
Today would be better. It was after Labor Day now. The town closed up halfway for the fall and winter, so the worst times of the year were now over.
She didn’t need to go to the library today since she’d finished reading the book on Friday and hadn’t started a new one. She could wait until ten thirty this morning to leave home. Then she would go to the little grocery store and get her stuff quickly. Then make a quick stop at the drugstore for a cheeseburger and be back home before noon.
She wouldn’t need to do any other errands. She visualized herself making those two stops quickly and safely and felt better about the day.
When her mother had left six years ago, she’d had a choice about how to live her life. She could have reentered the world, behaved like other people, tried to find some kind of social circle. She’d made a decision then, and she still believed it was a conscious choice—to live cut off from the world. Any other choice back then had made her feel sick and unsafe.
She’d chosen her life—it hadn’t just happened to her. But more and more she was starting to wonder if she was trapped on this small piece of property, unable to do anything else.
She didn’t like that idea. She was fine with her life, but she wasn’t fine by being imprisoned by fear.
The concern hadn’t yet grown strong enough for her to test it out yet though.
She didn’t want to be around other people. Not now. Not yet. And any whispers or questions that hinted otherwise could still be ignored.
She was so happy to have that family next door gone that she spent longer on the beach than normal. She took off her sandals and walked in the surf for a while, looking for crabs and watching the sea birds make their morning hunt for food.
Then she finally reached the far border of the property to watch the grizzled man with the fishing rod he never cast, and afterward she walked across the dunes to the wooded area. She smiled at the fox when it made an appearance, and she enjoyed the animal’s silent companionship as she walked the rest of the path.
There was a new nest in one of the trees. She couldn’t tell what kind of birds had made it yet although she examined it from below for nearly twenty minutes.
And, in the deer’s clearing, there were two new deer in the herd. She recognized they were new immediately. One scampered off at her approach, and the other had a damaged ear.
They’d eaten all the strawberries and lettuce now, so they were left with just grass and fallen apples to munch on. They loved the apples. More fell every day, so at least they continued to have new supply and should for at least another month.
It was hard for them in the winter. They had to eat a lot of woody plants that couldn’t taste very good. She would sometimes buy a bagful of apples and spread them out in the clearing if the winter months were particularly bad.
Holly enjoyed the deer for almost an hour until they started to dart away, back into the woods, having eaten their fill.
She turned around and made her way back to the house.
It was only nine o’clock. She had plenty of time before she needed to ride into town.
She took her old folding beach chaise down to the beach, set it up, and settled herself on it to watch the birds and listen to the bay.
The bay was happy today. She could hear it. It liked the sunshine and the cool air and the retreat of the tourists and vacationers.
This was a much better day than yesterday. Holly felt safe again.
She made it through the grocery store quickly. She had to get a whole week’s supply of food, but she was just the one person and she didn’t really eat very much, so she came away with only a few bags, all of which easily fit in the two baskets on her bike.
She was usually good about dividing her meals up across the seven days of the week and ensuring she had food for every day. Occasionally, she wouldn’t plan very well, and she might have only an egg and a piece of bread to eat on Mondays, but she could live with that. Better to go a little hungry than to make an extra trip into town.
She was relieved to see that the drugstore parking lot was mostly empty when she rode her bike up. There wouldn’t be very many people there today. It was definitely a good day.
She was getting low on dental floss, so she picked some up and paid for it before she went over to the grill. She was always careful about taking care of her teeth since she hadn’t been to the dentist since she was sixteen years old. She wasn’t prone to cavities, and they looked fine and never bothered her, so she assumed they were still okay.
Being trapped in a dentist chair with someone’s hands in her mouth was a completely unacceptable scenar
io for Holly, so she had to take care of her teeth herself. She also picked up a gallon of bleach since it was time to give the house a thorough cleaning.
She liked the man who always checked out her drugstore purchases. He never tried to speak to her anymore, and he always looked at her with a kind expression. He was her favorite.
She also liked the old man who worked behind the grill with the name tag that said “Roy,” better than she did the younger one with the name tag that said “Chad.” It was the old man today—the one with the beautiful eyes—so she walked over with a sense of relief.
There was the funny redheaded woman in her regular corner booth. There was also an old lady in one of the other booths, working on a crossword puzzle. And there was a tall man sitting at one of the stools. He’d been talking to Roy when she arrived, but now they were both silent as she walked up.
“The cheeseburger will be just a minute,” Roy said, nodding at her.
She nodded back.
Roy looked amused by something today, but she had no way of telling what it was. She wondered briefly if it was her, but then she decided he was silently laughing at the man sitting on the stool, whom he’d been talking to earlier.
She glanced at the man unconsciously before she dropped her eyes.
His appearance hit a chord, and she found herself raising her eyes again to take another look at him.
He was the man she’d seen running on Friday. She recognized him now, although his hair and skin were dry today and he was dressed in a camp shirt and a pair of khakis.
His hair was light brown. She could see now that it wasn’t all sweaty, and his clothes looked expensive, although they were casual and comfortable. He still appeared as strong as she’d noticed before, but he looked more than that now.
His eyes were the same unusual amber brown as Roy’s were, and they were thoughtful and intelligent as he gave her a quick once-over.
It wasn’t an intrusive look. It was a normal look—what someone naturally did to another person when they approached. But he seemed to see a lot more about her than most other people did, and there was something in the look that felt intentional.
