The Boardwalk Trust (Beach Lawyer Series Book 2)

by Avery Duff

  He and Gia clutched hands, watching Delfina and Bee. Every so often, he felt Gia shudder and knew she was choking back her emotions because he was fighting the same fight.

  He asked himself, You can be as strong as a nine-year-old girl, can’t you?

  Something to shoot for. Still, he would miss this little person in front of him. Miss making her pancakes, teasing her and getting teased back, tying silly knots, but he looked forward to toiling on her behalf as trustee. And he would protect her because that was his job. After all, he was Magna Carta Man.

  At the first court hearing downtown, he planned to make a motion to change the trust’s name. A name that looked forward, not back, as Teo once said. Something more fun, as Delfina might add. He would mention it to Delfina another time, knowing that if they put their heads together, the two of them would come up with the perfect name.

  EPILOGUE

  Sitting on a shaded California oak limb two weeks later, Robert looked far below his perch through a gap in the foliage. He could just make out his family farm’s empty army Jeep, parked in front of the farmhouse outside Gilroy. The house where he had been raised.

  The night before, he and Gia lay in bed on Ozone. Even before Teo’s funeral, they’d begun to stay at the beach. There was no discussion about it; her place felt a little too quiet right now as they picked up again with their lives. Robert didn’t bother quite yet with setting up his conference table in his boardwalk slot, but Gia returned to law school full-time.

  Three nights ago, the first time since the kidnapping, Gia had sat up in bed and slipped off her T-shirt. Looking over at him, she’d stroked his face.

  “Missed you, baby,” she’d said.

  She’d come to him without waiting for his move, and after they’d made love—that’s what it was—she’d lain in the dark on her back, the salted ocean breeze playing over them, her arms outstretched, his head on her belly, gently rising and falling.

  “Drive up to the farm,” she’d said. “Go home.”

  He’d thought it over, then looked up at her.

  “I’m so smart,” he’d said.

  She’d stroked his hair, knew what he meant: smart for being with her.

  “Want to come with me?” he’d asked.

  “A lot, but you should go alone. You have unfinished business.”

  From his oak limb, Robert glimpsed a man and a woman coming out of the farmhouse’s wide porch, piling into the Jeep. It would take a few minutes for them to make it up the hill.

  He pulled a postcard from his jacket. It was addressed: Beach Lawyer, Venice Beach, California. Mail carrier Sharon had slapped the card in his hand yesterday on the boardwalk and once again gave him her sitcom pitch for Mailman’s Dog!

  On the postcard’s picture side: a guitar-shaped swimming pool in Nashville, Tennessee. On the stamp side, a short, potent message:

  I fell in love with Carlos. I did not know what would happen to him. I am very sorry. Ilina S.

  Ilina. The girl. She must’ve read Beach Lawyer references in newspapers and online, and wanted Carlos’ death off her conscience for the price of a postcard. In spite of taking part in scamming Carlos, before it was all over, Ilina S. had fallen in love with bespectacled Carlos.

  You never know . . .

  Driving up to Gilroy earlier today, he’d decided that love—all kinds—was often a matter of timing: Ilina and Carlos, Robert finally finding Gia, Philip waiting years for Dorothy, Erik running into Priya in Thailand. And surely, the brotherly love of Carlos and Matteo Famosa.

  What if Teo had come to his brother and introduced Delfina? I’m in AA now. I need to get clean, Carlos. Can you help me?

  Or if Carlos somehow managed to find Teo and Delfina on his own and helped them off the streets?

  Robert didn’t believe any of the bromides—Love is the answer or Love will set you free. But if a loved one has gone MIA, better that you try to do something about it while you still can.

  Through the foliage, he gazed down the sere hillside. The army Jeep bounced its way uphill toward him. A Latino was driving, an Anglo woman beside him: Luis, the farm manager, and Rosalind, his estranged first cousin. He’d loved her like a sister until their family had split over money and land and loyalty, and Rosalind had been forced to choose sides.

  Now, on the uphill side of this spreading oak, Luis stopped the Jeep. Robert heard Rosalind’s voice over the rattling engine.

  “What hawk, Luis? Where the hell is it?”

  “Inside the tree, mi jefa,” Luis said. “A broken wing, it needs help.”

  She stepped onto the hillside. When she did, Luis ground the Jeep into gear and bucked away.

  “Damn it, Luis!” she yelled after him. “What’s wrong with you today?”

  Then it was quiet.

  “Rosalind,” Robert said.

  A raw-boned woman now, she peered into the shaded tree, looking at him on that limb.

  She sighed. “Not this, not now,” she said.

  “Please?”

  “Shoulda cut down this tree years ago.”

  “Why didn’t you?” he asked.

  This tree. Sitting on this limb. This had been where they’d hidden from the world, where they’d talked and laughed, and where they’d been just kids together.

  “I couldn’t,” she said.

  She stepped onto the wide limb where it angled into the hillside. She walked twenty feet toward him. Once she sat down, he opened the Igloo cooler beside him and showed her the iced-down bottles of Yoo-hoo and Abba-Zaba bars, their childhood junk foods of choice.

  “Yoo-hoo?” he asked.

  She cracked one open and took a swig. He did the same.

  “I’m a lesbian,” she said.

  Finally, she looked him in the eye. He put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Me, too.”

  For a while, they didn’t say anything more. Then they did . . .

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For their early reads, support of Beach Lawyer, and essential research: Lawrie and Ben Smylie, Sensei Rooney, Ana Shorr and Doctor Bobby, Ryan Gustafson, Jacqueline and the Lads of Steel, Blackwell Smith, Happy Baker, Libby Duff, Elizabeth Woods, Avery Woods, T. J. Hall, Andrea Mattoon, Hacker Caldwell, Kay Kendall, Surfer Dave, the guys at Nick’s and Urth Cafe, Alan Wertheimer, and Bret Carter.

  My deepest thanks to Reverend Andy Bales of Skid Row’s Union Rescue Mission, the largest mission of its kind in the United States. Andy is truly an unvarnished man of God. There are no words that come close to describing his devotion to the so-called least among us.

  My manager, Chris George; his wife, Rebecca; and their lovely daughters, Charlotte and Maya.

  My intrepid and enthusiastic agent, Beth Davey.

  Publicist Ashley Vanicek of Amazon, copyeditor Valerie Kalfrin, and proofreader Jill Kramer.

  Caitlin Alexander, my preternaturally patient and wildly talented development editor.

  And then there’s Liz Pearsons at Amazon. She gave all of those listed above a reason to help me out in the first place.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Avery Duff was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he attended Baylor School and graduated summa cum laude. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he earned a JD from Georgetown University Law Center and joined a prestigious Tennessee law firm, where he became a partner in five years. Duff’s screenwriting credits include the 2010 heist drama Takers, starring Matt Dillon, Idris Elba, Paul Walker, Tip “T. I.” Harris, Chris Brown, Michael Ealy, Jay Hernandez, Zoe Saldana, and Hayden Christensen. Duff lives at the beach in Los Angeles and spends his time writing fiction. His first published novel, Beach Lawyer, was an Amazon Charts Most Read and Most Sold book.

 

 

 
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