Return to the Beach House

by Georgia Bockoven

  Angie started to get out of her car to confront them, then changed her mind. Instead, she went back to the dorm and recruited Danielle and Carrie to help construct a suitable retribution. Finally, after much heated discussion, they decided that Bridget deserved to know what was going on, so they included her.

  Bridget desperately sought an explanation for what Angie had seen, even suggesting that she had only seen someone who looked like Miles. How could it be him? He loved her. She loved him. It was inconceivable that he would have cheated on her when they’d made love just the night before.

  Angie, Danielle, and Carrie sat by silently as Bridget reasoned it out, their hearts breaking for her, but secretly more than a little happy that Bridget would finally see Miles for what he was.

  Over the following week, Bridget’s denial turned to acceptance, and her pain to anger. She wanted to confront Miles, but the others convinced her there was a better way.

  It only took an afternoon, holed up in their favorite coffee shop, for the four of them to come up with a plan. Three days later, Bridget had succeeded in having a duplicate key made for the Corvette. Now all they had to do was wait another two days for Miles to cancel a date he’d made with Bridget.

  They borrowed a car—Carrie’s ancient green Volvo would stand out like a cheetah at a dog show—and followed Miles to a restaurant on the opposite side of town from the university. Almost as if it were scripted, he put on the same display Angie had witnessed the first time. Somehow Bridget managed to control the fury that rose from her chest like a dragon’s fiery breath.

  Five minutes later, Bridget was behind the wheel of the Corvette and headed for the hills.

  The original plan had been to leave the car on a deserted road near a reservoir, figuring hikers would find it in a few days—but not before Miles had made a complete fool out of himself trying to involve every law enforcement agency in the greater Charlottesville area in the search.

  While they’d scouted the area, what they hadn’t paid attention to was the lack of pullouts on the abandoned, weed-choked logging road.

  They finally settled on a wide spot that could be seen by a car coming in either direction, but as they started to drive away Bridget insisted the car had to be farther off the road to be safe. So they went back. Fatefully.

  Bridget was unusually quiet as she reached into the driver’s side and released the emergency brake. With a look of sober determination, she joined the others at the back and pushed. The car moved a lot easier than any of them had expected. And then easier still as it broke through the thick brush and picked up its own momentum, leaving the four friends gaping in surprise as it teetered on a mounded rock for a half second and then tumbled down a hundred-foot, boulder-strewn cliff. The noise was like a series of explosions as the car tumbled from one rock to another.

  Wide eyes and dead silence followed. Bridget fought to control a secret smile while the others looked like they were going to be sick.

  Angie moved closer to the edge, staring over the side. After scattering chrome and pieces of bright red fiberglass on rocks and in bushes, the Corvette had landed on its top, wedged between a tree and a boulder. “Oh shit,” she said, struggling to take in what she saw. “Now what are we going to do?”

  Danielle came up to stand beside her. Needing something to hang on to, she bent and braced her hands on her knees and then lowered herself to her haunches. “What the fuck? How could it just shatter like that? It’s like it was made out glass.”

  “Fiberglass,” Bridget said. “I knew it was fragile, but I had no idea something like this could happen.”

  Carrie didn’t say anything as she stood and stared into the canyon, her wide eyes and frozen expression the only clue to the frantic workings of her mind.

  Bridget made her way down to the first outcropping, where she stopped to examine a piece of fiberglass before stuffing it in her pocket.

  When she started down again, Danielle shouted, “What are you doing? You’re going to kill yourself if—”

  Bridget looked up at her. “I want to make sure it’s not leaking gas. There are homes down there. The last thing I want is arson on our records too.”

  “Too?” Angie said under her breath.

  “Along with car theft,” Danielle said.

  Carrie groaned. “Imagine what that’s going to look like on a job application.”

  Bridget reached the car, looked it over, and headed back up the hill. “I suppose it’s a good thing it wasn’t insured,” she said, brushing the dirt and debris from her shorts.

  “Why the hell not?” Carrie asked. “Who doesn’t insure a car like that?”

  “Miles doesn’t. He ran the numbers and figured it made more sense to pay the uninsured motor vehicle fee while he was still in school, and not worth suing, than it was to pay what the insurance companies wanted to insure a muscle car being driven by a male under twenty-five.”

  “Still, it seems to me that getting a new car out of this could have gone a long way toward keeping Miles from making a big deal out of losing this one,” Carrie said.

  “Think about it,” Bridget said with a note of impatience. “If we let Miles file a claim knowing the car wasn’t really stolen—at least not the way he would report—and someone figured out later that we were responsible, the insurance company would nail our asses to the wall for fraud.”

  “Is that something you know for a fact? Have you actually seen it written down someplace?” Carrie asked. “Or are you just speculating?”

  “What difference does it make?” Angie shouted in frustration. “We’re in deep shit no matter how you look at it. I sure as hell don’t have the money to get Miles another car like this one, and I know none of you do either.”

  “Even if we could afford a brand-new Corvette, it wouldn’t satisfy him,” Bridget said. “It’s the power this one gave him over his sister that made it so important.”

  Carrie sat on a nearby rock. “Trying to come up with the money to buy him another car is a moot point because we can never let him find out we were responsible for what happened to the old one.”

  “Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks,” Angie said. “A good body shop—”

  Bridget took Angie’s arm and led her to the edge of the cliff. “Take a closer look. There’s no way that car can be fixed. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle without a picture to use as a guide or any straight edges to get you started.”

  Carrie and Danielle joined them. “He’s going to be soooo pissed,” Angie said.

  “Beside himself,” Danielle added.

  Carrie put her arms around Danielle and Bridget. “Especially when he has to tell his sister what happened.”

  “Too bad we have to miss it.” Bridget bit her lip to keep from laughing as she pictured Miles and his sister going at each other over the loss of the family heirloom.

  Angie leaned into Bridget. “Such a shame . . . it really was a pretty car.”

  “And Miles did look a little like Val Kilmer when he was behind the wheel,” Bridget said, putting her arm around Angie and bringing her into the group hug.

  “Really?” Danielle said. “I thought he looked more like a white RuPaul.”

  “Oh, Danielle—that’s just mean,” Angie said, choking back laughter.

  “I’ll apologize—to RuPaul. If I ever meet him.”

  The offer to apologize broke the dam. It started with nervous laughter that grew and grew until it echoed off the hills.

  It was either laugh or cry.

  On the way home it was Carrie who said out loud what all of them were thinking.

  “We can’t just let this go. We have to find a way to make it right with Miles without telling him what we’re doing.”

  “How would you suggest we do that?” Danielle asked.

  “We could send him a check anonymously,” Angie said.

  “That would be a great idea—if any of us had any money,” Danielle said.

  Bridget pulled into a grocery store parking lot and turned
off the car. “If anyone is going to pay Miles, it’s me. None of you would have been involved with this if you weren’t sticking up for me. As far as I’m concerned, that makes me responsible.”

  “Nice try,” Angie said. “But we’re in this together.”

  “Does it really matter if we pay him now or later?” Carrie asked. “As long as he gets paid eventually?”

  Danielle turned in her seat so she could see everyone. “Since none of us has the money now, it seems like a moot point. Why don’t we set a date, say five years from now, that we each have to come up with our portion. We’ll get together and figure out how to send it so that it’s untraceable.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Angie said.

  “Sounds like something we should do for us,” Bridget added.

  “I like that idea,” Carrie added.

  “What did you do with the piece of fiberglass you picked up and put in your pocket that day?” Danielle asked.

  Bridget grinned. “When we were living in Hong Kong, I found an intricately carved, antique cinnabar lacquer box—the most expensive piece of art I’d purchased up until that time—and put the piece inside, along with a picture of Miles leaning against the fender. It was one of those poses where guys cross their arms and push against their biceps to make them look bigger. I gave it to him for our tenth anniversary.

  “He asked what point I was making, and I managed to squeeze out a couple of tears as I told him that when I found out where the wreck had happened I’d climbed all the way down the cliff to rescue an important piece of his past, knowing how much it would mean to him one day.”

  “Oh, you go, girl,” Angie said. “I’ve never been more proud of you.”

  Forever the most pragmatic of the four, knowing something had prompted the “gift,” Danielle urged Bridget to finish the story.

  “I caught him screwing around again,” she admitted.

  “What happened to the box?” Carrie asked.

  “He tossed it with the wrapping. He didn’t have a clue that it wasn’t some cheap knockoff I’d picked up at the Temple Street Night Market. I rescued it before the housekeeper showed up the next morning. I now have over fifty boxes I collected while we were living in Hong Kong, and Miles has no idea what any of them are worth. If he did, they would have become part of the divorce settlement. But I hid them in plain sight, and he was oblivious.”

  “What an idiot,” Carrie said.

  “Thank God for small favors.” Bridget smiled. “The last time I sent pictures to my dealer friends in Hong Kong, they told me that priced individually the value is well over a million dollars. Sold as a collection, it could be twice that. If something ever does happen to me and one day you receive a box of boxes in the mail. . . . Well, what you do with them is up to you. At least you know now what you shouldn’t do.”

  Chapter 10

  Danielle straightened the oversize beach towel Angie was sitting on, propped a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head, then handed her a pair of sunglasses before she tucked one plaid blanket over Angie’s lap and another around her shoulders. For the final touch she dabbed a large circle of white sunblock on the end of Angie’s nose. “Okay, I think we’re ready.”

  “Wait.” Bridget took a quart-size bottle of water out of her bag and set it next to Angie. “Now.”

  Danielle tried for a vertical shot but could only get a sliver of the ocean in the background, so she turned the phone horizontal to include a broad expanse of beach. Hopefully, Carrie would wrap up her business call in time to join them for a group picture. “Ready?”

  Angie nodded. “Make sure my boots show.”

  Danielle took a step backward and lowered herself to a crouching position. She snapped a shot, checked it, then took another and grinned. She handed Angie her phone. “There’s no way Darren can think we’re not taking care of you.”

  Seeing how ridiculous she looked, Angie laughed. “If this doesn’t impress him, nothing will.”

  She peeled off the extra layers of clothes and sprawled out on the towel before sending the picture and accompanying text on its way to Alaska. Less than a minute later, she was deep into an electronic conversation.

  Danielle reached for the sunscreen and applied a liberal layer to her arms and legs and Bridget’s back. When she finished, she gave Bridget the bottle and leaned forward while Bridget reciprocated.

  “Think they’ll get married?” Bridget asked.

  “She’s going to need help with the twins.”

  Bridget groaned. “Oh, I hope that’s not the only reason.”

  “Yeah, it would be nice if this works out long-term,” Danielle said. “For her and especially for the kids.”

  “How’s it going with you and Grady?” Bridget moved her legs out of the sun and into the shade from the umbrella.

  “Fine. Once the puppy is trained, we’ll go back to great.”

  “Whatever possessed him?”

  “A sappy news story about how many animals are gassed at the shelters every year.”

  “I’m surprised he came home with only one.”

  “One dog. He brought home a kitten too. She’s skinny and has black fur and looks like a baby bat. But she uses her litter box faithfully. I’m hoping she can teach the puppy that it’s not cool to squat whenever the urge strikes.”

  “I’m assuming the litter box thing earned her a name?”

  “Dandelion. To me she’s like a beautiful weed.”

  “That you don’t have to rush home from work to walk.”

  Danielle flinched. She drew her legs up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and propped her chin on her knees. “I should have said something earlier, but the business is no more. Grady and I made a couple of dumb decisions to try to hold on when the economy went belly up and wound up losing everything, including the building. The foreclosure sign went up the day before I left to come here.”

  “And you were saving this to tell us . . . when?”

  “It’s kind of hard to dump ordinary problems on someone who’s been through what you have.”

  Bridget let out a deep sigh. “How long is this ‘we all need to feel sorry for Bridget’ crap going to go on? It’s getting old.”

  “Then convince me I don’t have to worry about you.”

  “I can’t. If there’s a colony of cancer cells hiding somewhere in my body, it’s beyond my control. I’ll do what I can when I can, but you’re going to have to learn to live with it the same way I do.” She propped herself up on her elbows to get a better look at Danielle. “Now tell me what happened to the ski shop.”

  “Nothing that hasn’t happened to other small business owners all over the country. I wasn’t prepared for the crash, and then I wasn’t flexible enough to get through it. The customers who helped me build the business lost their jobs and then their homes, and when they were finally getting on their feet again, they decided that they didn’t have to have new skis or boards every year and that their jackets and pants could be passed down through the family. Swap meets became the hot ticket and recycling the mantra, for everything from gloves to car racks. The final blow came when a couple of the big-box sporting goods stores moved into the area. There was no way I could compete. Customer service was all I could offer, and it wasn’t enough.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Six years. We should have, and could have, bailed earlier and not lost everything, but I was convinced the economy would turn around, and with it our customers. What I failed to take into consideration was that once the pattern of shopping in the discount stores was set, it was going to take a long time—if ever—to get people to come back for the kinds of things we sold. If you absolutely have to have a Limited Edition Apex ski boot, you fly your private jet to the resorts that sell them.”

  “So now what?”

  “I’m looking at the experience as a kick in my complacent butt to get up and out and find something new. Retail stopped being fun a long time ago. I want to have fun again.”


  “Come work for me,” Angie said, tossing her phone back into her bag. “Darren has a pilot lined up to take over my flights, but I desperately need someone I can trust to run the Anchorage office while we’re in Fairbanks.”

  “There you have it,” Bridget said. “Problem solved.”

  Before Danielle could say anything, Angie sat up and added, “You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. All this time I’ve been spending on the phone with Darren hasn’t been just about the twins. We’re trying to figure out how we can be in two places at the same time, especially now that my flying time is going to end before we even get the Fairbanks office up and running. If I can’t fulfill the cargo contract, I can’t make the payments on the planes, and the whole thing comes tumbling down like a stack of dominos.”

  “I don’t know anything about running an airline. The way you’ve described it, keeping track of the weather and being flexible on scheduling and shipping can be life-or-death matters. You need someone local who understands these things. Even with Grady there to help me, we couldn’t do what you need done.”

  “That’s not where I need you. I have people who know what they’re doing who would be willing to go to Fairbanks to set things up and stay there as long as they were needed. What I don’t have is someone in Anchorage to manage the office and do the billing and keep the books and handle the insurance and employee retirement accounts and all the other crap that keeps us going but that no one but me knows how to do.”

  “And what would Grady do?”

  “What has he been doing for the past ten years?”

  “Everything you just listed.”

  “Then what have you been doing?”

  “The orders and sales and inventory and trade shows and social media.”

  “Oh, my, God—you’re the perfect team.” Angie came forward and threw her arms around Danielle. “Please, please, please say you’ll at least think about it.”