Beach Trip Read Online Free PDF Page A

in there.”
    “You brought deviled eggs to the beach?”
    “Well, I couldn’t just come empty-handed, could I?”
    No, of course she couldn’t. They were all Southern girls and had been raised to come bearing gifts. What each woman brought said a lot about her personality. Sara brought a beautifully wrapped, lacquered picture frame with a photo of the four of them standing out in front of their college apartment. Mel brought a bottle of Dos Amigos tequila.
    Stewart closed the back door. “Are we ready, ladies?”
    “I’ll ride up front with Stewart,” Mel said, quickly climbing into the front seat.
    It was a forty-minute drive from the airport to the Whale Head Island Ferry, long enough for Sara and Mel to sober up. They drove down narrow asphalt roads surrounded on both sides by wide flat fields of marsh grass. Late-afternoon sun shimmered across the landscape, and high overhead a hawk soared, circling above the distant tree line. Sara’s cell phone rang once but she didn’t answer it. It was Tom, calling to see if she’d arrived. Shecouldn’t talk to him here, in front of everyone. A faint feeling of homesickness stirred her bowels. They’d been married for seventeen years, and in all that time had never been apart for more than two nights. She thought of her husband’s smile, of her children’s sweet faces, and the homesickness swelled to a thick lump in her throat. Away from them she felt only half herself.
    Annie, as if reading her mind, asked, “How’re Tom and the kids?”
    “They’re fine. Thanks. And Mitchell? The boys?” Even now, when things got so bad, Sara could not imagine a life without Tom.
    “As ornery as ever. The boys have summer jobs, William in Chicago and Carleton out in Colorado.”
    “We’re not going to talk about the husband and kids the whole time we’re here, are we?” Mel asked.
    The fleeting camaraderie Sara had felt with Mel in the bar seemed false now, a desperate desire to become what they had once been, and could never be again. A product of that age-old elixir of forgetfulness, alcohol. This trip would require a lot of alcohol.
    She looked at Mel and thought,
I shouldn’t have come.
She thought,
Things will turn out badly.
    The ferry landing was a low, quaint building of weathered gray cypress built to resemble something in a New England port town. It was swarming with tourists and island dwellers who didn’t have their own boats and had to ride the ferry with the tourists. There was only one grocery store and three restaurants on the island, so people brought most of their own supplies, loaded into big plastic tubs with locking lids. A long line of shiny SUVs stood outside the landing, their owners unloading plastic tubs, bicycles, and beach gear on to a series of trolleys manned by an army of fresh-faced porters, who rolled the loaded trolleys into the baggage hold of the ferry. Children played in the sun, oblivious to the shouts of their stressed-out parents, who were trying to keep one eye on the luggage and one eye on their children.
    Stewart pulled slowly past the long line of SUVs, careful not to hit any of the scurrying pedestrians, and drove several hundred feet along the water’s edge to a small marina. The crowds here were thinner and less hectic, as island people loaded supplies onto their boats and called to one another by name.
    “Which boat is Lola’s?” Sara asked.
    “Boat?” Stewart said, chuckling. He lifted one hand and pointed. It wasthe largest one in the marina, of course, a one-hundred-twelve-foot Hargrave yacht sporting the name
Miss Behavin’.
    “I love that name,” Mel said.
    April, the girl hired to make beds and cook, stood out front holding an empty trolley She was tanned and pretty, and had the confident air of a young woman in her twenties. Behind her was another trolley loaded with groceries. She introduced herself to the women, then went to help Stewart load the luggage.
    “Where’s Lola?” Annie asked, shielding her