Fortunate Harbor Read Online Free PDF

swallowed the key. I don’t think she’s going to recover any time soon. But I’m glad your mother saw the light.”
    “I would not go that far, but perhaps it’s a start.”
    “So who was out here?” Wanda said. “Who’d you see, Janya?”
    “I don’t know. Someone. Thin, tall. Somebody walkingquickly. I cannot even say whether it was a man or a woman. I only caught a glimpse.”
    “Match your description?” Wanda asked Tracy.
    Tracy tried to think. She’d immediately thought of CJ, although why, she couldn’t say, now that her memory of the stranger was fading. But CJ was tall, and most likely thinner than he had been during the years of their marriage. She doubted the wardens at Victorville were serving osso bucco or roasted quail.
    “I don’t know.” She considered whether to tell her friends who she thought she’d seen, but rejected the idea. “I thought it was a man,” she added. “But maybe not. It was almost dark, and I just got a glimpse.”
    “The person I saw had a backpack, I think,” Janya said. “I noticed a little bulge.”
    “I didn’t see that.”
    Wanda twisted the strap on Tracy’s dress. “You know, Ms. Deloche, you are surely dressed to kill. Were you hoping this mysterious stranger might ask you on a date?”
    “I had a date. My date left.”
    “Marsh?” Janya asked.
    Wanda twisted harder. “He left when you were wearing this dress? It’s one step from a slip. All he had to do was reach out and tug, and you’d have been stark naked.”
    Tracy brushed away Wanda’s hand. “The whole evening went south. I don’t know what happened, exactly. He punched the button on my answering machine and heard my mother ranting about CJ. After that, CJ just kept coming up, and I was distracted, and Marsh…” Tracy paused, then let out a long breath. “Gone home now.”
    “Well, that’s pitiful.”
    “I thought so, too. Let’s not dwell on it, okay?”
    Apparently Wanda wasn’t feeling merciful. “Then I won’t say another word. Although a person does have to wonder if you just got spooked.”
    “Spooked?”
    “About going to bed with Marsh. I mean, the two of you have diddled around so long, making eyes at each other, getting close, dancing back. You ever see an egret mating dance? That’s what it looks like.”
    “Please!”
    Wanda turned up her hands. “I think now that you’re finally getting down to it, it’s been so long, you both forgot how it goes.”
    “Wanda!” Janya took the older woman’s arm. “Why not tell Tracy what you told me earlier today? About the server who works with you?”
    Janya, who was only in her early twenties, had the ability to pour soothing words into any conversation. In fact, there was little the Indian woman didn’t have in abundance. Gorgeous black hair, perfect features, a trim, well-rounded body, and intelligence. Tracy liked her too well to be jealous, although the feeling had erupted from time to time. Tracy had to work to be beautiful. Janya just was .
    Wanda took Janya’s hint, which was not always the case. “You remember me telling you about all the changes at the Dancing Shrimp?”
    Tracy did. All the women of Happiness Key thought it was a shame. The family that had started the town’s most popular beach hangout forty years ago had sold it to a young couple from Manhattan who wanted to put their particular stamp on it. Gone were the jitterbugging shrimp T-shirts, automatic refills on hush puppies, most of the funky Florida decor. Gone,too, were a lot of the staff. And Wanda was being asked to take extra shifts to cover for them.
    “I miss the old place,” Tracy said.
    “Don’t we all? A bunch of regulars aren’t coming anymore. Anyway, the owners hired a new server, a woman named Dana Turner. She’s new around town, and she and her little girl are staying in that seedy old motel near the industrial park. You know, the Driftwood Something or Other? She’s looking for someplace to rent. She asked if I knew of