Ocean Beach Read Online Free PDF Page A

and small apartment and condo buildings that ranged from spectacularly restored to “please pull me down.” Lush tropical plants and flowers spilled over wrought-iron gates and rose junglelike above stucco walls. New plantings dotted the islands of fresh dirt between the sidewalk and the curb and the streetlights were sleek and black and looked newly installed.
    Number 301 took up most of one corner of Meridian and Third and was bounded by a shoulder-high wrought-iron gate that was only marginally taller than much of the grass inside it. A section of gate stood open and Avery pulled across the sidewalk and onto the concrete strip driveway next to Nicole’s Jag and beside Madeline’s minivan.
    She and Deirdre climbed out of the car, staring up at the imposing two-story structure. “They couldn’t have picked a house that was more ‘you,’” Deirdre observed asthey both took in the house’s streamlined design and whimsical nautical accents.
    This was true, but Avery had no idea what, if anything, it signified. The house had magnificent bones, but its gouged plaster walls and the hodgepodge of window types and paint colors attested to long years of neglect.
    Avery craned her neck in search of the others, but the grounds were a Florida fantasy run amok, overgrown and unkempt. Not sure they could actually make it through the yard without a native guide and pith helmets, they walked back out the gate and down the sidewalk to the front of the house, where they found Madeline, Kyra, and Nicole trying to ignore the two-man film crew and the camera and microphone currently aimed right at them.
    The cameraman was tall with shaggy sun-streaked blond hair. The audio guy had a dark beard and a teddy-bear face. He was considerably shorter and stockier than the camera guy, with a thatch of dark hair that barely reached the video camera that sat on his partner’s well-developed shoulder. They both looked to be somewhere in their twenties.
    The camera and boom microphone swung toward Avery and Deirdre as they drew closer. Avery could practically feel the video camera’s boxy lens zooming in for its close-up. She tried to imagine what it was focusing on; the jiggle of her breasts in the unfortunate halter top or the expanse of skin bared by the even more unfortunate Daisy Dukes.
    “I don’t want to hear anything that sounds like ‘I told you so,’” she muttered to Deirdre out of the side of her mouth.
    “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Deirdre replied. “Even though this is exactly what I was trying to protect you from.”
    “And no performing for the camera,” Avery added. As soon as there was a camera within a five-mile radius, Deirdre had a tendency to flip the on switch.
    “Who me?” Deirdre asked innocently, but her smile had already spread attractively across her face and she’d tilted her chin at an angle designed to camouflage neck sag.
    The women hugged stiffly, all of them aware of their unexpected audience. Nicole looked the most together in one of her vintage sundresses, her deep red hair swirling around her slim shoulders. Maddie looked exhausted, the eleven-plus-hour drive from Atlanta with Kyra and her baby written all over her.
    Kyra had fared better, but then when you were twenty-four, long hours were not as formidable an enemy. Her long dark hair had been pulled back in a ponytail and she neither wore, nor needed, makeup. Her tall, lean frame had grown curvier with motherhood and she held the baby easily in her arms, his head of dark curly hair resting on her shoulder, a thumb slipped into his bow-shaped mouth. At six months, he was already a dead ringer for his famous father.
    Kyra made the introductions, her lips tight with suppressed anger, her free hand on the video camera that dangled at her side. “This is Troy,” she said nodding curtly to the tall, blond, broad-shouldered young man whose chiseled features could have easily put him in front of the camera rather than behind it. “That’s Anthony