Whiskey Beach Read Online Free PDF

pick one day of the week for an hour. Who said it had to be every day? Who made the rules? It was freaking cold out there, and even an idiot could look at that bloated sky and know those smug, swirling clouds were just waiting to dump a boatload of snow.
    And only an idiot walked on the beach during a snowstorm.
    He reached the bottom of the sand-strewn steps with his own thoughts all but drowned out in the roar of water and wind. No point in this, he convinced himself, and on the edge of turning around and climbing up again, lifted his head.
    Waves rolled out of that steel-gray world to hurl themselves at the shore like battering rams, full of force and fury. Battle cry after battle cry echoed in their unrelenting advance and retreat. Against the shifting sand rose the juts and jumble of rock it attacked, regrouped, attacked again in a war neither side would ever win.
    Above the battle that bulging sky waited, watched, as if calculating when to unleash its own weapons.
    So Eli stood, struck by the terrible power and beauty. The sheer magnificence of
energy
.
    Then, while the war raged, he began to walk.
    He saw not another soul along the long beach, heard only the sound of the bitter wind and angry surf. Above the dunes the homes and cottages stood with windows shut tight against the cold. No one moved up or down the beach steps or stood on bluff or cliff as far as he could see. No one looked out to sea from the pier where the turbulent surf hammered mercilessly at the pilings.
    For now, for this moment, he was alone as Crusoe. But not lonely.
    Impossible to be lonely here, he realized, surrounded by all this power and energy. He’d remember this, he promised himself, remember this feeling the next time he tried to make excuses, the next time he tried to justify just closing himself in.
    He loved the beach, and this stretch remained a sentimental favorite. He loved the feel of it before a storm—winter, summer, spring, it didn’t matter. And the
life
of it during the season when people dived into the waves or stretched out on towels, or settled onto beach chairs under umbrellas. The way it looked at sunrise, or felt in the soft kiss of summer twilight.
    Why had he robbed himself of this for so long? He couldn’t blame circumstances, couldn’t blame Lindsay. He could, and should, have come—for his grandmother, for himself. But he’d chosen what had seemed the easier way than explaining why his wife hadn’t come, making excuses for her, for himself. Or arguing with Lindsay when she’d pushed for Cape Cod or Martha’s Vineyard—or an extended vacation on the Côte d’Azur.
    But the easier way hadn’t made it easier, and he’d lost something important to him.
    If he didn’t take it back now, he’d have no one to blame but himself. So he walked, all the way to the pier, and remembered the girl he’d had a serious, sizzling summer flirtation with just before he’d started college. Fishing with his father—something neither of them had even a remote skill for. And further back to childhood and digging in the sand at low tide for pirate treasure with fleeting summer friends.
    Esmeralda’s Dowry, he thought. The old and still vital legend of the treasure stolen by pirates in a fierce battle at sea, then lost again when the pirate ship, the infamous
Calypso
, wrecked on the rocks of Whiskey Beach, all but at the feet of Bluff House.
    He’d heard every variation of that legend over the years, and as a child had hunted with his friends. They’d be the ones to dig up the treasure, become modern-day pirates with its pieces of eight and jewels and silver.
    And like everyone else, they’d found nothing but clams, sand crabs and shells. But they’d enjoyed the adventures during those long-ago, sun-washed summers.
    Whiskey Beach had been good to him, good for him. Standing here with those wicked combers spewing their foam and spray, he believed it would be good for him again.
    He’d walked farther than he’d