The Bookstore on the Beach - Brenda Novak Page 0,122

was also the place where so many terrible things had happened. But here she was. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, she’d never ridden on a plane. She’d driven everywhere she needed to go in the rattletrap Datsun that had belonged to her late grandmother, something her great-aunt had provided because it was just sitting in her garage.

Laurie had insisted that it wasn’t a big deal to fly. Everyone did it. But once they were in the air, Mary could barely keep her panic at bay. Her fingers clutched the armrests so tightly as the plane took off that Laurie said she was going to leave permanent impressions.

The ride was a bumpy one, which didn’t help. Fortunately, it didn’t last long. When she’d decided to take this trip, she’d used Google Earth to look up Tammy’s address. But she hadn’t learned much. The house was out away from the city, where there were too many trees to see anything.

What would they find when they landed?

She hoped they’d find a person she could both love and trust.

Because they hadn’t brought any luggage, they were able to circumvent the other passengers waiting at baggage claim and be first in line to rent a car. Once Laurie climbed behind the wheel and Mary took the passenger seat, she couldn’t help marveling at the fact that they’d made it this far.

“You okay?” Laurie asked.

Mary shoved the rental agreement in the glove box before snapping on her seat belt and putting Tammy’s address into GPS. “I’m feeling a long way from home,” she said. “The only thing stopping me from turning around and going straight back is that we have to wait for our flight, anyway.”

“You’ve come all this way, you might as well get a feel for who Autumn’s half sister has turned out to be. Hopefully, you’ll be comfortable telling Autumn the truth and will no longer have anything to hide. This could bring an end to it all.”

“God willing.”

“You’ll get through it,” Laurie muttered as she tried to familiarize herself with the rental car, which was a model neither one of them had ever seen before.

After fiddling with several buttons and knobs, Laurie figured out how to start the engine—even though there was no place to put a key.

They escaped the rental car lot, but that only dumped them onto an unfamiliar freeway system. Mary was so tense that she sat stiffly the entire ride and only grew more anxious when it began to rain.

Fortunately, she wasn’t tired despite her lack of sleep. She had that going for her, at least.

What she noticed of Tennessee was beautiful, just as she remembered it, but it wasn’t Sable Beach, and she didn’t want to be here. She believed she’d be glad she came in the end, but she was sweating through her simple white dress by the time Laurie turned down the narrow country lane that led to Tammy’s house.

As the windshield wipers worked in a rhythmic swish/swish and the car bounced and swayed, thanks to several deep potholes, they began to wonder if GPS had led them astray. This could not be where Tammy lived. The homes they passed weren’t exactly hovels, but they weren’t much better.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” Laurie said.

Dogs ran along chain-link fences, barking viciously at them as they passed, rusty cars sat up on blocks, halfway torn apart, and other junk—toys, car parts, cinderblocks, motorcycles, a stroller here and there—filled carports and outbuildings that looked as though a stiff wind would blow them down. “If Tammy received a large inheritance, why would she live here?” Mary asked.

“Maybe we’ll reach a better area soon,” Laurie replied.

Assuming that would happen, they continued to follow the directions given by the mechanical voice coming through Mary’s phone. But when that voice said, “Arrived,” they’d just navigated a long, windy drive that had opened up on a small clearing with a wooden clapboard house that looked as though it hadn’t been painted since the beginning of the twentieth century.

“This is it?” Laurie muttered as she put the car in Park.

Mary turned off her maps and peered out, trying to get a better look at Tammy’s place. But she couldn’t see the finer details. The rain painted only a watery, blurry picture of what looked like an old one-room schoolhouse with a beat-up car to one side.

“I must’ve put in the wrong address,” Mary said.

But a quick check confirmed that they’d come to the right place.

“This is strange,” Laurie said. “What do you think’s