care of you anymore, you can come live with me. We’ll even fix it so it’s all legal, okay? And Janya and Wanda will always be here for you. You’re one of our gang. We love you.”
Olivia relaxed against her. Then she finally began to cry.
Tracy stroked Olivia’s hair and realized that she had just promised she would stay in Florida until the girl became a woman. Because how would she be able to keep an eye on Alice and Olivia unless she was living right here, watching over them?
She waited for the jolt of an anchor hitting bottom, the familiar sensation that she was a sleek yacht moored in a fleet of dinghies. Instead, she looked up the beach and saw Marsh and Bay ambling toward them. She felt her anchor dropping gently into a bountiful estuary, the place where life begins.
Wanda felt like an actress on opening night after an exhaustive dress rehearsal. Even the care she took dressing and doing her hair and makeup was the same care a Broadway star took before walking out on stage.
She chose a scoop-necked peach T-shirt and under it the new flesh-colored bra she’d bought at Victoria’s Secret. She passed over her comfortable capris for white linen slacks that hid her varicose veins. And she painted her toenails a brilliant scarlet. She was ready to meet Shadow at last.
That afternoon she’d gone back over her records, to see how many times she and Shadow had talked. She’d counted eleven, none of them for long. She hadn’t made enough money off the guy to buy a good pirate romance and a bottle of wine. Of course, with Shadow, the relationship had never been about money. They had connected. From the beginning, she had understood him and looked forward to his calls. He was the only caller she took these days, and Lainie had finally given up and found someone else to permanently take her place. Wanda wasn’t sorry.
Last night, when Shadow asked her to meet him, she hadn’t hesitated. For some time, probably almost from the first, she had known this was inevitable. They were soul mates. The phone conversations had only been a prelude to something more intimate and important. She was ready for both.
They had decided to meet on the beach near the Indian mound. She’d told him what she would be wearing, and he’d told her to look for a man in a light blue sport shirt and jeans. She supposed it was possible he would take off once he saw the real her. But she didn’t think so. Shadow just wasn’t that kind of man.
After a short walk, she put Chase in the house and got in her car. She hadn’t been more nervous than this when she’d seen Lee Symington charging up behind Tracy and Alice in Alice’s dark bedroom. On that occasion she’d also been furious, and if she had been able to leap in and throttle the man, she would have done it. She had never been happier to see her husband, and never prouder of the man Ken was and what he did. She thought the encounter with Lee had proved he could still do his job, that he wasn’t trigger-happy or gun-shy, but simply a good cop with a conscience. She supposed she had Lee to thank for that, if for nothing else he had ever done except sire Olivia.
The drive to the stretch of beach Shadow had suggested took only five minutes. She arrived right on time, parked, took a deep breath, then another for good measure, and stepped into the parking lot. She crossed it, the heels of her sandals ringing against the pavement. There were other cars parked here, but none she recognized. In her opinion, Palmetto Grove was just the right size. A woman could make friends, find her own little community, but she could also be one of a larger crowd. And that was what she was hoping for this evening.
The sun had another hour to go before it melted into the horizon, but the sky was streaked with rose and flame. Most of her life she had taken Florida sunsets for granted, but she knew she could never live in a place where this sight wasn’t a short drive away. She understood why Ken had hoped to find his way back to life by walking for endless hours on this beach.
Not too far beyond where she’d parked, a man in a blue sport shirt was looking out