Dark Beach - By Lauren Ash Page 0,4
good—just what I needed.” She scrunched up her nose, feeling the numb pain of an ice headache. “Maybe too good.”
The beach house cowered at the end of a long strip of road. It felt like an hour passed as Ron slowed down, crawling along to look at the other beach getaways, all different shapes, heights, and colors: yellows, creams, blues. Wooden sculptures—mostly seagulls, seals or ships—sat sun-bleached out front. Fences were made of buoys with rope. Old ship steering wheels studded the lawns. Most homes looked serene, as if they hadn’t been used in months, but a few teemed with people and cars.
“Aw, look at that one.” Jenny pointed to a circular, domed house.
“That’s a geodesic.”
“A geo what?”
“Geodesic—its shape and style.”
“Oh.”
“That one there is a partial spherical shell. See all the triangles.” He pointed. “Stress is distributed across the entire structure. What’s neat is it encloses the most volume for surface area. Although there are so many edges that sometimes they leak.”
“I’m lost.”
“The edges of all the triangles.”
“Oh.”
“They’re expensive to build, that’s why you don’t see very many of them. They look awesome.” Ron’s voice deepened.
“I’d like to go in.” Jenny wriggled in her seat, turning back to look at the geodesic house as they passed by.
Ron laughed. “Speaking of going in, do you have the key to the beach house?”
Jenny fumbled around in her pockets, her purse, under the seat. “Oh no,” she said, checking her pockets again, and then her purse—this time dumping the contents everywhere. “I don’t have it.”
“I don’t either.”
“Ron!”
“I was too busy looking for Charlie.”
Upon hearing his name, the dog barked.
“Me too. I was distracted.”
“Now what do we do?” Jenny asked, hands in the air. “We’ve come all this way. I don’t want to go back now. Jesus … and … well … crap!”
“Calm down. I’ve got this.”
“What? What are going to…?”
Ron wrenched the wheel into a fast, sharp right and the car coasted down a pebbled drive and slid to a halt in front of the beach house. He flung open the car door and hurried up the narrow grey wooden steps, almost tripping before steadying himself on the rickety rail. Kip still napped in the back of the car, open-mouthed, head slumped to the side.
I can’t leave her in here, Jenny thought. No longer able to see Ron, Jenny hastily unbuckled her and scooped up the sleeping child, letting Charlie out of the back as she exited the car.
“These steps feel like they’re going to cave in any second,” Jenny called out to Ron, concerned.
There was no reply.
The dachshund whined at her feet. She looked up to see the tall, four-story beach house, topped with a hexagonal lookout, towering over her and a single imported palm fighting the winds. “Neat. Ron, where are you?” Hearing a commotion brewing nearby, she followed the sounds.
The home was due for a paint job—overdue. Grey paint peeled off like the scales of a gargantuan fish, more so on the deck than on the rest of the house. Jenny stopped to peel off a piece, flicked it away, and then stepped up to the newly blue-painted front door, deciding to try the silver knob—no luck. After rubbing a clean spot in the glass with one hand, she stuck her nose up to the small hexagonal window near the entranceway and looked in. She could see a hardwood hallway and a small white sign on the pale-blue wall. It read: “Fishermen are like the sea, rough around the edges, salty, and deep.”
“That’s adorable,” she said to herself, and then called out, “Ron?”
A gust of wind curled around the corner.
“Brrr!” With one hand, Jenny pulled up the hood of her grey sweatshirt, whipped the zipper up, and tried to snuggle Kip onto her chest a little more. The child stirred, waking.
“There you are.” Ron padded along the deck to stand beside her. “I’ve tried every door, every window, the garage doors. I’ve looked under any places a spare key might be hidden. Nothing. Nada!”
“So we go home?” Jenny asked bleakly.
“No! Are you kidding? We break in. It’s going to be our place anyways.”
“What do you mean?” Jenny peered in through the porthole-sized window near the door again.
“My mother doesn’t want it.”
“Rachel doesn’t want it?”
“No. Nana Gerry is leaving it to Mom in the will, but she’s very old now.
She’s in a nursing home. It’s fully paid for, except for property taxes. I suppose the taxes could be a lot, since it’s on the coast. I’m not sure.”
“Just like that, no