The weather is perfect for the first of June. Warm, but not too hot. I open and set my chair in the sand, facing the sun. I’m happy to be out of the cramped quarters for a while. My mother and I have one of those more-friends-than-mother-daughter things going on due to me being an only child and her being a single mom.
She started writing professionally when I turned eight, starting with a book about a murder in our community. From there she acquired an agent and publisher, and now she’s written over twenty books on true crimes and mysteries across the country. Her genre is popular, but dime store cheap. It’s enough to live on, and she provided me with a good childhood, even if she wasn’t around all the time. Even when she was home, my mother spent a lot of time in her head. I learned to fend for myself; cooking and laundry. My dad wasn’t around—divorced and living with a new starter family in Chattanooga. I stare across the water and promise myself for the gazillionth time not to become a single mother. God knows what your kid will get up to when no one’s paying attention.
Who knows who they will meet, decide to trust, and break down barriers for.
I push that thought away and stare out into the water.
“You’re gonna burn,” I hear over the lapping waves and noise off the waterway some time later. I must have dozed off.
I shade my eyes and see a girl, or woman I guess, with three kids in tow, all scurrying toward the water. She’s carrying a rusty chair and a bag of beach toys. “You put on sunscreen? Your chest is super red.” The word red drags out into two distinct syllables. Before I can answer she looks to the water and shouts, “JT! Stop pushing your sister!” I see the little boy, about three years old, smile wickedly but wade into the water, leaving his sister alone.
I hear a clatter as the woman drops the bag of toys and she tosses something in my direction. I catch the bottle before it flies past. In the purest southern accent I’ve ever heard, she says, “Put some of that on.”
“Okay,” I say, squeezing a glob of sunscreen into my hand and slathering on my skin.
“I’m Anita,” she says, dropping into her chair. “Number 46.”
“Forty-six?”
“Yeah.” She takes a sip out of a diet drink can. “My lot number. You’re in 19.”
Of course.
“Oh, okay, I’m Summer,” I say. I look at this woman—she isn’t very old, close to my age. Her dark hair is long and in a thick braid. For a mom, her body is pretty hot. The bikini she has on is tiny, showing twice as much skin as I am.
I frown at the kids in the water and try to do the math on their suspected ages and how old I think she may be.
“Only one of those is mine,” she laughs, seeing the confusion on my face. “The little one. Sibley. The others are her cousins.”
“You seemed a little young for three kids,” I confess.
“Pretty normal around here. My brother had his oldest,” she points to JT, “when he was still in high school.”
“Wow,” I say, because all of my other thoughts are inappropriate to say out loud, like “holy crap!” or “run Summer run!” or “If I’d gotten pregnant in high school I think I would’ve killed myself.” Instead I say, “That must’ve been rough,” because God knows, I’m not in a position to judge.
“Eh,” she shrugs. “He’s an idiot. Don’t get me wrong, we love JT, but his mother, Mandy? She’s crazy. That’s why I’m watching him and Carly, because she took off two years ago.”
“Oh, so you babysit them every day?” I’m trying to follow this girl’s story and figure out why she’s telling me all of this and how I can possibly sneak away without her noticing.
She takes another gulp of soda and adjusts her
top. Her skin is super tan. “Yeah, he works down in Myrtle when he’s not here working with Bobby.”
“Who?”
“My husband.”
“Oh.”
“My family owns the campground, so there’s always work here, but the guys also work at the marina. Well, Justin and Nick work at the marina primarily. Whit and Pete do sometimes, now that they’ve finished with school, but they all kind of go back and forth.”
I’m starting to get a headache.
“Enough about me, I hear you’re staying with your mom? She’s some kind of writer?”
I don’t even pretend to be shocked she knows this. I have a feeling we were a breaking addition to the campground newsletter. “She’s writing a book about some serial killer. Donald something.”
“Gaskins?”