My phone is in my hand, and I tap the icons quickly. “No thanks. I just ordered an Uber. Looks like it’ll be here in two minutes.”
Gripping my shirt closed, I stomp up the sidewalk that leads to the front of the hotel.
Betty Pepper calls after me, getting her final jab in. “Consider your ways, Tabitha!”
I grind my teeth and fight the urge to flip her off as I round the corner. I’m saved by the headlights of a Dodge Dart with a white U in the windshield. It’s too late to call my best friend Emberly, but when I get to the bakery tomorrow…
A billboard on the Interstate catches my eye, and I get an idea. Not Robbie Cole, Betty Pepper, or even Mr. Tall, Dark, and Sexy will see this one coming.
Two
Chad
One year later
The highway leading from the beach into sleepy Oceanside Village is tranquil tonight—as usual.
I’ve made my rounds, driving past closed businesses, along the strip where the tourists have all gone home, past deserted beachfront mansions closed up for the season. I’ve driven through neighborhoods, where residents have turned in for the night. I’ve checked on the single moms, the shut-ins, the bars that will be shuttered in another hour.
I’ve spent a year in this place, and I know its rhythm.
I know what will and what won’t happen as the shadows lengthen, as the noise of the cicadas rises louder than the crashing of the waves on the shore less than a mile away.
When I told my dad I’d taken a job as a sheriff’s deputy in a tiny county of less than twenty thousand, he said I wouldn’t last a month.
I said he was wrong.
He was wrong.
Taking this job was a 180-degree turn from the life I grew up in, from the forces that led to my sister’s death, a death the detectives still haven’t ruled out as a suicide.
I came to this hamlet along the coast to get away from the city, from my family, and from the memory of Charity lurking around every corner.
She died, and a month later I started basic training.
I’d already enlisted before it all went down. We buried her, and I buried myself in learning to protect and serve. I couldn’t save my sister. Maybe I could save somebody else.
It seemed like the best way to kill the pain, to silence the questions, the never-ending whys.
Why did she do it?
Why would a 23-year-old woman climb out the window of a car and stand facing a semi-truck racing head-on in a demented game of chicken?
Her body exploded on impact, the police said. Her friends were too traumatized to speak. I can still hear their hysterical screams.
Was she just a daredevil? An adrenaline junkie? A “bad girl” gone too far?
These were answers we would never get.
No note. No explanation.
We were left to pick up the pieces, carry on as survivors of her reckless existence. My parents chose to stay in their gilded bubble, to walk around town like nothing had changed.
I walked away.
Actually, I sailed away with the U.S. Navy to the coast of Africa onboard a destroyer. Missions like these have been risky since the bombing of the Cole.
I didn’t really care.