Now You See Her - Michael Ledwidge [10]
Had my father ever done something like this for someone? I wondered. Maybe he had, I thought.
I closed my eyes. There it was before me. The rest of my life. Jail or freedom. Right or wrong.
I thought about looking over again at the man I’d struck, but in the end I decided not to.
I opened my eyes.
In the silence, Peter clicked the cuffs together. Like the final tick of a scale coming to rest. Like the click of the bathroom door with Alex and Maureen behind it, I thought.
Then finally, I nodded.
“OK, then. Hurry up now,” Peter said. “Back up the car, pop the trunk, and follow me.”
Book Two
ENDLESS SUMMER
Chapter 12
IT MUST HAVE BEEN around noon when I woke up, but I didn’t open my eyes right away.
As I pretty much always did over the last two years, I lay still, my breath held and eyelids sealed, momentarily unsure and afraid of where I might find myself.
Then I opened my eyes and let out a sigh of relief.
Because I was OK.
I was still free.
I wasn’t in a prison cell.
Not even close.
Yawning, stretching, blinking in the bright, hazy morning light, I sat up in bed, slowly taking in the white-on-white bedroom. From left to right, I scanned the driftwood sculpture on the side table, the seashell shadow box, the book-filled beadboard bookcases.
And, as usual, my waking inventory ended at my left hand. Or more precisely, at the diamond engagement ring and wedding band that had somehow become attached to my ring finger.
Standing, I stopped and shook my startled head at the mirror above the bedside table. From all my sea kayaking and windsurfing over the past two years, my light skin had turned a deep shade of brown. My brown hair, on the other hand, had become lighter, now striped with blond streaks.
I’d somehow become a version of myself I’d never even considered. Jeanine, surfer chick. Malibu Jeanine.
Failing to wrap my head around that one, I crossed the room and opened the vertical blinds on the sliders. I squinted as I took in the lazily leaning king palms, the expanse of Crayola teal water, the forest of boat masts.
My backyard, replete with two white seaward-facing chaise longues, could have been the set of a Corona commercial. I smiled at the muscular arm resting on the edge of the right chair.
Since we were out of Corona, I had to settle for putting an ice-cold bottle of Red Stripe into the big hand as I stepped up.
Two years of healing. Two years of love. No one was luckier than I.
“How’s the fishing there, Mr. Fournier?” I said.
“Slow, Mrs. Fournier,” Peter said, grinning at me impishly behind his Wayfarers.
Chapter 13
YEP. YOU GUESSED IT. Peter and I had gotten married.
Or maybe you didn’t. I don’t blame you. I sure as hell hadn’t seen it coming.
I came down for spring break, and I never went home.
“Fish don’t seem to be biting today,” Peter said, putting the beer bottle down next to his sea rod and grabbing my ankle. “But hey, wait. I think I got something.”
For a scary second, I worried that I’d fall onto our concrete seawall or off it. But then I was on my back, across Peter’s lap, screeching ecstatically as he mercilessly tickled my armpits. Over the last two years in Key West, I was basically majoring in ecstatic screeching.
“You honestly think I’d let you fall in?” Peter whispered as he caught my earlobe in his teeth. “After all we’ve been through? It took me my whole life to catch a real-life mermaid. I’d never throw you back. No way.”
“In that case,” I said, sighing, as I lay back in the neighboring chaise. I smiled up at the merciless blue tropical Floridian sky. “I’ll just have to put up with you mortals for one more day.”
What hadn’t we been through? I thought as I closed my eyes, remembering the night of the accident.
It seemed like a million years ago.
After we had pulled into Peter’s carport, he brought me inside and sat me down on his living room couch and told me to sit tight. About ten minutes later, I heard his boat start up. I fell asleep waiting for him to return and woke to the sun coming up and Peter, back from his night