The Receding Tide
an excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
July 1973
The road leading to Bay Harbor went straight to the heart. Smooth and narrow, it seemed to go nowhere, and then there it was, a small town held fast by the Bay and Gulf that embraced it. There was no welcome sign, it was its own welcome. The sun was bright, the air was brisk and a passing storm but a reminder that home was close by. No one bragged about its past or preened because it had once been considered for the capital of Florida. Yes, the quarters were over the railroad tracks and led most often to unpaved roads, but its people sang for grief and glory, and they got along, resting their greetings on last names alone. The houses in Bay Harbor were never real estate. They were homes. It was that kind of place. No one had to apologize for living there. It wasn’t small so much as it was snug. It changed with the times, but it never outgrew its name. A place of palm trees and balmy breezes, of sugar sand and broken sidewalks. If you lived there, you’d be home now.
Anna Lee Owens, former proud resident, slowed the car as she studied the houses, the streets, the clouds—yes, even the clouds—as she eased into Bay Harbor once more. The last time she’d been home had been to bury her dad, a time of sadness tempered by the joy of thinking her life might be different now, thinking her husband Joel was still alive and would be joining her as soon as he left a hellhole called Vietnam.
For some time afterwards, she liked to think he still waited. She rubbed her ring finger raw, wishing she had taken his name when they married. As the months wore on though it became more and more difficult to imagine anything beyond the endless sleep and quiet that were the trademarks of Arlington National Cemetery. Joel, considerably older than Anna Lee, had gone into the Army after his time at Georgia Tech and later retired as a career officer in Intelligence. They’d had a good life those first ten years. He’d loved the Army. She’d loved him. There were no children, but that was okay too. He wasn’t good with them. If it wasn’t the life she’d dreamed of, she made that okay too. She had a longing but wasn’t sure what it was.
When the call came that her dad was dying, it was followed by another, this time for Joel. Her arrangements to fly to Tallahassee and take care of her dad were barely complete when the phone rang again. It seemed so innocent. Joel was called back for a brief stint in service to the Army to complete a job he’d started. Just to tie up loose ends. He agreed and they left for the Atlanta airport together early the next morning. It was foggy. Dim and grey but nothing to worry about. Separate destinations for tasks they both needed to complete.
Then, within a month, Joel’s job completed him. She envisioned him in a tent, dimly lit when a knife spiraled out of the jungle, quiet as a cemetery.
He didn’t suffer. That was her only consolation.
Her tire hit the curb, and she jerked back to the present. It was time now to let go. That’s what her childhood friend Lola said when she invited her to Bay Harbor for a visit. She was right of course. Lola always was, but this time she didn’t know how right. They both needed to let go. Lola said she’d been divorced for almost two years, but it seemed like yesterday. Yesterday. That’s what she said. Anna Lee already knew about the divorce but didn’t let on that she knew. She was there so they could help each other. Old friends with new problems.
Anna Lee slowed the car almost to a stop, driving into a dream. In a way it was a dream, an unreal break in time. She wanted to feel it all, to belong and not be a stranger, to be a part of it still, even as she felt a little guilty. It wasn’t just Lola. She had promised her dad she wouldn’t go back to the town of his disgrace. He felt betrayed by his best friend, denied an inheritance he’d been assured was his. He never got over it. Yet here she was in Bay Harbor, no longer the little girl who called it home, who withstood her dad’s shame, let a family friend sully her good name and make her a party to evil. She was home, but somehow it didn’t taste right.
The years she lost living in Tallahassee and Atlanta made her too uncomfortable to go straight to Lola’s, to drive up to a house that had been her family’s home and knock on the door. She’d do what the teenagers used to do. She’d drag Main, all three blocks of it. What struck her was how quiet it was. There wasn’t a sound from the dusty old quarters’ neighborhood, not even a dog barking. Atlanta had been her home for years now, and she’d grown accustomed to noise assaulting her ears. Had Bay Harbor always been so quiet, sun washed and treeless? Probably, but now it just seemed to be asleep.
Helen’s Rooming House was there all decked out in gingerbread that could have used a coat of paint. She hit the brakes hard when it registered. Not Boarding House but ROOMING House. Slowing then, she prayed that an older, still slender blond Helen would be there. Had she quit serving sumptuous noon meals in the long narrow room behind the grocery store? Where was the line of men and a few women who entered through a small door cut like an afterthought in the side of the building? Where did everyone eat without the tables spread with clean white cloths weighed down with huge bowls of good southern cooking? The black cooks always wore their white aprons with pride as Helen watched their every move.
Now and then a horn blew as Anna Lee’s car continued to inch along, but she ignored them as memory haunted her. She wondered how many times she had eaten there as a child. It never occurred to her to ask permission. She just chose a chair and began eating. She didn’t pay. She didn’t have to. Her mama was Helen’s best friend.
Cars drove around her, no one caring that a stranger strained her neck for one last look to see through the bug scarred windshield, to get a better view of Helen’s screened porch made warm by the July sun. Nightfall would bring a breeze from the Bay. By then Helen would surely be in her favorite rocker. Had she lived her mother would have been there with Helen too. They didn’t have a drop of blood between them, but they were close as sisters.
If only Anna Lee felt she belonged, if she didn’t feel like a stranger. She had left Bay Harbor when her family insisted, but she wanted it back. She swallowed hard, felt betrayed because it had gone on without her. Would she always be the one who was left? Neither the past nor the future waited for her.
She kept driving until the Bay stopped her. She looked at the water where she’d watched the sun set like a fiery ball each evening while her mother reheated the noon meal. It wasn’t special. It was just night coming on. That was her life as Bay Harbor framed it for over twelve years, when she had no reason to expect it to change.
But it had changed. She sat in her Pontiac that gleamed blue as the Gulf of Mexico, a thirty-eight-year-old woman living a new life in Atlanta, afraid to let the people of Bay Harbor see the Atlanta Anna Lee. Gone were the skinned knees and fly away hair. She had on heels, a tailored yellow suit and all the polish twenty-six years away from Bay Harbor had given her. She no longer called it home, had not been there as the people and town had gone on without her. She wanted to be part of the life she had known but that was not possible, no matter how she longed for it, no matter how much she loved the town that had left her behind. Feeling the heat despite the air conditioning, she slipped out of her jacket and draped it across the seat.
Still as the water was, there was something hypnotic about it. It was silly she knew, but she felt an almost kinship with its mirrored surface, its way of being reflective of nothing but the occasional breeze and the sun resting on its surface. The Gulf was such a short distance away, but so different. The waves roared—they foamed and demanded they be noticed. Quiet and more devoted, the Bay waited. But not the Gulf. The Gulf, she realized with a shock, was her life. She had come to Bay Harbor searching for a twelve-year-old girl, a quiet, polite child, and found herself trying to adjust to having reached that part of her life where she was like the receding tide of the Gulf. No longer young and strong, but needing to back off from life for a while, in order to be ready for the next surge.
She jumped with surprise when a policeman rapped on her car window. No longer were the days when her dad, then the local sheriff, would have known who she was, when her being there wouldn’t give anyone pause, much less the deputy-sheriff.
“You okay?” he asked, and she nodded without looking up as she lowered the window and wondered, what now and waited for a breeze.
“This is a no parking area,” the policeman said as he lowered his head and looked in the window at her hiked skirt, “but I noticed you have a Georgia tag, so I guess you didn’t know that.”
“It wasn’t no parking when I lived here.”
He removed his hat and fanned it for a breeze. “Well, if you’re from around here I reckon you’ll have to get used to the way things are now.”
“I guess I will, and I’ll be glad to move my car if you’ll back yours out so I can move mine and get away from here.”
“You sure you’re from around here? You sound mighty uppity to me.”
“Uppity? Me? I don’t think so, and I don’t think you have any right to talk to me that way. Cut that small town boy act. I lived here when you were still wet behind the ears.”
“I doubt that.” He gave her a practiced broad smile full of straight white teeth.
She turned and gave him a searching look, realizing he was older than she’d thought but not about to be charmed by an infectious smile. “What are you doing here anyway, hiding out? Shouldn’t you be in Vietnam or was Canada too cold for you?”
“Get out of the car!” he barked as though he hadn’t been flirting with her a minute before.
“I will not. Just give me a parking ticket, move your car, and we’ll be done with this little visit.”
“I don’t care when you lived here, lady. Get out of that car now. I’m not asking. I’m telling you.”
“Go shine your badge,” she tossed at him and opened the door, furious that she’d let him get her so upset. She stood up and began to smooth her skirt and pulled her silk blouse away from her skin when she saw him raise his pants leg to show her the metal leg that fit into the molded shoe that was his left foot. She felt her jaw drop and shame reddened her face when he said, “I was just a kid drafted during the Korean War. Foolishly made it a career and wound up in Vietnam. The rest of this leg was lost in Nam on April 2,1969. That make you feel better?”
“I’m so embarrassed,” she said hurriedly, lapsing into her Bay Harbor accent. “It’s not an excuse, but my husband lost more than a leg in that jungle. He lost his life. I’m hypersensitive.”
“I’m sorry,” was all he said before limping slightly to his car and calling a Bay Harbor mantra, “Welcome home.”
Talk about ice breakers, she said almost aloud as she welcomed the crunchy sound of pulverized oyster shells beneath her tires as she backed onto the beach road. So much for coming home again now that her dad was dead, now that she no longer felt she had to honor her promise to stay away. She’d drive slowly, so she wouldn’t get a ticket, down the highway bordering the Bay and calm her nerves a bit before facing Lola, the Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, as she’d been called in school. Now she’d just be Lola, a dear, if somewhat snarky, friend.