“If you’re old, I’m Drake. What can I do for you?”
“I heard you have a boat? Or access to a boat?”
“I might have access to a boat,” he said between bites of scrambled eggs and sausage. He sat on the counter, not at the table. When was the last time she’d sat on a kitchen counter? High school?
“Would you let me pay you to take me out somewhere on your boat? I need to take some pictures of a lighthouse.”
“You can drive to the lighthouse. Best beach in the state. Don’t tell anybody that, though. I wanna keep the tourists at Myrtle Beach, where they belong.”
“Miss Lizzie said there’s another lighthouse, one on some place called Bride Island. Do you know it?”
“I know it. Hard to get near it, though. There’s a sandbar in the way.”
“Guess that’s why they needed a lighthouse. Can you get into the area at all? I have a long-range lens on my camera.”
“I can probably do that.”
“Today? Tomorrow?”
“This evening? Five?” He hopped off the counter and poured himself a massive glass of orange juice, so big it made her teeth hurt and her blood sugar spike just looking at it. Did college kids know that their days of eating and drinking like that were numbered? She wanted to tell him, then decided to spare him the awful truth that time was a thief, and a metabolism like his would be the first thing it stole.
“What’s the charge?”
“Dinner. With me. You know, after we get back from the boat.”
“You’re too young for me, and I’ve been divorced for about—” she pretended to check her watch “—ten days.”
“You celebrate the divorce yet?”
“Is that a thing people do? Celebrate the painful dissolution of a marriage?”
“Who wanted the divorce?”
“I did.”
“You love him?”
“No.”
“Like him?”
“No, but he didn’t like me, either.”
“You have kids?”
“No.”
“Good in bed?”
“Fair to middling,” Faye said, shrugging.
Ty laughed. “Then hell, yeah, it’s a thing to celebrate.”
“I will have an age-appropriate celebration. You’re too young for me.”
He looked at her, tight-lipped and disapproving. “I’m twenty-two.”
“I’m thirty.”
“Thirty? Oh, my God, Becky, where were you when JFK was shot?” he asked in a Valley girl voice.
She glared at him.
“You flirt weird. Did you learn this in one of those men’s magazines with a woman in a metallic bikini on the cover?”
“Possibly. Is it working?”
Faye sighed. “It’s working. But just dinner. I’m not sleeping with you. I’m supposed to be sad.”
“Are you sad?” he asked, stepping up to her and looking her right in the eyes. She couldn’t remember if Hagen had looked her in the eyes the entire last year of their marriage. She’d forgotten how scary it was to be seen.
“Yes,” she said.
“Because of the divorce.”
“No, not that.”
“Then why?”
Faye smiled. “Who knows?” A rhetorical question. She knew why she was sad, but Ty didn’t need to know.
“We’ll go to the ocean today,” he said. “It knows things. Maybe it can help you.”
Okay.
So.
Faye had a date with a twenty-two-year-old college student. That was unexpected. Probably a very bad idea, as well. Maybe a terrible idea. Then again, he did have a boat. And he was cute. And she was single again.
And... For a split second while flirting with Ty, Faye had been almost okay. The saltwater cure seemed to be working already. And for a woman who’d been in mourning for four straight years, Faye knew “almost okay” was as good as it was probably ever going to get.
But she would take it.
3
Ty had the boat, but Faye had the car. Unless she wanted to ride twenty miles on the back of Ty’s scooter, she would be driving herself on her own date. It was nice. She felt very modern. Old but modern.
Ten minutes into the drive to the dock on Saint Helena Island, Faye pulled over in a church parking lot and gave Ty the keys.
“You want me to drive?” he asked, cocking his pierced eyebrow at her.
“I can’t drive and location scout at the same time without getting us in a wreck. I assume you can drive?”
“I have my learner’s permit,” he said, taking the keys.
“You’re cute.”
“The goddamn cutest,” he said as he opened the door and got behind the wheel.
As Ty drove, Faye stared out the window and jotted the occasional note on her steno pad. She should take pics of the old Penn School. The trees surrounding it were some of the most photogenic she’d ever seen. She also noted a crumbling ruin of a church that would make for a beautiful shot, maybe even the cover of the calendar. Thankfully Ty didn’t pester her with small talk as he drove them to the boat. He pointed out interesting scenery here and there—that road took her down to the old fort, this road took her to a converted plantation house... Useful things. Helpful things. She made notes of them all.
They arrived at the dock, and Faye nodded her approval at the boat. It looked adequately seaworthy, some kind of speedy fishing boat converted into a research vessel. It had a blue-and-white hull with the words CCU Marine Science painted on the bow and the number four on the stern.
“You won’t get in trouble for taking me out on your school’s boat, will you?” she asked.
“It’s mine for the summer. As long as I give it back in one piece with a full tank of gas, and I get my work done, they don’t care what I do with it.”
“What are you working on this summer?” Faye asked as Ty took her hand to steady her on the wobbling boat ramp. Inside the boat she sat on the battered white vinyl seat, mindful of the box of instruments on the floor as Ty settled in behind the wheel.
“Beach pollution mostly,” he said, as he steered the boat away from the dock. “The effects of pollution on coastal wildlife, the fish especially. I’m taking water samples all summer up and down the coast.”
“Are these beaches polluted?” she asked. “They look clean to me.”
“Think about rain,” Ty said. “Think about a rainstorm in your town. Water comes down and washes everything clean, right? What sort of stuff gets washed away in a rainstorm?”
“Bird shit,” she said.
“Squirrel shit.”
“Bat shit,” she said, and they both laughed.
“Oil from your car on the street. All that gets washed into the gutter, which goes into the sewer. Where does that sewer go?”
“Please don’t tell me the ocean.”
“Goes right to the ocean. Decades ago they built these drainage pipes from the cities, and those pipes empty into the ocean near the beaches. That’s why you shouldn’t swim around here after a rainstorm. Like swimming in a sewer.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“It is what it is,” he said with a shrug. “People want to pretend all that shit magically disappears into the gutter and is never seen again. But it’s gotta go somewhere, right?” He started the engine and eased the boat toward open water, steering it neatly between two sailboats, one with the elegant name Silver Girl and the other with the less-than-elegant name The Wet Dream.
The boat bounced hard as it skimmed over the top of a large wake left by a fifty-foot yacht. But Ty seemed imperturbable at the helm. He drove with a focused calm, intent without intensity—a true expert. She liked experts. The world needed more people who were good at their jobs.
“So why marine biology?” Faye asked, shouting over the steady hum of the engine.
“Grew up near Myrtle Beach, watched sea turtles hatching when I was a kid and fell in love. That’s all I’m trying to do—keep these beaches for t
he turtles. Don’t give a shit about the people.”
“That’s not very nice.”
“People are why we’re in this mess. Last year I pulled ten plastic bags, two Coke cans, half a nylon fishnet, and a goddamn pink Croc shoe, size six, out of the stomach of a shark. You know what we say about that down here?”
“What do we say about that down here?”
“That ain’t right. That’s what you say. You try it.”
Faye put on her thickest faux Southern accent. “That ain’t right.”
“Not bad. I took pics of all that mess, made signs and hung them up on every beach from here to Savannah.”
“You must make lots of friends that way.”
Ty snorted a laugh. “Yeah, they aren’t too happy with us when we tell everybody their fun summer vacations are killing the wildlife. They think we’re scaring off tourists. We are, but we’re not doing it to be assholes. We’re doing it to wake people up.”
“Are you waking them up?”
“All we can do is ring the alarm. Most people aren’t going to start paying attention until they have dirty ocean water on their doorstep. Bad as it is, I admit I’m gonna laugh when those rich white boys are playing golf in three feet of seawater.”
“My ex-husband was one of those rich white boys. He loved coming down here to golf with his buddies.”
“Sorry,” he said, looking awkward.
“I’m not.” She winked at him.
Ty smiled and hit the gas. Coming here had been a good idea. She should thank Richard for sending her the job. This job was just what she needed—work. Real work. Meaningful work. Plus sand, surf, seafood and a chance to be her old self again. She knew the old Faye, the Faye who’d existed before the miscarriages and the failed marriage... The old Faye wasn’t sad like the new Faye. The old Faye felt things, felt them deeply. The old Faye fought for things, too, didn’t give up or give in. And the old Faye would definitely go on a date with Ty. Absolutely.
Ty glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. A college boy had just checked her out.
Maybe the old Faye and the new Faye had something in common.
“Is that it?” Faye asked, pointing to the top of a lighthouse peeking out from the tree canopy.
“That’s Hunting Island. Pretty lighthouse. You can climb it for two dollars.”
“I think I can cover that. I’ll go tomorrow. Today I want to see Bride Island’s lighthouse.”
“We’re a couple miles out from there still. The lighthouse is on the north beach. You can see it a lot better than the Hunting Island lighthouse. It was never moved so it’s right on the water.”
“What do you mean it was never moved?” Faye asked, pausing to dig a strand of hair out of her mouth. She’d forgotten how windy it got on a boat.
“You see that long spit of sand there?” Ty pointed to what looked like a yellow cat’s tail lounging a few hundred yards out into the water.
“I see it.”
“That used to be land. And that’s where the Hunting Island lighthouse stood. Built in the 1870s, but they had to move just a few years later. The land had eroded that much already. Going, gone, almost gone...”
“It’s really all going away, isn’t it? The coast?”
“Let’s just say you won’t catch me buying a beach house.”
“It’s too bad. I always feel like a better person when I’m on the water.” The air smelled cleaner here. The water seemed purer. She wanted to strip off her clothes and dive off the side of the boat and let the water baptize her a free woman.
“The ocean is big,” Ty said. “And we aren’t. It’s good to be humbled every now and then.”
“You ever go through a divorce?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“Trust me, I know from humble.”
“You don’t seem humbled,” Ty said.
“What do I seem like?”
“Like a woman who just got out of jail.”
Faye grinned and was about to ask him what a woman just out of jail ought to do first when Ty raised his arm and pointed.
“There it is,” Ty said, and Faye looked up from the dancing blue water to the island on their port side.
“That’s Bride Island?”
“That’s it.”
Faye studied it, not sure what she was looking for except something to justify the trip out here. From this distance, about five hundred yards from shore according to Ty, it looked like Hunting Island. White sandy beach, a line of ocean debris where the tide met the shore and a thick forest of trees. Faye picked up the binoculars and studied the trees. She saw no palms or palmettos, no pines, no evergreens at all.
“Are those live oaks?”
“I don’t think they’re dead oaks,” Ty said.
“You know what I mean.”
“They’re white oaks. Lady who owns the island owns a bourbon distillery in Kentucky. They get the trees for the bourbon barrels from here.”
“White oak? Interesting. Naturally occurring or did the owner plant them?”
“You know anything about Bride Island?” Ty asked, slowing the boat.
“Not a thing except I couldn’t find it on the guidebook map.”
“It’s just Seaport Island on the maps,” he said. “But call it Bride Island if you want to sound like a local.”
Ty turned off the boat and let it bob gently in the water.
“Where’d the name come from?” Faye asked.
“Some rich planter came over from France in 1820 or something. He sent home for a girl to marry and they shipped her over here, got her in the rowboat to bring her in. They say it was love at first sight. She was so beautiful he waded right into the water to meet her boat. And when she saw him coming for her, she got out of the boat in her fancy dress and eight hundred skirts underneath and waded out to meet him. But the water weighed her down so hard, she started to go under, and he picked her right out of the water and carried his bride to shore. So it’s Bride Island.”
“Romantic,” Faye said. “Minus the almost drowning. Don’t swim in big dresses.”
“Gets more romantic. Their kid fell out of a tree and broke his neck. The bride drowned herself. And the husband went crazy and committed suicide by burning the house down with him inside it. But he was a slave owner so you know what we say to that?”
“That ain’t right?” Faye asked.
“Nope. We say this.” Ty raised his hand and defiantly flipped off the island. Faye smiled. She appreciated the sentiment. “Legend is, if a girl swims naked in those waters, she’ll find her true love right after. But don’t do that. Lotta girls have drowned out here. Only man they meet is Jesus.”
“I’ll make a note not to do that, then.”