The Beach House

For filling in the gaps for me while I was madly writing, for loads of support and for just being great and treasured friends, sincere thanks to Cynthia Pearlman, Susan North, Carolyn Graf, Ann Nodtvedt, Buzzy Porter, Marge Irizarry, Dottie Ashley, Sally Marschner, Tim Brewerton, Therese Killeen, Lisa and Barry Hand, Terri Ehlinger, Amy Rowe, Elizabeth Carota, Stacy Harwood, Marsha Iafrat, Clay and Martha Cable, Danny and Lena Johnson, Angela Jones, David Tekler, Susan Shimmin, Tamar Myers, Nina Bruhns, Dave and the gang at the Isle of Palms post office, the people of Isle of Palms and, of course, the Turtle Team.

For tech support, big thanks to Jon D. McCandlish.

Special thanks to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Wildlife Diversity Section. In particular, Sally Murphy, Meg Hoyle and Charles Tambiah for an education on loggerheads.

It was a treat for me to learn about the early days of being a “Turtle Lady” from one of the originals, Florence Johnson, and I am very grateful.

Thank you to the Isle of Palms Police Department and the Charleston County Red Cross for advising me on hurricane evacuation procedures.

Lastly, heartfelt love and thanks to my family. To Markus, for advice and long walks on the beach while I hammered out story points. To Claire, for trying to explain the finer points of my computer. To Gretta, for insights into the mind of an eighteen-year-old girl. Lastly, to Zack, whose smile brightens up each day.

CONSIDER THE TURTLE

Consider the turtle. Perchance you have worried, despaired of the world, meditated the end of life, and all things seem rushing to destruction; but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with the turtle’s pace. The young turtle spends its infancy within its shell. It gets experience and learns the way of the world through that wall. While it rests warily on the edge of its hole, rash schemes are undertaken by men and fail. French empires rise or fall, but the turtle is developed only so fast. What’s a summer? Time for a turtle’s egg to hatch. So is the turtle developed, fitted to endure, for he outlives twenty French dynasties. One turtle knows several Napoleons. They have no worries, have no cares, yet has not the great world existed for them as much as for you?

—Henry David Thoreau

Journal

August 28, 1856

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

loggerhead. 1. Latin: Caretta caretta. A tropical sea turtle with a hard shell and a large head.

2. a stupid fellow; blockhead.

3. at loggerheads; in disagreement; in a quarrel.

PROLOGUE

It was twilight and a brilliant red sun lazily made its hazy descent off the South Carolina coast. Lovie Rutledge stood alone on a small, rolling sand dune and watched as two young children with hair the same sandy color as the beach squealed and cavorted, playing the age-old game of tag with the sea. A shaky half smile lifted the corners of her mouth. The boy couldn’t have been more than four years of age yet he was aggressively charging the water, the stick in his hand pointing outward like a sword. Then, turning on his heel, he ran back up the beach, chased by a wave. Poor fellow was tagged more often than not. But the girl…Was she seven or eight? Now there was a skilled player. She danced on tiptoe, getting daringly close to the foamy wave, instinctively knowing the second to back away, taunting the water with her high laugh.

How like her own Cara, Lovie thought, recalling her youngest. Then, seeing a rogue wave wash over the boy, toppling him and leaving him sputtering with rage, she chuckled. And how like her son, Palmer. Not far away, the children’s young mother was bent at the waist busily gathering up the carelessly thrown buckets and spades into a canvas bag and shaking sand from towels, eager to pack up and go.

Stop what you’re doing and observe your children! Lovie wanted to say to the young mother. Quick, set aside your chores and turn your head. See how they laugh with such abandon? Only the very young can laugh like that. Look how they are giving you clues to who they are. Treasure these moments! Savor them. For they will disappear as quickly as the setting sun. And then, before you know it, you will be like me—an old woman, alone and willing to trade anything and everything for one soft evening such as this with her babies once again.

She wrapped her arms around herself and sighed. “Lovie, you do go on,” she told herself with a shake of her head. Of course she wouldn’t tell the young mother this. It would be rude, and of no use. The mother was harried, her mind filled with all she had yet to do. She wouldn’t understand Lovie’s warning until her own children were grown and gone. One day she would recall this very twilit evening and the sight of her children dancing on the shore and then…Yes, then she would wish she had stopped to hold their chubby hands and play tag along with them.

Lovie continued to watch the scene unfold in its predictable manner. The towels were shaken and folded, then stuffed into the bag, the children were called in from the water’s edge and, as the sky darkened, the mother led her tired soldiers in a ragtag formation over the dune and out of sight.

Silence reigned once again on the familiar stretch of beach. Another day was done. Along the water’s edge a sandpiper peeped as it skitted across the sand and foam line in its straight-legged manner. Behind Lovie, the tall grasses swayed in the evening breeze. She closed her eyes, acutely attuned to the night music. There would only be a few more quiet nights like this. It was mid-May and the tourist season would soon go into full swing on the South Carolina coast.