With the blazing sun rising toward the middle of the cloudless sky, Taylor drove her precision-tuned sports car over the bumpy gravel driveway away from Peyton Manor, toward Black Hall Trail. Nestled into the passenger seat, Alexandra looked through the windshield at the deep scratches on the hood of Taylor’s convertible.
Those certainly do look like claw marks, she thought, puzzled.
No matter how many times she replayed the night before in her head, she could not say for sure what she had seen in the middle of the road. “Let’s keep the top up for now,” she recommended to Taylor.
Searching for the right button on the dashboard that would close the convertible top, Taylor grumbled, “I’m glistening, Alex. You didn’t tell me how hot it was going to be here.”
Alexandra turned the air conditioner on full force and sat back in the seat. “I’m sorry, Taylor. I’m sorry about the car, the weather, your new shoes, everything.”
“Chill,” said Taylor as the car roof closed over them. Then suddenly Taylor asked, “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” replied Alexandra, looking through the windshield and seeing nothing. But then she heard it, too: a howling screech, echoing through the dense canopy around them.
“It must have been the gate closing behind us just now,” Alexandra said, turning around to look through the back window.
The car idled in front of the gate at the end of the driveway. “Yeah, you’re right,” Taylor said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Now point me toward the marina,” she said. The car gained speed quickly as she navigated from the packed gravel driveway up onto the black asphalt.
“Maybe it was just a low branch that scratched your car last night,” said Alexandra as they raced down the winding road.
“Probably,” agreed Taylor, nodding her head as she scanned the dense forest of moss-covered oak trees on either side of the road. “Don’t worry about it,” she lied.
“Make a left when you get to the stop sign,” Alexandra directed her.
“What stop sign? There’s nothing out here except trees,” Taylor sighed.
“It’s still a couple of miles up the road. Just make a left when you get to it, and follow that road to the water. You can’t miss the docks,” Alexandra explained. “Granny June said to ask for Captain Bradley when we get there. He’s supposed to take us out for a sail in the harbor.”
Alexandra stared at the passing woods through the passenger window, hoping to spot a low-hanging limb near the bend in the road where she scratched the car’s hood. But not a single stray limb hung down over the road. The woods flew by her eyes as they sped further from Peyton Manor. But deep in the trees, she saw something fleeting, something racing with them.
A deer? Alexandra asked herself as her fingers felt for the door lock. “Definitely a deer,” she said aloud, straining her eyes harder to see into the passing trees.
“What did you say?” asked Taylor, searching for the stop sign.
“Nothing,” mumbled Alexandra, her fingers fumbling absentmindedly with her necklace.
“Is this the turn?” asked Taylor as the convertible eased toward a four-way intersection. Alexandra did not answer, intently keeping her eyes on the woods.
“Hello?” asked Taylor turning to look at her friend. “Do I turn here, or what?”
“Yeah, I think so,” said Alexandra. Just then, a motorcycle approached the intersection from the right and screeched to a halt. The rider revved the engine impatiently, waiting for the convertible to move. Alexandra studied a dent in the bike’s black front fender.
“What is that?” asked Taylor, pointing to Alexandra’s necklace as the motorcycle sped past them through the intersection. “Jerk,” mumbled Taylor, turning the car to the left in the same direction as the motorcycle.
“My dad sent it to me,” explained Alexandra, clutching the necklace tightly in her hand.
“Your dad? Are you kidding?” Taylor asked in disbelief.
“No, it’s true. My grandmother said it came in the mail this week. The box had postmarks from, like, ten different countries. It had been lost all this time, but it finally found its way to me.”
“That’s really incredible,” Taylor said as the boat docks came into view. “You should call a TV station about it. They love doing those kinds of amazing true stories.”
“Yeah, except that my dad is still missing,” Alexandra said glumly.
“Never mind,” Taylor said. She pulled her Mercedes into a parking spot in front of the marina. Their spot was next to a black, dented motorcycle.
“So where do we find Captain Bradley?” Taylor asked as she followed Alexandra across the parking lot and up onto a wooden boardwalk. Her high-heeled sandals wedged into a gap between the planks. “Seriously!” Taylor complained.
“Why don’t you take those off and go barefoot?” Alexandra asked, looking down at her friend’s feet.
“No way. Do you know how hard it was to get these things on?” Taylor insisted, yanking her foot free of the boardwalk’s grasp.
At the entrance to the marina, a young woman wiped off tables and straightened chairs at an open-air restaurant. “Let’s check in there,” suggested Alexandra. “Maybe someone at Cannon Shots knows where to find him,” she said, reading the sign on the roof.
The pair strolled up to the long bar. Taylor plopped down on a tall stool and threw a pack of cigarettes from her purse onto the wooden bar in front of her. The pack landed next to a motorcycle helmet.
“A glass of Pinot Grigio,” she requested, winking at the man behind the bar.
He set a glass in front of her. She took a sip. “What is this?” she asked, spitting it out. “Water?”
The bartender chuckled.
“Excuse her,” Alexandra told him. “You wouldn’t happen to know where we could find someone named Captain Bradley, would you?” she asked.
“That would be me,” he told her, extending a handshake. “You can call me Brad. I’m not really a captain, though.”
“Really?” Taylor asked, rolling her eyes in feigned shock.
“I’m Alexandra Peyton,” Alexandra said, shaking his hand.
“Your grandmother called me about you. Are you young ladies ready to take the sailboat out now?”
“No, we’re here to watch you clean tables,” said Taylor sarcastically.
“Too bad,” Brad told her. “It’s a beautiful day for a sail.”
“Why do you call yourself Captain Bradley?” asked Taylor, lighting a cigarette and puffing the smoke toward him.
“I don’t,” he explained. “Mrs. Peyton likes to call me that. She doesn’t come down here very often. But when she does, she pays me well to sail the Miss Alex around the harbor for her,” he said, looking at Alexandra.
“I’m Taylor, by the way,” the pretty blonde informed him as she tamped out her cigarette in an ashtray sitting on the bar.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” he said, grabbing his motorcycle helmet and stowing it away under the bar.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” said Taylor. She slid from the bar stool onto her shaky, high-heeled feet. The two friends followed Brad’s careful steps over the wet boat docks, toward the Miss Alex.
High tide swelled in the harbor as the Miss Alex cruised lazily away from the marina. Once on board, Taylor appointed herself first mate. All the while, Alexandra’s belly ached from laughing at her best friend’s attempts to stand on a swaying boat in five-inch heels.
“So what do you want to be when you grow up, Brad?” asked Taylor. She stretched her aching legs out in the sun as Brad dropped the anchor in the middle of the harbor.
“I have some ideas,” he told Taylor, scrounging the deck for a fishing rod. He spied Alexandra rummaging through a cooler. “Let me see one of those sandwiches,” he called to her.
Taylor persisted with her interrogation. “Do you go to school?”
“I’m in law school at Vanderbilt,” he told her as he slipped a piece of sandwich meat on his fishing hook.
“Gross,” Taylor whined. “So you just do this for fun?”
“Actually, yes; but the money helps, too,” he said, casting the line into the ocean.
“I might apply to Vanderbilt this fall,” Taylor told him. “But I’m not sure if my extracurricular activities are well-rounded enough.”
“I’m guessing you’re a cheerleader,” Brad said, watching Taylor daintily chew on a cold ham-and-cheese sandwich.
“Not anymore,” Alexandra offered, listening to their conversation.
“I volunteer at an old folks home,” Taylor exclaimed.
“Does it count if it is court ordered?” Alexandra smiled as Brad smirked in her direction.
“Be quiet,” hissed Taylor as she reached inside the cooler for a soda.
Leaning over the side of the sailboat, Alexandra dropped her bread crust into the choppy water until a fin rose up from the waves by her hand. “Look,” she shrieked, quickly stumbling backward from the rail. “Shark!”
“Cool!” exclaimed Brad, jumping up to look. But then he said to assure her, “It’s only a dolphin.”
As her heart slowly returned to its normal pace, Alexandra leaned back over the rail. The high sun reflected harshly from the water back into her face, and she squinted in the glare. As the back of the dolphin rose toward her in the murky water, she leaned over the side of the boat once more for a closer look.
“I think I can touch it,” she said, extending her arm over the side of the boat.
As Alexandra stared into the water, she caught a glimpse of her own reflection on the rippling waves. Looking at the mirror image of herself, she suddenly saw a man standing behind her. She felt frozen in place along the railing. A cloud scurried across the sun, blocking the once-clear reflection. Grabbing the railing, she tried to steady herself as the boat swayed back and forth.
Taylor, seeing her friend’s unsteadiness, reminded Alexandra, “This isn’t Sea World.” A sharp gust of wind rocked the boat and knocked Alexandra headfirst into the water. With a loud splash, Alexandra descended into the dark waves. “Alex!” Taylor screamed at Brad as Alexandra fell into the sea. “She can’t swim, Brad! Help her!”
Sinking fast, she struggled to find the surface. Her eyes stung in the salty water. Despite not being able to see in the water, she became aware of a figure looming toward her. She was certain that it was a shark, swimming quietly only a few feet away. Panic gripped her. Her arms and legs flailed helplessly under the waves.
Don’t fight, she thought. Maybe it will go away. She started to submerge far below the surface. She shut her eyes tight. I don’t want to die.
The next instant, she felt a grip around her waist, and she rose to the surface. With her head now above the waves, she opened her eyes and saw Taylor throw her a round life preserver from the boat. She saw Brad jump into the waves. He dragged her to the ladder at the boat’s stern. Then he lifted her out of the water and pulled himself up beside her to the safety of the deck.
“Alex, you scared me,” said Taylor, rushing to her friend’s side.
“Get a towel!” ordered Brad.
Alexandra shivered in the wind, but soon Taylor was back with a towel that she’d found below deck. Covering her scared and soaking friend, Taylor asked, “What happened? It looked like you leapt into the water.”
“I fell,” stuttered Alexandra, wrapping the towel tightly around her body. “I saw—um—well, I don’t know what I saw. Something was standing behind me,” her voice trailed off. She looked into Brad’s face.
“I think you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said.
“Can we go back now?” asked Alexandra, her hand gripping the necklace around her neck to assure herself that it had not become lost in the ocean during her struggle.
“Sure,” he said. “Why don’t you come and stand by me at the wheel?” he offered, helping her to her feet.
As the boat sailed quietly back to the marina, Alexandra’s eyes scanned the waves, waiting for a fin to break the surface of the choppy water. Safely docked, she glanced back again at the water before stepping up onto the wooden pier. But all she could see was a dolphin, flipping in and out of the waves.
“We’ll put the top down on the convertible so that you can air-dry on the way back to your grandmother’s house,” Taylor joked as the three of them headed for the parking lot.
Reaching the car, the girls slumped into their seats. Taylor let down the convertible top, as promised. “Thanks for everything,” Alexandra told Brad as he held the car door open for her.
“No problem,” he said, closing the door as Taylor cranked the engine. “Do you two have plans for tonight?” he asked.
“What do you have in mind?” Taylor asked, winking.
“Some of my friends are getting together for a bonfire on the beach,” he told them. “You’re welcome to join us,” he said, all the time watching Alexandra.
“Thanks,” Alexandra said, smiling. “We might do that.”
“Ciao!” exclaimed Taylor as she punched the accelerator and squealed out of the parking lot, heading back to Peyton Manor.
As they drove to the estate, Alexandra was exhausted and subdued from her ordeal. She didn’t want to talk. She tried to relax. She closed her eyes to concentrate and to forget the shark, which was still lurking in her memory. During the drive, to get her mind elsewhere, she thought about what Granny June had told her about her family. It was a somewhat mysterious story that involved a fortuneteller.
Granny June’s parents, Charles and Martha, had been born in poverty in South Carolina; their parents had been sharecroppers. Granny June had said that Charles never felt at ease among his siblings, as if he had been placed there by mistake. As a boy, Charles had accompanied his father on deliveries of cotton, riding in their wagon through the streets of old Charleston. Charles saw the city’s stately homes and decided that he would never be a sharecropper like his father.
Charles met Granny June’s mother, Martha, during the four years that sharecroppers’s children were allowed to attend grade school. When Charles was fourteen, he left the cotton fields and ran away to the trading ships in the harbor. There, an aging sea captain took pity on him and let him swab the decks of his vessel in exchange for passage to Europe. For three years, Charles had adventures that led him to the cliffs of Dover, the Eiffel Tower, and the Parthenon in Athens. Along the way, he convinced the sea captain that he needed a loyal partner, a young man to expand the business into a full trading company.
But the sea captain needed convincing. What did he want with a trading company? He was already a successful seaman, crossing the oceans for the highest bidder, with tobacco, rum, and cotton in his hull.
But the captain’s chance encounter with a gypsy at a port in Romania changed his mind. The fortune-teller read the captain’s palm and saw great wealth in his future if he took Charles up on the plan. Then Charles offered his hand to be read by the gypsy. She recoiled, terrified to touch his skin. Only curiosity finally persuaded her to see his palm. She said that Charles, the captain, and their families would never want again.
When Charles returned home to South Carolina, he married Martha, and they had two children, Joseph and June. With Charles’s grit and determination, the shipping company was highly successful, and he built the estate by the ocean for his family. Joseph grew up strong and smart. Granny June told Alexandra how much she loved her brother Joseph, who helped their father run the business while she attended tea parties and auditioned dashing young men to be her worthy husband.
Joseph embarked on a military career. When June bid her brother farewell for West Point, she would not see him again until the Army sent him home, a wrecked veteran of General George Patton’s Third Army, which had rained hell upon the Germans. Not long after coming home, Joseph died in a hunting accident on the grounds of the estate. But that was all Alexandra knew about Joseph, because her grandmother had gotten strangely silent about him. She did know that when Granny June married her beau Thomas, her parents accepted him almost as another son, allowing the couple to share their large estate and bringing Thomas into the family business.