I’d racked my brains for another location and come up with an outdoor juice bar in Palmetto, where the furniture was all fair-trade, reclaimed wicker or some shit, and each juice cost twelve dollars, minimum. I didn’t like the idea of sitting out on the sidewalk where anyone could see me, but there was no way I was leaving Roxie in the car for the whole meeting. It was only the first week of April, but the air was already sweltering.
I parked my Jeep a block away, putting on my sunglasses and pulling my baseball cap low before getting out. Stupid, really. Em and Deacon would recognize me or my car on sight.
And Julian—well, he might not know what kind of car I drove now, but I doubted a pair of sunglasses would be enough of a disguise. Not when there was no power on earth that could stop me from recognizing him.
Ten years later and Julian was still a book I knew by heart. A single phrase could call up entire passages from memory. I knew those pages, that tattered cover, and how he felt in my hands, down to my bones.
I’d googled Tom before leaving Tennessee, so I recognized the wiry, gray-haired man sitting at the last table on the sidewalk in front of the juice bar. He was wearing a button-down shirt with an owl print, khaki dress pants that had seen better days, and Tevas. With socks.
He was also, I saw when he jumped up and smiled at the jingle of Roxie’s collar, thin to the point of frailness. This was a man who three separate coal companies were suing? He looked like one of Roxie’s sneezes would knock him over.
“You must be Connor,” Tom said, holding out his hand as I reached him. His grip was surprisingly strong. Maybe not as breakable as he looked. He glanced down at Roxie, who was eagerly sniffing his pockets for traces of food. “And this is…?”
“Roxie,” I said, partly in answer and partly to get her attention. She looked back at me, her tongue dangling out of the side of her mouth unabashedly.
“Sorry about that,” I said, pulling off my sunglasses as we sat. I couldn’t help glancing over my shoulder, just to make sure no one was paying attention to us. “She’s a glutton, and has to search everyone she meets for crumbs. Plus she’s a little excited, being in a new place.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Tom tilted his head to the side. “I thought Hetty said you were from Summersea, though.”
“What?” I blinked, pulling my attention back to Tom. I’d been scanning the sidewalk behind him, checking that none of the pedestrians passing by were giving us any lingering looks. “I am.”
I considered elaborating, but couldn’t find an explanation that didn’t sound like I was apologizing for something. Besides, he didn’t need my backstory. I wasn’t going to see him again. In the end, I just shut my mouth and waited for him to speak.
Tom blinked, looking very much like one of the owls on his shirt. “Well. You’re here now, anyway. I appreciate you meeting with me.”
I nodded, clenching my jaw and running through possible responses. Saying ‘my pleasure’ would be a lie, since I didn’t actually want to be here. And the feeling that someone might see me at any time was short-circuiting my brain a little.
I settled on, “Sure,” and waited for Tom to speak again. After another pause, he did.
“How much has Hetty told you about what we’re trying to do down here at McIntyre Beach?”
“A bit.”
Tom snorted. “Man of few words, are you?”
I bit back a sigh. Fuck. I was being rude. But I must have been insane to suggest meeting Tom in an outdoor space. I wanted to go back in time and punch Past-Connor in the face.
It didn’t help to tell myself to relax. To remind myself that it was 1:00 p.m. on a Wednesday and no one would see me. That he wouldn’t see me.
I slipped my shades back on, just in case.
“Sorry,” I said. It came out more like a challenge than an apology. I probably needed to work on that.
“That’s alright,” Tom said. “What I need is a man of action, in any case. I need someone to keep an eye on things here, not give speeches. Did Hetty tell you about my organization?”
I nodded, and then, since I didn’t want Tom to tell Hetty I’d been a complete asshole, said, “Parks and the People, right? You guys have done great work all over the state.”
They had. That was something else my googling had turned up. Tom Merritt was the director of Parks and the People, a non-profit that worked to establish, expand, and protect parks and wildlife refuges across the southeastern United States.
They’d managed to get an illegal mining operation shut down, had successfully sued multiple companies for polluting public lands, and had increased the acreage of parks in Georgia by ten-fold.
If their newest project hadn’t been on the island I’d been avoiding for the past decade, I’d have been fully supportive of it. Hell, I was fully supportive of it. Just, from a distance.
McIntyre Beach, way the hell out on the edge of town, was technically owned by Adair, but it had been a semi-official park all my life. Adair didn’t have the funding to add facilities or staff it with a lifeguard, but I liked it all the more for that. It felt wild in a way that most of Summersea’s candy-coated surface didn’t. And it was under threat.
Lyles & Blackstone, a thoroughly shady real estate development company, wanted to buy the land and erect a set of gaudy, luxury condos, the kind that had sprung up on the island like mushrooms after rain in the past few years. Condos that were shoddily constructed and would melt like cardboard in the next hurricane, and yet still managed to cost way more than any local could afford. Condos that strained existing island infrastructure, jacked up property taxes, and priced locals out of the market.
The issue was coming up for a vote with Adair’s city council in the beginning of June—only two months away—and with the way things currently stood, it looked like the council was going to approve the sale.
Needless to say, I was not a fan of the idea.
One side of McIntyre Beach was bounded by Slagle’s Marine, a general-store-slash-bait-shop-slash-kayak-rental-outfit that also sold ice cream and coffee. A small stream ran down the other side, bringing fresh water down from Summersea’s inland hills. Footpaths tangled through a forest of loblolly pines and live oaks, eventually leading onto the dunes that fronted the ocean.
For as long as I could remember, sea turtles had used the beach as a nesting site in the spring and summer, which was one of the reasons the town had left it relatively untouched. There was a general understanding that if you went to McIntyre Beach, you made sure to look out for nests and you did what you could to protect them.
All in all, the beach was a good place to get lost for a while. Or to go when you already felt lost, maybe. A place to remember how small you were, compared to the waves and the sand and the stars.
It was as close as I’d ever found to a place that felt sacred. And for that exact reason, it wasn’t somewhere I wanted to revisit.
“We certainly try to,” Tom said. “In this particular instance, we’re encountering a bit more resistance than expected. But we’ve overcome worse. I’m not worried. We’ve got a strong citizens’ action committee here, people who are as committed to seeing this park preserved as you or I am.”
That was a bit much, I thought, Tom assuming that I was as committed to saving the beach as he was. I did want the beach preserved, and not just for environmental reasons. There were personal ones, too. Just because I didn’t like to think about those memories didn’t mean I wanted them buried under concrete.