Moondance Beach (10 page)

Clancy’s eyes were big. Duncan waited for a response. Nothing.

“Say something!”

“Oh, so now I’m allowed to speak?” Clancy spun around in his chair to face the credenza. He poured himself a cup of coffee, then found a Styrofoam cup in a drawer and poured one for Duncan.

He took a sip—and nearly spit it out. “This tastes like it just drained out of my combat boots.”

“Good to the last drop.” Clancy raised his mug in a toast. It was obvious to Duncan that his brother was stalling for time.

“Just say it, man.”

Clancy nodded. “All right. Here’s what I think. I think that you’ve been through a lot. Your injuries were severe, and that kind of trauma can affect your brain. I think you need to give yourself time to heal. Go easy on yourself. You might be pushing yourself too hard.”

“So you think I’m nuts?”

“I didn’t say that.” Clancy took another swig of coffee, obviously weighing his words. “You want to be sure who you saw last night, correct?”

Duncan shrugged. “Sure. Just out of curiosity.”

Clancy seemed puzzled. “Hold up. So you’ve never actually seen Lena? I mean, before last night you haven’t run into her anywhere in the last, say, decade or so?”

“Of course not. I’m only here a few days out of the year, and I barely stay long enough to see my own family—why would I see her?”

“Point taken.” Clancy sipped his coffee. “And you haven’t looked her up on the Internet?”

Duncan shook his head. “No. It didn’t even occur to me until right this second.”

“Shall I do the honors?”

Just as Clancy turned to his computer, the dog jumped
in Duncan’s lap and plopped down like she belonged there. He wrapped his hands around the little body, feeling how bony she was under all that matted fur, and put her back on the floor. She couldn’t have weighed more than a sack of groceries.

He watched Clancy search the terms “Adelena Silva,” “mermaid paintings,” and “images.” He got immediate results and turned the monitor toward Duncan so he could get a close look. The screen was filled with thumbnail shots of more mermaid paintings than should be allowed by law, plus pictures of Lena at art shows, parties, interviews, and fairs.

Clancy clicked on one image in particular, and it expanded to fit the entire screen. It was a photo of a striking woman with long, dark hair, laughing almond-shaped eyes, and a sexy half smile. In this photo she was wearing a burgundy velvet evening gown cut to her sternum, her slim throat draped with exotic-looking jewelry.

“
Holy shit.
”

“That her?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Hmm. So we have a confirmed sighting of our local celebrity skinny-dipping with the fishes. Want me to call
TMZ
?”

Duncan knew his brother was trying to lighten the mood, but his head was spinning. He didn’t know how to process this information, especially in the context of everything else.

He really had seen a tail.

Then he’d seen a woman rise from the ocean.

The woman was someone he’d known as a kid.

She was the famous artist Lena Silva, known for her paintings of mermaids.

One of her paintings had caused him to have the most devastating sex dream of his life.

But now he realized that dream hadn’t been about the painting. It had been about
her
.

“You all right?”

“Huh? Yeah.” The dog would not give up and was now sitting by his shoe again, leaning her dirty fur against his calf.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, except this lice-encrusted hair ball won’t leave me alone, and I think your coffee just blasted a hole through my stomach lining.”

Clancy smiled. “So what’s the upshot here? Are you thinking of asking Lena out?”

“What?” Duncan jolted to attention. “Hell, no. I’m leaving as soon as the Navy clears me for active duty. Why would I want to start dating someone on Bayberry Island? Especially a chick who paints mermaid pictures?”

“It was just a question. No need to lash out.” Clancy held out his open palms in the same gesture he’d used to calm down their father at the birthday dinner. It had to be a cop thing. “I think you should take Ondine home with you. Spending time with a dog lowers your blood pressure, relieves stress, and increases feelings of well-being.”

“Not this dog. She just increases my need to take a shower.”

“Do you want to hear what I know about Lena?”

He shrugged.

“Well, I know she’s very good at what she does and she works hard at it. She always agrees to appear at Island Day to help us bring in the people, and they wait in
line for hours to get her to sign a poster or take a picture with her. And I know she takes very good care of Mellie and is a big supporter of several charities here on the island, too.”

“Sounds like a decent person.”

“You two were friends when you were kids, right?”

Duncan nodded. “For a short time, I suppose we were friends.”

“Well, I sure remember Lena crushing on you when you were in high school.” Clancy grinned. “She followed you around like a lost puppy.”

Duncan stared down at the lost puppy with the ridiculous name resting against his leg. A crush? Lena? He didn’t remember.

“Something’s bothering you,” Clancy said. “Want to tell me what it is?”

Slowly, Duncan returned his attention to his brother. He heard himself laugh. “I am perfectly fine.”

“Excellent news!” Clancy uncrossed his legs and leaned in toward Duncan. “I’m going to deputize you and make you serve your community during festival week.”

“What?”

“Sure. Under Municipal Code Section 8, subsection 42-B, paragraph 2, as police chief of Bayberry Island, Massachusetts, I have the authority to appoint, at my discretion, temporary peace officers to ensure the safety of our many Mermaid Festival visitors.”

“Nice try, man, but the United States Navy’s not gonna look kindly on that. I’m on medical leave, but I’m still the property of Uncle Sam.”

“Fine.” Clancy sighed. “Then I’ll ask you to help us out on the down-low, no police powers, just an extra set
of eyes and ears—more of a volunteer tourist facilitator. You know, a facilitator-slash-bouncer.”

Duncan squinted at his brother. “Now you’re just making shit up.”

Clancy couldn’t suppress his laugh. “No, seriously. I would appreciate your help. You’re here, right? In fact, you’ll be here for the entire festival week, and I don’t think that’s happened since you were in high school. So why not pitch in? Or maybe you’d rather help Ma decorate for the clambake?”

Duncan pictured himself hanging Chinese lanterns around the dance floor and putting centerpieces on the tables.

“Exactly what would I be doing?”

“Just keep an eye out for shoplifters on Island Day and radio it in. Or maybe lend a hand with crowd control during the parade. Total civilian stuff.”

Duncan grunted.

“Chip will find you a BIPD shirt and a pair of standard-issue shorts. I know we got some extras around here somewhere.”

Duncan couldn’t help but laugh. “Damn, man. A hallucinating, tourist facilitator in a pair of shorts. If that doesn’t scream Bayberry Island, I don’t know what does.”

“Give yourself a break, Uncle Duncle,” Clancy said, grinning. “You weren’t hallucinating—you were just trespassing on private property and violating a citizen’s right to skinny-dip in peace.”

“Good.” Duncan got up from the chair, the dog standing, too. “Then just do me a favor and throw my ass in the slammer until the Mermaid Festival is over. Please.”

S
anders Garrett signed the freight receipt and told the driver to go ahead to the Bayberry Island Municipal Airfield, where he’d meet him within the hour.

He found Lena on her favorite perch, a Victorian chaise placed in front of the wall of windows facing the sea. The heavy piece of furniture was made of elaborately scrolled mahogany and covered with ripped and stained upholstery that might have once been velvet. Sanders knew Lena would never restore it. No matter that it was soaked with a hundred years of linseed oil—it had too much sentimental value in its lived-in state. It was her way of holding on to her late mentor and teacher in New York, Madame Broussard.

“Too early for wine?”

As she turned away from the window, Sanders could see she’d been lost in thought. Lena blinked at him as if she’d forgotten he was there.

She just kept getting more beautiful, he realized. He might have been biased—being her manager and dear friend—but each year seemed to add another layer of polish to Adelena Silva’s beauty. Yes, there were
remnants of the seventeen-year-old sprite he’d met at the Art Institute of Chicago all those years ago, but the girlish energy was no longer her dominant trait. Lena’s personality had softened, her talent had deepened, and her beauty had blossomed all over the damn place.

“You’re gorgeous. You know that, right?”

“Moi?”
She batted her dark eyelashes and rested her fingertips against her paint-splattered oversized sweatshirt. “In this old thing?”

“C’mon.” He pulled her up from the chaise. “Let’s have a toast before I have to get back up on that rubber-band-powered plane, shall we? This may be the last time you see me alive.”

“Always so dramatic,” she said, laughing.

That laugh never failed to take Sanders back in time, to the poorest—and happiest—years of his life. Art school was a time when nobody had a dime and too many of them shared an apartment that should have been condemned, in a neighborhood that should have been under martial law. And they didn’t even notice.

Life then was delicious and juicy and their group lived off their passions—for painting, sculpture, graphic design, filmmaking, for the city of Chicago, and occasionally, for one another. They hadn’t been trampled by reality quite yet, and they were free to be as unusual as they dared.

It amused Sanders that all these years later, the shyest and most humble of the bunch, Lena Silva, had become an international art rock star, while the most vocal counterculture rebel badass—himself—spent his days writing contracts, booking gallery showings, and managing the assets of those with real artistic ability.

Of his five clients, Lena had the biggest share of
talent. She had the most of everything else, too—money, heart, kindness, and eccentricity. But as much as he loved her, Sanders couldn’t relate to her lifestyle. Lena Silva was all mermaid, all the time, and she lived on an isolated little island known for its mermaid legend, for God’s sake.

The only island Sanders could tolerate was Manhattan, and the only mermaids he believed in were the ones that flew off the gallery walls at well above catalog price.

As they exited the studio, Sanders’s eye caught that old pencil drawing Lena refused to part with. It was a sketch of her face when she was about eleven, and though it had been done with a startling lack of skill, the artist had a good eye for detail—Lena’s detail. The crude pencil strokes captured a young girl with a mixture of innocence and understanding beyond her years. It showed the face of a young girl in love.

It occurred to Sanders that Lena hadn’t mentioned the artist in a few weeks. He would have to remember to ask her about him.

They grabbed a bottle of Malbec and two glasses, then squished together in the rope hammock on her side porch. The sun had dipped behind the house, and the combination of shade and breeze was delightful. Lena rested her head on his shoulder while he poured.

“Here’s to another embarrassingly successful Paris show.” Sanders clinked his glass to hers. It had taken three hours that morning to catalog and crate twenty canvases. All but one would travel from Bayberry to Boston, and then on to Galerie de la Mer in the city’s Marais district—Sanders riding along as bodyguard. The last canvas was headed to Seattle.

“And a toast to one very happy dot-commer,” Lena reminded him.

“Of course! Here’s to
Rhonda on the Rocks.
May she enjoy sunning her double-Ds for the rest of her days. Cheers.”

Lena took a sip and snuggled up to him, and for a few moments they didn’t talk. Sanders began to notice the silence.

“You good, sweetie? You seem a little pensive today.”

She shrugged. “You just emptied my studio of two years’ worth of work. I’m not complaining, but it seems a little hollow in there right now, you know?”

Several weeks had passed since she’d mentioned her wounded warrior. Maybe the news wasn’t good.

“Is he getting better?”

“Absolutely. He’s doing great.”

“Have you had a chance to talk to him?”

When Lena shook her head, her hair rustled back and forth on his neck. “You know my rule.”

Sanders chuckled. Ah, yes. He knew all about her “Duncan Flynn rule.”

As a gorgeous woman, Lena had never lacked for male attention. Men were drawn to her like moths to a bug zapper. But Sanders had watched every relationship she’d had since the age of seventeen implode. As far as he had been able to tell, the problem was Lena’s no-frills honesty. When the time came to bring up the “L” word, she would calmly inform the man du jour that she would not be able to love him.

“I’ve loved the same man since childhood,” she would say. “I don’t think I’m capable of loving anyone else.”

This revelation usually didn’t go over well.

He respected Lena’s devotion, but he didn’t fully understand it. First off, the dude was a Navy SEAL, a precision-honed instrument of war, and Sanders couldn’t imagine what he and a woman like Lena would have in common. And then there was the fact that Lena had never even
told
this SEAL person that she loved him. The man had left for the Naval Academy before Lena had even graduated from high school. So from then until now, she’d heard about him only through her mother. And that meant this soldier of hers had been out there fighting terrorists and getting himself blown up without ever knowing Lena Silva loved him.

Was it commendable of her to stay true to her heart? Sanders couldn’t say—he didn’t have much experience with such things in his own love life. Was her approach unusual? You bet. But was it stupid? That remained to be seen.

All he knew was that the night Lena had learned of Flynn’s injuries, she’d fallen apart in a way he’d never seen before. Sanders had caught the next flight to Boston and risked life and limb in a flying Sprite can to get to her little island. He’d stayed for a week.

Lena sat up and looked Sanders in the eye.

“He has to come to
me
. That’s the rule.”

He smiled at her.

“He has to figure it out for himself. I’ve known him since I was seven years old. But Duncan has to put the pieces together and make the choice for his own reasons. Otherwise, it won’t work.”

“I know, Lena.”

“He’s stubborn and wickedly smart. He’s a fighter, in every sense of the word, and he will need to fight to get
me or it won’t work. If he feels he’s been reeled in somehow—like loving me is not one hundred percent his idea—then that’s it.”

“I hear you.”

“But time’s running out.” Lena’s dark eyes filled with tears. “He’s doing so well that they’re going to clear him to return to active duty, and he’ll be gone. I can’t help but think this is my one chance.”

“Can I ask you something, sweetie?”

She shook her head. “I know what you’re going to ask, and the answer is no—I’m not lonely. I haven’t missed anything while I’ve waited for him. I have a successful career. I’ve had some wonderful lovers. And I’ve seen the world. But I am absolutely certain that if I am to share my life with anyone, it’s supposed to be Duncan.”

Sanders nodded. “Well, okay, but that’s not what I was wondering.”

“Oh.” She pursed her lips.

“My question is, what if he’s not everything you imagine him to be?”

Lena gave him a calm half smile. “He is.”

“But—”

“If I’m wrong about him, then I’m wrong. Done and done. I can move on with my life. Is that the sane answer you were waiting for?”

Sanders laughed. He had never gotten anywhere with Lena when the topic of conversation was her mythical Duncan Flynn, but if he didn’t try to bring her back to earth—at least temporarily—then who would?

“Just . . . one more question, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Would you be able to handle it?”

A little crinkle popped up between her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, could you handle loving a man who’s gone to God knows where, doing God knows what, for God knows how long? Could you deal with knowing he might not come home?”

Lena looked surprised. “Of course. I already am.”

*   *   *

Duncan needed a little extra proof that he hadn’t been seeing things that night on the beach. He spent a few days studying up on a variety of subjects, including Adelena Silva, of course, and the connection between posttraumatic stress and visual hallucination.

During his three months at Walter Reed, Duncan had been evaluated for PTSD and had participated in private and group counseling sessions. The docs wanted to know how the deaths of his teammates and his own injuries had affected his mental state, and they’d found that aside from his issues with guilt and grief, which they’d said were to be expected, he was perfectly normal—for a Navy SEAL. His own research seemed to back that up. He exhibited no other examples of psychosis.

When it came to Lena, there was no question in his mind that she was the woman on the beach. The Adelena Silva he watched in online interviews possessed the same serene expression he had seen that night. She had the same laugh he’d heard at the Safe Haven, and it turned out she was just as exquisite in clothes as she was out of them.

Lena didn’t sound like a nut job when she was interviewed on camera and in print, which, he had to admit, surprised him. She never claimed mermaids were real. In fact, she never even mentioned the Bayberry Island
Great Mermaid legend—an attribute Duncan found outrageously sexy. If that wasn’t enough, Lena Silva didn’t dress like a mermaid or claim that she herself happened to be one.

All in all, she sounded sane.

“Reality is subjective,” she told the host of a TV morning show. “If people want to believe there are mermaids in the sea, who am I to say they’re wrong? But my paintings aren’t field studies. They come from my imagination.”

But in another interview, Lena did briefly wander off into la-la land. She was talking to a women’s magazine about the symbolism in her paintings. “I have always been fascinated by what lies beneath the surface, in the ocean and in people,” she said. “That’s where the magic is. And yes, my underwater scenes are mysterious and exotic—and sometimes a little over-the-top—but then again, so am I.”

Right.

Duncan would bet he’d spent a lot more time beneath the surface of the ocean than Ms. Silva had, yet he’d never seen a whole lot of magic down there. The deep was brutally cold, dark, and silent, and it wasn’t a place humans would care to frolic. There was exotic beauty there, to be sure, but only those with adequate equipment and training could survive long enough to see it firsthand. In Lena’s mind, the sea was a playground. For a Navy SEAL, it was a hellish training ground for mastering underwater demolition, combat diving, search and rescue, and your own fears. The ocean was nothing to fuck with.

So now that Duncan was sure
whom
he’d seen on the beach, he wanted to understand
what
he’d seen. Had it
been a dolphin? A minke whale? For that he needed to see it again.

So for four nights in a row, Duncan made his way to Moondance Beach. He came at different times to cast a wide net, arriving between twenty-three thirty-two and zero two fifteen. The first two nights he rested his quads and hamstrings and walked the round-trip. The next night he ran. And the fourth night he decided he was ready to swim.

Duncan pulled on his wet suit and fins and waded into the ink black water off Haven Cove. It was an immediate rush to be back in the sea. He used a combination of freestyle and combat sidestroke, shooting up the shoreline at a good clip. His legs moved freely, with little pain or stiffness, and he felt himself smile. God, how he’d missed this.

He knew Haven Cove like the contours of his own face, exactly where the undertow was fierce, where it got rocky and shallow, and where the waves crashed the hardest or rose the highest. This stretch of ocean was where he had found his core. Once puberty had put the brakes on his asthma and bronchitis, this was where the ocean had taught him to trust himself. Distance swimming had taught him there were no limits. It was right here, at the age of twelve, that for the first time in his life Duncan had pushed beyond what anyone thought possible.

He hadn’t stopped since.