Reunion Beach by Elin Hilderbrand (best ebook reader under 100 .TXT) 📗

of him turning her away made her dizzy. She pressed her hand over her stomach and waited for it to calm. She’d felt this blooming panic and fear before—when?

Ah, when after fifteen years of marriage Tom had told her he didn’t love her anymore. When Tom had told her and their two—then twelve-and fourteen-year-old—daughters, Paige and Emma, he needed to find his way in a new world. When she’d stood on the front steps of a shambled life and couldn’t catch her breath. When Tom had packed his suitcases and emptied half the bank account. That’s when.

That was the last time Beatrice had felt this way. But this time it was her fault. She had no one else to blame, and she would fix it. She rushed to the shower, thinking of Harry’s line to Sally: “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

After Beatrice uttered her own version of that line on Lachlan’s doorstep, then it would be off to bed to make love. They would, for the rest of their lives, talk about that moment.

She turned on the water and held her hand under the spray while waiting for it to heat up. An hour later, spruced up, she surveyed her image with care: yes, all was a bit haggard but okay. Her dark hair had been blown to its smooth shoulder-length swing, the blotches from a sleepless night covered with makeup and her blue eyes slightly less cloudy with the addition of coffee. She wasn’t the hottest fifty-five-year-old in the city, but that was never her goal. Hot had never been in her bag of tricks; classy and artsy yes, smokin’ no.

The hangover a dull memory that lived on as an ache behind her eyes, and as cotton padding around her thoughts, she picked up her cell to see that Lachlan had left a voicemail.

She smiled. Not so bad, after all. Really. She’d made the entire situation worse in her mind.

She clicked on the voicemail, putting it on speaker to listen while she brushed her eyelashes with mascara.

“Bea.” He paused. Beatrice smiled at herself in the mirror, at his soft voice using her nickname.

“I think we need to be apart for a while, take a breath. I don’t know what that means, really, but do not call or come over right now. Thank you.”

Silence.

My God. He had never before used that tone of voice. That kind of finality.

Beatrice’s stomach lurched and she bent over, heaving her breakfast, her hangover, and her heartache into the sink of her immaculate white bathroom.

“No!” she said out loud, and it came out more like a moan than a word. A breath or two as she leaned over her sink, and the nausea passed. She grabbed her toothbrush and squirted double the amount of toothpaste as it ran over the side of the brush; she scrubbed the taste of bile from her mouth and then set to cleaning her mess.

Respect his request? What the hell did that mean?

When the bathroom looked as pristine as it had before her emotions took over, and the towels had been dropped into the washing machine, Beatrice rushed to the kitchen and did the only thing her fizzled mind allowed her to do—finish what she’d started with her birds. This group of women who’d started as college roommates, become bridesmaids, and continued to be her dearest friends had once chosen a bird to represent each one of them. From that moment forward they’d become “the flock.” Now they would gather and reconnect—it had been too long, almost two years—chat about the old days and help Beatrice figure out her new days. She would draw birds, reconnect with her flock. Yes. This was a very good plan.

She’d take a big breath before making another huge decision that might upend her life.

3

The House

Mid-afternoon sun heated the July air to its steaming point as Beatrice stepped off the small motorboat to gaze up at the cedar-shake one-story cottage that sat on the edge of the coastal river, or if Beatrice was completely honest, almost in the water. The waves would lap the house right up within the next generation. But she didn’t need the house to last longer than the weekend, so it wasn’t her concern.

The Lowcountry island called Oak Island was deserted save for this one house; the instructions on the rental site had been clear and easy: bring everything you need. No stores. No grocery. A getaway on a spit of land just off Savannah with its own beach, dock, and four bedrooms. Cushioned on the east side by the ocean and the west side by the coastal river, it was both safe and comfortable for a weekend getaway.

Perfect, right?

Beatrice stood by herself at the end of the splintered and sun-washed dock and looked around, cataloging her surroundings. Not fancy. Rose would love it; Victoria would complain about the lack of spa and services; Daisy would find the good in it and immediately start the party. Or these were Beatrice’s best guesses, based on decades of friendship.

So far, it seemed everything Beatrice had imagined when she read “getaway” under the house photo posted online. From Savannah, it was only a ten-minute boat ride (very bumpy, very wet boat ride with a kind man about her age if she had to guess, with a baseball cap covering curly hair) to the flat low island a mile wide, a mile long. Making the journey ahead of the rest of the flock, she now observed the overgrown island’s scrubby palmetto trees, Spanish moss hanging like the hair of some giant, and a crescent moon–shaped beach just the right size for four women and a cooler.

The squeaky call of what Beatrice identified as the brown-headed nuthatch and the musical trill of a sparrow combined in symphony with the slap-slap of water on the wobbly dock. The pure sounds were enough to