CHAPTER 1
Caroline - April 20, 2010
Our paddles caressed the water without creating a ripple as we floated by turtles sunning on tree trunks fallen into the river. A great blue heron spread its wings on the banks and lifted its large body into the air, breaking the silence of a warm spring day in north Florida.
The heron led us down the river of our youth stopping to rest when we fell too far behind. The white spider lilies of spring covered the green banks of the Santa Fe River in north Florida.
"Do you remember the spot where we always swam?" my husband Simon asked. "Isn't it around here?"
"I can't remember back that far," I said.
Simon pulled his kayak up alongside mine as a mullet jumped out of the water in front of us and slapped its body back into the water.
"Still the dumbest fish in the river," I said.
The leaves on the trees were fully green and returned to glory after a tough winter of frosts and freezes. Wild low-growing azalea bushes were completing their blooming cycle, and the dogwoods dropped their white blossoms a month ago. The magnolia flower buds would burst into large white blossoms within a month.
Simon and I missed the peak of spring on the river. However, we finally escaped our work on a warm Tuesday morning in late April.
"I hope things settle down. We should spend all summer on the river," Simon said.
"Maybe we can get Jodi to come with us when she gets home from Auburn," I said.
"Don't count on it. Promise me you won't be disappointed if she refuses."
"I wish you wouldn't be such a pessimist. That upsets me more than anything."
Simon didn't respond, which usually happened when I tried to talk about his daughter Jodi.
When we were kids, Simon and I spent many days in an old canoe on this river. Those idyllic days ended when he married my sister Amy. I never forgave Amy, even when she died two years ago. I eventually forgave Simon.
Even though I didn't miss or mourn my sister, Jodi, my niece, did. She lost a mother she loved and believed Simon and I trampled her mother's grave when we married nearly a year ago.
"At least winter is over," Simon said. "Let's hope for a quiet hurricane season."
A turtle dove from a rock into the river as we approached. Either our voices or the sound of lapping water from our paddles sent it swimming. I was happy to note the freshwater turtles didn't seem impacted by the atypical cold of the past few months. The sea turtles hadn't fared so well.
I followed the sea turtle story for three months from the Gulf to the Atlantic coasts of Florida. The supreme effort to rescue cold-stunned turtles and rehabilitate them for release was overwhelming in its sheer numbers of both wildlife and volunteers. As an environmental and wildlife freelance writer, I'd written dozens of stories since January on the rescue and recovery operations. Miraculously, the majority of the stunned sea turtles survived and were in the process of being released back into the warming waters.
When Simon and I married the previous year, I vowed to curtail my traveling. Yet Simon never complained when I left our home in St. Augustine over the winter months as freezing temperatures caused iguanas to fall from trees, manatees to congregate near power plants, and sea turtles to become ice sculptures. He kept busy with the opening of his new law office, relocated from his previous home in Calico, sixty miles away. Just when the cold weather disappeared, and as I was finishing writing a series of articles on the cold winter's impact, Simon left for West Virginia. On April 5, his cousin Jason McDermott was one of the twenty-nine coal miners killed when Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine exploded. Simon went home to West Virginia for the funeral. He stayed for more than a week helping Jason's parents and his widow, who was pregnant with their third child. Until Simon and his family moved to Florida when he was fourteen, Jason had been his best friend. The two remained close over the years, and I knew Simon mourned Jason's death.
