resurface

5

I kept running, but not back to the boardwalk for my bike and backpack. I ran to the northern most estate in Seaside, the Anderson estate. I just wanted to see her. If she really was back and he wasn't lying, I needed to see her with my own eyes. Not just to know that she was okay, but just because.

The path to the estate had been purposely obscured, but I'd been using it to get to the house for as long as I could remember. The sawgrass came up as high as mid-thigh, scraping against my skin as I headed away from the beach. A half-mile in, the plants thinned out and the sand turned hard under my feet. Then suddenly, as if it appeared in the middle of nowhere was the gate to the pool. I brushed the sand from my legs and shoes the best I could and slipped through.

The pool was like everything else here, beautiful but understated. Even on stilts, the house was still half-hidden by plants and tall fences. From outside someone might have thought it was just another house. It wasn't until you had roamed the inside, looked out the windows, saw the view from the master bedroom balcony, that you realized what this estate was. From that vantage point, a person see all of Seaside, everything from the lighthouse to the boardwalk, which was fitting given that the Jacqueline Anderson practically owned all of it.

As I approached the back door that it occurred to me I was hardly dressed for some kind of reunion. It wasn't the first time I'd stopped here mid or post run, but that was usually while I was on some part of an errand and Jacqueline was home alone. This would be different. It was too late to turn around, though. I committed to this, and I needed to know, so I took a deep breath and knocked on the back door.

The door opened almost immediately. "You've heard?" Martina said, ushering me in and through the kitchen.

"It's true? She's—"

"Yes, even with all that makeup," she said with a smile. "We'd know her anywhere."

I would have stopped, simply to take it all in, but Martina had her hand on my back, guiding me to where they were.

Ivy was our tragedy. Eleven years ago, she was the life of this place. She belonged to Seaside, the first daughter, the youngest and prettiest child of our two wealthiest families. She was practically a princess. And she had this laugh. It was loud, explosive and infections, impossible to mistake for anyone else's and the most likely thing to come out of her mouth. She was the kind of person who laughed all the time.

When she was gone, stillness crept into the spaces she left behind, buried its way into the foundations of our buildings and the bones of our selves.

Something stirred deep inside me now, some mixture of hope, doubt, excitement and fear.

I heard them first. Voices I knew responding to this in ways I could have guessed.

Martina and I paused in the archway that led to the living room.

Charles Wright stood out in the cream-colored room in his charcoal business suit and blue silk tie, with his hair slicked back and car keys still in hand. He was the kind of man who commanded attention. He stood opposite two uniform cops, presumably the ones who brought Ivy here from wherever she was. "You can't tell me where she's been?" he said. "You still have no idea what happened to her all those years ago?"

Sheriff Platt stepped forward. He was so out of place here with his beer gut poor excuse for a uniform. "Charlie, we're going to work with them to resume the investigation. Now that Ivy—"

"This is unacceptable. She was taken from us, and you still haven't figured out who did this."

Right now, I didn't care. The cops would do what they would do. I'm sure Ivy could tell them what happened to her and they'd figure it out. Or they wouldn't. All I wanted to know is