The wishing tide, p.1
The Wishing Tide, page 1
Praise for The Wishing Tide
“Everything I love in a novel: a coastal setting so rich you can practically taste the salt in the air and feel the sand underfoot, an old inn, and a deeply felt and explored love story with a smart, relatable heroine and a handsome hero with a mysterious past. Atmospheric, suspenseful, and very romantic.”
—Erika Marks, author of It Comes in Waves
“Beautiful and haunting. The mystery sucked me in from the first page and I was swept up in Lane and Michael’s story. . . . I could not read it fast enough!”
—Anita Hughes, author of Lake Como
“Set on a desolate, storm-tossed North Carolina barrier island lush with family secrets, madness, and ghost stories, this lyrical novel will haunt you from the first page to the last.”
—Barbara Claypole White, award-winning author of The In-Between Hour
Praise for The Secrets She Carried
“Barbara Davis wowed me with her flawless blending of past and present in The Secrets She Carried. Her compassion for her characters made me care and her haunting tale kept the pages flying. A poignant, mysterious, and heartfelt story.”
—Diane Chamberlain, author of Necessary Lies and The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes
Written by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.
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“I was swept into Adele’s heartbreaking life and her devotion to those she loved.”
—Susan Crandall, author of Whistling Past the Graveyard
“I read Barbara Davis’s debut novel, The Secrets She Carried, deep into the night—one minute rushing to discover how the mysteries resolved, the next slowing. . . . Adele Laveau’s haunting voice and Leslie Nichols’s journey toward understanding lingered long after I read the final page of this engrossing tale.”
—Julie Kibler, author of Calling Me Home
“The Secrets She Carried is a beautifully crafted page-turner with many twists but a simple theme: No matter how far you run, you can’t escape your past. Part contemporary women’s fiction, part historical novel, the plot moves seamlessly back and forth in time to unlock family secrets that bind four generations of women. Add a mysterious death, love that defies the grave, and the legacy of redemption, and this novel has it all.”
—Barbara Claypole White, author of The Unfinished Garden
“This beautifully written novel tells a tale of epic romance, one that lasts through the decades and centuries. All centered on a plantation home in small-town North Carolina, love stories unfold as the novel progresses through both past and present, and hidden secrets, once thought long buried, slowly reveal themselves. It’s a beautiful story, and Davis does an amazing job telling it.”
—Romantic Times (41/2 stars)
“Davis’s writing is heartfelt and effective.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Davis has a gift for developing flawed characters and their emotionally wrenching dilemmas. The small-town setting, full of gossip and prejudice in the Depression years, feels realistic . . . a very satisfying tale.”
—Historical Novel Society
Also by Barbara Davis
The Secrets She Carried
NAL Accent
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by NAL Accent, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC
Copyright © Barbara Davis, 2014
Conversation Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Davis, Barbara, 1961–
The wishing tide / Barbara Davis.
p. cm
ISBN 978-1-101-61475-4
I. Title.
PS3604.A95554W57 2014
813'.6—dc23 2014016209
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Praise
Also by Barbara Davis
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Epilogue
Conversation Guide
About the Author
For Tommy, my absolute everything . . . for helping me find my wings
Acknowledgments
To my lovely agent, Nalini Akolekar—thanks for making it all so easy. Every writer should be so lucky! To my editor, Sandra Harding, who is never too busy to be a cheerleader. Words can’t express what a privilege it is to work with such a pro.
To Lisa Rosen, Matt King, and Doug Simpson, wonderful authors all, who week after week provide fresh eyes and invaluable feedback. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.
To Barbara Claypole White, Diane Chamberlain, Susan Crandall, Julie Kibler, Anita Hughes, Laura Drake, Barbara Longley, Normandie Fischer, and all the amazing writers of woman’s fiction who have been so very gracious in their support of a struggling new voice. I’m blessed to know you, and grateful beyond words.
And finally, to Debbie Threlkeld Wittstein, and my friends from Tradewinds and Changing Tides, Pompano Beach High School classes 1976–79, who’ve been faithful supporters from the very first page of my very first novel. I love you guys. We may be scattered to the four corners of the earth, but we’re never out of reach.
They say the people you need appear in your life just when you need them, and I must say this has been especially true for me. I’ve been blessed with such an amazing team of supporters, family, friends, and professionals, whom I can never repay for their kindness and generosity. The writer’s journey is said to be a lonely one, but I have never felt alone.
Chapter 1
Mary
Through my fault.
Through my fault.
Through my most grievous fault.
The sea, it seems, has become my priest, the punishing, faceless thing to which I confess my sins, silent witness to my self-inflicted wounds. We’re alike in many ways, a restless beating of water and salt, a shifting and seething of secrets, of treacheries. Reckless. Dangerous.
The tide, you see, is a fickle thing: stealing in, sliding away, always, always turning. She comes while you’re not looking, a silent, liquid thief, only to rush away again, retreating from the shore like a coward. She gives sometimes, too, though, in fleeting, unexpected moments, yielding up her treasures and her d
And so here I sit on the dunes in my carefully mismatched clothes, hour after hour, day after day, frozen in my looking back. Do not look behind you . . . lest you be swept away. That is what scripture says. Only there is nowhere for me to look but back. No future. No redemption. Like Lot’s wife, I am turned to salt, my tired eyes trained on the blue-gray horizon, where sea meets sky, where my yesterdays meet my tomorrows, a ragtag eccentric, watching and waiting for something that never comes.
Oh, I’m quite aware of how ridiculous I am. I’m called Dirty Mary by the locals, though Crazy Mary would be more appropriate. I’m not dirty, but I am crazy. I have the pills and the scars to prove it. I don’t mind the name. It keeps people at a distance, which is exactly how I like them—the more distant, the better. I have no wish to share myself with anyone, you see, to unwrap either the then or the now, the before or the after. I move alone through the world. It’s better that way—safer.
There are more like me—many, in fact—who hide behind masks and write their own fairy tales. Bright or dark, it makes no difference. We would not have our true selves stripped bare, would not have cold eyes peering between our emotional blinds. Our sins and follies are ours alone, to mourn or rewrite as we choose.
I have chosen the latter.
I pay no attention to the buffeting wind, or to the sand gusting up from the dunes. Mother Nature, it seems, is bent on pitching a bit of a blow. Penny. They’re calling her Penny. High time, too, I’d say, for that good lady to show what she’s made of. We should all do that now and again, unleash a bit of ourselves—a flash of lightning, a growl of thunder—just to prove to the world and the White Coats that we haven’t been beaten, that beneath our cool, glassy surfaces we are still forces to be reckoned with.
I know about reckoning. I have lived through the reckoning.
I think of that time now, that other time, that other storm, and the day my life took its final, irrevocable turn toward disaster. I let my eyes wander briefly down the narrow strip of beach, down to Starry Point Light, hazy and chalk white in the windy distance, startled, as I always am, by how little things have changed since that awful day. And I wonder how this can be—after all that has happened, after all I have lost. It matters little now, I suppose. And so I say let the storm come, with its wind and whipping sea. Let it take what it will. For me, the sea has already done her worst.
Chapter 2
Lane
Of all the rooms at the Cloister House, Lane’s favorite was her writing room in the northeast turret. She loved the smoothly curved walls and high, curtainless windows, how the light played over the smoothly worn floorboards and turned the jars of sea glass along the sills into chalices of pastel jewels. But most of all, she loved the view, nothing short of spectacular when the day was clear and bright but even more breathtaking at night, when stars filled the sky and the moon turned the sea to quicksilver.
But tonight, as she peered over the rim of her cold cup of tea and listened to the wind gusting in off the Atlantic, there was nothing to see: no moon, no stars, nothing but the rhythmic sweep of Starry Point Light and her own reflection in the wavy panes.
They didn’t have tropical storms in Chicago. Penny would be her first. There had been scares, of course, close calls that caught the attention of the locals and even sent a few scurrying to prepare, but they’d been incredibly lucky, something to do with El Niño. Now it seemed their luck had run out. Not that she was worried. She’d been through plenty of firsts in her life, plenty of lasts, too, and had managed to survive them all. More than five years had passed since she landed in Starry Point, the last in a sandy string of islands along North Carolina’s Outer Banks. At the time it seemed an unlikely place for a Chicago girl to end up, a small spit of land tethered to the world by a series of narrow, sand-swept bridges. But something had whispered as she crossed that last bridge, something that said this spit of land, with its charming old lighthouse, pastel-washed bungalows, and sleepy Victorian village, this place at the end of the world, might be the perfect place to begin again. And begin again she had.
Running a bed-and-breakfast had never been her dream. In fact, until she laid eyes on the Cloister, the idea had never crossed her mind. She’d had no idea where to start, but with a failed marriage, a failed pregnancy, and a failed novel to her credit, one more failure wasn’t likely to make much difference one way or another.
She liked to pretend it was the view that captured her heart—powder white dunes and teal blue seas, Starry Point Light standing tall and formidable in the distance—but that wasn’t the absolute truth. Those things kept her guest register full during the season, but for Lane the Cloister’s appeal had to do with its twin Romanesque towers and rough-faced gray stone, wholly unexpected and starkly at odds with Starry Point’s wooden shingles and white picket fences.
I’m all wrong, it seemed to say. I don’t belong here.
Yet here it stood, proud, indomitable—a survivor. And now it belonged to her. For the first time in years, perhaps in her life, she was in charge of her own life, with no one peering over her shoulder, ready to pounce on her slightest mistake. And if running it took most of her waking hours, so what? For now, that was enough. And when the season ended—three weeks early this year, thanks to tropical storm Penny—there was time to pursue her freelance work: scribbling articles about things she’d never done and places she’d never been.
Lane’s teacup came down with a clatter as a fresh gust of wind slapped at the windows, rattling the old panes in their frames. Everyone said that waiting was the worst. Everyone was right. Snapping off the lamp, she rose from her desk and headed downstairs.
In the kitchen she rinsed her cup and saucer, then decided to make one last round to check the locks. She had already checked once, right after the Burtons went up for the night, but these days it didn’t pay to take chances. As if a late-season storm weren’t excitement enough for one small town, a recent rash of break-ins on the normally sleepy island had the good people of Starry Point bolting their doors and demanding answers.
Nine break-ins reported so far: all petty, and all unsolved. But in a town where sand-sculpture contests and chowder cook-offs qualified as excitement, they might as well have been armed home invasions. And now, with her last guests fleeing inland tomorrow morning, she would soon find herself alone for the entire winter.
The thought was vaguely unsettling as she took one final peer through the curtains. Across the street, the Rourke place stood grave and forlorn. The once-fine house was empty now, and had been for years, its rear windows boarded after a fire ravaged the upper floors and took the life of five-year-old Peter Rourke. In the dark the place looked grand enough, when you couldn’t see the overgrown shrubs and shabby lawn, or the faintly scorched brick above the third-story windows. She stifled a shiver, as she always did when her eyes lingered on the Victorian-style greenhouse hunkered against the north side of the house.
She had ventured inside once, not long after moving to Starry Point, had stood in the center of the ruined conservatory, choked with weeds and saplings, more than half its small square panes in shards on the packed earth floor. It had given her the creeps then, and it still did. But it made her a little sad, too.
It was a shame that a home that once belonged to one of Starry Point’s most beloved mayors had been allowed to go to ruin. For years, the Preservation Society had been vowing to restore the place and open it to the public, but as far as she could tell, little progress had been made in that direction. In the meantime, years of neglect had taken their toll, until all that remained was the hollow echo of the home’s former grandeur. And yet it remained a favorite on Starry Point’s seasonal walking tours—mostly because locals insisted the place was haunted. Lane didn’t believe it, of course, but it had become clear that owning a bed-and-breakfast across from the local haunted house wasn’t exactly bad for business.
She was surprised when the banjo clock in the hall sounded a single, throaty peal. How was it already one a.m.? The Burtons would be up in five hours, ready for breakfast and anxious to stay ahead of the weather. She didn’t blame them. According to the news, Highway 12 was bumper-to-bumper all the way to the mainland. She only had one more window to check.
