The High Tide Club

Josephine gave her an appraising look. “I believe I might have underestimated you.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Brooke said. “When we get back to the house, if you’re not too tired, I’ll help you write letters to everybody you can think of at the state level, protesting the state’s attempted land grab, pointing out what a giant misuse of taxpayers’ money it would be, and so on. On the county level, we need to figure out what you pay in property taxes every year and remind the commissioners how much revenue will be lost if your land gets turned into a state park.”

“All right,” Josephine said. Behind the thick-lensed glasses, her eyes glittered with excitement. “Maybe I’ll even call Virginia Traymore. After all, I did make a hundred-dollar contribution to her son’s campaign.”

Brooke rolled her eyes. Georgia’s governor, Tubby Traymore, was a multimillionaire developer. He hardly needed Josephine Warrick’s hundred dollars.

“My colleague has also offered to handle your estate work. As I said before, it’s a conflict of interest for me to have anything to do with that, since my mother is a beneficiary.”

“I’ll want to meet him first,” Josephine said. “When can he come see me?”

“As soon as you’d like,” Brooke said.

They’d reached the exit sign for the state park, where the road veered sharply off to the left.

“Where now?” she asked.

“Take the beach road,” Josephine said.

“Sure thing,” Brooke said. “That’s a part of the island I haven’t seen yet.”

* * *

After a quarter of a mile, the pavement transitioned to a bumpy crushed-shell road. Palmettos and cabbage palms closed in on either side, their fronds slapping against the side of the truck. Brooke slowed, downshifted into third gear, and steered the truck around the worst of the potholes, but some were unavoidable.

At one point she started to apologize for the rough ride, but a glance revealed Josephine with her head slumped against the passenger door, snoring softly. The interior of the truck was silent except for the soft shunting noise of the old woman’s oxygen tank.

She drove for fifteen minutes, unsure about her exact location, but eventually, the terrain changed. Palmetto thickets gave way to dense stands of gnarled and stunted live oaks, whose dark gray trunks acted as a windbreak for the seashore just beyond the tree line.

Here and there on the other side of a towering hedgerow of sea grapes, Brooke glimpsed a stretch of beach and heard the waves crashing. The wind whipped her hair around her face, and she was thankful for the break in the oppressive heat in the truck’s cab. Meanwhile, Josephine slept on.

Finally, she saw a pull-off point on her right, a hard-packed section of shell that gave way to a path down to the beach. Brooke pulled in and shut off the ignition. The beach stretched temptingly in front of her, totally empty of any sign of human activity. Blue-green waves lapped at the shore, and seabirds skittered along the sand. A mosquito buzzed against the windshield.

“Josephine?”

“Hmm?” The old woman blinked slowly, seemingly confused.

“Is this the spot you wanted me to drive to?” Brooke asked.

“Hmm?”

“The beach road,” Brooke said. “You asked me to take you to the beach road. Is this the spot you had in mind?”

Josephine nodded. She sat up straight, bracing her hands against the cracked vinyl dashboard, staring out at the seascape unrolled before her.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Just as I remembered it. Untouched. Unspoiled.”

Brooke propped an elbow on the windowsill, and the two women sat, without speaking, for half an hour. It was mesmerizing, Brooke thought. She felt her pulse slow, heard her breaths begin to match the inexorable rhythm of the waves rolling into the shore. She watched the long-legged shorebirds and smiled at their graceful antics, rushing in and out of the foam, pausing to dip and sieve for food. A pod of dolphins cruised by, rolling in and out of the waves. It made her think of Henry, whose favorite beach pastime was looking for dolphins.

She glanced at her cell phone on the seat beside her, guiltily wondering how her mother was faring with her son, who’d woken up cranky and uncooperative that morning. She couldn’t tell whether her mother had called, though, because again, she had no cell service.

“Was there something here you wanted me to see?” she asked her client.

Josephine waved her arm toward the horizon outside the truck’s windshield. “This. It’s the place I told you about. Mermaid Beach.”

“Where the High Tide Club went skinny-dipping?”

Josephine nodded. “I haven’t been up here since I got sick. Today, when I woke up, I thought, just for a minute, maybe I’m better.”

“You certainly look better.”

“Looks are deceiving,” Josephine said. “I’m dying. The doctors did scans, and there are new tumors everywhere.” She stared out at the water. “And please don’t tell me you’re sorry. I’m sick of hearing that.”

“What should I say instead?” Brooke asked. Since Josephine felt so little empathy for others, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that she expected none for herself. Still, her client’s matter-of-fact acceptance of her terminal diagnosis was unsettling.

Josephine turned dark, unblinking eyes toward the younger woman. “Tell me the real reason you decided to work for me. I know a little bit about people. You’re broke, but you’re not desperate, not by a long shot.”

“Maybe it’s the challenge. My colleague who’s worked on these kinds of cases says that fighting a state on condemnation issues is mostly a lost cause. I like the puzzle-solving part of being a lawyer, and lately, there hasn’t been a lot of that in my life.”

Josephine’s thin lips stretched into a ghostly smile. “You think I’m a lost cause?”

“You said it yourself.”

“So you’re a fighter, after all.” Josephine coughed violently, holding a hand to her chest as though trying to soften the racking spasms.

“I found the women you wanted me to look for,” Brooke said abruptly.

“Tell me.”

“Your friend Ruth has a granddaughter who lives out in California. Her name is Lizzie. She’s a freelance magazine writer.”

“Lizzie. She must have been named after Ruth’s daughter, who died when she was a teenager. Did you speak to this Lizzie person? When can she come?”

“I did speak to her, and she said she’ll only come if you pay her way.”

“Hmmph.”

Brooke let it drop, knowing that if she pushed the matter her skinflint client would probably push back and refuse to underwrite Lizzie’s travel expenses.

“Also, Varina and her great-niece Felicia came to see me.”

“They came to you? How extraordinary.”

“Not really. Louette told them how ill you are and mentioned that you’d hired me to help with fending off the state.”

The old woman scowled. “Louette had no business saying anything to that girl about my private business.”

“Felicia brought her great-aunt to town to pick out a headstone for her great-uncle. Louette’s a cousin. Saved me the trouble of tracking her down. If it means anything, Varina wants to come see you.”

“Because of the money. That Felicia is all about the money.”