Page 161 of Sunset Beach
Drue stood up and winced as her bad knee protested.
“We really have to get you in deeper water to get you swimming,” she said. “Do you feel like going back down to the beach again?”
Tears brimmed in the child’s big dark eyes. “Do I have to? I’m afraid.”
Drue sat down on the edge of the tub and hugged the child against her. “No. You absolutely don’t have to. But you know, mermaids are rarely found in bathtubs. Even pink tubs like mine. Mermaids swim in the ocean, right?”
Aliyah nodded solemnly.
“For your next lesson, I’ll show you how to stroke with your arms, and kick with your feet,” Drue said. “But in deeper water. Okay?”
“How much deeper?”
“It won’t matter how deep,” Drue said. “Because your body just naturally floats. It’s okay to be afraid at first, but then, after a little bit, I’ll let go of your hand, and the next thing you know, you’ll be in the water and you’ll be swimming like a mermaid.”
“Okay,” Aliyah said.
“Are you hungry?” Drue asked. “Do you happen to like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as much as I do?”
“I only like strawberry jelly,” Aliyah said. “And chunky peanut butter.”
“Me too!” Drue exclaimed. “Let’s eat!”
They had lunch on the deck, eating off paper plates and enjoying the stiff breeze coming off the beach.
“Look!” Aliyah said, pointing at a billowing orange and green kite floating through the sky just past the treeline. “What’s that?”
“Let’s go see,” Drue said.
They walked hand in hand down to the beach. A sun-browned teenage girl stood with her back to the wind, both hands grasping the control bar of a trainer kite. Her long blond hair streamed out behind her as she walked down the beach, and the kite swooped and dipped and fluttered at a forty-five-degree angle over the waves as the girl expertly turned the bar.
Except for the girl’s blond hair, Drue thought, that could have been her, twenty years ago.
“What’s she doing?” Aliyah asked.
“She’s learning how to fly with that kite. And she’s pretty good already.”
Aliyah looked up at her. “Do you know how to fly like that?”
“I used to,” Drue said. “A long time ago.”
“Why did you stop?”
Drue gazed down at her knee. There was no swelling today, and the incision was no longer an angry red.
“I hurt myself, and then I was too afraid.”
“Are you still afraid?” Aliyah asked.
Drue thought about the spare bedroom in the cottage, and the door she thought she had so firmly closed on her past.
“A little bit,” she said. “But I think I’m getting over it.”
65
She’d called ahead to tell Yvonne that a courier from the law firm would be dropping off some legal papers on Saturday morning. “Will you be home then?” Drue asked.
“Ain’t got no place else to be,” Yvonne said.
