“You said you come here a lot,” I said.

“Almost every day,” Jackson said. “When Mommy doesn’t have to work.”

“Do you drive here?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Do you remember where she parked your car?”

His eyes lit up. “Yes!  We always park in the same spot!”

“Show me.”

We moved up the dunes, toward the line of tall condo buildings. The long stretch of sand was shadowed by seven-story buildings, housing rentals of all types. Expensive, moderate, dirt cheap. Something for everyone.

The wet, wooden ramp took us up and over a large dune and between two of the buildings. We passed an outdoor shower and descended the walkway into an asphalt parking lot, sand scattered around like glitter.

“There she is!” Jackson cried and took off running.

I looked in the direction he was heading. A woman in her late twenties, longish brown hair, light pink coverup over her bathing suit, was talking to a guy a little younger. Muscled up, wraparound shades, dark green tattoos on each shoulder. She looked agitated and he looked like he didn’t care. He had hold of her arm and she was trying to remove it. They both looked at Jackson as he got closer.

“Mommy!” he yelled. “I lost you!”

The guy let go and his eyes drifted in my direction.

She gathered him up and hugged him. “I’m sorry, bud. I was just on my way back. Didn’t mean to scare you.”  She looked up at me. “Hi.”

I held up a hand. “He was scared. He couldn’t find you.”

The muscles in her arms flexed as she hugged him a little tighter. “Thank you. For bringing him to me.”

“He knew where your car was parked,” I said, glancing at the guy next to her. He rocked from foot to foot, his arms folded across his chest. “He found you. Not me.”

She kissed the top of his head and set him on the ground, hanging onto his hand. “Well, thank you anyway.”

“Sure.”

We all stood there for a moment, heat rising off the pavement around us.

“You can go,” the guy said, adjusting his sunglasses.

“I know,” I said, not moving.

“Then go.”

I didn’t say anything.

He stepped in closer to me. “Or I can make you go.”

“Colin,” the woman said. “Don’t.”

Colin shuffled his feet. He was shorter than me, a little over six feet, and had his chest puffed out. A small white scar ran lengthwise down the bridge of his nose. He smelled like beer and sunscreen.

I looked past him at the woman. “You okay?”

“She’s fine,” he snarled, exposing perfect white teeth.

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Fine.”

He stuck a finger in my chest. “You got three seconds.”

A finger in my chest had always been a pet peeve of mine. I hated it. It was rude, invasive, condescending. I could think of a number of times that I grabbed the offending finger and bent it backwards until I felt like letting go. Or it broke. Either way, I’d made my point that I didn’t like it.

I had no doubt I could’ve quickly snapped this guy’s finger in half.

Jackson and the woman stood there, watching, waiting.

She said she was fine.

I stepped back in the direction I’d come.

The guy grinned. “That’s what I thought.”

I looked past him. “I’ll see you around, Jackson.”

Jackson smiled and waved goodbye and I headed back to work.

THREE

Ike was waiting at the tent for me. “Busy today?”

“Nope. It’s kinda dead.”

He nodded. “Yeah. July sucks around here. Too hot for anybody to do anything other than stay inside.”

I handed him the cashbox. He lifted up the metal lid and removed the zippered bank bag. “You can cut out early if you want. Don’t think we’ll miss anything.”

“I’ll stay.”

He smiled, nodded. “Figured you’d say that.”

Ike was somewhere in his fifties. Thick gray hair and skin turned a leathery brown by years in the sun. Always wore a gray tank top and khaki shorts. Never any shoes. He ran a rental company that rented everything from bikes to surfboards up and down the beach. I manned one of his stands on the beach, renting umbrellas and chairs to tourists looking for protection from the sun. Showed up every morning at nine and stayed until four. He made the same offer at least once a week, telling me I could bail early if I wanted. But I always declined. I had nowhere to go.

He handed me a folded-over stack of bills. “For this week.”

I shoved the money in my pocket without counting it. “Thanks.”

He lingered for a moment. “Doing okay in the place?”

“Yep. Thanks.”

“Sorry it don’t have air. Gotta be hotter than shit in there.”

“It’s fine.”

“Well, it ain’t fine. It’s a goddamn dump. But as long as you’re okay.”

“It’s fine,” I repeated.

“Carter would probably kick my ass if he saw the place,” he said. “Tell me I coulda come up with something better.”

I squinted into the sun. “Ike, it’s fine. I appreciate you letting me use it. I’m good.”

He studied me for a long moment, then shrugged. “You say so. Cement guys are coming to pour tomorrow, by the way.”

“Okay.”

“Supposed to be there around seven. Can you show ’em where they need to pour?”

“Sure.”

“And then if you wanna start trenching for the sprinklers, you can do that.”

“No problem.”

“Unless it’s this hot again. Then don’t.”

I shifted my feet in the sand. “I’ll do it.”

He frowned. “Yeah. I know you will. I’ll be damned if you don’t do everything you say you’re gonna do, kid. I may find you dead on that lot with a shovel in your hand, melted by the sun, but you’ll probably have it all done.”

I gave him a faint smile. I liked Ike. He was a good guy. And he didn’t ask a lot of questions, even when I knew he wanted to.

“You find that six footer I told you about?” he asked.

“Nah.”

He raised a thick eyebrow. “Carter said you’d probably need a board.”

I sat down in the beach chair. “I don’t.”

“You bring one with you?”

“No.”

“Well, you can use that…”

“I don’t surf anymore, Ike,” I said, cutting him off. “So I don’t need it. But thanks.”

Ike nodded. “Alright. Good enough. You’ll holler if you need something?”

“Yep.”

He headed up the dunes toward the parking lot and I watched him disappear.

I listened to the small waves crash against the shore. The wind had turned, blowing hard off the gulf, the blue-green water choppy and rough. The sun was high in the sky, beating all of us outside into a sweaty submission.

I hadn’t talked to Carter in several months. The last time we’d spoken, I was on a pay phone in Oklahoma, putting as much distance between me and California—and the memories of Liz—as I could. He’d called in a favor and told me to head to Florida. Gave me an address in Fort Walton Beach, told me Ike would know what to do. I didn’t ask what the favor was in return for. I didn’t need to know.

Ike had taken care of me. Got me a place to live and gave me a job. I was surviving.

Carter and I agreed that we shouldn’t talk for awhile, part of that whole plan to lay low. I had an email address that I checked once a week from a coffee shop or the library. If there was anything he thought I should know, it would show up there.

So far, it had remained empty.

I watched the vacationers bounce in the water, yelling and screaming and smiling. You could find a sunburn in every shade of pink and red if you strode down the beach. They didn’t notice me unless they wanted to drop twenty bucks on a big blue umbrella, thirty if they wanted the chair, too. They were there on the Panhandle because they’d chosen to be, to escape their everyday lives and enjoy a few days in the sun and water.

              I was there because I had no place else to go.

FOUR