Beach Rental

by Greene, Grace

  “Thanks.” Ron extended his hand. “I’m Ron. You’re Ben? I don’t think we’ve met. I see your wife on the beach most mornings.”

  Ben shook his hand. “I’m a late sleeper. Pleased to meet you. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting your son. Cute kid.”

  “Thanks. I’m sorry to sound like a worrier, but I want to keep the family safe. No one’s talking evacuation. Juli said you two spend a lot of time at the beach. What do you think?”

  Ben said, “They downgraded it to a tropical storm. It’s forecasted to stay offshore. The authorities will call for an evacuation if they think it necessary. No one’s particularly worried because it’s weakening, but it’ll take away from the end of your visit. Expect rain, wind and rough water tomorrow night into Saturday morning. No guarantees, of course.”

  Ron stepped back to stand just outside the door. He touched the casing on the side of the window. “These are hurricane shutters, right?”

  “You shouldn’t need them for this storm, but if something changes or you’re not sure, just knock on the door. These shutters are electronic, easy to use, and I’ve got a set of keys.”

  She asked him after Ron left, “Are you sure there’s no problem?”

  “Don’t tell me a little rain and wind has you worried. You didn’t live far inland, yourself.” He walked over and put his arms around her. “I won’t take any chances. I don’t take anything for granted, and never you.”

  “Living a little inland is very different than living on the edge of the ocean. Besides, I didn’t grow up in the area, remember? I’m relatively new to the coast.” Juli held his hand. “I’m a landlubber. Or used to be. I’m still getting used to this.”

  Ben turned her around and met her eyes. “You never actually said where you grew up.”

  “Mostly in the Raleigh area. I moved here a few years ago.” Juli tried to say it in an off-hand manner. She wasn’t looking for pity.

  “What brought you here?”

  She reached up and brought his face to hers and planted a kiss on his lips. “Simple. There was nothing to keep me there.”

  They took a short walk and they took it earlier in the afternoon than usual. A number of people were stowing and securing loose items. A few were packing up to leave.

  Low, heavy clouds had been pushing in all day cooking up an ominous stew in the atmosphere. The red Beach Patrol vehicles rode up and down the strand with regularity warning the few beachgoers about the rough conditions. Ben showed Juli, yet again, where the storm kit was stowed. He set the storm radio on the counter.

  They stayed up later than usual that night keeping a close eye on the weather reports as the tropical storm made its way up the coastline. It was rapidly losing its punch and thanks to beneficial steering currents was moving farther offshore. They were forecasted to have high surf, gusty winds and occasional showers, possibly heavy at times, through the night and the next day.

  The evening sky was a strange shade of green, like an omen, and it worried her. Ben put one arm around her and pulled her close as they walked upstairs together.

  When they paused in the hallway, instead of turning toward her room, Juli touched his cheek. Her face felt warm and she was suddenly shy. She dropped her eyes and started to pull her hand away, but Ben caught her. He kept her hand as if he’d found treasure and brought her palm to his lips.

  His eyes were warm with invitation. “Stay with me tonight?”

  The hallway became its own special world—this moment only—no yesterday or tomorrow. A place where decisions were simple and obvious. Juli ran her free hand over Ben’s chest and down his arm until she claimed his free hand. “Tonight.”

  ****

  Later, when she awakened in the dark and heard rough, even brutal gusts of wind buffeting the front of the house she reached over and touched Ben’s shoulder. His hand reached up to cover hers. She snuggled closer, enjoying the shared comfort.

  Saturday’s bloody red dawn gave way to swiftly moving clouds and crashing waves that beat violently at the land. The ocean was an adversary today and the wind was its ally. Fitful and gusty, at times assaultive, the wind sand-blasted the few beach walkers who’d been beguiled to venture outside by peeks of blue sky between scudding clouds. Juli, herself, was mesmerized by the quickly changing landscape and light as the storm pushed northward.

  Ben stood beside her on the porch, each with their arms around the other, protected from the worst of the wind as long as they stayed near the wall of the house.

  “Are you sorry?” he asked.

  “Sorry? She shook her head. “No, I’d say it was a lucky thing we were already married.” She laughed.

  He tightened his arm around her. He started to speak, but coughed instead, then cleared his throat. After a few minutes of standing together and suffering the sandy blasts, Ben spoke near her ear. “Keep away from the water today. I guess I don’t need to tell you, do I?”

  “No, you don’t. The beach is too breezy for me, never mind the water,” Juli added, as a walker’s straw hat was whipped away, sailing as high as a kite into the distance. “It’s just as well most of the vacationers are too busy packing up to be out here.”

  She felt the sag in Ben’s stance. “Why don’t you go on in? I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

  He kissed her on the temple, then released her and went inside.

  With Ben gone, she’d lost more than a wind buffer. The ultra-white nearer clouds racing with the dark clouds along the horizon, contrasted with beige sand and the savage ocean and found a wild core inside her. It echoed in her heart, the part of her heart not touched by Ben’s need, but by her own troubles. At times nature’s elements probed that restlessness, stirring it and drawing it forth. Juli drew her arms closely about herself and shivered.

  There was a rap on the window. She turned and saw Ben. He waved at her and she turned to go inside to join him, but before she reached the door, she heard a noise on the other side of the porch divider, a bump and sounds of frustration.

  “Are you okay?” She peeked around the divider in time to snag an inflated duck that tried to fly away.

  Victoria was fussing with a net bag, fighting to stow beach toys as they tried to blow away. “Charlie got into them. They were all packed. I should let them blow out to sea. Thanks,” she said, taking the ducky. “I’ve got it now.”

  “Are you leaving tonight or in the morning?”

  “Early in the morning. With kids, you have to get it packed up ahead of time.”

  “We’ve enjoyed having y’all as neighbors for these two weeks. Have a safe trip home.”

  “Thanks. You, too.”

  Juli went inside to join Ben.

  Ben was seated in his usual chair at the table by the front window, working on his puzzle. He never seemed to make much progress.

  Juli went to the kitchen just as someone screamed. She was turning back toward Ben, to ask if he’d heard something, but he was already up and moving out the door.

  “Ben?” She crossed the room and looked out the door. He was running down the crossover. Running? What on earth? Beyond, down on the beach, she saw figures moving at the water’s edge.

  As surely as she knew something was wrong, she knew what it was—a drowning.

  The door was still swinging wide as Juli flew through chasing Ben. He was moving faster than she would’ve believed possible. He was in the sand and heading toward the ocean as she reached the steps. Juli saw Victoria and her daughter, drenched and knee-deep in angry waves.

  Two yellow water wings bobbed out in the water, staying about a foot apart and riding the waves as they swelled and dropped.

  Could she see a child’s hand? An arm? Too much spray and too distant.

  Victoria was pulling at her tangled hair with one hand and pointing out to sea with the other. Ben never paused as he ran past the women and splashed into the churning Atlantic Ocean making for the yellow bits of plastic, tiny in the ocean that might still have little Charlie attached.


  Juli’s feet hit the rough steps, then the sand, running to the rhythm of her frantic thoughts—thoughts that condemned Victoria for not watching her child and for not going into the waves herself.

  Ben was Juli’s and precious.

  She heard Ron’s deep voice yelling in alarm behind her. As she raced past, the distraught mother reached out to her, crying and screaming. Juli ignored her and followed Ben into the ocean.

  He dove and swam. He did his best to find little Charlie in the roiling ocean. Adrenalin fueled the strength that drove Ben into the manic waves, but it faltered too soon. He couldn’t withstand the ocean’s power. Nor could she. As Juli grabbed him, the waves slammed their faces and snatched the ground from beneath their feet.

  Juli dug her fingers into his arm, fighting the slippery wetness of his flesh. His face was white and his eyes stared at her, then past her.

  She lost her grip on him, bested by the pull of the ocean. She couldn’t find bottom. Her toes searched for purchase and found only water. The next wave came as she surfaced to breathe. It filled her eyes and mouth with vile salt water and sand. This is it.

  A hand closed on her upper arm with a viselike grip and pulled. She had no sense of direction, but felt ripped through the water, her arm in agony. Her toes hit sand and then her knees as she was dragged onto the beach. Ron released her. She huddled, gasping and coughing. Her lungs burned. Ron knelt beside her. She waved him away, rolling over onto her butt and pushing her hair out of her stinging eyes. Desperately, she scanned the waves and the beach.

  “Ben?” Juli tried to yell, but only croaked. Her throat was raw. Ben was nowhere in sight. Charlie’s yellow water wings had vanished, too, claimed by the ocean.

  Ron, above her, was saying over and over, “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

  Juli tried to rise. Her legs failed her. Ron caught and steadied her. She felt otherworldly, disbelieving. She wanted to scream this was a mistake. Ben had been working a stupid, boring puzzle. They had a doctor’s appointment in two days.

  Victoria was crying. Her words came to Juli through thick tears. “He got away from us. I’m so sorry. We saw his floaties and thought he’d…. but they were tied together.”

  Juli turned to look. Beyond Victoria, Violet stood near the crossover. Beyond Violet was Charlie, oblivious, playing in the deep sand beneath the wooden steps, well-camouflaged by the strips of shadow and light.

  Someone dialed 9-1-1 and Juli stayed on the beach. She answered the questions of the emergency workers, as did Ron and Victoria. Seeing the Beach Patrol vehicle took her back one day. Just one day made all the difference in the world. A big if-only. So she stayed, not because she had hope, but because the idea of returning to the house while leaving Ben in the ocean was more than she could bear. She waited.

  For what? Acceptance? Would that come when her heart stopped shrieking, no, no, no? When tears burned the truth into her denying eyes and shattered her control?

  For now, she was paralyzed, trapped in denial. She dropped her head onto her arms. A kind stranger draped a large beach towel around her shoulders.

  They’d known from the start he would die, but not today. Not this way.

  She couldn’t accept and hold the reality. It kept slipping away from her like mist through her fingers.

  How grossly unfair that so much of life could be built upon chance, like a mom who believed her toddler had gone into the ocean alone at the moment Ben was handy to hear her frantic screams.

  “Ma’am. Mrs. Bradshaw. You should go to the hospital. You took in a lot of water yourself.”

  “No. I’ll stay here.” She waited. Maybe for an ocean of tears or for hysteria. Maybe for someone to come running up the beach shouting Ben was okay.

  Ron walked over to the emergency workers and the beach patrol. They’d already tried to convince her to leave the scene. A police officer detached from the group and came to her.

  “Is there someone I can call for you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “His cousin, Luke Winters. Crescent Street. I don’t know the phone number.” Coward. But no, not a coward, it was merely a physical impossibility to speak such words into the phone, to say them aloud, to anyone.

  “No problem. I can get it.”

  At some point, when the remaining emergency personnel grew anxious and her vigil began to feel like a spectacle, she trudged up the steps, back over the crossover and faced Ben’s empty house. She pushed through the door, but couldn’t manage more than to reach the sofa. Sandy and salty, still wrapped in the stranger’s towel, she fell upon the cushions and curled up into as small a ball as she could manage.

  Not long after, she heard someone at the door and Luke asked, “What happened?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  She pushed herself upright. There he stood, filling the doorway.

  “He went into the ocean to save a child.” Her throat was made of sandpaper. She hardly recognized her own voice.

  Luke stared.

  Juli ran her hands over her face and forced her breathing to stay within normal bounds. What more was there to say?

  “Did he?”

  “Did he what?”

  “Save the child?”

  She shook her head slowly, afraid of breaking into little pieces. “It was a false alarm.”

  He didn’t say, so, he died for nothing. Instead, he said, “I called Adela. She’s on her way. I guess there’s nothing else to be done tonight.”

  His voice sounded numb. She shook her head.

  “Do you need anything? Are you okay?”

  She was obviously not okay, but there was nothing anyone could do for her tonight. Tomorrow was time enough to think. Tonight should be for grieving, but so far the emotions stayed jagged and painful, bottled within her.

  It was an endless night.

  Soon after the first rays of dawn had touched the sand and lit the water, Luke knocked on the door. Juli opened it. He stood on the threshold looking as rough and unwashed as she felt.

  “They found him.”

  She gasped. Instantly, her chest hurt and her throat closed. She forced the words out before he could utter the dreadful words. “I don’t want to know.”

  No word pictures. No location. She covered her ears and turned away, forcing the image of Ben, as Ben, into her heart and memory, the way she wanted to remember him.

  “I understand.”

  Juli kept her back turned until he was gone, then ran down to the beach.

  She sat and listened to the ocean. The tide came in and went back out. People walked past without stopping. The beach, littered with thick layers of broken shells dredged up by the storm, wasn’t inviting to swimmers.

  What did she look like? Wretched and disheveled? Had the people strolling by heard of the drowning and wondered? Been curious? She didn’t care so long as they didn’t bother her with questions or sympathy. The wind tangled her hair and the sand and shells abraded her skin. Classic shock, she knew. And bludgeoned by grief and regret.

  She should have been a better partner for Ben. A better wife. Had she done her best?

  The worst blow was that she’d be paid because Ben died.

  That had been the bargain from the beginning.

  The day’s light waned. She became aware someone was standing behind her.

  “I knocked. No one answered. I almost didn’t look down here.”

  She didn’t turn around. She pushed the hair out of her face and sat straighter.

  “Adela arrived this afternoon. She’s making the funeral arrangements. Do you want to be involved? If you have special wishes or anything, you can tell her, or I’ll tell her for you, if you prefer.”

  “Whatever she wants is fine.”

  “You can’t stay out here.”

  She ignored him.

  “You have to pull yourself together. The service is in two days.”

  Juli looked over her shoulder and saw his bare feet. The hem of his dress slacks hung awkwardly without the shoes and socks. She wanted to
appreciate that he’d come out here to make sure her wishes were considered, but the trimmings were meaningless. Dead was dead. The ritual might be comfort for some, but it didn’t change a thing.

  Juli didn’t want comfort. She wanted to know she’d given Ben what he needed despite how their marriage had started out, despite the fact she didn’t fall in love with him in the same way he’d come to love her. Still, she loved him. Had it been enough for him? Had he known about her divided heart?

  “It’s time for you to go inside.” Luke shifted his feet. “I have to leave now. Call me if you need anything.”

  She bit her lip to keep from begging, tell me I made Ben happy. Tell me. There was no one to whom to address such a question. Certainly, not to Luke.

  The sand whispered beneath his feet as he walked away. Juli waited in the twilight to give him time to depart. When she stood and turned toward the house, he was standing on the porch facing toward her and the ocean. By the time she climbed the stairs to the crossover, he was gone.

  ****

  Strangers filled the funeral home chapel in Morehead City for the service. She glimpsed Ron and Victoria standing at the back of the chapel as she entered, but pretended not to see them. She walked with the family, stood with the family and sat in the pew with the family, but she felt encased in a plastic bubble. She was front and center at the service because, to the world, she was the widow. To Ben’s family, she was a calculating interloper. She stared straight ahead, deliberately blind to the people around her.

  The smooth wooden pews were hard beneath her. Hard was good. This was not a day for comfort.

  She kept wishing she was back at home on Emerald Isle. But it would be without Ben. And now, with Ben gone, she’d be out soon, too. Her brain hit a roadblock there and could go no further. She’d think about that tomorrow or the next day.

  Pastor Herrin spoke about Ben. She kept her eyes on him and remembered nothing of his eulogy. Each word passed right out of her head. All of her concentration was bent upon making it through.

  There was a program in her hand. Someone had written it up and had it printed. Juli held onto the paper like an anchor, but didn’t dare read it.