As he drew near the land, he strategically planned how many trips it would require to move the gear he packed for the day from the boat to the shore. He figured he could do it in two trips if he carried the cooler first and then came back for the beach chair and the small bag that contained his towels and sunscreen and the most crucial item for his day of relaxation—Axel Hunter’s third book, White Clover.
From the synopsis on the book jacket, this appeared to be the “touchiest and feeliest” of Hunter’s books thus far. It promised to be a tale of love won and lost between an Irish-Catholic farmer and the Protestant daughter of his landlord. It was a plot that, if Gabriel had read it even a month ago, would have been a “gag and replace” story line, but deciding to take Avery’s advice, he had vowed to plow through each book in order to see where this novice-but-complicated author intended to take his readers.
After anchoring the boat a few yards from shore, he stuck his foot into the chilly water and thought twice about the day’s plan, deciding instead to enjoy his book while nestled on the sun-warmed bow. He grabbed a soda, slathered on some sunscreen, and stretched out on a blanket. While waiting for the sun to warm his work-weary body he thought about the affect the previous Axel Hunter book, Prayers of the Lost, had on him and thought it odd that Avery declared it to be her favorite. He found that fascinating and wished he had asked her why.
Personally, he disliked the main character for most of the read, finding him arrogant and willful, a man who kicked tenaciously against the pricks in his life, digging in his heels, so certain of the rightness of his position that he refused proffered help. Gabriel had saved that book for a special weekend, intending it to be his reward after a hard week. Instead, he became so perturbed by the story’s scenario that he snapped the book shut and went to bed early. Haunted by the character, sleep was restless at best, so Gabriel awoke before dawn and returned to the tale. In the end, as honorable as the protagonist’s intentions were, his pride and inability to bend left him bitter and alone, clinging to his convictions until his death. Initially, Gabriel wondered why the character’s pathos compelled him and why Avery liked the book so, but after a moment’s thought, it was clear. He knew men who reacted similarly when pushed to extremity. Had she? Am I such a man? he wondered. The question nagged at him all week. He hoped this third book, White Clover, would prove more settling.
He turned to the first chapter and began to read. By page 53 he was fully engaged in the story, his mind filled with ideas he longed to bounce off Avery. When his skin showed signs of red, he paused to reapply his sunscreen, then read on. By page 76 he could see the familiar theme developing, but it was Axel Hunter’s characters that made the books compelling. Most of them were good though imperfect people, beset by adversities and self-doubt.
Unlike the stubborn main character in Prayers of the Lost, the pride of White Clover’s hero in broke early, and humility replaced his dogged arrogance, allowing him to accept the offer of help. As Gabriel pondered the story, he believed the author was sharing a very personal journey with the reader. That thought kept him turning pages, intimately engaged once again.
He touched his shoulder and saw the telling white spot appear and subside into angry red when released. He slipped his T-shirt over his muscled shoulders and slipped below deck to read the last forty pages by lamplight. When the last page was turned, he was satisfied for the character and challenged personally by the notions and principles he’d gleaned during his reading. He was anxious to share his observations with Avery.
It was cool dusk when Gabriel headed back into the harbor. His mind was so occupied, the trip seemed to take but an instant. He tied up the boat and headed upstairs to email Avery when he ran into Teddie and Rider who were standing in the hallway. Teddie was wearing an orange and blue sarong over a T-shirt and slacks, while Rider was adorned in a grass skirt and holding a guitar.
“Hey, Gabriel!” Teddie called out heartily as soon as the elevator doors opened. “Whatcha doin’ tonight? Our church is hosting a luau at Patterson Park. Rider and I are headin’ out there now. Wanna come?”
Gabriel chuckled good-naturedly. “I think I’ve already seen the best part of the show.”
Rider cocked his head to the side and laughed back. “Not yet, you haven’t. Wait till I tune up and start singing Hawaiian tunes with this Abilene accent.” He shook his musical accomplice. “You should come. They’re roastin’ a pig and everything. It’s gonna be a hoot.”
Gabriel actually considered the invitation for a second, and, had it not been for his rush to email Avery, he would have gone. One by one he’d visited each of the sights on his tourist list and eaten in every seafood house until his love for seafood had hit a temporary lull. Except for his passion for reading and his delight while sailing the TIME OUT, he was again as lonely and bored in Baltimore as he had previously expected.
“I’ve got plans tonight, but it looks like fun. Maybe next time, okay?”
Rider shot a pistol-like hand in Gabriel’s direction and pretended to shoot. “Absolutely.”
Even as he opened the condo door and heard the swish of the elevator closing, Gabriel considered changing his mind and joining the jovial pair. They were a different lot, like no people he’d ever allowed into his tightly controlled circle of acquaintances, and certainly not what he expected from a pair of Bible thumpers. Their hearts were open and welcoming rather than judgmental and doom filled as he had come to expect from religious people. The Davises reminded him more of the lighthearted, floral-shirted, Bermuda-shorted mainlanders who cycled through Anna Maria. As the young son of a dock worker, Gabriel had watched tourists transform working men’s cottages into dainty vacation abodes. Some stayed for good, while others offered their refurbished homes to vacationers who cycled through in fifty-two weekly waves a year. Despite their differences, their commonality intrigued him.
He found these landlocked mainlanders a curiosity, fleeing to his island with light, anticipation-filled hearts, ready to relax and play. He loved the island, but play and relaxation were foreign concepts in Gabriel’s expectation-filled home where the parents played emotional tug-of-war with their children.
Gabriel’s wants had always been simple. His mother nurtured his gift for art made from the materials nature provided. He learned hard work from his father, one of the toughest men he’d ever known. The combination of those gifts clashed when Gabriel told the stevedore that his only son, born late after five girls, wanted to be a nursery-man. Gabriel’s father had demeaned him and treated him like a disappointment or some freak of masculine nature.
They argued constantly, and finally Gabriel took his savings and stormed out, heading to DC, where the national arboretum and parks called to him. And though he and Lucia moved back to Florida, he didn’t return to Anna Maria until his father’s funeral, two years after his mother’s. Gabriel knew the tale could have come straight from an Axel Hunter story line. Perhaps that was why he found the author’s books so riveting and disturbing.
Gabriel wondered what to write to Avery, or whether to write anything at all. He brought his computer online while he contemplated the options, and he decided to type a brief note.
* * *
Avery,
I finished number three and can’t say whether or not I enjoyed it, only that I was compelled by it to the very last word. My guess is that Axel Hunter was either religious or a psychological menace. When you read his stuff, did you also feel as if he was holding up a mirror for you, showing you an inner self you rarely acknowledged? In either case, Axel is in my head now, for good or bad. I feel as though I should be paying myself fifty bucks an hour for self-analysis, and I have you to thank for it.
How’s Anna Maria treating you? Have you taken the trolley yet or eaten at Mister Bones? I’m trying your haunts and you must try a few of mine. Have you met my girls?
Gabriel
* * *
He turned his computer off and stretched in the chair, trying to work the tension out
of his body. Restless and bored, he flipped the TV on and shut it off just as quickly. Out on the deck he gazed at the harbor, hoping the water would lull him as the sea did, but after ten minutes on the small veranda he was ready to climb the walls. He grabbed Hunter’s fourth book and settled on the sofa to read.
Chapter Fourteen
Anna Maria Island, Florida, May 6
Church was perfect. Avery fell instantly in love with Bradenton’s sociable congregation, and its friendly bishop. The large choir performed two stunning numbers, nearly bringing Avery to tears. She felt so welcome that she stayed after, chatting with people, before leaving to pick Wes up at the Sarasota Airport.
They took the long way back to Anna Maria, over the bridge from Sarasota to Long Boat Key and up the coast to the house. She grinned as he rolled the window down, allowing the air to riffle through his dark hair. The tight set of his jaw softened the moment the gulf scent reached him, making it clear that he needed Anna Maria’s magic as much as she did.
She slept better with Wes there. When she awoke, she smiled at the sunlight streaming through her open window. It was already becoming steamy by first light, and she knew there would be only a few more days until she would close the windows at night and rely on the air conditioning to cool her thick Utah blood. She stepped from her bed and padded down the hall to peek in at Wes. When she crossed the threshold, her heart warmed at the relaxed look on his face. She marveled over the immeasurable comfort she received just from seeing his rumpled, brown hair on the pillow. Now she was content. Now she could relax. Anna Maria was a place of extreme beauty, but, just as she always knew, it wasn’t paradise without family.
After dressing, she went downstairs to the big, open kitchen that led to the deck and the sea. Even at first light there were already people walking on the beach. Some early risers even staked out their lounging spots, poking umbrellas into the sand and stationing their cadre of chairs to face the rising sun so they could catch the morning rays when they returned hours later. Avery decided this was the day she’d get out and walk. She’d vowed to do so every day, but her best intentions had already diluted to a few short strolls and too much sitting.
While the notion seemed pleasant, she hurried back upstairs and slid into gray sweat pants and a white T-shirt. She carried socks and sneakers downstairs, and sat at the computer to put them on. Her first mistake was refreshing her laptop while she tied the shoes. Once the screen came alive, she decided to spend a minute reviewing yesterday’s work.
She performed a few idle arm stretches while reading the pages of her current writing project, another Avery Elkins Thompson mystery novel. It featured a female detective from Baltimore on vacation on Anna Maria Island. In her condo, she finds a thumb drive with secret files, making her a murderer’s new target. Her sidekick, a gorgeous, blond surfer dude named Sam Gordon, moonlighted as the building’s super.
On the surfing circuit he was known as “Flash,” permitting the obvious punch lines. Avery thought things were shaping up nicely. She could, once again, clearly see where she wanted to go with her writing. The “formula” was working again.
She made a small word change here and there and then declared yesterday’s work good. Determined to hit the beach and walk, she resisted the urge to write a little more. She did hit the server icon and go online briefly to check her email. There was a message from her editor and three from Jamie, updating Avery on her pregnancy news.
Finding an email from Gabriel was an unexpected treat. She bit the knuckle of her right hand as she read, surprisingly anxious to read his opinions of her work and of Axel’s. It pleased her to hear how deeply he’d been touched by the author’s work, but for some reason, that news made her equally sad, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. She delayed her reply. When she heard no sounds indicating that Wes was rising, she headed out for her walk.
Stopping near the deck steps, Avery did a few leg stretches. She wasn’t sure what muscles she was stretching or exactly why, but the nice lady at the gym had warned her to do it or risk pulling a muscle, a most unpleasant thought, and so Avery stretched and bent her middle-aged body as directed. She stepped into the sand and headed to the right. She liked walking north first, plodding along at a fair pace. She was still a little awed and humbled by men and women at least half again her age, trucking past her at a gait she dared not attempt yet.
Gulls and sandpipers cawed and barked at her with each step she took, some rushing right in front of her, scolding her for her intrusion as they spotted a fragment of food washing ashore. Avery kept a watch on the pier ahead and the buildings she passed to her right—her reference points and distance markers. As she trod along, she decided to lay out the next chapter of her manuscript, so she focused her attention on what diabolical intrigue should next befall her heroine, but nothing came to her mind—nothing except phrases from Gabriel’s email.
I finished number three. I was compelled by it to the very last word. Axel is in my head now. When you read his stuff, did you also feel as if he was holding up a mirror for you?
Over and over the phrases ran through her mind as she stomped through the sand, preoccupying her so fully that she failed to avoid the surf until it washed over her shoes. She walked to dry sand, flopped down, and pulled off her shoes and socks. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she laid her chin on top and stared out at the sparkling water. Gabriel’s comments came to her once more, and she allowed herself to remember how Axel’s words first hit her nearly thirty years earlier, providing a voice for her own spiritual hunger. They made her feel as if she too was looking into a mirror, and though she had since tuned out that author’s voice, she could not deny the captivating power of Axel’s intuitive insights. Gabriel’s comments reminded her of these things and something else as well—that nothing she’d written lately had touched her equally, and that truth saddened her.
She stood abruptly and turned back for home, running lines from her current manuscript through her mind. They sounded hollow and trivial, entertaining but meaningless. There’s nothing wrong with writing something entertaining. But why can’t I produce anything that touches me like Axel’s work did? Maybe I really am nothing without Paul.
The dull ache of doubt that plagued her youth returned again as it had on so many occasions since Paul’s death. Why am I like this? she asked herself.
Her parents had done their best. She’d come to understand that, but at the time, as a kid growing up, she struggled to understand the disparity between families—why some seemed rock solid and others seemed to come unglued at the slightest provocation. She noticed such things at an early age and started placing families into “glued” or “unglued” categories, trying to figure out what destined some for one and not the other. By age thirteen, Avery identified two primary elements common to nearly all steady families. The first was real love between mothers and fathers, not just that we’re-sticking-it-out-for-the-kids kind of love that emerged most readily in the presence of alcohol and guests, and on holidays. The second was an anchor in some belief system. Denied both of those basic elements but armed with this critical insight, Avery became fixed on a quest to secure both things for herself.
She found both in Paul and his church, but ironically, she could see that she’d allowed her religious conversion and subsequent marriage to become a journey-ending finish line instead of a starting gate to paths of greater personal and spiritual development. It was her own doing. Paul enjoyed having a full partner in the marriage, someone willing to run beside him in life, stride for stride. They were a perfect match in their early years but when the children arrived, Avery passed Paul the baton and contentedly cheered from the sidelines with her babies. Life was so sweet, she didn’t notice the gradual shift from partner to follower, relegating spiritual and disciplinary duties to Paul while she mothered and wrote. Formulaic writing was more efficient, less challenging, and highly marketable. Paul loved her stories, so she ignored her professional judgment, anesthetizing the c
reative spirit of Avery Xandra Elkins Thompson.
She was the namesake of Alexander Dearborn, her mother’s father, a professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland. His grandfatherly talks were like impromptu adjudications, where a simple statement like “Strawberry ice cream is my favorite” might become fodder for a discussion ranging from “Why do you say that?” to “Have you considered the ramifications—all the flavors you rule out by making such a blanket statement?”
Initially, like her sisters, Avery had hated the discomfort the old coot’s examinations caused, but as she got older, these discourses became cerebral wrestling matches, pitting her mind and imagination against his. She came to love the games because she discovered that, win or lose, each exercise made her strong while delighting the patriarch who adored her.
Avery knew the safety and inquisitiveness her grandfather inspired was the catalyst for her religious conversion and the blessings that followed. He had been her only anchor, and every word she penned before meeting Paul was written to meet his exacting standards. She could still hear his voice.
“Ask yourself the hard questions, Avery Xandra! Follow where they lead!”
Her grandfather’s advice also inspired Axel Hunter, and, though labeled commercial disappointments, all eight Axel Hunter books had touched people. Could she say the same about the mysteries she wrote? She blinked hard as she admitted she could not. And why? Because her grandfatherly muse died a few months after she was married. She floundered for a time, and then she placed all her trust in Paul.
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