for the back door, scooping her keys from the hook as she leaped down the porch steps to her car. There was no thought. No planning. Just action. When you get a call that your kid is in the ER, there can be no room for thinking. Just the deepest fear imaginable, the kind that gripped like a steel band around her chest.
She hurled herself into the car, started it up, and tore down the driveway, her tires spitting an arc of crushed oyster shells in her wake. She roared around Lighthouse Point at the end of her road. The rocky shoals there had been guarded for a century by the sentinel overlooking the bay.
The car radio was on, broadcasting a surf report at the top of the hour by Crash Daniels, owner of the Surf Shack. “We are getting our first taste of summer, people. The whole Delmarva Peninsula is basking in temperatures in the mideighties. The oceanside looks rad. Bethany Bay is totally off the hook …”
She snapped off the radio. Panic about her daughter demanded total focus. Surf rescue class? What the hell was Julie doing in surf rescue? She wasn’t even taking that class, an optional PE credit offered to ninth graders. Camille had forbidden it, even though Julie had begged. Far too dangerous. The tides on the ocean side of the peninsula could be deadly. There was no satisfaction in being right. Julie got caught in a riptide, the nurse had said. A surge of horror filled Camille’s throat, and she felt like puking.
“Easy,” she told herself. “Deep breath. The woman on the phone said Julie is conscious.”
Jace had been conscious, too, moments before she had lost him forever, five years before, when they were on a romantic second-honeymoon getaway. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking about that now. That was the reason she had refused to sign the permission slip to allow Julie to participate in surf rescue. She simply couldn’t survive another loss.
There had been a time when Camille had led a charmed life, cheerfully oblivious to the devastation that could strike without warning. Throughout her idyllic childhood in Bethany Bay, she’d been as wild and carefree as the birds that wheeled over the watery enclave at the edge of the Atlantic. She herself had excelled at surf rescue, a rigorous and physically demanding course all high schoolers were encouraged to take. In this community, surrounded on three sides by water, safety skills were mandatory. Thanks to the popularity of the beach, with its pipeline waves rolling in, local youngsters were trained in the art of rescue using special hand-paddled boards. It was a time-honored tradition at Bethany Bay High. Each May, even when the water was still chilly from the currents of winter, the PE department offered the challenging class.
At fourteen, Camille had been clueless about the dangers of the world. She’d shot to the head of her group in surf rescue, ultimately winning the annual competition three years in a row. She remembered how joyful and confident the victory had made her feel. She still remembered reveling in the triumph of battling the waves under the sun, laughing with her friends, intoxicated by the supreme satisfaction of conquering the elements. At the end of the course, there was always a bonfire and marshmallow roast on the beach, a tradition still observed by the surf rescue trainers so the kids could bond over the shared experience. She wanted that for Julie, but her daughter was a different girl than Camille had been.
Up until five years ago, Camille had been an adrenaline junkie—surfing, kiteboarding, attempting harrowing rock and mountain climbs—anything that offered a dangerous rush. Jace had been her perfect partner, every bit as keen as she for the thrill of adventure.
Those days were long gone. Camille had been remade by tragedy, cautious when she used to be intrepid, fearful when she used to dare anything, restrained when she used to be unbridled. She viewed the world as a dangerous place fraught with hazards for those foolish enough to venture out and take a risk. She regarded everything she loved as fragile and apt to be lost as quickly as Jace had been.
Julie had processed the death of her father with the stoic innocence of a nine-year-old, quietly grieving and then accepting the fact that her world would never be the same. People had praised her resilience, and Camille had been grateful to have a reason to put her life together and go on.
Yet when Julie brought the permission packet home and announced she was taking surf rescue, Camille had flatly refused. There had been arguments. Tears. Stomping and flinging on the bed. Julie had accused Camille of trying to sabotage her life.
With a twinge of guilt, Camille knew her own fears were holding her daughter back, but she also knew they were keeping Julie out of harm’s way. Yes, she wanted the same kind of fun and camaraderie for Julie that she herself had found in high school. But Julie would have to find it through tamer pursuits. Apparently she had found a way to join the surf rescue class, probably with the age-old trick of the forged permission slip.
There were few forces greater than the power of a fourteen-year-old’s determination when she wanted something. A teenager would stop at nothing in order to get her way.
Camille should have been more vigilant. Instead of becoming so deeply absorbed in work, she should have kept a closer eye on her daughter. Maybe then she would have noticed what Julie was up to, sneaking off to surf rescue instead of dodgeball or study hall or some other tame substitute for the course on the beach.
When Jace was alive, he and Camille had both made sure Julie was a strong swimmer. By the age of eight, she’d learned about the way a riptide worked, and how to survive if she happened to get caught in one—tread water, stay parallel to the shore, and don’t fight it. Camille could still remember Jace explaining it. The riptide would come back around in three minutes, so there was no need to panic.
These days, panicking was Camille’s specialty.
Keeping her eyes on the road, Camille groped in her bag for her phone. Her hand bumped up against the usual suspects—wallet, pen, checkbook, hair clip, comb, mints. No phone. Shoot, she had forgotten it in her rush to get to the hospital.
The hospital, where her wounded daughter had been taken while Camille was holed up in her darkroom, ignoring the world. With each negative thought, she pressed her foot harder on the accelerator, until she realized she was going fifty in a thirty-mile-per-hour zone. She refused to ease up. If she got pulled over, she’d simply ask the police for an escort.
The word please echoed over and over in her head. She begged for this to not be happening. Please. Please not this. Please not Julie.
Fourteen, smart, funny, quirky, she was Camille’s whole world. If something happened to her, the world would end. I would simply end, thought Camille with rock-solid certainty. I would cease to exist. My life would be kaput. Over. Sans espoir, as Papa would say.
The coast road bisected the flatlands embraced parenthetically between the teeming mystery of the Chesapeake Bay, and the endless, vast expanse of the Atlantic. Fringed by sand dunes filled with native bird rookeries, the bay curved inward, framing the crashing Atlantic and forming one of the best surf beaches on the eastern seaboard. It was there, on this stunningly beautiful sugar-sand beach that drew tourists every year, that Julie’s accident had occurred.
Camille accelerated yet again, on the home stretch. Five minutes later, she careened into the parking lot of the medical center. The place held both distant and recent memories for her. She leaped from the car, hitting the ground at a run.
“Julie Adams,” she said to the woman at the reception desk. “She was brought in from surf rescue.”
The receptionist consulted her screen. “Curtain area seven,” she said. “Around to the right.”
Camille knew where that was. She ran past the memorial wall—the Dr. Jace Adams Memorial Wall, which never failed to pierce her heart with remembrances.
