Page 89 of The Beach Trap

It takes me a moment to catch up; my first impulse had been to assume the worst, that he’d passed away, and the twisting nausea in my stomach turns to panic. “Wait, what?”

“Ellis O’Neill, your grandfather, has wandered away. Again.”

He says this like it’s all a big hassle, like Granddad is nothing more than an inconvenience in his busy day of dividing the cups of Jell-O into red and green, or whatever important things he does. I bristle like a porcupine.

“Where’s Martina?” I ask. She’ll set things right.

“She’s on vacation,” Vincent says.

Shit.I knew this; I just lost track of time.

“But even if she were here,” Vincent continues, “it wouldn’t change the facts of the situation. As you know, this isn’t the first time your grandfather has done this.”

I feel like a kid called to the principal’s office, and I remind myself that I’m a twenty-seven-year-old woman who has single-handedly refinished a wood floor, removed a sixty-year-old bathtub, and demolished a wall with a sledgehammer.

“My grandfather is missing,” I say, forcing my voice not to shake. “He could be in danger. What are you doing about that?”

“We’re following protocol,” Vincent says. “Which includes notifying next of kin and the police. But, Ms.O’Neill, this is precisely why your grandfather must be transferred to the memory care building as soon as possible. Understand?”

My body goes rigid with anger. “At this moment, all I care about is getting my granddad back safely. Understand?”

He’s silent. “Of course. Just know we’ll continue this discussion in the near future.”

•••

I’m sick withdread as I set the phone down. I wish I could call Noah, but he can’t be my support system anymore. Selfishly, Ihope Kat is still at the beach house when I get there—and that she’s ready to talk to me again.

I’m desperate for someone to hold my hand and reassure me that everything is going to be okay. Unfortunately, when I open the garage, her car isn’t inside.

After grabbing my purchases from the back of my car, I climb the stairs, thinking I should’ve probably made two trips with all these bags. When I unlock the door, the dog dashes inside, and I hear a strange sound as he runs through the house.

Splashing.

I push the door open and walk in. The floor is covered with at least an inch of water. Gasping, I set my bags down on the table in the entryway and look around. The dog is bounding around like he’s at a splash park, and I can hear running water in the dining room. I head in to see a stream of water coming from the ceiling, right through the beautiful chandelier Henry helped me wire not long ago, soaking the wood table we tried so carefully to preserve. A sopping-wet piece of notebook paper is on the surface of the table, but whatever was written on it—maybe a shopping list?—is unreadable, the ink blurred to the point of illegibility.

“Fuck!” I shout, then race for the stairs, sloshing through water up to my ankles. Upstairs, I run into the second bathroom, which is located above the dining room.

And there it is: the toilet tank is overflowing and there’s water all over the tile floor, leaking into the hallway. My eyes fill with tears of horror and desperation, and I reach behind the toilet to turn off the valve.

How the hell did this happen? I’d left a sticky note on the toilet that saidDON’T USEeven though there’s no reason Kat would ever come in here; as far as I knew, she always uses the bathroom attached to her bedroom or the one downstairs.Maybe I should have posted the note on Instagram and tagged her in it.Thenshe would have paid some attention.

Panicking, I clench my fists as I look around the bathroom. There’sso much water. Hundreds of gallons throughout the house, maybe thousands. The damage is going to be astronomical. Not to mention all the time I put into the beautiful floors, washed away with her reckless mistake.

I really hope this was a mistake, that Kat just didn’t see my note, but a nasty little voice whispers that maybe she did it on purpose. That she wanted to punish me, to sabotage my progress so we couldn’t sell the house. That she really does hate me that much.

Shoving that thought away, I remind myself I need to take care of this situation before I start assigning blame.Crying over your spilled milk won’t fill your glass up again, as my grandma would say.

There’s no insurance policy on this beach house—it’s just been sitting here decaying for years—which means no one else is going to clean this up for me. Kat has run back to her perfect life in Atlanta. Noah has vanished like he couldn’t get away from me fast enough. I’d call Henry, but he clearly has the hots for Kat and I don’t trust myself not to say something horrible about her right now. I have no other friends here in Destin, and I can’t afford to pay anyone to help me.

I sit on the closed toilet seat, my eyes blurring with tears. What was my dad thinking, giving me half of this house, trapping me in this hellhole? I wish he hadn’t. I wish he’d gone to his grave pretending like I don’t exist. I think back to the day I drove into Destin the first time, the words that echoed through my mind:My life is about to change forever.

A bitter laugh escapes my lips. Fuck that. I don’t want this. I don’t want any of it. I wish I could rewind time back to the day I got the call from the estate lawyer; I’d tell him he had the wrongnumber. Then I’d rewind all the way back to when I was twelve years old; I’d tell my grandparents I’d changed my mind, that I didn’t want to go to Camp Chickawah. I want to erase it all, scrub it from my memory, bleach it away. To live free from the suffocating weight of my past.

Tears roll down my cheeks, and I dash them away, furious that after all these years, I’m still allowing him to hurt me. Why can’t I stop caring about what my asshole father did or didn’t do?

The dog nudges his way into the bathroom and stares up at me with his liquid brown eyes. The smell of wet dog permeates the room, which snaps me out of my pity party.

Standing, I put my hands on my hips and survey the bathroom. First step: I need to get rid of all this water. Then get everything dried out. And finally, figure out how to repair the damage.

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