Page 109 of Ten Beach Road

On August 23, the day the house at Ten Beach Road was pronounced “done,” Tropical Storm Charlene dumped rain over the Turks and Caicos and headed toward the Florida straits. On the twenty-fourth, Kyra posted her final video to YouTube. It was cut to the theme fromRockyand was a stunningly powerful recap of Bella Flora’s renovation from the day Kyra had first arrived through that morning’s formal guided tour, with comments from Chase, every Dante family artisan who’d worked on the job, and a small plug for their personal plumber, Robby.

It was hosted by Deirdre Morgan and Avery Lawson, who didnotappear on screen together but were skillfully edited into what felt like a seamless narrative by the filmmaker herself. The last frames were of the Designer Show House Opening Soon sign and the For Sale sign being hammered in.

“You’ve got talent, kid,” Maddie said that night as they screened the piece on the new HD set the salon’s design team had tucked into a marvelous Deco reproduction armoire. The audience, which erupted into cheers and catcalls at regular intervals, included the entire Hardin clan as well as the Franklins, whose affection for each other Kyra had also managed to capture. “You need to be making movies.”

Kyra rubbed her stomach and hit the rewind when the audience demanded to see the piece again. “I will,” she said with a certainty that filled Maddie with pride. “I’ll just be shooting newborn video for a while, first.” Pushing the Play button, she added, “I’m going to need a crash course in motherhood. Do you think you could put together a syllabus?”

Madeline smiled at her daughter, thinking of the sonogram they’d seen at Kyra’s last ob-gyn visit. The months until Kyra’s D-day were slipping away. “Sure. Although your dad was always the calmer of the two of us.” She sighed. “It’s going to be hard doing this all alone, Ky,” Maddie said. Just as getting through this time had been so much harder without the man who’d always been her best friend at her side.

“Have you heard anything from Dad?” Since the cessation of hostilities between them, Kyra often seemed to be on the same wavelength.

“Just a text that he was at Aunt Emma’s and another apology.”

“You’re not really thinking about divorcing him, are you, Mom?” Kyra looked about five when she asked the question.

“How did you . . .”

“I heard Nicole and Avery talking about it one day.” She looked at Maddie’s face. “They didn’t know I was there. But . . .”

“At the time, it seemed like the only threat that might motivate him. But it’s been so long since we’ve spoken, I really don’t know where things stand or what to do next.”

“I don’t blame you, Melinda,” Kyra teased, using the wrong name as her grandmother so often did. “Won’t Edna be upset when she finds out you’ve spent a whole summer with both Avery Lawson and Deirdre Morgan? Maybe we should bring her back some autographs.”

Maddie smiled, relieved to be on firm footing with Kyra, even more relieved that the renovation of Bella Flora was done, each ant-sized bite thoroughly chewed and digested. Did she have the energy and strength to apply the same approach to her marriage? She now knew she could do whatever needed to be done without Steve. What she didn’t know was if she’d have to.

The morning of August 25, Charlene moved out of the warm waters of the Caribbean into the even warmer and more welcoming waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The Florida Keys battened down its hatches at just about the same time that Nicole Grant battened down hers.

She’d watched Kyra’s last post to YouTube more than a dozen times, cringing at the initial footage when they’d all looked so beaten and desperate, feeling almost worse at how close they’d all appeared right before she’d been booted out. It was hard not to see just how much the summer had changed them all.

When she’d left Bella Flora, she’d had no destination in mind and only the vaguest of plans for meeting up with Malcolm on her own terms. She’d zigged and zagged her way up the state of Florida always looking over her shoulder, trying to spot a tail. But if someone was following her, it wasn’t Giraldi. Or else Giraldi was very, very good.

With almost ten days to kill, she’d continued north to the semirural area of Acworth, northwest of Atlanta, and stashed the Jag in the cinder block garage of an old friend of their mother’s who’d never had enough money to invest with anyone, and especially not with Malcolm. After dinner and a night on a pull-out sofa that made her mattress on the floor at Bella Flora feel five-star, Nicole gave the woman the cash to pick up a car for her from Rent-A-Wreck. Nikki had spent the last week in the slightly dented beige Ford Focus holing up first at an old friend’s cabin on Lake Lanier before driving east to another friend’s small beach place in St. Simon’s.

Yesterday she’d driven back into Florida, catching I-10 around Jacksonville and heading west to Sneads where Florida met up with the southwest corner of Georgia. Now she was ready to drive the beige rental car into the Three Rivers State Park and hike by foot to the campground on Lake Seminole, where the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers merged.

Turning in to the park entrance, she watched her rearview mirror carefully to see if anyone had followed her, but there was no sign of movement at all—not even from white-tailed deer and gray foxes that the park’s website seemed so proud of.

Afraid to trust in the absence of Giraldi, she parked at the visitors’ center and went in to use the restroom, taking a good look around while she was there, but no one shouted, “Halt, FBI!” and none of the employees looked anywhere as well built or fluid as Joe. Which may have accounted for her slight flare of disappointment and the reluctance with which she left the building and proceeded on foot to the camping area where Malcolm was supposed to be waiting.

She found him at the farthest campsite very near the lake. An old canoe sat at the lake’s edge with a life vest and both oars stowed neatly inside. Malcolm had set up his tent in the hollow of a Y-shaped rock wall, and was sitting under a live oak in a director’s chair reading what looked like theWall Street Journal. He looked up when her foot crunched loudly on a dead branch. His gaze skimmed over her, then peered beyond her, presumably to make sure she was alone.

“I hope that’s not your getaway vehicle,” she said with a nod toward the canoe. “I’d feel a lot better if you had that yacht you had custom built moored here. Or that race car you sponsored stashed behind one of these trees.”

“Me, too,” he said, folding up the paper and standing. “But at the moment, I can’t even access that old dirt bike I saved all my paper route money for.” He stood as she approached. She took in the rumpled Levi’s and plain white T, which were a far cry from the two-thousand-dollar suit he’d been wearing the last time they met for dinner, and wondered if he’d chosen the ensemble as camouflage or out of necessity.

They hugged, but both their bodies remained stiff with tension. Nikki felt as if she were in some bad movie of the week when he ran his hands up and down her sides.

“Sorry,” he said when he’d finished patting her down. “I just wanted to be sure you weren’t wearing a wire or anything.”

She stepped back so that she could look him in the eye. His were bloodshot and weary. He was overdue for a shave and a haircut. A bath wouldn’t have hurt, either. “Funny, since I’m not the one who’s been lying and stealing.”

He looked surprised, and once again she wondered what he’d been expecting. “Have a seat,” he said, setting up a second director’s chair, keeping the one with its back to the rock face.

She sat. It was hot and humid, with the loamy smell of lake and forest, but not unbearable in the shade of the oak. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d come,” he said. “But then I figured you’d never let me down before. There’s no one I trust more.”

“I used to feel that way about you, too, Malcolm. Until you stole everything I had.” She said it quietly, a replay of their whispered Fourth of July conversation.

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