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Chapter One
Jenni held her breath as the bridge approached. She was so close now.
The air left her at last when she crested the top of the new bridge and began the sloping descent to Pea Island, the name for the north end of Hatteras Island. She allowed herself to slow down and take in the view over Oregon Inlet. Thank God she was here, even if the pain she was feeling inside didn’t match the beauty outside the window.
It was a beautiful April afternoon, the sun creating diamonds on the surface of the water. The old Coast Guard station was like a postcard in the afternoon sun.
She managed to laugh at herself for holding her breath as she drove up and then over the highest point of the new bridge. It was a holdover from her childhood when her family traversed the old bridge which was much steeper and narrower. She and her brothers and sisters would hold their breath as their dad drove them across that arch, seeing who could make it the longest.
Back then, she had dreams of the woman she would become. She saw someone who had self-confidence and achieved great things. She would be carefree and happy. She was sure of those things back then.
With those thoughts, tears came to her eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks.
But now she was on Hatteras Island and with that exhale she relaxed. It was going to be a wonderful weekend.
It had to be.
She needed this long weekend to try to finally put the past year behind her. The separation and divorce from Compton Lee Satterwaite III, or Compy, had exhausted her and changed her in ways she was ashamed to admit.
They’d been married five years. In the past year, she’d spent too many hours beating herself up for everything she had or had not done to make the marriage work.
Despite family and friends sharing that they’d had misgivings from the first—why didn’t they share those thoughts with her a long time ago? Logically, she knew that both parties in any divorce had to share blame, but she convinced herself it was all her fault.
She moved back home to Raleigh, found a position in financial development at a non-profit she had always admired,and promptly, as her best friend Caitlin said, fell off the face of the earth.
It was Caitlin who begged her to take this long weekend to come to Hatteras, to stay at her mom’s beach house in Frisco, and to have some long overdue heart-to-heart talks over a bottle of wine.
Jenni suddenly banged her fist on the steering wheel.
She was supposed to text Caitlin at Whalebone Junction to let her know she was a little over an hour away.
Caitlin’s mom, Barb Thomas, was an excellent cook, but she was a stickler for wanting everyone to be present the minute food came off the stove or out of the oven. She declared that for each minute it sat on the table, some of the flavor disappeared, and she wouldn’t be blamed.
Jenni glanced in the rearview mirror to see if there was much traffic. She thought she’d just slow down and gently pull off to the side, being careful to keep two tires on the pavement and out of the sand.
Just as she started to pull over, a large truck, which must have been in her blind spot, came barreling by and caught her totally by surprise.
She jerked the steering wheel and groaned inwardly as she felt the two wheels on the left leave Highway 12 and settle unhappily in the sand.
This can’t be, it just can’t. She shook her head.Compy would assume I would do something like this. I…
She forcefully stopped that train of thought.
It didn’t matter any longer what Compy thought or didn’t think.
At this moment, she had to figure out a way to get unstuck.
She’d read somewhere that floor mats were a good solution for tire traction, and she was about to get out of the car and beginthe process of trying to extricate herself from the situation when a vehicle slowed down, coming up beside her.
Her spirit sank when she realized it was a large pickup with more fishing rods than she’d ever seen in her life.
A window rolled down and music, loud music, assaulted her ears.
She could see four guys in the truck. The driver was motioning to the guy next to him to turn the music down.
“Hey there, looks like you are going to need a tow,” the driver said as he leaned across the passenger in the front seat who was guzzling down a beer. “Want some help?”
Jenni’s knee-jerk response was to say, “What do you think?”but she held her tongue and said, “No thanks, I think I can handle this. I stopped to send a text and a truck came by and I was startled and…”
