Spring Break by Barbara Steiner

Author:Barbara Steiner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497628540
Publisher: Open Road Media

Chapter 13

Angie woke, surprisingly rested, after only a few hours of sleep. She remembered nothing after falling into bed. Perhaps exploring the ballroom and finding nothing — no one — there had taken away some of the fear she’d felt after hearing the voices and music several times.

The unknown was what was frightening. The musty, still-decorated ballroom was only sad, as if the family living here last had thrown one last farewell party before they moved. The party had faded to a memory for them. Angie felt as if she had seen that memory last night, and this morning she felt nothing but sadness. And, of course, loneliness.

She couldn’t remember ever feeling this empty, hollow core. Why did she feel it so intensely this week?

She knew the answer to her question. She admitted it while she waited for a pot of coffee to drip.

She was used to seeing Kerry and Chad together. They had been a couple for so long, she thought nothing of it. And she still had had Paula. But now one couple had become two. And she had met Val. For the first time she cared deeply about someone. The caring had happened so fast. What was it about him that touched her heart? That he, too, was alone? That he retreated so easily deep into a space inside himself that was so intense she could almost feel his loneliness?

Suddenly she knew she must find him.

She scribbled a note: Gone to look for Val. She slipped out the front door before anyone else was awake.

On the beach, she looked both ways. There was no sign of human life for as far as she could see in either direction. The birds were there, of course. They performed their morning ritual of searching for food on the beach or from the air.

Angie smiled and continued to walk. A brilliant sun rose on the eastern horizon, glancing off waves and dunes, but scarcely warming the morning. To the west, huge billows of clouds, blue tinged on the bottom, gray, then white with a hint of yellow, built, probably forecasting the rainy end to the week they had been promised.

Angie stared in the direction she walked and wondered how far she’d already come with no hint of a camp, no clue that anyone was living out here. She turned and stared out to sea, feeling even more lonely than when she’d left the house. Maybe some exercise would lift her mood. She pulled her sweatshirt over her head.

A slight breeze raised tiny bumps on her arms and legs and lifted the hairs on the back of her neck. She waded until the waves lapped at the bottom of her swimsuit; then she took a breath and dived into the next swell of greenish-blue water.

With long, strong strokes, she glided along the surface of the ocean with ease. She swam as far out as she had the first morning she was here, buoyant and energized by the salty sea. Then she floated, knowing the current was taking her in the direction she wanted to go.

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