Whispers In The Dark by BJ James

Author:BJ James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

Eight

The beach was a narrow, primordial strip of sandy soil separating earth from this briny passage to the sea. One small part of thousands of miles of curling, meandering merges of land and water marking the beginning and the end of the Chesapeake.

At the edge of a salt marsh, a great blue heron splashed and fluttered as it speared a breakfast catch. Without turning or slowing his pace, Rafe identified the sound. One that had grown commonplace in the time he’d spent walking the shores of Valentina’s retreat. He wondered, apropos of nothing but a ranging, questioning mind, if there was a season of the year, or a country in the world in which this skinny-legged Ichabod did not stand watch over dawn.

He wondered, as well, if it were an unwritten dictum of man and life that a stroll on the beach, any beach, should offer succor for body and spirit. And as he wondered he understood, as he had each of the three mornings he’d walked this walk, why Valentina came back to it time and again after each call from Simon. Returning to recover, to recoup. If never truly healed.

On this, the day he meant to be the last on her small island, he found her where he knew he would always find her in this hour encompassing dawn and day. The curving easternmost point, the end of her mile long expanse of shore, drew her as inevitably, as surely, as if it were her lodestar. While the river churned and swirled on its way to empty into the broad expanse of the Greater Chesapeake, she stood at its edge, her slender figure delineated in perfect detail by dancing reflection, her face raised to the sun just lifting from the rimline of the horizon.

Loath to disturb her reverie and the thoughts that took her so far from him, he approached slowly, his footsteps soundless. Choosing his customary seat, he settled on a half-petrified log of driftwood washed on shore only God knew when, or from where. As light burst fully upon them, bright and white with hues of sunrise giving way to a clear cerulean sky, he waited.

Affronted by the intrusion, a red-jointed fiddler crab scuttled away. Its trail a telltale line of crumbling, shifting sand dotted with bits of white quartzite and black and cream-colored chert. From a neighboring mix of trees, in a great flapping of wings, a bald eagle lifted from an aerie sprawled among the towering, uppermost limbs of a dying conifer. A magnificent treasure, a beautiful spectacle, strafing silver-crested ripples.

While the eagle soared, tiny beach creatures and sand dwellers tied to the earth scurried and hurried in their fashion. Fish leapt, sparkling rainbows in the light. Shells washed from deeper water tumbled on shore. There were bird calls and bird-song raised in morning symphony. But none were the red-throated loon, rarest of the rare on the bay. Valentina’s favorite.

As he waited and watched, the lap of the tide and the distant sea kept the rhythm of the day.

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