Excerpt: All Roads Lead to Home (or Prints of Tides)

Ex#2

Alone again, Melody headed down to the southern tip of the beach. She snapped tons of shots of the water, passing skiffs heading out for a hard days work, and beach trash tangled in seaweed. Every few minutes the sunlight changed, getting higher, brasher, which incited Melody to try to capture that feel as well.

Once she reached the point, she slipped off her sneakers and waded up to her calfs in the gentle, swirling water. She bent at the waist and pulled the camera to her eye. Two fiddler crabs, picking at a dime-sized clump of mystery meat, gingerly bringing claw to mouth over and over. A speckled gray gull, pecking in the shallows for minnows, lifting each foot high, like it loathed getting its feet wet. It was life made simple, and she could feel the peace settling in her bones.

Getting hungry and dry-mouthed, Melody headed back toward her car, following the waterline of the tidal marsh, instead of crossing back over the gravel drive to the beach side. It was quieter on the inlet side, the ebb and flow, the rhythm of nature. It lulled her into thinking, and she spent the next several minutes trying to make sense of how her life had turned out thus far.

She was jobless, homeless and the talk of every channel on television. She was getting a little better with her anxiety, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just being away from the pressure of Hollywood. At least she wasn’t penniless, she was pretty sure. She did need to sit down and take a look at all her statements soon though. She couldn’t rely on Sam to monitor bank levels and shift things around if need be.

Twice she’d been dumped in the cruelest possible ways by men. What was the old saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. She wanted, more than ever in her life, to just give up on men. As much as she hated it though, men were a necessary evil. Any hot-blooded woman rapidly approaching her sexual prime had to have contact with a man at some point, unless she had a secret stash of batteries.

Melody wasn’t a big do-it-yourselfer though, for the same reason that restaurant steaks were always better than the ones she made at home. Maybe she’d swear off men entirely, and just become a reclusive old cat lat. Or start dating women.

The last thought left Melody, a life-long heterosexual, flustered. So much so, that she didn’t see it until she’d stumbled and fallen over something in her path. She lifted her head, moving slowly to test out her limbs for damage, and there, less than four inches from her face was the mottled blue-gray hand of a corpse.

Ex. #1
“You keep treating fans like that, and someone’s going to have you committed.”

Suddenly not smiling, Melody looked up from her book-shield to see the personal-space reporter sitting two chairs down, tapping away at his laptop. Coincidence, surely not. “Are you following me Mr.— um, sorry I didn’t catch your name earlier…”

“You can call me Wayde,” Personal-space held out his hand, “I’m with the Associated Press”

Not wanting to seem rude, Melody shook his hand, if weakly and disinterested. “AP, huh. Wow. I would have pegged you for The Inquisitor. Since when are you guys interested in the lowly goings-on of has-been actresses? Shouldn’t you be writing a story on something newsworthy, like how laptops can lead to male sterility? You could give it a catchy headline, like Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Wifi.”

Wayde touched his hand to his chest, feigning a wounded heart before shifting the laptop away from his crotch and onto the arm of his chair. “I supposed I deserve that.” He went back to his hunt and peck routine.

He was probably recording verbatim what she’s just said. So much for maintaining her sanity in the public eye. She pretended to read while keeping one eye on Mr. Reporter. Was she just being paranoid, or was he following her? Just the fact that he was seated in her section was too much of a coincidence. He was probably even on her flight. God, she hoped not. The absolute last thing that she needed was a member of the press following her home. She’d been careful to keep her past separate from her present, and she was severely uncomfortable with the two inter-mingling. It was sort of like the husband and the lover meeting by chance and hitting it off— uncomfortable for all involved.

The whole point of going home was to rest, recoup, and figure out just what she was going to do from here on out. It just wouldn’t do if the world followed her home to wallow with her. Wallowing was a solitary experience, dammit!

“Are you going anywhere particular, or do you just hang out in airports waiting for unhinged actresses to make a scene?” Make jokes to keep the tone light and non-confrontational, good idea, she thought.

Without looking up from his laptop, hands hovering over the keyboard, Wayde replied, “Actually, I’m going home for a long-overdue visit with relatives. Two weeks of bar-b-cues and fishing in the Chesapeake Bay…I can almost smell the saltwater.”

Melody could smell it too, which was not a good thing. “The Bay, really? Would I know the town?” She clasped her hands to keep from fidgeting. Let it be somewhere in Maryland or Delaware. Pretty please?

Wayde smirked, started typing again.

That bastard, he’s toying with her. She was pissed, but oddly enough, she was beginning to like him just a little bit. Mysteries could be fun as long as you recognized them for what they are. What sucks is when you think you know something and it turns out that you really don’t.

Back to not reading her book, but just one more glance. He really was an attractive man— strong jaw, clean-cut, an out-door loving tan, and if she wasn’t mistaken, he was wearing some sort of cologne that said “carefully now, little lady, come any closer and I won’t be able to control myself.” Christ, had she just thought that, or were there voices in her hung-over head? Horny voices at that.

“You probably have never heard of the town.”

So, now he was talking to her? “Try me” she said nonchalantly, not lifting her nose from her book. See, she knew how to play as well.

“You ever see the movie Misty of Chincoteague?” he asked. When she didn’t reply he continued, “Well, this tiny island off the coast of Virginia has these wild ponies that were said to have come from a sunken Spanish Galleon and…”

“That’s nice.” Melody soothed, sounding so much like her mother half-listening to one of her father’s rambles that is was oh, so scary.

Wayde ignored the slight, either immune to indifference or legitimate in his vacation excitement. “Well, my parents retired a few miles from there to beach-comb and catch some fish. At least they picked a good vacation spot.”

Chincoteague, how lovely. They’d be practically neighbors. Well, not exactly, but the Eastern Shore was small enough that it was very likely that he’d get wind of her location and pop on over for a little glimpse into the past of Melody Kerr, along with a dozen other reporters and photographers.