Topsail Sundays

  Topsail Sundays

  by

  Kathi Daley

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Katherine Daley

  Version 1.0

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 1

  When I was in college, I met a man named Raphael Vargas. Our pairing was one of convenience rather than love or friendship. He’d recently returned to the States after spending a year in Tibet and needed a place to stay, and my roommate had unexpectedly decided to drop out of college just a few days before the beginning of our junior year, leaving me with an extra bedroom in need of a tenant.

  Despite the fact that we were very different, Raphael and I clicked from the beginning. He was a deeply spiritual man who seemed to take each new day as it came, accepting the good with the bad, never questioning what was to be, or forcing an outcome that didn’t seem to occur naturally, while I, on the other hand, was an ambitious student who obsessively studied while frantically scratching my way to the top of whatever pile I was currently trying to conquer.

  Raphael studied art and philosophy, while I studied mathematics and probability theory. While he spent his days meditating and walking the gardens at the university, I spent my days in the library, cramming for whichever presentation or exam was next on my list of items to deal with and then move on from. Yet setting aside our differences, he and I shared an understanding and intimacy I’d shared with very few people in my life.

  My relationship with Raphael was a short one. He died due to complications from a heart defect almost a year to the day after we met. Looking back, I can almost admire his acceptance of what was to be. I’m not sure I would have reacted to impending death in quite the same way. In fact, I’m quite certain that if it had been me in need of a transplant, I would most likely have spent every waking moment focused on that one pursuit until I either achieved my goal or perished trying.

  I thought of Raphael often during the endless months of waiting after my twin sister, Kayla, was critically injured in an auto accident that had left her comatose. I wanted, like Raphael, to find peace and serenity in a difficult situation, and, like Raphael, I wanted to accept that the universe had a plan that was not mine to manipulate or question, but mostly, I wanted to find silence within the chaos and to know everything was exactly as it was meant to be.

  Instead, my life was steeped in anger and desperation. At the time, giving in to the inevitable seemed impossible; fighting for Kayla had appeared to be the only thing to do. I cried, I argued, I bargained, and I spent every minute by her side, but in the end, none of that had mattered. She’d died, and I’d been forced to continue my life with only half a soul.

  God, I missed her.

  I listened to the gulls on the beach outside my window as I sat up in bed. Picking up the notebook I’d been reading the previous evening from the table beside me, I ran my finger over the handwriting on the cover, which said Private Property of Kelly Green. I thought about the nine-year-old who’d used the hundred-page, three-hole-punched notebook to pen her most intimate thoughts and dreams. I thought about the childlike wonder I’d brought to my writing as I stayed up late into the night, building my plan to conquer a world I was certain contained nothing but unlimited potential and unmet possibilities.

  Perhaps I no longer possessed the heart of a child or the faith that springs from unconstrained trust, but it had still been fun going back through the words scribbled by my own hand, reliving those magical summers when Kayla and I were exploring the world through the eyes of innocence. While Kayla had preferred images she drew or captured with her camera, I’d chosen to record my experiences through the written word.

  There were a lot of different memories contained within the old notebooks I’d left behind, both good and bad, but the passage I’d read the previous evening had to do with a huge fight between Kayla and me. A fight, I reminded myself, I’d all but forgotten about until words scribbled angrily by my much-younger self showed me that not everything had happened exactly as I remembered.

  The argument came into being after I’d found a puppy wandering alone on the beach. We looked for her owner but were unable to find them, and I wanted so desperately to keep her. But Kayla had been bitten by a neighbor’s pet when she was seven and had been deathly afraid of dogs ever since. I’d begged my dad to allow me to keep her anyway, insisting that Kayla would eventually conquer her fear and learn to love the fluffy dog as much as I did. Our dad was less certain and didn’t want to traumatize Kayla any more than she’d already been, so he chose Kayla’s fear over my desire for companionship and found the pup a home with one of the locals he knew in town.

  I really can’t remember a time when I’d been madder at Kayla than I was in that moment.

  Going back through my journal entries from that summer, I couldn’t help but relive that anger and pain. At the time, I thought Kayla was the worst sister on earth and that my life was ruined forever. I was sure I’d never be happy again. I remember hating Kayla as I cried myself to sleep night after night, certain that a terrible injustice had occurred, and the dog really had been destined to be mine.

  Of course, if I’d known then what was to come, perhaps I wouldn’t have spent so much time being angry about things that really didn’t matter, in favor of spending more time with the sister I lost much too soon.

  I set down the journal, got up out of the bed, walked across the room, and glanced out the window of the bedroom of the summerhouse my family had owned when Kayla and I were growing up. My mother sold the house to an investor after my father passed away. He’d turned the large, single-family home into a vacation rental, which had been enjoyed by many families over the years. One of my best friends, a woman named Carrie Davidson, had rented the house for the four remaining members of the Summer Six, the childhood group I’d grown up with so that we could all get together for a reunion of sorts to remember both Kayla and our good friend, Peggy Amundson, who’d disappeared forever when she was sixteen.

  Once the dark sky began to take on hues of pink and purple, I realized I needed to stop daydreaming and begin getting ready for my morning run with Ryder and Baja. Ryder West was Carrie’s little brother. I’d considered him a pest when we were children, but as most children do, we’d grown up, and now, when I looked at Ryder through the eyes of an adult, I realized my feelings for him had matured as well.

  If I was perfectly honest, my expanding feelings for Ryder were both unexpected and confusing. On the one hand, he was still Carrie’s much younger brother, but on the other hand, the boy I’d considered a pesky little twerp had grown into a handsome and successful businessman who created both excitement and nervousness in me as I donned my shorts, sports bra, tank top, and running shoes.

  Since I’d been on the island, Ryder and I had settled into somewhat of a routine. We both liked to run along the same stretch of beach early in the morning before I went about my day, and he headed into town, where he owned a veterinary hospital and served as mayor. We
’d meet at a designated spot at six a.m., run—mostly without speaking—for an hour, then each return to our own lodging to shower and dress for the day. While running silently next to a man you’d known since he was born might not sound all that intimate, with Ryder, the experience of gliding along the beach as the sun rose into the sky, had become one of the most meaningful and intimate encounters I’d had for a very long time.

  “You made it.” Ryder smiled as his dog, Baja, ran up to greet me. “I wasn’t sure you would with Nora arriving yesterday. I figured the three of you would stay up late, talking into the night.”

  “Actually, we had an early night,” I said as we approached the waterline, where the damp sand made it easier to run. “Nora’d had a busy couple of weeks getting Shelby settled at college, and we could see she was exhausted.”

  I’d decided not to bring up Nora’s personal issues; they really weren’t mine to share, though I would admit that the problems in her marriage had been on my mind ever since she’d shared her struggle with Carrie and me the evening before.

  “It’s been forever since I’ve seen her,” Ryder said. “How is she?”

  “She’s good. I think having her baby getting ready to go off to college has been hard on her, but I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  “I guess the three of you must have plans for today.”

  “We do, but not necessarily together. Carrie and Nora are planning to head over to the house to continue packing up Carrie’s things for the move to the condo, but I’m going to meet with Sam about the missing girls.”

  Sam Stone, another old friend, was currently the island’s sheriff.

  “Did Sam find something new?”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “Maybe. If you remember, Sam found a pattern of girls from the island who’d gone missing every five years, beginning with Peggy in 1995.”

  “I remember,” Ryder said. “He found a series of blond-haired, blue-eyed girls who’d either run away or been reported missing and were never seen again.”

  “Exactly. Except for 2010. He was able to track down girls who’d gone missing though they hadn’t really fit the profile, so we’d been assuming the girl from 2010 was still out there, waiting to be linked to the case.”

  He wiped his brow with the back of his arm as sweat began to bead on his tanned skin. “And you found something?”

  “Maybe. Last night, when we were sharing our theory with Nora, she told us that her family summered on the island in 2010. It seems Denver, who’d just turned fourteen at the time, met a surfer named Cherry, who was sixteen going on seventeen, and they really hit it off. They’d made plans to get together for a picnic on the beach her last night on the island, but she never showed. Denver assumed he’d been stood up, but given the fact that Cherry was a blond-haired, blue-eyed sixteen-year-old, I have to wonder if she might not be the missing link we’ve been looking for.”

  “So, what does Sam think?”

  “He thought we were on to something. Cherry was on the island on her own, so she hadn’t been warring with her family as the other girls were, but otherwise, she seems to fit the profile. He was going to dig around to see what he could find out. Nora didn’t know Cherry’s last name and was, in fact, pretty sure Cherry wasn’t even her real first name. She was an emancipated minor who’d grown up in the foster care system, so Sam wasn’t sure what sort of records he’d be able to find. Chances are, because she seemed to be mostly alone in the world, no one was missing her, so no one filed a missing persons report.”

  “It does sound like a hard clue to follow up on, but I also agree the clue has promise. The real question is whether or not figuring out what happened in the past is going to help Sam prevent a girl from going missing this summer. It’s already late into July. It seems like whatever is going to happen is going to happen soon.”

  I blew out a long breath. “Yeah. Sam and I have discussed the crazy-tight timeline he’s dealing with. If the pattern stays true to the past, the girl who’ll go missing in 2020 will disappear in the next week or two.”

  Ryder and I finished our run and said our goodbyes after agreeing to call each other later in the day. He invited me to his renovated boathouse for dinner, which was something I both wanted to make happen and wanted to avoid, depending on my present mindset. Still, I promised to check my schedule and let him know when would be the best time, which at the very least, was something I’d need to do.

  As I jogged alone back toward the house, I tried to sort out my conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I liked Ryder. He was fun and interesting, and I was sure an intimate dinner on his oceanfront deck would be an experience I’d remember for a very long time. On the other hand, as I’d reminded myself time and time again, he was Carrie’s little brother, and in my mind, that made moving our relationship toward one that included a sexual component feel awkward.

  And then there was the fact that he was firmly rooted here on the island, while I wasn’t rooted anywhere at the moment. I hadn’t worked in over a year and knew that the time was quickly approaching when I’d need to deal with that subject and make some decisions about my future. I had to wonder if exploring the obvious chemistry between us wouldn’t just lead to heartache on both our parts.

  I’d pretty much decided that having the just-friends talk with him was going to be an absolute must, but then I thought of his kind smile, understanding eyes, and strong hands, which caused a little tingle up my spine just thinking about those hands gently caressing my body. I thought of the passion I’d experienced when he’d kissed me at the beach two nights before, and considered my deep longing to take the passion we’d shared to its logical conclusion. Maybe I’d been overthinking things. I was an adult. He was an adult. It was natural to explore whatever attraction Ryder and I might share. At least that was the story I was telling myself as I neared the house I was sharing with Carrie and Nora.

  “How was your run?” Nora asked after I’d kicked off my sandy shoes, poured myself a mug of coffee, and settled onto the deck overlooking the sea where Carrie and she were already sitting and talking.

  “Exceptional,” I answered. “This truly is a spectacularly awesome day.”

  “And how was Ryder?” Carrie asked, with a gleam in her eye that suggested she might have figured out there was more going on between us than running.

  “He’s good. He has a busy day at work, but he’s good. Baja is good as well.” I looked at Nora. “Baja is Ryder’s dog, if you haven’t met.”

  “Yes, we actually have met, although it was quite a few years ago. Matt and I were on the island visiting Carl and Carrie, and the four of us took a drive up the coast to see the whale migration. Ryder was still in the process of renovating the boathouse, and he invited us to stop by for a look at the project and a glass of wine. He really does have a lovely location.”

  “I’ve always thought the beach where the boathouse is located is one of the nicest,” I agreed. “Ryder told me the family who owns the property is committed to keeping the land natural and undeveloped, so he doesn’t have to be afraid that condos are going to go in right on top of him.”

  “The island needs condos,” Carrie countered. “But I know what you are saying. It would be a shame if anyone built on that property. One of the things I like most about the complex where I bought my own condo is that it is a small unit, with nothing but open space on either side.”

  “I can’t wait to see it,” Nora said. “After we grab a load from the house, of course.”

  “So, the two of you are heading over to the house to continue with the packing?” I asked.

  “We are,” Carrie confirmed. “I want to get this move behind me, and I’m as excited to show Nora the condo as she is to see it. You are welcome to come along if you want.”

  “Thanks,” I answered, “but I’m afraid I have other plans. I have a meeting with Sam this morning, and then I’ve made plans to meet with Dottie Pemberton for lunch.” Dottie was a woman in her seventies who’d lived most of her
life on the island and was friends with my mother when we spent summers here in the eighties and nineties.

  “I haven’t seen Dottie for ages,” Nora said. “How is she?”

  “She’s good,” I answered. “I ran into her on the ferry on my way to the island, and we chatted for a bit. We didn’t have a lot of time to catch up, so we promised to get together for lunch while I was here.”

  “Well, tell her hi for me,” Nora said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve run into her. I understand her husband passed away.”

  I nodded. “Three years ago. Do the two of you have plans for dinner?”

  “Nothing specific,” Carrie answered. “Why do you ask?”

  “Ryder invited me to come to the boathouse for dinner. Now that I am the official substitute on the racing team, he wanted to go over a few things with me in the event I have to sub for someone on the day of an actual race.”

  I’m not sure why I couldn’t just leave it at “Ryder invited me to dinner,” but I felt like I had to offer a reason along with the invitation. If I was going to explore this thing Ryder and I seemed to have going on between us, I was going to need to find a way to get over my discomfort about dating Carrie’s little brother.

  “Nora and I will probably just hang out here,” Carrie responded. “Or we might have dinner in town. Either way, I think it is a good idea to spend some time with Ryder. Seems the two of you might need to explore this new arrangement of yours.”

  I almost choked on my coffee when Carrie winked at Nora. Dang if the two of them hadn’t already talked about Ryder and me.

  “Okay. I’ll let him know to go ahead and plan on it,” I said, trying to hide the blush I was sure had covered my face. “I’m going to head in to shower,” I added, standing up. “I told Sam I’d be by around ten, and I don’t want to be late.”

  After I went up to my room, I called Ryder to confirm our dinner plans and then hopped into the shower. By the time I emerged from my room on the second floor, Nora and Carrie had each retired to their own suites to get ready for the day. I left them a note, letting them know I’d text them later and then headed out to my Porsche for the short drive into town.