My phone vibrated with a text from Dr. Wilton asking what time I’d be in the office today. I picked up the phone and used Siri to text back. “Fixing a tampered cage. Should be in by eleven.”
A seagull glided overhead, and I flattened the accelerator on the back wall of the cart, racing along the coastline. I breathed in the salt air and soaked in the words inked on my arm, One with the sea.
Chapter 3
Tate
“I don’t care about the money, Mr. Williams.” The phone burned against my ear. Lengthy conversations did that.
“It’s not that simple, Adrian. Your brother is contesting the will. If you want to negotiate with your brother out of court, that is your choice. You can tell him what you want and see if he’ll drop the suit. But I strongly recommend you get your own counsel before doing so. Let a lawyer negotiate for you. I shouldn’t even say that much, but I’ve known you your whole life. Be smart about this.” A fatherly tone colored his words. Truth be told, I couldn’t even remember what Mr. Williams looked like. I knew he’d been at our house a few times growing up, but his face blended with all the other faces of my parents’ friends who stopped by on random occasions.
“I thought the only thing Gregg cared about was the business. He wants my business shares. I don’t have a problem with that. We all know the only reason she left half to me is she was aiming to be fair. She wasn’t thinking about the business.” I pinched the bridge of my nose while watching the waves crash in the distance, a calming and focusing technique I learned in Asia.
“Adrian, when you find your own counsel, have them contact me. Please, son, obtain counsel.”
I knew he was stepping on lines he shouldn’t be, all out of some sense of obligation to look out for the kid he remembered. There was a good chance he remembered tousling my hair, teasing me about how much I’d grown, or maybe I looked like his son. Or maybe he felt an obligation to my parents. But I wished he’d let me settle and put this ugly fight behind me.
“I will. Thank you, Mr. Williams.”
I let my grandmother’s screen door slam behind me and headed to the beach. Once the sand filtered between my toes, I lifted my cell out of my pocket and called Gabe. I disconnected from this world over a decade ago. But Gabe was a childhood friend. The kind of friend you could go a decade without talking to and pick right back up where you left off.
“Goldman Sachs, Gabriel Chesterton’s office.” The words came out in rapid-fire, spoken like a no-nonsense New Yorker.
“Hi. This is Adrian Tate. Is he available?”
“He’s in a meeting. I can let him know you called.”
“Great. Thank you.”
“What did you say your name is?”
The ocean water circled around my ankles, cooling my bare feet, as I finished giving my information to an assistant who sounded skeptical her boss would return my call. My tight, sore muscles cursed at me for declining Alice’s guest room. This body of mine was getting too old for lumpy sofas. But until I got the AC working, the downstairs sofa had my name on it. Besides, the mildew smell on the upper floor approached unbearable.
I stretched my legs along the waking beach, passing families staking out umbrellas and all forms of contraptions designed to create shade as they settled in for a day in the sun. One older man held his dog’s Frisbee, and the moment I walked past him, the black lab leaped over the incoming wave in hot pursuit of the flying plastic disc.
I slowed as I neared the peak where the Cape Fear and the Atlantic Ocean intermingled. A furor of crashing waves denoted the long sandbar formed by the swirling waters. Stories of families venturing out onto the sandbar and getting caught far out by a fast-rising tide served as island urban legends, and fuel for my grandmother’s warnings to always be aware. Even close to shore, the almighty ocean claimed lives.
“There’s a riptide warning today, boys. Be careful.” Her words floated across the breeze, as crisp and clear as if she stood beside me.
I cast a glance back toward the Shoals Club. The Cape Cod inspired architecture sat majestically on the point, above wispy blades of grass blowing in the wind on the dunes. Back in my youth, the club didn’t exist. Now it featured multiple pools overlooking the ocean, and my grandmother had told me in one of her emails the restaurants were worth the money.
Her mostly unanswered emails weighed heavily. I always meant to sit down and send her a long response. “Will you send me a letter telling me what your average day is like?” Only once did she ask. If I’d just done it when she asked, I could have told her about life on the seas tracking a ship, watching dots on radars. The fear one of those dots might be a modern-day pirate ship. I held back, not wanting to worry her. That was before my days became the stuff of nightmares.
A drumming beat pulled me out of my introspection, and I cast a glance up the beach. A young woman knelt in the sand near the point, pounding a white square contraption with orange plastic rectangles into the sand with a rubber hammer. She wore a yellow string bikini top and short denim cut-offs. Her long hair flowed down her back, but only the lighter blonde strands took flight in the wind. The bulk of her hair was wet, weighted down from her most recent dip in the ocean.
A younger man clambered
