“I thought he left,” Leigh said.
“He keeps a condo down by the Ritz, and in the condo he’s always got some young girl he met on the beach. He’s pushing fifty, the girls are usually half that. He’s a charmer, though, and can tell great stories about prison. Careful when you’re on the beach. Bob Cobb is always on the prowl.”
“I’ll write that down,” Mercer said with a smile.
“Who else can we talk about?” Myra asked, chugging.
“That’s enough for now,” Mercer said. “It will take some work to remember these.”
“You’ll meet them soon enough. They’re in and out of the bookstore and Bruce is always having folks over for drinks and dinner.”
Leigh smiled and set down her drink. “Let’s do it here, Myra. Let’s throw a dinner party and invite all of these wonderful people we’ve been trashing for the past hour. We haven’t hosted in some time and it’s always Bruce and Noelle. We need to officially welcome Mercer to the island. What do you say?”
“Great idea. Lovely idea. I’ll get Dora to cater and we’ll get the house cleaned. How about it, Mercer?”
Mercer shrugged and realized that it would be foolish to object. Leigh left to refresh her drink and fetch more wine. They spent the next hour talking about the party and haggling over the guest list. With the exception of Bruce Cable and Noelle Bonnet, every other potential invitee had baggage, and the more the better. It promised to be a memorable evening.
It was dark when Mercer finally managed to get away. They practically demanded that she stay for dinner, but when Leigh let it slip that there was nothing in the fridge but leftovers, Mercer knew it was time to go. After three glasses of wine she was not ready to drive. She roamed downtown and drifted with the tourists along Main Street. She found a coffee shop still open and killed an hour at the bar with a latte and a glossy magazine promoting the island, primarily its real estate agents. Across the street the bookstore was busy, and she eventually walked over and stared at the handsome display window but did not go inside. She ventured down to the quiet harbor, where she sat on a bench and watched the sailboats rock gently on the water. Her ears were still ringing from the avalanche of gossip she had just absorbed, and she chuckled at the visual of Myra and Leigh getting drunk and blowing smoke and growing more excited about the dinner party.
It was only her second night on the island, but she felt as though she was settling in. Drinks with Myra and Leigh would have that effect on any visitor. The hot weather and salty air helped ease the transition. And with no home to long for it was impossible to feel homesick. She had asked herself a hundred times what, exactly, she was doing there. The question was still around but it was slowly fading.
3.
High tide was at 3:21 a.m., and when it crested the loggerhead turtle slid onto the beach and paused in the sea foam to look around. She was three and a half feet long and weighed 350 pounds. She had been migrating at sea for over two years and was returning to a spot within fifty yards of where she had made her last nest. Slowly, she began to crawl, a slow, awkward, unnatural movement for her. As she labored along, pulling with her front flippers and pushing with more power with her rear legs, she paused frequently to study the beach, to look for dry land and for danger, for a predator or any unusual movement. Seeing none, she inched ahead, leaving a distinctive trail in the sand, one that would soon be found by her allies. One hundred feet ashore, at the toe of a dune, she found her spot and began flinging away loose sand with her front flippers. Using her cupped rear flippers as shovels, she began forming the body pit, a round shallow burrow four inches deep. As she dug she rotated her body to even the indentation. For a creature of the water, it was tedious work and she paused often to rest. When the body pit was finished she began digging even deeper to construct the egg cavity, a teardrop-shaped chamber. She finished, rested some more, then slowly covered the egg cavity with the rear of her body and faced the dune. Three eggs dropped at the same time, each shell covered with mucus and too soft and flexible to break upon landing. More eggs followed, two and three at a time. While laying, she didn’t move, but appeared to be in a trance. At the same time she shed tears, excreting salt that had accumulated.
Mercer saw the tracks from the sea and smiled. She carefully followed them until she saw the outline of the loggerhead near the dune. From experience, she knew that any noise or disturbance during nesting could cause the mother to abort and return to the water without covering her eggs. Mercer stopped and studied the outline. A half-moon peeked through the clouds and helped define the loggerhead.
The trance held; the laying continued without interruption. When the clutch held a hundred eggs, she was finished for the night and began covering them with sand. When the cavity was filled, she packed the sand and used her front flippers to refill the body pit and disguise the nest.
When she began moving, Mercer knew the nesting was over and the eggs were safe. She gave the mother a wide berth and settled into a dark spot at the toe of another dune, hidden in the dark. She watched as the turtle carefully spread sand over her nest and scattered it in all directions to fool any predators.
Satisfied her nest was safe, the turtle began her cumbersome crawl back to the water, leaving behind eggs she would never bother with again. She would repeat the nesting once or twice during the season before migrating back to her feeding ground, hundreds of miles away. In a year or two, maybe three or four, she would return to the same beach and nest again.
For five nights a month, from May through August, Tessa had walked this section of the beach looking for the tracks of nesting loggerheads. Her granddaughter had been at her side, thoroughly captivated by the hunt. Discovering the tracks had always been exciting. Finding a mother actually laying her eggs had been an indescribable thrill.
Now Mercer reclined on the dune and waited. The Turtle Watch volunteers would come along soon and do their work. Tessa had been the president of that club for many years. She had fought fiercely to protect the nests and many times had chastised vacationers for tampering with the protected areas. Mercer remembered at least two occasions on which her grandmother had called the police. The law was on her side, and that of the turtles, and she wanted it enforced.
That strong and vibrant voice was now silent, and the beach would never be the same, at least not for Mercer. She gazed at the lights of the shrimp boats on the horizon and smiled at the memories of Tessa and her turtles. The wind picked up and she folded her arms over her chest to stay warm.
In sixty days or so, depending on the temperature of the sand, the hatchlings would come to life. With no help from their mother, they would crack open their shells and dig out in a group effort that could take days. When the time was right, usually at night or in a rainstorm when the temperature was cooler, they would make a run for it. Together they would burst from the cavity, take a second to get oriented, then hustle down to the water and swim away. The odds were stacked against them. The ocean was a minefield with so many predators that only one baby turtle in a thousand would see adulthood.
Two figures were approaching at the shoreline. They stopped when they saw the tracks, then slowly followed them to the nest. When they were certain the mother was gone and the eggs had been laid, they studied the sight with flashlights, made a circle in the sand around it, and sunk a small stake with yellow tape. Mercer could hear their soft voices — two women — but was safely hidden from their view. They would return at daylight to secure the nest with wire fencing and signage, something she and Tessa had done many times. As they walked away, they carefully kicked sand over the turtle’s tracks to make them disappear.