Diamond Bay Read Free Page A

despite the heat. A glass of iced
tea sat constantly beside her elbow, and she sipped at it as she read.
    The geese honked peacefully as they waddled from one section of
grass to the other, herded by Ebenezer Duck, the cantankerous old leader. Once
there was an uproar when Ebenezer and Joe, the dog, got into a dispute over
which one had the right to the patch of cool green grass beneath the oleander
shrub. Rachel went to the screen door and shouted at her rambunctious pets to
be quiet, and that was the most exciting event of the day. That was the way
most of her days went during the summer. Things picked up during the fall, when
the tourist season began and her two souvenir shops in Treasure Island and
Tarpon Springs began doing a lively trade. With the journalism course her days
would be even busier than usual, but the summers were a time for relaxing. She
worked intermittently on her third book, feeling no great pressure to finish
it, since her deadline wasn't until Christmas and she was well ahead of
schedule. Rachel's energy was deceptive, because she managed to accomplish so
much without ever seeming to hurry.
    She was at home here, her roots deep in the sandy soil. The house
she lived in had been her grandfather's, and the land had been in the family
for a hundred and fifty years. The house had been remodeled in the fifties and
no longer resembled the original frame structure. When Rachel had moved in she
had renovated the inside, but the place still gave her a sense of permanency.
She knew the house and the land surrounding it as well as she knew her own face
in the mirror. Probably better, because Rachel wasn't given to staring at
herself. She knew the tall pine thicket in front of her and the rolling
grassland at her back, every hill and tree and bush. A path wound through the
pines and down to the beach where the Gulf waters rolled in. The beach was undeveloped here, partly because of the unusual roughness of the
shore, partly because the beachfront property was owned by people who had had
it for generations and weren't inclined to see condominiums and motels rise in
their faces. This was prime cattle country;
Rachel's property was almost surrounded by a huge ranch, owned by John
Rafferty, and Rafferty was as reluctant as she to sell any land for
development.
    The beach was Rachel's special haven, a place for walking and
thinking and finding peace in the relentless, eternal surge of the water. It
was called Diamond Bay because of the way the light splintered on the waves as
they crashed over the underwater boulders that lined the mouth of the little
bay. The water shimmied and glittered like thousands of diamonds as it rolled
to shore. Her grandfather had taught her to swim in Diamond Bay; sometimes it
seemed as if her life had begun in the turquoise water.
    Certainly the bay had been the center of the golden days of her
childhood, when a visit to Gramps's had been the most fun a young Rachel could
imagine. Then her mother died when Rachel was twelve, and the bay became her
permanent home. There was something about the ocean that had eased the
sharpness of her grief and taught her acceptance. She'd had Gramps, too, and
even now the thought of him brought a smile to her face. What a wonderful old
man he'd been! He
had never been too busy or too embarrassed to answer the sometimes awkward
questions an adolescent girl could ask, and had given her the freedom to test her
wings while still keeping her solidly grounded in common sense. He had died the year she'd finished college, but even death had
met him on his own terms. He had been tired and ill and ready to die, and he'd
done it with such humor and acceptance that Rachel had even felt a sort of
peace at his going. She
had grieved, yes, but the grief had been tempered by the knowledge
that it was what he had wanted.
    The old house had stood empty
then, while Rachel pursued her career as an investigative reporter in Miami . She had met and married B. B. Jones, and life