“Oh, just go in the men’s room,” Julia grumbled. “There aren’t hardly any men here tonight. No straight men, that is.”

“There’s twice as many girls in the men’s room line,” Dorie said. “Come on, y’all, if I don’t get out of here right this minute, I’m gonna pop.”

“Might as well,” Ellis said, getting somewhat unsteadily to her feet. “They close at two. C’mon, Julia, let’s get little mama home.”

She tried to catch Ty’s eye as they were leaving the club, but there was still a crowd standing at the bar, and Dorie was tugging at her, urging her to hurry.

When they got back to Ebbtide, Dorie pulled the red van almost to the edge of the porch, put the car in park, and jumped out and raced for the front door, fumbling for her keys as she went.

Madison hesitated, getting out of the backseat of the van. She looked up at the silent house, and the dull, yellow glow of the porch light they’d left burning, and then back again at the end of the driveway, bathed in a pool of pale white from the street lamp. No cars drove past. It was eerily quiet, except for the thrum of cicadas.

For the tenth time, she pulled her cell phone from her purse to check for missed calls. Nothing. She frowned.

Ellis climbed out of the van in time to see Madison tuck her phone away.

“Maybe Adam changed his mind,” she offered.

“He should have been here by now,” Madison fretted. “Something’s wrong. I just know it. It’s not safe. If Don figures out I’m here…”

“He won’t,” Ellis assured her. “Anyway, Ty is friends with a sheriff’s deputy here. He was actually working the door at Caddie’s tonight. Ty promised he’d get the guy to drive past the house tonight and tomorrow in his sheriff’s cruiser. You know, just in case.”

“A sheriff’s deputy?” Madison shrugged. “I guess it couldn’t hurt.”

*   *   *

“Anybody hungry?” Dorie asked hopefully, standing in the kitchen doorway.

“After all that stuff we ate tonight?” Madison shook her head. “I guess you really are eating for two now.”

“She’s always been like that,” Julia said. “Ever since she was a kid. Eats like a little piggy and never gains an ounce.”

“What did you have in mind?” Ellis asked. “Have we got any dessert?”

“Fudgsicles and some store-bought pound cake and some strawberries,” Dorie reported.

“Okay, you talked me into it,” Julia relented. “All that dancing we did tonight has to have burned off a boatload of calories. And I’ll run off the rest in the morning.”

“I’m in,” Ellis said. “Madison?”

“Not me,” Madison said. “I’m turning in.” She turned and headed for the stairway, but then stopped, and came back into the kitchen.

“Hey, ladies,” she said shyly. “Thanks. I had a good time tonight. So thanks … for everything. Really. In case I forget to tell you tomorrow.”

Julia managed a crooked smile. “And Madison? I really am sorry about the, you know, uh…”

“Break-in?” Madison shrugged. “What break-in?”

*   *   *

Julia groaned and pushed away the half-eaten bowl of strawberries and cake. “Gawwd. Why did I let y’all talk me into eating this mess? I’m going to bed. Booker will be here tomorrow, and I’ve got to get my beauty sleep.”

“I’m coming too,” Dorie said, stacking the bowls in the sink. “You, Ellis?”

“I’ll be along,” Ellis said casually. “I think I’ll just tidy up in here a little bit.” It was after two, and she’d promised Ty she’d wait up for him. She had her cell phone on the counter, and kept eyeing it, waiting for his text.

“You don’t fool me, Ellis Sullivan,” Julia said, yawning again. “You’re waiting for a call from garage guy.”

“Actually,” Ellis admitted, “he said he’d text me when he was leaving the club.”

Julia gave Dorie an elaborate wink. “She’s gonna have to pay for all those free drinks one way or another.”

“You’re such a romantic, Julia,” Dorie said. She grabbed Julia’s hand and tugged. “C’mon. I’ll race you for the bathroom.”

38

Alone in the kitchen, Ellis washed, dried, and put away the dishes. She smiled as she traced the faded pattern of green leaves and pink rosebuds on the delicate gold-edged china. Such a sweet gesture on Ty’s part, giving them his grandmother’s dishes.

It was nearly 2:30 in the morning. To kill time, she got a bottle of spray cleaner and spritzed all the counters. Then she swept the floor, and finally, took the damp dish towel out to the back porch to dry on the makeshift clothesline the girls had rigged up between the weathered gray porch posts.

It was still unbelievably hot and humid outside. She glanced at the rusted Sunbeam Bread thermometer tacked to the wall beside the kitchen door. Eighty-six degrees! Still, she thought, glancing up at the deep, velvet sky, the stars were so plentiful and bright this time of night. Maybe she’d take a walk on the beach while she waited for Ty. She’d read a magazine article about how summertime was the season when sea turtles lumbered ashore all along the East Coast to lay eggs, and had even seen signs on the beach warning people not to disturb the turtle nests. Wouldn’t it be amazing if she came across a nest of sea turtle eggs? She ducked back into the house, grabbed her cell phone, and strolled down the boardwalk over the dunes.

Leaving her shoes at the bottom of the beach staircase, Ellis let her feet sink into the cool, damp sand. The tide was out. She walked to the water’s edge, letting the incoming waves tickle her ankles. She inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of salt and sun-baked sand, and started walking north, confident that she would not get lost or panicked this time.

She walked for fifteen minutes, zigzagging between the waterline and the dunes, before she saw it: two wavy, parallel lines in the sand, which crossed in a X shape, leading up to a sort of crater shape in the soft sand at the edge of a dune.

Ellis tiptoed over to the crater. The sand here had clearly been disturbed. Had she found a turtle nest? She looked back towards the water, wondering about the odd X-shaped lines, until it occurred to her that if she had indeed discovered a nest, maybe one track was from the turtle, making its way up to the dune line, and the other was the turtle’s return track to the ocean.

She knelt in the soft sand and peered down at the impression in the sand, holding her breath, as though even the softest sound might disturb what was under the sand. Should she touch it if it was a nest? And if it was a nest, and she did touch it, would that deter the mother sea turtle from returning to tend to its eggs? She frowned, wishing she knew more. She really wanted to feather the sand aside, to see if, by some miracle, there could be eggs there. She straightened and looked around, but the beach was deserted. As she looked up, she felt a drop of water on the back of her neck.

It had started to rain. Reluctantly, she stood up, brushing sand from her knees. She looked around for something to mark the nest, so that she could find it again in the morning. Finding a piece of a windbreak, she managed to wrench off a weathered wooden stake, and poked it into the sand a few inches from the nest.

“Okay, turtle babies,” she whispered, as the rain began to fall harder. “I’ll check back with you little guys later, okay?”

As she trotted back through the rain, she heard her cell phone ping, and looked down at the text message there.

I’M HERE. WHERE ARE U?

Ellis smiled, tucked the phone back into her pocket to keep it dry, and picked up her pace.

*   *   *

She was soaking wet and out of breath as she climbed the last step to the garage apartment deck. The light was on inside, and she tapped on the door. Ty opened it and laughed when he saw her bedraggled condition.

“Get lost again?” he asked, pulling her inside and out of the rain.

“No,” she said excitedly. “I was walking on the beach, and I saw these tracks in the sand. Ty, I think maybe I found a sea turtle nest!”