Lucky's Beach Read online

  Dedication

  To Janice

  Ardent supporter and friend

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Reading Group Guide

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Shelley Noble

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Julie Barlow looked over her students’ heads to the wall clock behind them. The minute hand clicked forward.

  It was the last day of school, the last five minutes to be precise, and Julie was the only one in her fourth-grade class at Hillsdale Progressive Elementary who was watching the clock.

  Sixteen nine-year-olds, heads bowed, were finishing up the last of their work: a questionnaire about their summer goals.

  Travel, enrichment classes, chess clubs, special workshops—even in summer, they were adding to their résumés. After all, they were in fourth grade and time was passing.

  She jumped when the bell buzzed. Watched the children she’d tried to guide and nurture for the last year gather up their iPads, iPhones, and backpacks. They filed by her desk, leaving their questionnaires in her inbox.

  The last to leave was Jimmy Marcuse, a quiet boy who had surprised them all by winning the county spelling bee. Spelling wasn’t really emphasized at Hillsdale Progressive. That’s what spell-check was for.

  “Looks like you’ll be having a busy summer,” Julie said, glancing at his questionnaire.

  “Yes, Ms. Barlow. I leave for space camp next week.”

  “Space camp, that sounds exciting.”

  “I have a lot of studying to do first. They don’t usually take fourth graders.”

  “That is an achievement. Is your family planning a vacation?”

  “My parents are taking my brother to look at colleges, so he can decide where to apply for early admission. I’m staying home and taking a digital media workshop while they’re gone.”

  “Oh, you don’t want to go see the sights?”

  “He already knows where he wants to go. I don’t see why they have to go look at them.”

  “There are probably some other great things to see and do.”

  He gave her a look so sympathetic that Julie flinched.

  “Well, maybe I’ll see you at the pool this summer.”

  “We have our own pool. Besides, in August I have soccer boot camp.”

  “That sounds fun. What position do you play?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Defense, probably. It’s really hot in August. You get sweaty and there are bugs.”

  “True.”

  “But Dad says it’s important to have a well-rounded résumé if I want to get into a top school.”

  Julie smiled. She wanted to say, But you’re in fourth grade. There’s time—you should be having fun over the summer, but she didn’t. Julie had been just like him at his age, always achieving, always with the future in mind. She was like him now.

  She followed him down the hall to the exit, held the door open while he stepped into the sunshine.

  “Jimmy.”

  He looked back over his shoulder but didn’t slow down.

  “Never mind, have a good summer.”

  She stood at the door watching as he walked down the sidewalk and got into the front passenger seat of a silver BMW. Watched as the car drove away, Jimmy’s head already bent over his phone or his tablet, school and last year’s teacher forgotten as he planned for the next step toward a brilliant future.

  Julie wanted to run after the car and say, There’s more to life. Hard work doesn’t guarantee a perfect future. Spend time with your family; they’re the most important thing in the world.

  But who was she to give him that advice? She’d been raised by a single mother and a sometimes uncle.

  Her mother had worked her whole life to give Julie a secure future, but Julie hadn’t had the advantages of most of her students, certainly not the same technology at her fingertips. At nine, most of them had more experience in the world than she had.

  She’d always wanted to be a teacher, guiding young minds, introducing them to the world of possibilities, and giving them the tools to achieve their dreams.

  But had she done anything this year beyond the syllabus? Opened them to any new ideas? Showed them something they couldn’t see without her? At least bring a balance to their lives? She was afraid she knew the answer.

  That’s why she’d applied for an educational leave of absence for the following year. She knew if she just had new experiences, a fresh outlook; if she could just broaden her own horizons, learn new methodology, she could make a real difference in their lives. Their whole lives.

  But her application had been denied.

  And now Julie Barlow was about to do the most reckless thing she’d ever done. Because she had to do something to fulfill her own dream.

  She returned to her classroom, opened her desk drawer, and with trembling fingers took out the letter of resignation she’d written the night before.

  Her mother would be disappointed. But she would understand. In time.

  Julie marched resolutely down the hall toward the principal’s office.

  Halfway there, Sara Olins came out of her classroom. “Oh good, you’re just who I need. You have a minute, don’t you?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, but steered Julie inside.

  “I can’t get this mural down by myself without tearing it, which would be such a shame.”

  Julie looked at the wall. Ten feet of second-grade depictions of “People in Our Neighborhood.” She pulled over a stepladder. “I’ll release the tape, you hold the edges.”

  By the time they’d rolled it up, wrapped it in plastic, and found a place for it in the closet, the principal had left for the day.

  Julie stood outside his door, half defeated, half relieved. What had she been thinking? She’d worked her whole life for this.

  She tore up the letter right there.

  But the original was still in a file on her laptop. And she wouldn’t delete it. Not just yet.

  Chapter 1

  Two Weeks Later

  Vacation. It couldn’t get here soon enough, thought Julie, but looking out the window wouldn’t make Kayla and Aggie arrive any earlier; her two best friends since forever were always late. Notoriously late.

  Girl Scouts, soccer camp, junior prom, the vacations they’d been taking together since college—they’d never yet arrived anywhere on time. Even as teachers the two of them were always running into the classroom along with the bell.

  Julie had been doing a lot of waiting lately, for school to end, for vacation to begin. For something to happen. She needed this vacation to figure out how to get her life back on track.

  She turned from the window and made one last mental sweep of her living room. Lamps unplugged, laptop packed, cell in purse, extra chargers in her suitcase. Printer off. Desk . . . not cleared.

  The stack of
travel brochures she’d been collecting for the last two years and that she’d meant to recycle the night before still sat there, a painful reminder of all the places she wouldn’t be going during the next school year. She’d put them out in the bin now.

  She wouldn’t need them anymore, now that she’d been denied a leave of absence, and it was time she stopped thinking about what might have been.

  Recycle bin, she reminded herself.

  A prolonged honk jarred Julie back to the here and now.

  At last. Vacation had arrived and—she glanced at her watch—only seventeen minutes late, practically early.

  She hurried across the room and opened the door just as an electric-blue SUV stopped at the curb and Kayla and Aggie jumped out of the car. They were both in vacation mode, in short shorts and tees. Kayla was beanpole thin with shoulder-length dark hair, today tied back in a ponytail that she’d pulled through the back of a hot-pink baseball cap.

  Aggie was unselfconsciously poured into a pair of stretchy short-shorter-shortest cutoffs and a tight T-shirt, proud to sport her hourglass-in-a-post-Twiggy-world figure.

  Julie was wearing new shorts from Aritzia and a Freddie Mercury T-shirt. She’d attempted to clip up her curly hair into a twist with tenuous success. She’d even done a pre-vacation sit out in the backyard so she wouldn’t look like rice on the beach. Still, she felt not quite ready for prime time.

  Kayla stopped at the back of the SUV and opened the hatch; Aggie made a beeline for the front door.

  “Hurry up. Happy hour’s waiting! Is this all your stuff?” She breezed past to pick up Julie’s laptop. “Kayla’s making more space in the trunk. Good luck with that one.” She spotted the brochures that Julie had left on the desk.

  “Oh goody, plans for our next vacation.”

  “No! They’re not . . .”

  Aggie shoved the brochures into Julie’s beach bag just as Julie lunged for them. “Man, this is heavy, what do you have in here?”

  “Beach stuff and a few books.”

  “Better be juicy romances and not a textbook.”

  “My Contemporary Trends class starts in three weeks.”

  Aggie rolled her eyes. “Another three points toward your master’s degree. I’m impressed, but I may be moved to toss it out the car window.”

  “Very funny. I’m putting it in the trunk.”

  Though right now Julie wouldn’t cry if Aggie did toss it. She was the only one of the three working on her master’s degree. Better salary, better job security. Better do it now, her mother had advised. So she had.

  She hadn’t told Kayla and Aggie about her request for a leave. At first she didn’t want to share it in case it didn’t happen. Now that it had not happened, she wondered if she should mention it at all. She knew they would commiserate, be disappointed that she didn’t get it and angry that she’d been passed over, but they would also be relieved because they would still be together like always.

  Well, she wasn’t going anywhere but back to school. No reason to mention it ever almost happened.

  Aggie headed toward the open door. “Chop-chop. Time’s a’wasting.”

  “You guys are the ones who were late,” Julie groused.

  “We’re always late,” Aggie said cheerfully.

  “True, and I love you anyway,” Julie said, following her out the door.

  Kayla had even been late to her own wedding, but that was because the limo had had a flat tire on the way to the church. Not her fault. But it had probably been one of those signs that no one ever paid attention to until it was too late.

  Seven years later, her two kids spent two weeks each summer with her ex-husband, and Aggie and Julie always planned their vacation accordingly.

  Julie stopped to double-lock the front door and rolled her suitcase out to the SUV.

  “I think we may need your organizational skills,” Kayla said, staring under the open cargo door.

  It was a mess. Julie nudged Kayla aside and began removing the haphazardly balanced bags, cases, coolers, beach umbrellas, and backpacks. Several minutes later, she’d repacked and secured every piece while managing to leave a full view out the back window for the driver.

  “Pure genius,” Kayla said, and slammed the hatch.

  “All righty, girls, let’s rock ’n’ roll.” Aggie stuck up her hand. They all high-fived and jumped in the car, Aggie riding shotgun and Julie in the back.

  They hadn’t gone two blocks before someone’s cell phone rang.

  Kayla turned down the radio while they all listened.

  “It’s mine,” Julie said, recognizing the “By the Seaside” ringtone she’d downloaded for the summer.

  A few seconds of rummaging in her bag and she extracted the phone, looked at the caller ID. “It’s my mother.”

  “I thought she was on that nurses’ cruise.”

  “She is.” Julie connected. “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hi, Louise,” Kayla and Aggie called from the front seat.

  “What’s up? Everything okay?”

  “No.”

  Julie sucked in her breath. “Are you okay?”

  Aggie turned around in her seat, looking worried.

  “I’m fine. But Lucky’s missing.”

  Julie shook her head. Tony Costa. Her mother’s younger brother—by seven minutes. Julie’s sometimes surrogate father. Always entertaining, often irresponsible, never reliable, Uncle “Lucky” was a favorite with her friends. For Julie, the jury was still out.

  She relaxed and gave her companions a thumbs-up. “Oh, Mom, you know how he is.”

  “I do and that’s why I’m worried. We talk every week without fail.”

  “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. Maybe he couldn’t get access to your cell while you’re on the ship.”

  “Of course he could.”

  “Maybe his cell phone died or he doesn’t have reception on his end.” Maybe it fell in the ocean while he was out catching the big one.

  “He’s in Delaware.”

  “Delaware?” Julie glanced at her friends as a creeping sense of inevitability stole over her. She vaguely remembered that he had settled there . . . somewhere.

  “Honey, you remember; he opened up that bar in wherever they have the big waves.”

  “In Delaware?”

  “Well, they’re biggish. And I’m sure it’s right on your way to Rehoboth.”

  “We’re going to Dewey Beach.”

  “It’s just a few minutes out of your way. He’s my twin brother. I can tell when something’s wrong.”

  Leave it to her mother to pull the twins card when she was determined to have her way.

  “Mom.”

  “What’s wrong?” Aggie asked.

  “Or maybe I can get them to airlift me off the ship . . .”

  “Oh, Mom.”

  “Put her on speaker,” said Kayla.

  “Is that Kayla?”

  “Yes. I’m putting you on speaker.”

  “Hi, girls, I’m so glad I caught you. You don’t mind taking a little detour, do you?”

  “It’s a four-hour trip,” Julie argued from the back seat, but no one paid any attention. She already knew they’d be detouring to check out Lucky’s “retirement” venture. Some surfer bar in some beach town that was not the beach town they were going to.

  But Julie could never hold out against her friends or her mother—or even Lucky.

  “Not at all,” Kayla said. “We’ve got this covered.”

  Julie rolled her eyes heavenward. Her mother was an intelligent woman, hardworking. She’d raised Julie solo and done a good job of it, while also saving enough money to send Julie to college. But all that rationality and self-reliance flew out the window when it came to her twin brother.

  Julie tried not to audibly sigh. “Okay, text me his number and address. I’ll phone you tonight.” She ended the call and sank back against the seat.

  In the last two weeks, she’d been denied leave, almost quit her job, and in the midst of
her existential crisis, they were driving not to their planned vacation but to look for her disappearing uncle. Okay, one more little detour, and her duties would be done. Then ten whole days of lying on the beach. Fun in the sun. Drinks with little umbrellas. Dancing in the moonlight.

  A few minutes out of their way. What could possibly go wrong?

  Though when her uncle was involved, you never knew. Uncle Lucky. Julie remembered the first day he’d shown up at their door, tanned to a crisp and wearing cutoff jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. With a gigantic nylon duffel bag by his sandaled feet and a surfboard tucked under one arm, he was the strangest creature Julie had ever seen. He looked nothing like his sister, except for his sun-streaked hair that fell well beyond his shoulders.

  He’d missed her father’s funeral. He’d been in India or somewhere at a surfing competition. But he was here now, he said, and he was staying to take care of his sister and niece.

  Her mother said, “Oh, Tony, we’re so lucky to have you.” And from that moment on, he became Uncle Lucky.

  And he did take care of them. Sort of. Whenever he wasn’t riding the waves. When the other parts of his life or friends didn’t get in the way.

  Her phone pinged: a text from her mother. “Oh man, listen to this address. Route One and Daly’s Junction.” She keyed it into her map app. “I don’t think it’s even a town. Good thing we have a long drive. It’ll give me time to find it.”

  “Haven’t you been to visit him?”

  “Nope. He used to move around all the time. I figured he still was. I mean, why would he settle down in Delaware? How challenging can the waves be?”

  Kayla frowned at Julie in the rearview mirror. “He is getting older.”

  “Fifty-two is not that old. Anyway, sorry we’re losing a beach day for what is most likely a wild-goose chase. We’ll probably find him lying on the beach with an open beer and an uncharged cell phone stuck in the sand.”

  “Huh,” Aggie said. “Maybe it’s a sign.”

  “Of what?” Julie said. “Annoyance?”

  “No, that it’s time you broke radio silence.”

  “The phone works both ways,” Julie said defensively.

  “Maybe, but you started it.”

  “Are we really going to beat this dead horse on our first day of vacation?”