Second Nature

Chapter 17

17 

After doing the breakfast dishes, Cade walked along the beach toward the northern arm of the bay and the ritzy community called The Palms. 

Sailing and motor yachts glowed in primary colors at their moorings at the yacht club. A cluster of architect-designed vacation homes, all glass and pastel-colored stucco, straddled the dunes on stilts as if daring the reach of winter storm tides. A quarter-mile inland from the stilt homes, rose a twelve-story, pink-stucco condominium, named The Grove. To build The Grove, twenty years ago, Weston Fairchild's construction crew had leveled an entire grove of coconut palms. His grandfather's mind operated that way. 

Weston owned The Grove and more than half of Coolahatchee Bay Island. His forebears had made their fortune running a sea island cotton and turpentine plantation worked by slaves. After the Civil War, Weston's great-grandfather continued to operate the plantation with low-wage black laborers. By his grandfather's day, Fairchild Plantation had become a dying enterprise, and the senior Fairchild began selling land to wealthy Yankees looking to build summer vacation homes. At the turn of the century, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Hunt, Getty, and a handful of lesser-known tycoons all had homes on the island. Five of those early mansions still existed, but all of them, like Cool Bay Inn, had been converted to bed & breakfast businesses.  

Nowadays, what was left of the Fairchild real estate holdings still covered more than half the island and was worth a huge fortune-probably close to a billion dollars, Cade figured. For years, Weston had been selling the land in small, expensive parcels to stay liquid. But his latest project was anything but small. With the backing of Japanese and German investors, Weston was building a world-class golf and tennis resort that would sprawl across all the land he still owned.  

In practical terms, it meant the undeveloped portions of the island were slated for development; pine forests would be bulldozed, osprey nests destroyed, and a dozen creeks fouled in order to build pricey condos and neighborhoods with names like The Pine Forest, Osprey View and Clearwater Creek. 

Cade felt a knot of worry bouncing in his gut as he walked along the beautiful shore. For two years, Weston had been pressuring Cade and Lana to sell their land, but the two had never even considered it, even as his offers skyrocketed. Some things are more precious than money. A lot of things, come to think of it. What good does it do you to gain the world and lose your soul, and all that. Cool Bay Inn was home. Okay, my home is not my soul, but my soul has strong ties to it. 

Yesterday evening on the phone, Weston had told him, "This is not about a new offer for your land." So what the freak was it about, then? Weston had disowned his only child, Elaine-Cade and Lana's mother-for the crime of loving a man of the forbidden skin color. The cold-hearted old fart had not summoned Cade to his penthouse to kick back a few beers and share some belly laughs, that's for sure. He'd said he had some very important information. Like what? Cade had no clue. But he especially had not liked the sound of, "I could have my lawyer deliver a letter..." 

The mid-morning sun had not yet turned the air into a steam bath. A steady on-shore breeze flattened the in-rolling swells and flung white, lacy foam down the breakers when they hit the sandbar. Just beyond the shallow bar, a sudden froth of splashes and panicked mullet showed that something was feeding on the school. Probably dolphins. Cade watched for dorsal fins and was rewarded with a dolphin's high leap, twisting in the air with a mullet in its mouth and smacking down-just for fun, it seemed. 

The sight made his thoughts return to Gen. All morning, she and Weston had taken turns occupying his mind.  

Cade couldn't figure Gen. What was Haven's comment, yesterday? "She's mysterious." Girl, no joke. Truly mysterious, and truly a bullshitter. That amnesia stuff was pure crap. Gen knew who she was. She was hiding something, but he couldn't guess what it might be.