Surfacing - Book One in the Swans Landing Series

SURFACING

by

Shana Norris

Copyright 2011 by Shana Norris

Cover photograph: Copyright 2012 by Dejan Sarman | Dreamstime.com
Cover Design by Shana Norris

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.

For Michael, Nicholas, and Ashley, who were my first readers.

And for Heather, who loved this story first.

 We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

-T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

 Chapter One

When I closed my eyes, I dreamed of an ocean I could barely remember. The last time I saw the beach, I had just turned four. It was fall, only a few weeks after my birthday, and my mom drove all the way across Tennessee and North Carolina to the tiny island where my father lived.

It had been the big adventure of my life, the long car ride and the ferry trip across the water, but the only thing I could remember now was this giant, dark haired man framed by the sunlight. Mom’s voice still echoed in my head. “Mara, this is your daddy.”

I had vague memories of sitting on his shoulder as he walked down to the beach. When he dipped my toes in the Atlantic Ocean, whispering things I had long ago forgotten, Mom got angry. Angrier than I’d ever seen her before or since. We left that night and I never saw him—or the Carolina coast—again.

Until today.

The bus I’d boarded at the tiny airport half an hour ago bumped down the road and sent me bouncing in my seat. It woke me from my half-sleeping state, pulling me from foggy dreams of waves crashing over my toes. Outside, all that sped by my window were dried pastures dotted with a few grazing cows and abandoned gas stations with windows like broken teeth.

Only an occasional car passed by in the other direction. Even the bus was empty, except for the driver up front, me in the back, and the thin, silent woman who had been staring at me from a few rows ahead ever since I’d boarded.

Another bump and I tried to hold onto the seat in front of me while gripping my bag. My camera, as usual, hung safely around my neck and tucked inside my jacket, so that was one less thing to worry about as I held on as if my life depended on it. Because, judging from the bus’s lack of shock support, it apparently did.

The woman didn’t seem to notice the bumps in the road as she bounced in her seat, her frizzy graying hair forming a messy halo around her head. She sat turned on the edge of the seat, her legs in the aisle and her back pressed against the seat back in front of her.