Distracted √

Distracted: Chapter Nineteen

Enraged, Erin stared at her cell phone. She wanted to fling it against the wall, but she had already lost two phones that way in the past four months.

The small phone vibrated in her hand and she noted the readout: "Mom." She rolled her eyes and punched the green handset icon.

"Yes, Mom?"

* * *

On Christmas Eve, Erin peered out the plane window at the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Soon she recognized features and spotted glowing green retention ponds, then the moonscape of exhausted phosphate pits. She watched ant-sized cars crawl along I-275. As the plane circled to make its landing, she spotted the Howard Frankland Bridge and shuddered. She wasn't a fan of bridges or tunnels, or airplanes for that matter.

Although her parents lived in Bradenton, the closest large airport was Tampa International. They didn't mind the drive over the Sunshine Skyway but Erin did. She hated the thought of driving on the bridge with the world's longest cable-stayed main span. It frightened her to know that it had replaced an earlier bridge that had been destroyed when a tanker – the Summit Venture – collided with a pier during a storm. Much of that bridge collapsed into Tampa Bay taking automobiles and a bus. Thirty-five people died. Only one man survived the fall when his pickup truck landed on the deck of the Summit Venture.

It was a horror story that ran through her mind each time she visited. She couldn't hold her breath while crossing the long bridge; instead she panted and gritted her teeth.

"Relax, sweetie," her mom said, reaching into the back seat to pat Erin's arm. "We're almost there."

Erin closed her eyes. The trip to her parent's house was cramped and uncomfortable since her mother sold their car and purchased a pickup truck. "It's easier since my poles fit nicely in the back," she explained. Erin's father smiled. He had always tolerated his wife's life-long obsession with fishing and was compiling a cookbook based upon seafood recipes he created during their 42-year marriage. Without her contributions, he reasoned, the cookbook wouldn't exist.

Riding high in a truck cab meant Erin could see over the sides of the bridge, something she couldn't appreciate.

"Oh my, you should see this," her mother said as she looked through the window. "There are several large sharks following that barge. That reminds me, you should have seen the Mako shark we caught in May. We went out to the fishing grounds and set a few lines. When it hit, I thought it was an amberjack, it fought so hard. Your father had to help me with that one, didn't you Jake?"

He smiled at the memory of shark fin soup and Cajun shark steak.

Erin tried to get her mind off the idea of being on the bridge. "Well, have you two ever seen a manta ray up close? Well I ..." Erin's voice trailed off at the flood of memories.

"Never saw a manta, but I did hook a ..." her father was cut off mid-sentence with a hand from her mother on his thigh. They shared a glance that said, "Let it go," and rode in silence the rest of the way.

Finally, the truck rolled down the crushed shell driveway that ended at Jake and Beth Andersen's retirement home. The small stucco-covered concrete house had weathered thirty years of Gulf Coast hurricanes and while it wasn't the attractive condo on the golf course that Jake had envisioned, its location on the Intracoastal Waterway meant they could keep their Luhrs sportfishing boat ready at the dock. The thirty-eight foot vessel cost twice as much as the squat house, but the Andersens were happy. They spent most of their time on the boat, since living in Bradenton gave them easy access to the back bays and the open Gulf of Mexico.

A small dog zipped around the corner of the house and made a beeline for the truck. Yapping and standing on its hind legs, it greeted the Andersens. "Hello baby; come to daddy," Jake said, holding out his arms. The little dog leapt into his arms and licked his face. "That's my girl. Cookie loves her daddy."