Read Online Return to the Beach House by Georgia Bockoven - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Georgia Bockoven
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the food a close second.”
“Then why don’t you let me take care of the arrangements.”
“Okay.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say and was afraid if she did, it would be something dumb. She headed for her car, stopping to call over her shoulder, “Eleven-thirty?”
He was still watching her. “I’ll be here. And I’ll drive. Traffic around the wharf can be a real pain that time of day.”
She backed toward her car. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours then.”
“Looking forward to it.”
She believed him, and it felt wonderful.
Alison started her walking tour at the Pacific House Museum, where she picked up additional material to add to the brochures Grace had put in her file. She’d been an information junkie all her life, with a passion for discovering obscure bits of trivia about the places she visited. There were times she was sure she’d seen Dennis’s eyes glaze over when she insisted on sharing what she’d learned, but he’d never complained.
Having been raised in Connecticut, she hadn’t been taught much about California history beyond the gold rush era and the mission settlements. The tribes she learned about in school were the Apache and Navajo and Lakota; even though the Indians who’d inhabited California before the mission settlements were also a part of Western lore, what she knew about them wouldn’t fill the pages of a toddler’s picture book.
Between the cattle grazing that depleted the traditional food sources of the Rumsien Indians and the diseases the Spaniards brought with them that wiped out entire villages, the native people who’d lived in the Monterey area for thousands of years were gone in less than two hundred years after the Spaniards arrived. The last-known speaker of the Rumsien language was a woman who died in 1939.
Alison hated the word “last.” Last dinosaur, last passenger pigeon, last Javan tiger, last kiss, last good-bye, last words on a voice-mail message. . . . .
She had a list of things she loved too, like puffy white clouds in a brilliant blue sky, songbirds announcing spring, Christmas trees laden with memory-rich ornaments, wistful memories that made her smile, and the sense of freedom she’d experienced since coming to California.
At home everyone knew her, even people she’d never met. After thirteen years, she and Nora and Christopher were still gossip fodder. They were classified the way doctors and lawyers and actors and politicians and criminals were labeled, who they were being lost in what they were. Her name forever carried the tag: You know, she’s the one who lost her husband and son in the World Trade Center attack.
When her friends insisted it was time for her to start dating again and she’d finally agreed to give it a try, just to let them see she wasn’t turning into a recluse, she hadn’t dated one man whose eyes didn’t cloud with his own memories when he found out how she’d become a widow. Once anyone, man or woman, knew who she was, they were more interested in her story than they were in her. She’d come to the conclusion that 9/11 was a wound that needed more time and an entire new generation to heal. The scar would never fade for those who had lived through that day.
She glanced at her phone. She still had another hour before she met Kyle. Plenty of time to go to the nearby Custom House and discover a wealth of information that fascinated her and bored her friends to tears.
Chapter 6
When Alison arrived, Kyle was standing beside a Chevy sedan talking to a young couple with a baby in a backpack. She caught his attention and pointed toward the art gallery next door. He excused himself from the couple and caught up with her. “Are you ready?”
“I can wait.”
“Not necessary.” He nodded his head in the young couple’s direction. “They’re just looking. He works the late shift at one of the restaurants on Cannery Row. They come in two or three times a month to see what’s new and make
“Then why don’t you let me take care of the arrangements.”
“Okay.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say and was afraid if she did, it would be something dumb. She headed for her car, stopping to call over her shoulder, “Eleven-thirty?”
He was still watching her. “I’ll be here. And I’ll drive. Traffic around the wharf can be a real pain that time of day.”
She backed toward her car. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours then.”
“Looking forward to it.”
She believed him, and it felt wonderful.
Alison started her walking tour at the Pacific House Museum, where she picked up additional material to add to the brochures Grace had put in her file. She’d been an information junkie all her life, with a passion for discovering obscure bits of trivia about the places she visited. There were times she was sure she’d seen Dennis’s eyes glaze over when she insisted on sharing what she’d learned, but he’d never complained.
Having been raised in Connecticut, she hadn’t been taught much about California history beyond the gold rush era and the mission settlements. The tribes she learned about in school were the Apache and Navajo and Lakota; even though the Indians who’d inhabited California before the mission settlements were also a part of Western lore, what she knew about them wouldn’t fill the pages of a toddler’s picture book.
Between the cattle grazing that depleted the traditional food sources of the Rumsien Indians and the diseases the Spaniards brought with them that wiped out entire villages, the native people who’d lived in the Monterey area for thousands of years were gone in less than two hundred years after the Spaniards arrived. The last-known speaker of the Rumsien language was a woman who died in 1939.
Alison hated the word “last.” Last dinosaur, last passenger pigeon, last Javan tiger, last kiss, last good-bye, last words on a voice-mail message. . . . .
She had a list of things she loved too, like puffy white clouds in a brilliant blue sky, songbirds announcing spring, Christmas trees laden with memory-rich ornaments, wistful memories that made her smile, and the sense of freedom she’d experienced since coming to California.
At home everyone knew her, even people she’d never met. After thirteen years, she and Nora and Christopher were still gossip fodder. They were classified the way doctors and lawyers and actors and politicians and criminals were labeled, who they were being lost in what they were. Her name forever carried the tag: You know, she’s the one who lost her husband and son in the World Trade Center attack.
When her friends insisted it was time for her to start dating again and she’d finally agreed to give it a try, just to let them see she wasn’t turning into a recluse, she hadn’t dated one man whose eyes didn’t cloud with his own memories when he found out how she’d become a widow. Once anyone, man or woman, knew who she was, they were more interested in her story than they were in her. She’d come to the conclusion that 9/11 was a wound that needed more time and an entire new generation to heal. The scar would never fade for those who had lived through that day.
She glanced at her phone. She still had another hour before she met Kyle. Plenty of time to go to the nearby Custom House and discover a wealth of information that fascinated her and bored her friends to tears.
Chapter 6
When Alison arrived, Kyle was standing beside a Chevy sedan talking to a young couple with a baby in a backpack. She caught his attention and pointed toward the art gallery next door. He excused himself from the couple and caught up with her. “Are you ready?”
“I can wait.”
“Not necessary.” He nodded his head in the young couple’s direction. “They’re just looking. He works the late shift at one of the restaurants on Cannery Row. They come in two or three times a month to see what’s new and make
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