Read Online The Bay at Midnight by Diane Chamberlain - Free Book Online Page A

five years ago and Abby’s out on her own now, of course. She has a daughter. My granddaughter. Did she tell you that?” There was pride in his voice. I could hear the smile.
    “No,” I said. “That’s wonderful.”
    “Do you want to come here?”
    “No,” I said, nearly choking on the word in my rush to get it out. There was no way I was going to Bay Head Shores. “Maybe we could meet halfway.”
    “Well,” he said. “I have to be in Spring Lake Friday. If you want to meet me there for lunch, we can do that.”
    It was more than halfway, but that was all right. I needed to see him face-to-face to persuade him to take Ned’s letter to the police.
    A man carrying a soft-sided briefcase walked through the door of the restaurant and I looked up expectantly, but the red hair and glasses were missing and I gazed out the window again.
    “Julie?” I turned to see the man standing next to my table.
    “Ethan?” I queried back.
    He nodded, his smile subdued, and held out his hand. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I got stuck in beach traffic.”
    “That’s okay.” I shook his hand, and he sat down across from me.
    “I would never have recognized you,” I said, then wondered if that sounded rude. The truth was, age had done him many favors. His red hair was now a gray-tinged auburn, thin at his temples. He wore no glasses. The freckled skin of his youth had weathered into something kinder and he’d put on weight in the form of muscle. He was wearing a cobalt-blue short-sleeved shirt and his arms were lean and tight. The nerdiness from his childhood was gone. Completely. “You look great,” I added.
    “And you look wonderful,” he said. “I would have recognized you anywhere. But of course, your face used to be all over our house on the back of your books.”
    “Used to be?” I asked.
    “We both read them, but my wife got custody of the books,” he said. He glanced down at my bare ring finger. “You’re married, right?” he asked. “I recall something like ‘the author lives with her husband in New Jersey’ or something like that from one of your book jackets.”
    The waitress appeared at our table, pad at the ready. “How’re you two doing?” she asked.
    I looked up at her sunburned face. “He hasn’t had a chance to look at the menu,” I said.
    Ethan handed the waitress his unopened menu. “Just a burger, medium well,” he said. “And lemonade, please.”
    I ordered the shrimp salad, then returned my attention to Ethan. “I’m divorced,” I said. “Two years.”
    “Children?”
    “A daughter. Shannon. She’s seventeen. She just graduated high school.”
    “College plans?”
    “The Oberlin Conservatory of Music,” I said. “She’s a cellist.”
    He looked impressed. “Wow,” he said.
    “What kind of work do you do?” I asked, then held up my hand. “Wait. Let me guess,” I said. “You teach marine biology.”
    He laughed. “I’m a carpenter,” he said.
    “Oh.” I nodded. That was not what I’d expected. If anyone had told me skinny little Ethan Chapman would end up working with his hands instead of his head, I never would have believed it. I thought of his ambitious father, Rosswell Chapman III or whatever he had been. The summer I was twelve, he was chief justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court and he later ran unsuccessfully for governor. I wondered if he’d been disappointed to see his sons turn out to be an accountant and a carpenter rather than follow him into law or politics.
    “I wasn’t the least bit surprised you turned out to be a writer,” Ethan said.
    “No?”
    “Your family was so artsy. Your mother painted, right?”
    “That’s right. She was a teacher, but she painted as a hobby.” I’d almost forgotten how my mother loved to set up her easel on the bungalow porch.
    “And your father was a doctor, but wasn’t he a writer, too?”
    “A columnist for a magazine,” I said.
    “You’ve got a daughter who plays the cello,” he continued.