Page 3 of Shaw

“I think you mean counterculture, sweetheart,” Jack said. Although he was tall like her, he had massive arms and a muscular build that didn’t quite match his soulful eyes, giving him the look of a lumberjack poet. “Your mother and I came after the hippies, like Disco and Star Wars and Skittles.”

She sighed. “Okay, but why did you go from doing the hustle to organic farming, then?”

“As soon as we adopted you, Mom said we needed to raise you where you could grow up in the sunshine and fresh air,” her father told her. “Your Aunt Klee did the rest.”

“Your aunt said we needed to get away from the highway shootings, riots, and genetically modified vegetables,” Sarah corrected as she joined them. Petite and black-haired, she was as tiny as her husband was huge. “None of which were healthy for my little girl.”

Since she stood two feet taller than her dainty mother, Julianne had to press her lips together for a moment to keep from laughing.

“I don’t get it. Until you moved here from the city all you grew were houseplants,” she said. “Weren’t you scared? Didn’t you think you might fail at farming, and end up living in a tent in the park and eating church hand out meals?”

Her parents eyed each other before they both burst out laughing.

“We didn’t come here unprepared, my darling,” Sarah said at last, wiping her teary eyes on her sleeve. “Klee spent the first three months helping us get settled in, and she taught your father everything he needed to know in order to manage the orchards and fields.”

Julianne groaned. “You know Auntie Klee is a dingbat like me, Mom.”

“Stop saying that.” Her mother put an arm around her. “She’s different like you, that’s all—and she grew up on a farm in France. Or was it England? Anyway, she’s got so many green thumbs she can shove a burned stick in the ground and make it sprout leaves.”

As Julianne drove to the park visitor’s center that served as the lifeguards’ office, she recalled the last time she had seen Aunt Klee, who had shown up at her high school graduation before leaving for India, the latest stop in her vagabond life. Her mother’s ditzy, happy older friend had always loved her, and had kept tabs on them even from across the planet. Klee had been the first one to call after the news broke about the wildfire that had swept through the valley, so fast that her parents hadn’t been able to escape.

Do you need me there, child? I can be on a plane this afternoon.

Julianne had refused, as making the older woman take a twenty-hour flight simply so she could hold her hand through the funerals seemed selfish. Maybe that was why she’d been so ripe for Mitch’s con; when he’d come along six weeks later Julianne had been so stressed and depressed she’d practically hurled herself into his arms. He’d told her that the pain would pass in time, that he was there for her, and all the other things she’d needed to hear. Now she wondered if he’d always known about her parents’ property, which was worth millions to developers and even more to the valley’s seventeen hundred vintners.

David hailed her from his office inside the center, and after clocking in Julianne went to see what her day looked like. Her Latino boss appeared short and skinny next to her, but he swam just as fast and stayed calm no matter what was happening in the water.

“The surf’s too rough, so we closed the road and put out the blackball,” he told her, referring to the yellow and black warning flag they raised when conditions grew dangerous. “Stay on the tower until sunset, just in case some fool surfer sneaks in and tries to drown himself while trying to impress his girlfriend or boyfriend. Why do you look like you just got your ass kicked?”

“Maybe because my ex has been kicking it again.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.” She took out the ten she had left after buying the will form, and tucked it into his shirt pocket. “Buy your girl some ice cream to go with the pizza.”

“Then I don’t want to hear any crap about the stuff I brought you,” he said, smiling, patting his pocket “Maria said to leave the containers in the fridge here so they don’t spoil.”

After her boss left Julianne changed into her work uniform, a red one-piece under a black wind breaker and sweat pants. She usually wore a wet suit while on duty, but with the beach roads closed and a hefty fine waiting for anyone who ignored the warning signs, she probably wouldn’t see another soul. She then went to the supply cabinet to grab a blank envelope, in which she put her will, and tucked that away in her locker. Once it was notarized then Mitch would be out of luck; if anything happened to her then the farm would go to Aunt Klee.

“Kill me, and you won’t inherit anything, Jerk-face,” Julianne muttered.

On her way out of the center she grabbed her gear bag and stopped to peek inside the fridge, laughing out loud as she saw the bulging bags of fresh fruit, veggies and a stack of containers with sandwiches that she suspected David’s wife Maria had made for her.

“Maybe I should leave the farm to you guys.” Gratefully, she tucked a bottle of water, a sandwich, and a pear into her bag before she hung her whistle around her neck and headed out.

The white-painted wooden shack where she would spend the rest of the day rose on sturdy stilts some twenty feet above the sand, and featured wide eaves over the angled windows of the boxy structure. To signal the tower was occupied by a lifeguard Julianne first raised the American flag, and then hung in prominent view her red can, the flotation device she would use during a rescue.

Inside the tower she picked up the wash bucket, climbing back down to fill it from the tank under the tower’s base before she kicked off her shoes and used the water to wash off the sand from her feet. Finally she went back up, grabbed the clipboard where she would make notes throughout her shift, and took out her binoculars, using them to scan the water from one side of the beach to the other.

“Okay, Aunt Klee, let’s have a nice day, huh?” Saying that out loud was a little silly, but she had a habit of talking to her aunt when she was alone. “Or just a boring one.”

From the size of the waves coming in and the way in which they were breaking, Julianne knew her boss had been right to close the beach. She counted at least a dozen spots where holes had probably formed in the ocean floor. Such anomalies, while common, spawned rip currents. The fast-moving streams of water grabbed swimmers and moved them as fast as eight feet per second, often sweeping them out to deep water before they realized what was happening to them. Most casual swimmers also didn’t know how to react properly and tried to fight their way through the current, which quickly exhausted them.

“At least no one will drown on my shift,” Julianne murmured, lowering her binoculars and leaning against the rail as she made her first entry in the log sheet on the clipboard.

Because of TV shows featuring lifeguards, most people didn’t understand that she was a first responder with a very dangerous job. Panicking victims were capable of injuring or even killing her, as could predators attracted by blood from an injured swimmer or simply the commotion in the water. Over a typical holiday weekend Julianne and her colleagues performed dozens of rescues, some under very risky conditions. Yet whenever she wondered if it was worth her life to do the job, Julianne would remember the victims she had pulled from the water to safety, their terrified friends and family sobbing with relief and joy. She then thought of the dozen pale, still faces of those she hadn’t reached in time.

She was never going to cure cancer, reverse climate change or get people to live together in peace, but someday she might save the life of someone who would.

Her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten all day, and she went inside to grab her lunch. The sandwich turned out to be chicken salad, and tasted so good she wanted to wolf it down in three bites. Instead she let herself have only one half along with a little bottled water. Too much food was almost as bad as not enough, and she didn’t want to throw up the best sandwich she’d ever tasted.

“It’s just because I’m starving,” she told herself as she put the rest back in the container, and then stopped as she realized what she’d said, and took in a hitched breath. “No, I’m not. I’ve eaten something every day since I left him. I know I have.”