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"That legal?" Jakob asked, anxiety for his friend stampeding through his gut at that bit of news.
"Probably not," Ethan said with a heavy sigh. "But for some reason, the police don't seem to believe me when I tell them I am but merely a simple art teacher."
Jakob snorted. "You've never been a simple anything, Ethan."
"Sure, but they don't need toknowthat, do they?"
Jakob chuckled, prompting Alex to look over at him for a minute. But the endless string of suburban houses had petered out to rolling farmland, dotted here and there by harvesters and combines. Occasionally it was interspersed with pastures full of grazing cattle; the rural landscape that was so familiar to Jakob apparently holding a riveting fascination for the kid.
He couldn't imagine what might be running through Alex's head at this point.
Jakob wondered how often he had ever been outside the bounds of his cookie-cutter little suburb. What he'd thought he was walking into when he had called up Ethan. What he was going to think of the ranch, or even the island in general.
Speaking of.
"We're nearly to the amusement park," Jakob told Ethan as they crested a hill and a massive arch came into view, the ocean sparkling like diamonds to either side. "I can see the bridge just beyond. We'll get home and settled in, and I'll fill you in on everything later."
"Alright. You… Take care, Jakob. Okay?" came Ethan's voice, something soft hidden in its tones that sparked a curl of warmth in Jakob's chest to hear it.
"Yeah. You too. Talk to you soon," Jakob said, feeling a grin come sneaking its way across his lips, even as he ended the call.
They rode for a while in silence, Alex's face pressed up against the window the whole time.
The marshy strip of mainland that lay across the bay from the island's north side wasn't the prettiest bit of landscaping, not by a long shot. But that meant it had been cheap as dirt when the amusement park had been built. Not to mention all the hotel towers that had come with it, lining both sides of the bay.
Being on the mainland, the park wasn't technically part of Chance's Harbor. Enough of the tourists the park attracted wandered across the massive bridge to the island's beaches, however, that the local businesses onlyslightlybegrudged not getting a say in the behemoth they lay just outside their door.
Jakob took Cassie to the park a few times when it had first been built, but it'd been a few years now since last they'd gone.
"You been?" he asked Alex as they passed the big castle in the park's center, who only shook his head in response.
There were a good number of fishing boats out today Jakob spotted as they crested the big bridge. And more speedboats flying across the water than you generally saw this time of year, too.
The island of Chance's Harbor was long and skinny, made up mostly of sand and sediment that shifted with every storm that came blowing through. Its western end was where all the action was, all stately old homes and impressive historic districts. The theater, the boardwalk, and of course La Calle; where all the sunburnt tourists turned up to spend their money at the cafes, confectionaries, and curio shops that lined what had once, in the district’s more humble days, been merely known as the wharf.
If the western end was the head of the comet, then the eastern was its tail. Almost completely given over to beach houses and holiday homes wherever they could be fit; sandwiched between the coves and marshes of the northern side, and the long ribbons of white sandy beaches that stretched along the south.
Keep going far enough, and you’d eventually find a little spur of actual rock, a sweep of ridge barely attached to the island proper at all. It was connected by a strip of salt marsh that was soggy and wild even at low tide, and almost completely flooded when the tide was high. Still, it was the highest bit of ground the island could claim, and so it did; right up to the spot that once boasted an old stone lighthouse before it was destroyed by cannons and fire.
And pirates, Jakob seemed to recall. Or…it was built by pirates? Possibly both. It had changed hands many times over the years, that he knew; just as the rest of Chance's Harbor had. Bit like its namesake, really.
Out here the road was somewhat more modest, and the bridge something of a religious experience that often had you thanking your maker of choice that you survived. But with a little faith and a half-decent GPS, you’d find yourself pulling up to a ranch overlooking the gulf.
It had done a brisk business back when Frank had just been starting out, offering horseback tours along the empty beach below. He’d long ago made good on the bank's loan and then some, and now he owned the place outright.
But when the amusement park on the mainland had come blowing into their neck of the bay…
Jakob sighed as the ranch's red barn came into view. It was a puzzle. How could half an hour in a rented saddle compete with an entire day of roller coasters and costumed characters, with catchy songs sung ad nauseam by a backseat of screaming kids?
Rubbing his chest at the crunch of gravel under the car's tires, Jakob frowned. He focused on taking deep breaths just like his therapist had recommended, as they drove up the path snaking between the two massive oleanders he and Frank had planted down at the foot of the drive, all those years ago.
Ethan too, come to think of it — the tightness in Jakob’s chest lessening — during one of those spells he would stay with them when he'd had nowhere else to go.
He —
"YOU HAVE FUCKINGHORSES?" Alex exploded next to him; interrupting Jakob's thoughts as sure as a freight train as the kid whipped 'round, surprise written all across his face. "I thought you were bullshitting me!"
Chapter 11
