Chapter 27
The first time she managed to get a moment to herself was late Monday evening the day before she was going to leave town. She glanced at the date on her computer, then at the calendar covering her desk. With a jolt, she sat upright in her chair. Holy shit!She had less than twenty-four hours to run a load of laundry, get packed, hold the mail, stop by the bank, fill up her gas tank, straighten the house…
I’ll never get it all done in time, she thought, collapsing back in her chair. I should call Marlene and cancel. This is crazy. I don’t feel like driving seven hours after putting up with this place all morning. I should stay home, I need a break. I need—
A vacation.
Which was what she’d been planning to take all along, wasn’t it? The whole thing with Wildwood was a time to relax and unwind. After the month she’d had, didn’t she deserve it? The beach, the sun, the sea? The boardwalk? The rides?
A feeling of nostalgia swept over her so poignant, it brought stinging tears to her eyes. She blinked them away. God, she needed this, so badly.
Fuck it. She was going. This time tomorrow, she’d be smelling the salty air and sipping margaritas as she watched the boardwalk lights sparkle against the night sky.
* * * *
The drive turned out not to be as hectic as Tara feared. She took Route 301 instead of the interstate, bypassing the afternoon traffic around Washington D.C. and picking up 95 on the north side of Baltimore, Maryland. The toll into Delaware was higher than anything she’d paid driving around Richmond—a solid eight dollars, which made her laugh out loud at the audacity of it—but she had an E-ZPass and drove through without stopping.
Nothing really seemed familiar to her on the way up, if she were being honest. The last time she’d visited Wildwood, she was too young to really remember the route, and too excited to pay attention, anyway. Plus, a lot could change in twenty years.
Then she reached the Delaware Memorial Bridge. There was another toll, of course—her E-ZPass was getting quite a workout this week—but the towers rose up into the pale blue summer sky, cables strung out between them like gossamer strands of steel. Now theseshe remembered, as well as the long drive across. It only took about four minutes, but she felt her stomach flutter as the ground fell away beneath her, replaced by the rippling waters of the Delaware Bay. She stayed in the middle lane but sat up higher in the driver’s seat, craning her neck to get a glimpse of the white-capped waves and the seagulls that soared and dove beneath the bridge with ease.
Before she knew it, she was on the other side, passing beneath a sign that read, Welcome to New Jersey.Her heart swelled, and she pulled over at the first fast-food restaurant to grab a bite to eat for dinner. Made it, she thought, chowing down on a cheesesteak and fries. Something she wouldn’t normally indulge in, but what the hell? Her vacation had officially begun.
* * * *
After dinner, Tara felt revived and eager as she climbed back into the car to finish her trip. She had less than two hours left to go, and swore she could smell the salt in the air. There weren’t any more familiar landmarks as she drove across New Jersey, but as she started seeing road signs for Wildwood, her excitement grew. Soon she had the radio blasting, some pop station she’d found that was playing all the hits, and she sang along at the top of her lungs, feeling like a kid again as she kept the gas pedal pressed down to the floor. Almost there. She was glad she’d come.
Then, up ahead, the horizon flattened out and the land gave way to salt marshes. “Oh God, this,” Tara said, grinning with anticipation. A low bridge stretched from the mainland onto the island of Wildwood, a bridge she remembered even better than the Delaware Memorial, not because it was larger or prettier but because it was, of all things, a drawbridge.
She crossed it in anticipation, but the only traffic in the early evening was of the vehicular persuasion, cars passing her and the one far ahead on Route 47. Out on the still waters, she saw a few smaller boats, pleasure crafts mostly—speedboats and fishermen, a few crabbers, nothing that would warrant opening the drawbridge for, of course. But the few times she remembered as a child having to stop when the bridge was up stood out in her mind as magical moments, cherished because there were so infrequent.