“This is so unexpected,” Cara said, still in disbelief. “A whole summer rented to one person.” She paused as an unwelcome thought broke through her relief. “There’s got to be a catch. Is he weird or something?”
Palmer shook his head. “It’s not for him. It’s for his daughter. The scoop from Devlin is that the daughter is in her twenties. Some kind of artist. Professional, not hobby, that much I got. I gather she needs a place to paint this summer for a project she’s working on.”
“She must be doing well to be able to rent the house for a whole summer to paint.”
“Who knows?” Palmer made a face. “She still lives at home with Daddy. But the father is getting married again. So . . .”
Brett finished the sentence: “. . . he’s looking to boot his daughter out of the house.”
“Could be.”
Cara didn’t think that was unreasonable for the father. A woman in her twenties should be able to take care of herself. After all, Cara had left home at eighteen without a dime of support. Her father sure hadn’t rented a place for her. But none of this speculation mattered. The salient point was that the father was renting the beach house for his daughter for the entire summer.
“When does she want to arrive?” asked Cara. “I still have finishing touches to do on the beach house.”
“The wedding is in early May, so I’m guessing as soon as possible.”
“That doesn’t leave us much time,” said Brett.
“We don’t have much left to do.” Cara shook her head in wonder at the whims of fate. Here she’d been considering selling the beach house, and suddenly a regular renter appeared out of nowhere. Maybe it was fate giving her a postponement on dealing with what she’d need to do to change her status quo. Cara was good at making snap decisions, and this one was easy. She’d do all the preliminary background checks, of course, but one renter for the entire summer likely meant less wear and tear on the house, fewer loud parties, and less worry about people squeezing in extra guests under the radar.
“Oh,” Palmer interjected, “there is one thing.”
Cara groaned softly. “I knew it was too good to be true.”
“No,” Palmer replied with a light laugh, “it’s no big deal. She has canaries. She wants to bring them.”
Brett guffawed. “That’s a new one.”
“I guess a canary is okay,” Cara said.
“More than one. I believe he said three or four.”
“As long as she keeps them in cages and the seed swept up. We don’t want bugs. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“So I should say yes?” Palmer confirmed.
Cara glanced at Brett, and he nodded. She turned to her brother. “Yes.”
Palmer clapped his hands together in finality. “I guess that’s it, then. The beach house is officially rented out for the season.”
“Wait. Who is this new tenant? What’s her name?” Cara wanted to know.
Palmer lifted his phone and, after a few minutes of scrolling, said, “Name is Heather.” He looked up. “Heather Wyatt.”
Chapter Three
May 2016
HEATHER WYATT SAT upright in the passenger seat of her father’s luxury black Cadillac SUV. She breathed deep, doing her best to contain the growing panic inside of her. Her hands were white-knuckled in her lap; her knees pressed together tightly so she wouldn’t visibly shake. Her mouth was set in a straight line, but inside she was cringing with fear, curled up in a ball as her mind screamed No, no, no!
She could barely look out the window at the trees and billboards and countless exit signs on the highway as they whizzed by. It was May, and already the South was blanketed in a thick, lush green, especially the vines of kudzu that climbed the telephone poles and trees on the edges of the roads. They rode with the windows up and the air-conditioning on, as the humid, sultry heat that defined a coastal summer had already descended. She closed her eyes and tried to distract herself by singing along to the playlist she’d created titled “Journey to Isle of Palms.” Before leaving Charlotte, North Carolina, she’d packed her computer, books, art supplies, and work files into neatly organized plastic bins. She’d moved her three treasured canaries into special travel cages. Finally she’d notified anyone of importance of her change of address—even if it was only for the summer. This was the salient point. The one that gave her the strength to persevere. At weak moments she told herself she was returning to Charlotte at summer’s end to resume the comfortable, productive, safe life she’d enjoyed before her father had taken the bold step of renting her a beach house all the way over in South Carolina.
This, in fact, marked the first time she’d left home alone. At twenty-six, Heather was well aware that it was long overdue. She was an adult. An accomplished illustrator. She’d been awarded a commission to paint shorebirds of the Atlantic Coast for the United States Postal Service. A heady accomplishment. She still couldn’t believe that her art would someday become stamps that people—millions of them—would affix to their envelopes. The award was hard-won and presented a tremendous challenge. Her pride in the achievement boosted her lagging self-confidence enough that she agreed to her father’s offer to rent her a beach house. But of course, moving to the beach house meant leaving the safety of home.
Heather brought her fingers to her mouth and began chewing her nails. She didn’t like to think of herself as agoraphobic. She preferred to describe herself as shy. That’s what her mother had said whenever she had to push her young daughter forward to greet a stranger: “Heather’s a bit shy.” Yet she’d never outgrown her shyness, and as an adult Heather was well aware that her anxiety levels went far beyond normal. She wasn’t completely housebound, a classic sign of the disorder. She functioned pretty well, considering that her anxiety sometimes spiked through the roof. She was proud of how she’d managed, all in all.
As an illustrator she was able to do most of her work at home. But she ran errands in town and visited shopping malls, and she and the FedEx woman were on a first-name basis. She regularly saw a therapist, took her medication religiously, and was encouraged that her last panic attack had been well over a month ago. Heather chewed another nail. Stressful situations, however, could still bring on a full-blown attack. And moving to a new house in a new city—a new state—certainly qualified as a high-stress situation.