Pieces of Us - Carrie Elks Page 0,3

by a web page with a photograph of a long pleasure pier stretched into a sparkling blue ocean, complete with a big restaurant halfway down, a large boat parked at the end. Autumn scanned down, her eyes swimming as she tried to take in the small black print describing the pier and the small town of Angel Sands where it stood, followed by an email address for interested parties to submit a bid.

With her breath caught in her throat, Autumn pulled up her sent emails. Of course, there was one sent at three that morning. And naturally, it was to the real estate company listed on the web page, offering the full asking price and telling them she was able to pay cash and close very fast.

She’d even given them her attorney’s contact details.

“Autumn?” Lydia said. “Are you okay?”

“No,” she said, her voice thin. “Not really. I think I bought a pier in California.”

2

Griffin Lambert lifted his board out of the surf, tiny droplets of water clinging to his suit and tanned body. He shook his thick brown hair and spray launched in all directions, like a dog drying itself after a swim.

At six-five, he was taller than anybody he knew. His first teenage growth spurt had come at the tender age of thirteen and hadn’t stopped until he was almost twenty-years-old. But it wasn’t just his height that drew looks as he pitched his surf board into the sand and unzipped his neoprene half suit. It was the bulk he’d built up over years of working and surfing. The kind of muscles that the gym could never give you.

“Hey!” a voice called out.

He looked up to see Lorne Daniels approaching. The seventy-year-old man was wearing bleached cut-off denims and a lurid pink-and-orange hibiscus shirt, unbuttoned to his mid-chest.

“Hey, Lorne.” Griff smiled. “How’s it going?”

“Did you see that?” Lorne asked, nodding his head toward Paxton’s Pier. “Looks like they’ve found a chump to buy the old wreck.”

Griff turned his head to look for the sign that had been hanging from the pier for the last year or so. It hadn’t weathered well. The white paint was peeling from the wooden board, and some kids had drawn comically inaccurate pictures of male genitalia with black sharpies all over it. But Lorne was right, there was something new on there. Where the painted red letters that proclaimed the old pier was ‘For Sale’ was covered with brand sparkling new lettering.

Sold

“You know who bought it?” Griff asked, two tiny lines appearing between his brows as his gaze scanned along the old Victorian pleasure pier. Halfway along the wooden boarded walkway was the bright blue painted building housing Delmonico’s, an Italian restaurant much loved by the inhabitants of Angel Sands. It was closed up right now – but like everything else in Angel Sands, it would be bustling by lunchtime. At the end of the pier was a boat – Griff’s boat. The Ocean Explorer was a sixty foot ex-fishing boat, adapted by his father back in the ‘90s for whale watching expeditions. His dad had long since retired, and Griff bought him out, taking over as captain of the white painted vessel.

“No idea.” Lorne shrugged. “But I’m thinking maybe it’s that guy who bought London Bridge and moved it brick by brick to Lake Havasu. If not him, somebody just as crazy.”

Griff’s lips twitched as he grabbed his board.

As the two of them walked up the sand toward Lorne’s surf shop, the older man asked, “How are your folks?” Lorne was in the process of opening up, the canopy that covered the surfboards and racks of clothes already extended. Next door was Déjà Brew, the coffee shop owned by Griff’s friends, Ally and Nate. They were outside unstacking chairs. When they saw him and Lorne, they lifted their hands in a wave.

“Good, I think.” Griff shrugged. Since his mom and dad retired and moved to a community in Florida, he only heard from them occasionally. That was the way he liked it. He’d suffered too many years of their on-again off-again relationship to want any more communication than that.

“Tell them I say hi when you speak to them next.”

“I will.” Griff nodded, and headed along the golden sand toward the pier.

After washing himself off in the showers by the boardwalk, and storing his board and suit in the lock up shed that came with his boat mooring, Griff ambled up the wooden pier, the smile slipping from his face when he saw a