Chapter 2 - Dust Along the TidelineThree days and seven hundred miles later, the concrete towers of New York were replaced by salt cedar, weathered cedar shingles, and the brackish scent of the low country.
Cape Haven was a forgotten sliver of coastal North Carolina that tourists rarely bothered with. It possessed no boardwalks, no high-end marinas, and no boutique hotels. It was inhabited by commercial crabbers, retired boatwrights, and people who had come to the end of a continent because they had nowhere else to run.
Amy had changed her name on the paper lease to Amelia Vance-Cole, using an old family surname that predated her father's corporate mergers. She rented the upper apartment of an old saltbox house perched near the salt marshes. The landlord was an elderly widow named Martha Holloway, whose sun-leathered face bore the map of seventy years of coastal storms.
"Rent is five hundred, cash on the first," Martha had said, looking at Amy’s bulging belly and the single canvas duffle bag she carried. Martha didn't ask about wedding bands or husbands. The salt marshes had seen hundreds of shipwrecks; she knew how to recognize salvage when it walked up her steps. "Water heater takes five minutes to warm. Roof don't leak, but the wind talks loud at night. If you hear thumping, it’s just the gulls dropping clams on the tin to crack 'em."
"Thank you, Mrs. Holloway," Amy said.
"Just Martha, child. You look like a puff of sea mist could knock you flat. Go upstairs and eat something warm."
The apartment had sloping pine floors, a single cast-iron bed, and a wide window that looked directly across the marsh toward the barrier dunes. That first night, Amy lay awake on the hard mattress. For months, she had fallen asleep to Julian’s erratic arrivals, the smell of bourbon and expensive cigars, and the unspoken threat of corporate audits and family reputations.
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Here, there was only the rhythm of the tide—rising, filling the muddy estuaries, then receding back into the Atlantic with a steady, impartial sigh. She placed both palms upon her swollen belly. A faint, fluttery tap replied from beneath her skin.
"We are here," she whispered into the darkness. "We are entirely on our own, and we are safe."
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