Beach Lane by Sherryl Woods Page A

night.”
    “Fine,” Henry said grudgingly.
    Susie sat down on the floor between their twin beds and accepted the book from Henry. “Okay, you’ll need to fill me in on what’s happened in the story up till now,” she told them.
    Their words tumbled over each other as they brought her up to date.
    “It’s a really good story,” Henry concluded.
    Shanna grinned. “They only get to hear one chapter,” she warned Susie. “Do not let them try to talk you into more.”
    “Absolutely not,” Susie told her solemnly, then winked at Henry, who giggled.
    Shanna merely shook her head, then left the room. “Dinner’s in a half hour,” she called back.
    Susie looked at the two boys. “I guess I’ll have to read fast.”
    She began the book on the designated page, less caught up in the story than in glancing at both boys as they listened. Davy soon curled up with his pillow and fell asleep, but Henry was on the edge of the bed eagerly absorbing every word. He sighed when she reached the end of the second chapter.
    “Do we really have to stop?” he asked wistfully.
    “We really do,” she said, giving him a hug and tucking him in. She pressed a kiss to his cheek. “You need lots of sleep so you can go to school tomorrow and get very, very smart.”
    He regarded her solemnly. “I’m already smart.”
    “Trust me, kid, there’s a whole universe of stuff you don’t know yet. Even I’m not caught up on everything, and I’ve been around a lot longer than you have.”
    “I guess,” he said. “Thanks for reading to us.”
    “It was fun. I wish I’d had a mom with a bookstore when I was your age. You guys are so lucky.”
    “The luckiest,” Henry said, his eyes drifting closed.
    Susie tiptoed from the room, then leaned against the wall outside the door, trying very hard not to cry. She wanted nights exactly like this, putting her own kids to bed, then going downstairs to her husband, to Mack.
    What if that could never be?
    “Susie, dinner,” Shanna called, snapping her out of her moment of self-pity and panic.
    “On my way,” she called back, wiping the tears from her cheeks and plastering a smile on her face.
    “Please God,” she murmured as she went downstairs, “don’t take this away from me. Please.”
    For just an instant, she regretted not filling Gram in on what was going on. Gram would know exactly the right words to use, the ones God would hear.
    She’d also remind Susie that God always knew what was in her heart.

    A few days after his disquieting conversation with Susie, Mack learned the details about yet another investigation of steroid use among top-ranked baseball players, one of whom had been especially outspoken in his criticism of players who’d been caught in the past. The hypocrisy irked him, as did the crash of more sports heroes. He was itching to take on the topic, but without his column where was he supposed to find an audience?
    He recalled Susie’s suggestion that he blog, went online, set up an account and wrote the kind of scathing column that once might have gotten him into hot water at the newspaper.
    He had no idea what to expect. For all he knew, his words were going out into cyberspace, unread by anyone. When he logged on the next day, he had half a dozen comments, most of them from people who’d sometimes emailed him at the Baltimore paper.
    “Happy to see your voice hasn’t been silenced forever,” one wrote. “Welcome back!”
    A couple of days later, he had a call from a local sports radio show inviting him to come in and discuss the topic. The gig didn’t pay, but it was exposure for his views and, he thought with a sense of amazement, for the blog he’d started with little hope of drawing any attention.
    By the end of the next week the hit counter he’d installed on his site was surprisingly active. It didn’t rival his old paper’s circulation yet—and probably never would, he realized—but at least he’d found a way to keep his name and his views out