Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews

And everything changed.
    She had to talk to Adam right away, warn him. Don knows. I’m gone. I’m afraid. Afraid he’ll come after me. Afraid he’ll come after you. Be careful. I’m gone.
    Adam would have to wait, though. She yawned, got out of the car, locked it, and looked around, automatically tensing at the sight of a black SUV and, quickly, rebuking herself. This SUV was an Explorer, not an Escalade. Don Shackleford did not know where she was. Yet.
    Inside the restaurant, all the tables were full. There was one seat vacant, at the counter, between a guy who looked like a construction worker and a young woman her age, with a sunburnt nose, who looked to have just walked in off the beach.
    The restaurant smelled like hamburgers and French fries. Maryn’s stomach growled again. She needed food, a bed, a new name, new identity, new life. But for now, a seat at the counter at The Picky Pelican would have to do.

 
    11
    Dorie sat alone at the luncheonette counter. Even though it was nearly two, the place was still mobbed with a late lunch crowd. “Here ya go, hon,” the waitress said, as she carefully poured the chocolate shake from the stainless-steel shaker into the tall, frosted glass and then placed it on the fluted white-paper place mat. “Wait,” the waitress said. She turned to the back bar and returned with a can of whipped cream in one hand and a maraschino cherry in the other. “There now,” the waitress said, plopping the cherry atop the mound of whipped cream.
    “Thank you so much,” Dorie said, shooting the waitress a smile. “This looks awesome.”
    She plunged the straw into the shake and took a deep sip. The sensation of the ice-cold chocolate sent a chill down her sunburnt back, but that didn’t slow her down. When she’d woken up back at the beach, Ellis and Julia were gone, and she was starving. Again. She’d washed the sand off at the outside shower, slipped into her cover-up, and gone in search of something to eat. The little luncheonette was called The Picky Pelican. It sat in themiddle of a strip shopping center only a few blocks from Ebbtide, and it reminded her of Clary’s Soda Fountain, back home.

    So she’d found the seat at the counter, but when the waitress brought the menu, nothing really appealed to her. Except a chocolate milk shake.
    Dorie tried to take her time finishing the shake. She’d felt a little guilty, leaving without telling the girls where she was going, but then, hadn’t they gone off without her while she was sleeping on her lounge chair?
    She pulled a magazine out of her beach bag and flicked idly through the pages.
    “Ah-hem.” A woman in expensive-looking designer sunglasses cleared her throat.
    Dorie looked up from her magazine. “Hello,” she said.
    “Would you mind if I sat here?” The woman gestured at the empty stool beside Dorie’s. It was the only vacant one at the counter.
    “Not at all,” Dorie said.
    “Thanks.” The woman sat down and silently picked up a menu. She was attractive, maybe a little younger than Dorie, and with her tailored black slacks, black sling-back stiletto heels, and clingy silk leopard-print blouse, she looked distinctly out of place amongst the T-shirts-and-shorts-wearing beach crowd in the restaurant. Dorie went back to her magazine, forcing herself to take tiny sips of her milk shake. What she really wanted was a second shake. But this one cost nearly four bucks, and she’d have to leave a buck tip, and that was five bucks that she hadn’t budgeted on spending. Five bucks she really shouldn’t spend.
    She looked down at her cell phone, and for the tenth time that day, tried to force herself to call her sister. Willa had plenty of money. Arthur was rich, and Willa hadn’t worked a day since she’d married. It was rotten of her to cancel at the last minute, and even rottener not to offer to pay her share anyway. Back when she’d invited herself to come along with the others, she’d even hinted to Dorie that