Beach House Beginnings. Christie Ridgway

      Chapter One

      Two miles of magic.

      Trudging through soft sand, Meg Alexander remembered that’s how she’d thought of her childhood Neverland, Southern California’s Crescent Cove. Even after ten years away, she recalled how lucky she’d felt growing up here.

      Meg’s great-great-grandfather had purchased the land as a location to make silent movies such as The Courageous Castaways and Sweet Safari, and the tropical vegetation he’d trucked in for authenticity in 1919 continued to thrive at the cove today. The buff-colored bluffs rising up from the beach were made more colorful by the bright green fronds of date palm trees and the salmon and scarlet flowers of bougainvillea that nestled beside the native sagebrush. Closer to shore, floppy-leaved banana plants, chunky Mexican fan palms and colorful hibiscus shrubs surrounded the fifty eclectic cottages, most of which had been built during the 1920s through 1950s.

      Each of the beach houses at Crescent Cove was different, their form-following whims now long forgotten. Their paint schemes were as varied as their shapes and sizes, though the colors selected blended well with the landscape of sand, earth and vivid flora. The single similarity was that in every one, windows peered oceanward.

      Meg didn’t dare look in that direction, herself.

      Growing up, her mother had told Meg and her little sister, Skye, that merfolk lived in those waters off shore, protecting the cove with their supernatural powers. Growing up, Meg had believed in that, just as she’d believed that sand dollars were the merpeople’s currency and sea glass the discarded pieces from some mysterious merchildren’s board game.

      But Meg didn’t believe in magic or mystery anymore.

      “Good morning,” an elderly male voice said.

      Startled, Meg looked up. “Hey, Rex. Good morning, yourself.” Rex Monroe, ninety-some years young, was the only full-time resident at the cove other than Skye, who had managed the property since their parents’ move to Provence, France. Yesterday, for the first time in a decade, Meg had met up with the nonagenarian as he walked along the sand. Like now, the clouds had been low and damp, the typical gloomy “May Gray” weather conditions. “Getting in your daily constitutional?” she asked.

      Rex patted his belly, covered in a flannel shirt tucked into soft chinos. “It’s not just you ladies who have to watch your figures. Are you settling in okay?”

      “Oh, sure,” Meg said, waving a hand. It was actually weird being back in her childhood bedroom, ten years after leaving the cove at nineteen, but her sister had been invited to the out-of-town wedding of a former college roommate. How could Meg have refused to step in? Memorial Day weekend was the kick-off of the Crescent Cove summer season. Someone had to be on hand to pass out keys to the bungalows and handle minor crises.

      Even if it was a major crisis, in Meg’s mind, to be back here.

      “I see you have a satchel of tools,” Rex said, pointing to the canvas bag she carried. “Something need fixing already?”

      “Not really. Just trying to keep busy.” Anything to prevent her from thinking of the last summer she’d spent at the cove. “I’m going to scrape the deck railing at Beach House No. 9. I understand that Griffin Lowell has been staying there the last couple of months, but since he’s away for a few days, Skye hired a contractor to take care of the blistering paint while he’s gone.”

      Rex gave Meg a piercing look that reminded her he was a former war correspondent, one who’d won a Pulitzer during World War 2. “What? The man Skye hired doesn’t have some sort of electric paint-removing machine?”

      “Uh, well…” Meg glanced at the simple metal scraper at the bottom of her bag, sitting beside a few other basic tools and her bottle of water. “You know what they say about idle hands. I thought I’d do the work myself.” An idle mind was even more dangerous, Meg had decided. She had to stay busy to avoid thoughts of that last summer. Of Peter.

      Rex nodded as if he understood all she didn’t say aloud. “You come visit me if you’d like some company, all right?”

      “Thanks, I will,” Meg said with a bright smile, though she knew she wouldn’t. She didn’t want company. Company might bring up Peter. Company might ask her why she’d run away from her childhood home and never returned. Company might make her admit how much she’d lost, including the happy-go-lucky girl she’d once been.

      Meg was too smart to allow that to happen.

      “Enjoy your walk, Rex,” she said, and then continued down the beach.

      The south end of Crescent Cove was bounded by a sea cliff that pushed into the Pacific. Though the top of it was wide and flat, there were steep trails snaking up its side that led to various outcroppings from which, she remembered, daredevils used to launch ocean jumps.