Lucky's Beach

New York Times bestselling author Shelley Noble takes her readers on another beach adventure where a young woman discovers the power of family and forgiveness.

School teacher Julie Barlow and her two best friends, Beth and Aggie, are looking forward to an adults only beach vacation. Julie also plans to use the time to figure out why her perfectly planned life has gone terribly amiss. They’ve barely hit the road when a frantic call from Julie’s mother hijacks their best laid plans. Uncle Tony “Lucky” Costa is missing. Always entertaining, often irresponsible, never reliable, Uncle Lucky was a favorite with her friends. For Julie, for whom he’d been a sometimes surrogate father, not so much.

Her mother wants them to take a “teeny” detour to look for the irascible retired surfer. Julie makes excuses. After all, she was the one who decided she never wanted to see Lucky again. Overruled in this as she is in much of her life, Julie and her friends detour to Lucky’s latest scheme, Lucky’s Beach Bar and Grill. They find it tucked away in a quaint coastal town on the Delaware coast. With a crescent beach of white sand, large waves, plenty of tanned young men, a lively night life, it’s a perfect beach getaway.

Beth and Aggie see good times ahead, Julie is determined to get through it as quickly as possible. But that will change as she gets to know Lucky’s friends and confidantes. The taciturn bartender, the loyal housekeeper, the local fortune teller, the whole town shares a determination to protect him. But from what?

Soon Julie and her friends are swept up in an effort to save the town's―and Lucky’s― most closely guarded secret. And Julie begins to see her uncle in a new light.

Julie Barlow has a few things to learn about life―and love―and sacrifice. Her lesson begins this summer at Lucky’s Beach.

Prologue

Julie Barlow looked over her students’ heads to the wall clock behind them. The minute hand clicked forward.

It was the last day of school, the last five minutes to be precise, and Julie was the only one in her fourth grade class at Hillsdale Progressive Elementary who was watching the clock.

Sixteen nine year olds, heads bowed, were finishing up the last of their work. A questionnaire about their summer goals.

Travel, enrichment classes, chess clubs, special workshops. Even in summer, they were adding to their resumes. After all they were in fourth grade and time was passing.

She jumped when the bell buzzed. Watched the children she’d tried to guide and nurture for the last year gather up their iPads, iPhones, and backpacks. They filed by her desk, leaving their questionnaires in her inbox.

The last to leave was Jimmy Marcuse, a quiet boy who had surprised them all by winning the county spelling bee. Spelling wasn’t really emphasized at Hillsdale Progressive. That’s what spellcheck was for.

“Looks like you’ll be having a busy summer,” Julie said, glancing at his questionnaire.

“Yes, Miss Barlow. I leave for space camp next week.”

“Space camp, that sounds exciting.”

“I have a lot of studying to do first. They don’t usually take fourth graders.”

“That is an achievement. Is your family planning a vacation?”

“My parents are taking my brother to look at colleges, so he can decide where to apply for early admission. I’m staying home and taking a digital media workshop while they’re gone.”

“Oh, you don’t want to go see the sights?”

“He already knows where he wants to go. I don’t see why they have to go look at them.”

“There are probably some other great things to see and do.”

He gave her a look so sympathetic that Julie flinched.

“Well, maybe I’ll see you at the pool this summer.”

“We have our own pool. Besides in August I have soccer boot camp.”

“That sounds fun. What position do you play?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Defense probably, it’s really hot in August. You get sweaty and there are bugs.”

“True.”

“But Dad says it’s important to have a well-rounded resume if I want to get into a top school.”

Julie smiled. She wanted to say, but you’re in fourth grade. There’s time, you should be having fun over the summer, but she didn’t. Julie had been just like him at his age, always achieving, always with the future in mind. She was like him now.

She followed him down the hall to the exit; held the door open while he stepped into the sunshine.

“Jimmy.”

He looked back over his shoulder but didn’t slow down.

“Never mind, have a good summer.”

She stood at the door watching as he walked down the sidewalk and got into the front seat of a silver BMW. Watched as the car drove away, Jimmy’s head already bent over his phone or his tablet; school and last year’s teacher forgotten as he planned for the next step toward a brilliant future.

Julie wanted to run after the car, say, there’s more to life. Hard work doesn’t guarantee a perfect future. Spend time with your family; they’re the most important thing in the world.

But who was she to give him that advice. She’d been raised by a single mother and a sometimes uncle.

Her mother had worked her whole life to give Julie a secure future, but Julie hadn’t had the advantages of most of her students, certainly not the same technology at her fingertips. At nine, most of them had more experience of the world than she had.

She’d always wanted to be a teacher, guiding young minds, introducing them to the world of possibilities, and giving them the tools to achieve their dreams.

But had she done anything this year beyond the syllabus? Opened them to any new ideas? Showed them something they couldn’t see without her? At least bring a balance to their lives? She was afraid she knew the answer.

That’s why she’d applied for an educational leave of absence for the following year. She knew if she just had new experiences, a fresh outlook; if she could just broaden her own horizons, learn new methodology, she could make a real difference in their lives. Their whole lives.

But her application had been denied.

And now Julie Barlow was about to do the most reckless thing she’d ever done. Because she had to do something to fulfill her own dream.

She opened her desk drawer and with trembling fingers took out the letter of resignation she’d written the night before.

Her mother would be disappointed. But she would understand. In time.

Julie marched resolutely down the hall toward the principal’s office.

Halfway there, Sara Olins, came out of her classroom.

“Oh good, you’re just who I need. You have a minute, don’t you?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but steered Julie inside.

“I can’t get this mural down by myself without tearing it which would be such a shame.”

Julie looked at the wall. Ten feet of second grade depictions of People in Our Neighborhood. She pulled over a step ladder. “I’ll release the tape, you hold the edges.”

By the time they’d rolled it up, wrapped it in plastic and found a place for it in the closet, the principal had left for the day.

Julie stood outside his door, half defeated, half relieved. What had she been thinking? She’d worked her whole life for this.

She tore up the letter right there.

But the original was still in a file on her laptop. And she wouldn’t delete it. Not just yet.

 

Two Weeks Later

Chapter One

Vacation. It couldn’t get here soon enough, thought Julie, but looking out the window wouldn’t make Kayla and Aggie arrive any earlier;, her two best friends since forever were always late. Notoriously late.

Girl Scout meetings, soccer camp, Junior Prom, the vacations they’d been taking together since college; they’d never yet arrived anywhere on time. Even as teachers the two of them were always running into the classroom along with the bell.

Julie had been doing a lot of waiting lately, for school to end, for vacation to begin. For something to happen. She needed this vacation to figure out how to get her life back on track.

She turned from the window and made one last mental sweep of her living room. Lamps unplugged, laptop packed, cell in purse, extra chargers in her suitcase. Printers off. Desk . . . not cleared.

The stack of travel brochures she’d been collecting for the last two years and that she’d meant to recycle the night before, still sat there, a painful reminder of all the places she wouldn’t be going during the next school year. She’d put them out in the bin now.

She wouldn’t need them any more. Her request for an educational leave of absence had been denied, and it was time she stopped thinking about what might have been and get back to the here and now.

Recycle bin, she reminded herself.

A prolonged honk jarred Julie back to the here and now.

At last. Vacation had arrived and—she glanced at her watch—only seventeen minutes late, practically early.

She hurried across the room and opened the door just as an electric blue SUV stopped at the curb and Kayla and Aggie jumped out of the car. They were both in vacation mode, short-shorts and tee tops. Kayla, beanpole thin with shoulder length dark hair, today tied back in a ponytail that she’d pulled through the back of a hot pink baseball cap.

Aggie unselfconsciously poured into a pair of stretchy short-shorter-shortest cutoffs and a tight tee shirt. Proud to sport her “hour glass in a post Twiggy world” figure.

Julie was wearing new shorts from Aritzia and a Freddy Mercury tee-shirt. She’d attempted to clip up her curly hair into a twist with tenuous success. She’d even done a pre-vacation sit out in the back yard so she wouldn’t look like rice on the beach. Still she felt not quite ready for prime time.

Kayla stopped at the back of the SUV and opened the hatch; Aggie made a beeline for the front door.

“Hurry up. Happy hour’s waiting! Is this all your stuff?” She breezed past to pick up Julie’s laptop. “Kayla’s making more space in the trunk. Good luck with that one.” She spotted the brochures that Julie had left on the desk.

“Oh goody, plans for our next vacation.”

“No! They’re not . . .”

Aggie shoved the brochures into Julie’s beach bag just as Julie lunged for them. “Man, this is heavy, what do you have in here?”

“Beach stuff and a few books.”

“Better be juicy romances and not a text book.”

“My Contemporary Trends class starts in three weeks.”

Aggie rolled her eyes. “Another three points toward your masters degree. I’m impressed, but I may be moved to toss it out the car window.”

“Very funny. I’m putting it in the trunk.”

Though right now Julie wouldn’t cry if Aggie did toss it. She was the only one of the three working on her masters degree. Better salary, better job security. Better do it now, her mother had advised. So she had.

She hadn’t told Kayla and Aggie about her request for a leave. At first she didn’t want to share it in case it didn’t happen. Now that it had “not” happened, she wondered if she should mention it at all. She knew they would commiserate, be disappointed that she didn’t get it, angry that she’d been passed over, but relieved because they would still be together like always.

Well, she wasn’t going anywhere but back to school. No reason to mention it ever almost happened.

Aggie headed toward the open door. “Chop. Chop. Time’s a’wasting.”

“You guys are the ones who were late,” Julie groused.

“We’re always late,” Aggie said cheerfully.

“True, and I love you anyway,” Julie said, following her out the door. Kayla had even been late to her own wedding, but that was because the limo had had a flat tire on the way to the church. Not her fault. But had probably been one of those signs that no one ever paid attention to until it was too late.

Seven years later, her two kids spent two weeks each summer with her ex husband, and Aggie and Julie always planned their vacation accordingly.

Julie stopped to double-lock the front door and rolled her suitcase out to the car.

“I think we may need your organizational skills,” Kayla said, staring into the open cargo door.

It was a mess. Julie nudged Kayla aside and began removing the haphazardly balanced bags, cases, coolers, beach umbrellas and backpacks. Several minutes later, she’d repacked and secured every piece while managing to leave a full view of the back window for the driver.

“Pure genius,” Kayla said and slammed the hutch.

“Alrighty girls, let’s rock n roll.” Aggie stuck up her hand. They all high-fived and jumped in the car, Aggie riding shotgun and Julie in the back.

They hadn’t gone two blocks before someone’s cell phone rang.

Kayla turned down the radio while they all listened.

“It’s mine,” Julie said, recognizing the “By the Sea” ringtone she’d downloaded for the summer.

A few seconds of rummaging in her bag and she extracted the phone. Looked at the caller ID. “It’s my mother.”

“I thought she was on that nurses’ cruise.”

“She is.” Julie connected. “Hey Mom.”

“Hi, Louise,” Kayla and Aggie called from the front seat.

“What’s up? Everything okay?”

“No.”

Julie sucked in her breath. “Are you okay?”

Aggie turned around in her seat, looking worried.

“I’m fine. But Lucky’s missing.”

Julie shook her head. Tony Costa. Her mother’s younger brother—by seven minutes. Julie’s sometimes surrogate father. Always entertaining, often irresponsible, never reliable, Uncle “Lucky” was a favorite with her friends. For Julie, the jury was still out.

She relaxed and gave her companions a thumbs up.

“Oh. Mom. You know how he is.”

“I do and that’s why I’m worried. We talk every week without fail. ”

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. Maybe he couldn’t get access to your cell while you’re on the ship.”

“Of course he could.”

“Maybe his cell phone died or he doesn’t have reception on his end.” Maybe it fell in the ocean while he was out catching the big one.

“He’s in Delaware.”

“Delaware?” Julie glanced at her friends as a creeping sense of inevitability stole over her. She vaguely remembered that he had settled there . . . somewhere.

“Honey, you remember; he opened up that bar in wherever they have the big waves.”

“In Delaware?”

“Well, they’re biggish. And I’m sure it’s right on your way to Rehoboth.”

“We’re going to Dewey Beach.”

“It’s just a few minutes out of your way. He’s my twin brother. I can tell when something’s wrong.”

Leave it to her mother to pull the twin’s card when she was determined to have her way.

“Mom.”

“What’s wrong?” Aggie asked.

“Or maybe I can get them to airlift me off the ship . . .”

“Oh Mom.”

“Put her on speaker,” said Kayla.

“Is that Kayla?”

“Yes. I’m putting you on speaker.”

“Hi girls, I’m so glad I caught you. You don’t mind taking a little detour, do you?”

“It’s a four hour trip,” Julie argued from the back seat, but no one paid any attention. She already knew they’d be detouring to check out Lucky’s “retirement” venture. Some surfer bar in some beach town that was not the beach town they were going to.

But Julie could never hold out against her friends, or her mother—or even Lucky.

“Not at all.” Kayla said. “We’ve got this covered.”