The Secret Path by Karen Swan (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

them. This wasn’t the main surfing beach; that was a little further down the shore, two bays away. Here, the cove was too small to really travel any distance, but some of the locals liked to come here for an easy ride before or after work and she liked that it was quieter.

Jed’s beach shack was only a couple of hundred metres away and she found him unpacking crates of rum and beer as she walked up. He had his back to her, a triangular sweat patch on the t-shirt between his shoulder blades as he worked, but she knew he’d seen her. The coloured huts were in eyeline from here and she knew he surreptitiously ‘kept an eye’ on them. Always had, always would.

‘Morning, Jed.’ She placed her forearms on the bar. It was just old gangplanks nailed together, but they had long ago been worn marble-smooth by generations of people doing exactly the same.

He turned, his eyes meeting hers with a smile. ‘Morning, T-t. Sleep well?’

T-t. One of her childhood nicknames, rarely used these days. His voice had a skip to it, as though both a joke and a song lay curled within its folds.

‘Like a log,’ she smiled, perching on the bar stool. ‘I didn’t realize how tired I was.’

‘Yes,’ he nodded deeply. ‘The others said you’ve been working hard.’

‘Are they still asleep?’ She twisted on the seat, looking back to the water. The surfers were on their tummies and paddling out to deeper waters now.

‘No. Miles and Zac and Rory have gone on a bike ride. The others are on a walk to the big beach. Little Jimmy was keen to see the surfers doing their thing.’

She turned back again with a pout. ‘They’re all up? Oh, I wish they’d woken me! I’d have liked to have gone with them too.’

He chuckled. ‘Oh, they tried. A few times. You were fast off, they said.’

She sighed. ‘Oh dear. I guess I was pretty tired.’ She closed her eyes, feeling the ocean breeze ruffle the baby hairs that escaped her bun, tickling her neck. It was good to be out of clothes, to feel the wind and the sun on her skin.

‘And hungry now too?’

As if on cue, her tummy grumbled. ‘Funny you should mention that . . .’ She leaned in closer on the counter. ‘What have you got by way of scoff?’

‘Scoff.’ He repeated the word as though trying it out for size, softening her vowels so that the word became different but the same. Scaff. ‘I can do you some Gallo Pinto.’

She smiled gratefully, knowing perfectly well he would. Gallo Pinto – beans and rice, with plantains and egg – was to the Costa Ricans what eggs and bacon were to the English. Jed and his father had been cooking it for her since she was little; it was instant comfort in a bowl. ‘Great,’ she sighed, feeling cared for, her needs already met. She was well rested, she was warm . . . This was going to be a good day. She could feel it.

‘You want some coconut water?’ He held up a coconut questioningly.

‘Oh my God, yes.’

Reaching down to below the counter, he pulled out a machete and with one practised swipe, took off the top. It was still as exciting as when she’d been a kid. He stuck a straw in it and handed it to her, watching as she drank.

‘Oh. My. God,’ she said as she came up for air. ‘That is literally better than saline.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Saline?’

‘What we doctors use for a rapid recovery.’

‘Ah.’ He chuckled as he walked off towards the kitchen area at the far end of the bar and began slicing up some plantains.

‘So, tell me your news,’ she said to his back, finding comfort just in watching his familiar routines. ‘What’s been going on over here?’

There was a short pause as he put a pan on the heat. ‘Well, they gone built the new school at last,’ he said over his shoulder.

‘Finally!’

‘Yeah. Only took eight years in the end.’

Only eight? He wasn’t joking, and she felt a shot of anger. How many children had grown up here without a formal education in the meantime? Her father had given the money in a lump sum years ago, so it wasn’t funding that had been the issue. It wasn’t even that corruption was rife; she just knew that when it came to the Indigenas – the native people – their needs were at the very bottom of a long governmental to-do list.

‘And ol’ Sam finally perished.’

‘Oh no, I’m so sorry. Was it his heart?’ She quickly calculated that he must have been in his late eighties by now. He had been on statins for years. She was the one who had diagnosed his symptoms on her last trip out here, when she was a first-year in med school. The summer before she’d met Alex.

‘Yes. He died happy though, Bertha said.’

Bertha was a kindly, larger-than-life figure in town, who sat on her stool making baskets by day and was the town prostitute by night. She had to be in her mid-sixties. ‘Well, that’s . . . nice to think he . . . had a smile on his face.’

Jed laughed, his muscular arm stirring the rice and beans as the plantains sizzled and softly charred. ‘He had that all right,’ he chuckled.

She watched him move, so loose-limbed and easy in his bones. He looked like there wasn’t a knot of tension in his entire body.

‘And how about you? What’s happening in your life?’ she asked, as he cracked two eggs and spilled them into a clearing in the pan, leaning back as the fat began to spit.

He didn’t look back. ‘I’ve got four little ones now. They’re six, five, two and eight months.’

‘Wow, Jed! I didn’t know! . . . Your wife must be very busy.’ And Tara had thought she was tired!

He gave an easy shrug. ‘They’re good kids.’

‘How could they not be? What’s your wife’s name?’ She had heard he had married several years back but she’d not heard about their growing family. Or