Pineapple Turtles

Pineapple
Turtles
A Pineapple Port Mystery: Book Ten
Amy Vansant


©2019 by Amy Vansant. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by any means, without the permission of the author. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Vansant Creations, LLC / Amy Vansant
Annapolis, MD
http://www.AmyVansant.com
http://www.PineapplePort.com
Copy editing by Effrosyni Moschoudi
Proofreading by Effrosyni Moschoudi  & Connie Leap
Cover by Steven Novak


CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Other Books by Amy Vansant
 
 
 
Chapter One
One Week Earlier
Kim walked through the Marine Rescue Center pushing Josh Jr. as he gurgled sing-song noises in his stroller. She flipped through turtle-stamped tee shirts on a rack one at a time, as if she were studying the designs, but her eyes didn’t see anything but smears of dull color. Her vision had blurred and darkened. It was as if someone had wrapped a burlap bag around her head and, strangely, she didn’t care. It was a relief. The new gray-brown of her world kept her from screaming. She didn’t want to remove her veil of sadness. It was safer, deep inside. Even her limbs worked as if someone else ran the controls.
Earlier, she’d been driving home when her arms jerked the steering wheel left, pointing the vehicle toward the beach and away from home. When she passed the Marine Rescue Center she’d thought, I should take Junior to see the turtles.
That was the funny part: she wanted to take Josh Jr. to see the turtles.
She was inside the Center now, surrounded by rescued sea turtles lazily stroking inside giant tanks, when she realized how stupid she was.
He can’t see them.
That’s when the energy oozed out of her as if she were an overfilled sponge and she walked like a zombie, pushing Junior’s carriage through the gift shop.
I’d nearly done it.
That was the other funny part. She and Josh had almost made it. There’d been a time when their fighting occurred as regularly as the rising and setting of the sun—and every other solar position on the weekends when he was home from work. Then she got pregnant and everything changed. Josh was over the moon. He stopped drinking hard liquor in favor of beer. He started painting the nursery walls and building a crib. He spent days sanding the crib until it was as buttery smooth as their future baby’s bottom.
Don’t have a baby to save a marriage, her mother had warned.
Ha, Mom. What do you know?
The baby had saved her marriage.
She’d known it would. Josh had been talking about having a son since the day she met him. The day they found out it was a boy—
Oh boy.
The love kept piling on. She’d been promoted from Nagging Shrew to Queen Mother in the span of a few months.
Little Josh Jr. was born healthy. Check that off the list. Ten toes. Ten fingers.
A week later work promoted Josh to foreman.
Could things have been any better?
And then today.
Everything changed today.
Had they not been grateful enough? What did they do to deserve today?
Josh Jr. hiccupped and Kim looked at him without seeing him.
It was only fair. He didn’t see her either.
Today was the day she found out Josh Jr. was blind.
One checkup and everything changed. Somewhere in the pit of her being she’d already known it. There’d been a rock in her stomach for days, a creeping dread whispering something’s wrong. She trained herself to swallow her fears and hide them from Josh and herself—most of all, Josh. She’d almost cancelled the baby’s checkup, but she knew Josh would want to know how it went and she didn’t think she could live the way she’d been living much longer. She had to know the truth, for better or for worse.
Ha. For better or for worse. That was funny, too.
The marriage wouldn’t survive the diagnosis. Of that, she was sure.
She wished she hadn’t gone to the doctor.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
The way Josh Jr.’s eyes stayed fixed. The way he wouldn’t follow a toy when she moved it in front of his face—
I knew it.
As much as Josh loved having a son, he didn’t spend much time with the baby. When he did want to interact it was easy to show him the best things. If you booped the baby on the nose with his stuffed lion, he giggled, just like any other baby. There was no reason for Josh to think his son couldn’t see the lion. Josh wasn’t the type to look into things too closely.
I could have hidden it for months. For years.
Josh’s mom was a different story, though. It wouldn’t have been long before she noticed. Kim pretended to have a stomach virus to put off her own mother’s visit once already. How many times could she have the flu? A week ago Josh asked if she wanted to have his mom watch the baby while they sneaked to the bar with their friends and she had to fake a headache.
How long could I pretend to be sick?
So she’d kept the baby’s doctor appointment, hoping to be proved wrong and put all her fears behind her.
But that wasn’t to be. All her fears were with her now, fully realized, on top