Swimming Lessons. Mary Monroe Alice

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      Praise for the novels of Mary Alice Monroe

      “An inspirational tale of redemption.”

      —Publishers Weekly on Swimming Lessons

      “Monroe makes her characters so believable, the reader can almost hear them breathing…. Readers who enjoy such fine southern voices as Pat Conroy will add the talented Monroe to their list of favorites.”

      —Booklist on Sweetgrass

      “Skyward is a soaring, passionate story of loneliness and pain and the simple ability of love to heal and transcend both. Mary Alice Monroe’s voice is as strong and true as the great birds of prey of whom she writes.”

      —New York Times bestselling author Anne Rivers Siddons

      “With each new book, Mary Alice Monroe continues to cement her growing reputation as an author of power and depth. The Beach House is filled with the agony of past mistakes, present pain and hope for a brighter future.”

      —RT Book Reviews

      “Monroe writes with a crisp precision and narrative energy that will keep [readers] turning the pages. Her talent for infusing her characters with warmth and vitality and her ability to spin a tale with emotional depth will earn her a broad spectrum of readers, particularly fans of Barbara Delinsky and Nora Roberts.”

      —Publishers Weekly on The Four Seasons

      Swimming Lessons

      Mary Alice Monroe

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      To Martha Keenan

      Contents

      Odyssey

      Part One

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Part Two

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Part Three

      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

      Part Four

      Chapter Twenty-Nine

      Chapter Thirty

      Letter to Reader

      Questions for Discussion

      Acknowledgments

      Odyssey

      The sea is thick and murky. Can you see me?

      I am propelled forward, caught in a spiral of swift water. The Great Current carries me as it writhes along the coastline, swirling around the great gyre and through a vast spread of sargassum weed. It snakes from south to north, a supernatural force pushing me forward. Always onward.

      I am a loggerhead. I’ve journeyed far in this vast ocean, a servant to my magnetic compass. Yet now I hear a voice that cries above the roar of the current. It is the voice of my ancestors, a voice that has guided mothers for generation after generation, for two hundred million years. I heed the call and spread my beautiful long flippers. Strange forces gain strength in my soul, compelling me eastward. Light shimmers above, then grows dark. Aqua to indigo, over and over on this odyssey.

      I ignore the hunger that gnaws at my belly and swim through the living broth of drifting plankton. I push past gangly, gliding invertebrates and hallucinatory looking creatures, beyond the wreck fish and sea bream that share space beneath a gilt rock laden with pink coral and bright anemones.

      I am riding a river of current, gliding in watery thermals, warmed by the sun, powered by the earth’s rotation. I am soaring through liquid wind, reaching out to the place of my birth.

      I am swimming…swimming…swimming home.

      Part 1

      First get wet, get comfortable in the water.

      Let your skills develop naturally, at your own pace.

      1

      Last night, Toy Sooner dreamed again of the turtle. It was always the same dream, one so vivid that when she awoke she was tangled in her sheets, disoriented and filled with a great, nameless yearning.

      Toy sat on the precipice of the sand dune looking out over the wave-scarred beach. Another day was ending. Around her the sea oats were greening and above, a nighthawk streaked across the slowly deepening sky. The tide was coming in, carrying seashells, driftwood and long-harbored memories tumbling to the shore.

      She identified with the loggerhead sea turtle in her dream. Was it merely that the turtles were on her mind? She searched the restless sea that spread out to forever under the vast sky. Out in the distant swells, the sea turtles were gathering for the nesting season. Toy sensed the mothers out there, biding their time until instinct drove them from the safety of the sea to become vulnerable on the beach and lay their eggs.

      It was an emotional time of the year for her. Each May when the sea turtles returned to the Isle of Palms, she felt the presence of her beloved mentor, Olivia Rutledge, returning with them.

      She hugged her knees closer to her chest. This small dune on this empty patch of beach was her sanctuary. She came often to this sacred spot—to think, to remember, to find solace. She felt closer to Olivia Rutledge here—Miss Lovie to everyone she’d met. This dune had been Miss Lovie’s favorite spot, and on some nights, especially when the sun lowered and the birds quieted, as now, Toy imagined she heard Miss Lovie’s voice in the sweet-scented offshore breezes.

      It had been five years since old Miss Lovie had passed. Five years spanned a good chunk of her life, she thought, considering she’d only lived twenty-three. After Olivia Rutledge died, Toy had worked hard every day of those five years to make a better life for herself and for Little Lovie, her daughter. That had been a vow made at Miss Lovie’s gravesite and a promise to her infant daughter.

      “I did my best to keep my vow,” she said aloud to Lovie Rutledge, feeling her spirit hovering close tonight. “I finished college, got a good job and I’ve made a nice home for Little Lovie. All tidy and cheery, with flowers on the table, like you taught me. I want so much to be a good mother.” She rested her chin on her knee with a ragged sigh as the longing from the dream resurfaced.

      “So, tell me, Miss Lovie. Why don’t I feel that I am? Or content? I’m still like that turtle in my dream, swimming toward someplace I can’t seem to get to.”

      A