The Sisters of Blue Mountain Beach

By Kalan Chapman Lloyd

The Sisters of Blue Mountain Beach is a gripping tale revolving around the lives of three remarkable women who suddenly go missing in the devastating aftermath of a ferocious hurricane on Florida's renowned 30A.

Arden, the youngest, finds herself at a crossroads in her life, grappling with difficult decisions and a sen

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fiction/family life
• Release date: May 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869379603

Book preview

kalan Lloyd

2024-05-15

Praise for

Kalan Chapman Lloyd

Heartwarming [and] hard to put down… will make you believe redemption is possible no matter how bad life seems. - Romance Times

A winning contemporary romance… a gently affecting tale of personal redemption, second chances, and the power of faith. – Kirkus Book Review on Loser’s Road

"Loser’s Road is an engaging work of fiction about growth, second chances, and one man’s ability to grow and change for the better." - Clarion Foreword Reviews

Defies genres… a story to get lost in. Perfectly encapsulates what a good comeback story should be. – Hollywood Book Review

An entertaining story of redemption and growth… well-developed [and] ahead of the game. - San Francisco Book Review

"[F]rothy, saucy chick-lit for fans of all things country, and Lilly Atkins is Erin Brockovich in boots, ensuring plenty of sass and Southern charm." – Foreword Reviews on So Many Boots, So Little Time

Charming and heartfelt, this complicated love story delivers a well-developed journey of self-discovery and romance. – Kirkus Reviews on So Many Boots, So Little Time

…full of sassy, gun-carrying, badass women. Lloyd checks off all the appropriate boxes — suspense, drama and humor — to keep readers turning the pages. – Romance Times on So Many Boots, So Little Time

[E]very ingredient has been perfectly measured, and it works… With sparkling wit, Southern charm, and a steady pace, Miss Lilly has hit her stride. – Kirkus Review on These Boots Are Made for Butt-Kickin’

Featuring a heroine worth accompanying home, [this punchy] debut begs for a sequel. – Kirkus Review on Home Is Where Your Boots Are

Other books by

Kalan Chapman Lloyd

The MisAdventures of Miss Lilly

Volume One: Home Is Where Your Boots Are

Volume Two: These Boots Are Made for Butt-Kickin’

Volume Three: So Many Boots, So Little Time

Volume Four: When God-Fearing Women Put on Boots

Volume Five: Double, Double Boots in Trouble

Loser’s Road

Mo(u)rning Joy: a memoir

Water Dogs

The Sisters of

Blue Mountain Beach

Kalan Chapman Lloyd

The Sisters of Blue Mountain Beach is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, alive or dead, businesses, events or a locale is entirely coincidental.

2024 Rebelle Press Edition

Copyright © 2024 by Kalan Chapman Lloyd.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Rebelle Press.

ISBN 979-8-8693-7960-3

For the Cover-to-Cover Book Club.

Long may you reign. Afterglow

I’d like the memory of me to be a happy one,

I’d like to leave an afterglow of smiles when life is done.

I’d like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways,

of happy times and laughing times and bright and sunny days.

I’d like the tears of those who grieve,

to dry before the sun of happy memories that I leave behind when day is done.

WALTON COUNTY GAZETTE

Wednesday, October 25

Hurricane Mitzi met land on Tuesday, October 24th at approximately 7:56 p.m., swamping the beaches of the Emerald Coast. She did not leave a path of destruction to Niceville as expected, but rather, met her end when she hit one lone home in Blue Mountain Beach at 5684 White Cliffs Drive, owned by Mr. and Mrs. Alec Gilpin. In an odd phenomenon, Mitzi appears to have broken apart as soon as she hit the house.

It is thought that Mrs. Gilpin was in residence, but she, along with her usual travel companions, her sisters, are unaccounted for. A quick search of the palatial, Gulf-side home revealed devastation at the property, and an early, completely unofficial assessment by local insurance agent, Patti Hale, indicated total loss. Mrs. Gilpin, a member of the Arkansas State Bar, and past president of the Junior League of Northwest Arkansas, resides mostly in Lowell, Arkansas, but is a long-time favorite short-term resident in Santa Rosa Beach. She is well known and well loved by many as a patron up and down 30A. The home on White Cliffs Drive, built by the Gilpins and subject to much controversy during construction, has been featured in Coastal Living, Southern Living, and Garden and Gun.

It is thought, hoped rather, that Mrs. Gilpin and her sisters evacuated north as was advised earlier this Sunday.

Mr. Gilpin, a long-time confidante of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, was unavailable for comment at the time of print. The Sisters

There were three sisters. One tall and thin like a nervous flamingo bird, and one round and plump and brown, a horned thrush. The last was exotic and colorful and uncommon, she had things in common with the second, the nose for one. The first one, the oldest, was not the ringleader, she followed and fretted and fretted some more. The middle one was bossy and brassy, her hair, her smell, her attitude. She ate and rolled her eyes when the other ones didn’t. The youngest was in charge, not by personality, but by default, by the sheer fact that she controlled the purse strings. Strings they did not discuss out loud or with each other, but about which they were all silently resentful.

They all attended the University of Arkansas. They are all Chi Omegas, sisters on purpose.

They all have double-pierced ears. It happened at the same time. Two have let theirs grow over. It’s not the two you think.

Two of them are allergic to ginger. One of them is allergic to fish as well. Two of them get a rash if stung by a jellyfish. Only meat tenderizer takes out the sting.

They always come in August. Only August. Never in April, when the sand starts to warm, and the mess has been cleaned up by the spring breakers. Never in October, when the hurricanes are tracked. Never in those golden summer months of May, June, and July when the shores are overrun with those who need to make sure they have a beach vacation to report at their private schools back home, a t-shirt to validate they gave their children a sand-laden sensory experience.

They liked to buy matching swimsuits and show off at the public beach. They have watched all 007 movies and were partial to Daniel Craig, and had held out great hope for Idris Eldeba. They have read the entirety of Carl Hiaasen’s work, as well as Janet Evanovich, and they laugh out loud when they read them alone. They have been there for each other, through graduations and sick children, and weddings and surgeries and births and death and Tuesdays and highs and lows. One totaled one’s car. One saved one’s child from drowning. They have shared drinks, and clothes, and children, and recipes, and gossip, all the things… to a certain point.

They came in August, always, when schools were back in session, and there was still a mess to clean up, but it was manageable, the mess, and the whole of 30A seemed to sigh and swell with relief as the swollen masses departed. They came to Blue Mountain, which takes its name from the blue lupine flowers covering the dunes that were once so tall and the flowers so plentiful they blanketed the dunes they were thought to be mountains, first noticed from the sea by the sailors; the pirates, the blockade runners, the soldiers. If you swim out far enough and turn back to shore, you can see that it is true; the dunes are tall enough to be mountains. They came to the youngest one’s beach house, a grand palace on the edge of the Gulf, maybe the grandest in all of Blue Mountain, which suited the youngest well. She was more comfortable when she had the best, and was at the top. She was claustrophobic at the middle of the pile.

They fight. They makeup. They are family. They love one another unconditionally, even as they’d like to kill each other, they would first kill for.

The important thing to know is that they always came in August. Only August.

The important thing to know is that they were not sisters at all. The important thing to know about the Emerald Coast is that hurricane season begins June 1st and ends November 30th. Since the 1850s, every single inch of Florida’s gorgeous coastline has been affected by at least one hurricane. There are zero hurricane-free zones in Florida. 30A, while the most beautiful stretch on the Gulf Coast, is not immune. The most notable (and best-named!) hurricanes to hit Florida and the Walton County area are Donna, Betsy, Eloise, Wilma, Elena, Sally and Nicole. The peak of hurricane season on the Emerald Coast, statistically speaking, is September 10th.

The time to prepare for hurricanes is always now.

Arden

The important thing to know about Arden is that she is a liar.

She is up early. Early again this morning with no reason to be up, other than God continues to wrench her out of a not-so deep sleep at three a.m. each morning in His vain hope of making her face her life. She ignores Him mostly, but does not try to go back to sleep, rises instead to read, or watch the Housewives, or flick through Pinterest, but mostly to try to ignore the suffocating feeling that fills her chest each morning.

She starts her coffee while she imagines the rest of the world continues to sleep, snores undisturbed, peacefully, gently. She thinks about her husband, thinks about pouring the piping hot coffee, Café Bustelo, espresso style roast, black, onto the space where his nose meets his forehead. She thinks about holding the oddly-shaped handle of the mug that admonishes her to PRAY, PRAY, PRAY, gifted by one of her sons. The one who avoids her and the home of his childhood, and his childhood itself. She thinks about smashing the bulk of the mug down in that same place, that space where the bridge of his large nose meets his broad forehead. Would it bleed, there, if she nailed it just right? Would he die? Would he be knocked cold? Or would he awake, like an angry bear, throw her off in defense. Would he take his hand and knock her across the face in that same space. Kill her? Knock her cold? Would she bleed?

She thinks about these things as she turns on the beach cam. She has to re-route the television from the late-night binge of true crime shows she’d stayed up to watch, with dry popcorn she did not eat and Chardonnay she most definitely downed. She has figured out how to live stream her Blue Mountain haven onto her too-large flat screen TV in her living room. She sips her coffee, and tries to find some envy.

The Blue Mountain beach cam is too intrusive, in her opinion, and when she is there, she takes great care to avoid it. It took her two whole weeks to find its perch, even after she’d spent twelve months watching from its vantage point. It is right beside the boardwalk at Big Redfish Lake, hidden somewhat in the dunes, but angled to see both the steps, and the flag of the day, and then the expanse of white sugar sand that leads to the edge of the verdant Gulf. If she turns it on before sunrise, she can only see dune grass; crowfoot and seashore dropseed, sea blite, saltmeadows cordgrass and seaside goldenrod, and the gray blur of swirling waves and sea. But when the sun comes up and the camera switches to daylight mode, she can watch as the chair boys, interchangeable with their size and tans and jogs, like jockeys whose only defining feature is the colors of the owners they ride for, place the chairs, drill the holes for the umbrellas, drop them in the holes and then, glance around furtively, and if no one is about, dive into the surf. They’ll be dry by the time someone perches at the top of the stairs.

Arden is fascinated by the people who stop at the top of the stairs and sit (sit?!) and drink from a coffee mug that shouldn’t leave their rented condo. She agrees that the view is good, but if you’re going to steal a coffee mug to watch the sunrise at the beach, you might as well sit your tush in the sand. Or on the chairs that Jake/Austen/Braxton/Brooks heft into the perfect spot for you. She is never not surprised by how many people congregate and cluster at the top of the stairs, at the topmost point of the dunes. She watches them do it every day for a week, and then the people change, as one group goes home and another replaces them, always.

She pulls a blanket, Lora Piana, around herself and watches the sun start to pull itself over the Gulf of Mexico, Blue Mountain Beach, with its namesake blue lupine flowers, flowers so blue they are almost purple. Arden watches as the water loses its navy inky blueness and finds its way toward clear Tiffany-green glass. It is swirling with white foam today, the glass. The blue and the green are mostly gray and white, to match the sky and the clouds, with a tan chunk of khaki sandbar rising up out of the water. It looks like a regular beach today, one on the west or east coasts, not the revered Emerald Coast, with the combined algae and low turbidity creating that Tiffany sea-glass color that the brochures and the influencers boast.

Double Red Flags. Closed to swimmers. Open only to idiotic surfers tethered to their boards. Do not get in water. If you are up to your knees, you are too far out. Red Flags mean death. Arden is obsessed with the flags, and even though she herself has never been to the beach on a red flag day, she keeps furtive watch over the pole when she is there. She even subscribes to the text alerts from Fort Walton County, she knows by 10:11, Central Standard Time, every day, whether or not it’s safe to go in the water.

Arden watches a young woman clothed in black yoga pants and an oversized faded purple hoodie, clutching a telltale white ceramic mug stop at the top and plop down on the stairs and hug her knees to her chest. She sips her from her mug and it reminds Arden to sip from hers and the coffee is now cool, which annoys Arden.

She is irritated as she watches Yoga-Pants, who is probably a mom to three young children who adore her, whose husband has allowed her to take her coffee, alone to the beach, while he and the children sleep in, because all children sleep in at the beach. Arden’s never did, but her children are not normal. She did not give them a normal childhood. It is her fault that her children never slept in at the beach. Yoga-Pants sips her coffee, and while Arden can only see the outline of the side of her face, she can see by the set of her shoulders that she is enjoying her coffee more than Arden is hers. She probably has cream in her coffee, maybe even sugar. Arden does not allow herself such things. She fasts, intermittently, more to prove that she has more willpower than the average person than for the newly discovered health benefits. She makes a note to tell Cilla to try intermittent fasting, although Cilla will be appalled.

Arden stands up and tests the coffee, it is completely cold now and she thinks it tastes stale. Her husband would say that if she ground the beans and drank the good stuff he has flown in from Costa Rica, this would not happen. She ignores him and defiantly drinks what she started her mornings with in law school, when she first started drinking coffee. She dumps the cold sludge in the sink and starts over. As the second cup of coffee brews, she senses the air get colder, hears the subtle creak of the floorboards. She thinks back on what she watched last night and braces herself.

Her husband enters the kitchen and good-naturedly rolls his eyes at her coffee choice and starts his French-press process. She knows that he expects her to do this for him, knows that he thinks it is part of her job as his wife. She, Arden Alexandra Boudreaux Gilpin, who used to collect all the trophies, is now a trophy. She does not make his coffee, never has, and won’t start now, no matter that she can feel the passive-aggressive shift come into the air like a rain-filled cloud rolling over the beach from the Gulf but refusing to release the moisture, pressing down on everyone instead, making them move slower, making them plod.

Arden does not plod. She is a thoroughbred, not a plodder. She glides. She will not be drug down by the passive-aggressive humidity. She will not make his coffee.

Once her husband has left the house, she rattles around a bit, trying to decide if she’s going to don her tennis whites and drive her silver Mercedes convertible over to Pinnacle. She makes another cup of coffee before making a decision and sits down on her blue Ikat covered couch from Ballard Designs. Alec had said it should have been custom, but Arden loves the fabric. It graces the windows as well, and pieces are placed in mirrored frames anchoring the walls. She frowns toward the beach on the TV and gets up to find her glasses. The hot September Arkansas sunshine fills the room through the wall of windows that looks out onto the back deck and to the blue blue pool, the color of a BIC Ultra round stic, her favorite pens from law school. It is tiled to match the couch and curtains.

The hot sunshine is a stark contrast to what has happened on the beach. It has become dark in Florida and the Gulf, the emerald gulf, is purple now, and a wretched gray, like a piece of candy whose coating has been sucked off. The waves foam white and churn and spit and roil and Arden can see now why the red flags are raised. She eyes the flags to make sure they are still there and haven’t been whipped away by the wind that shakes the camera planted in the blue lupine. She checks her phone and checks the weather. Storm warning. She shrugs, unbothered. It’s September and the Gulf of Mexico. Much like September in Northwest Arkansas. Something yellow catches her eye on the screen and she frowns again, wondering if they are changing the flag. They shouldn’t. She can see, even seven hundred, ninety-eight miles away, through the blessing of the Internet, that the Gulf is dangerous, too dangerous to even dip a toe in.

The yellow is a person. In a hoodie? Or a rain jacket? Arden can’t tell, but she sees the yellow come too close to the water. Arden leans forward and sits her coffee down on the table that came from Lola’s, a bespoke piece she’d bought to bring a little beach into her main residence. The yellow steps into the water and Arden is instantly annoyed, more annoyed with this person than with the woman who leaves her kids who love her with her nice husband to go drink her coffee on the top of the dunes.

The person in the yellow jacket keeps going, deeper into the water, ankle-deep now, too deep! Is it a man? A woman? A child?

Arden does not know what to do. Twenty years ago, she would not have hesitated; she would have rung up the Walton County Sheriff already, instead of watching in slow-motion horror, her hand to her chest. Perhaps this is what she should do. What will she say? She decides she won’t tell them who she is, so if she’s crazy, no one will know it’s her.

She dials the sheriff’s office, which she finds she has plugged in to her cell phone, which she thinks is odd. The operator is instantly annoyed with her when she tells him she has an emergency. He asks why she didn’t call 911. Why didn’t she call 911? Because they trace calls and it might appear a prank if she says she sees someone drowning on the beach when she is seven hundred ninety-eight miles away? She glances back at the TV. Knee deep. Her jaw clenches and she rubs one side, which she is not supposed to do. She has to rub both sides at the same time or her TMJ will get worse and one side will pop out like a lopsided blowfish.

There is no one else on the beach. The chairs are there, but all the umbrellas have been lowered and the chairs are empty. She starts babbling to the operator at the sheriff’s office and his tone changes. He asks her name. She hesitates but then gives it up, only thinking for a second of giving her cousin’s name.

She feels like she should turn it off, it feels so macabre, to watch it, but she wants to make sure that they arrive. Waist deep. She is standing close to the TV now, peering into the pixels. She thinks it’s a child. It can’t be a child. But it must be a child, because who else would be out in that water, out in that swallowing froth? Unless… Arden looks away. No. She is personally offended, and annoyed at the person in the yellow jacket. Hoodie? How dare they go to her beach to drown on purpose!? She shakes her head and focuses. Shoulders. The white caps spray and punch and foam around the yellow. Yellow is a putrid shade. Arden is blonde and brown-eyed, but yellow is not her color. She’ll never wear it after this.

She is still on the phone when the rescue buggy rolls up with three lifeguards on board, the red floaties bouncing. She tells the operator that help has arrived and he asks if she is okay if he lets her go now. She asks his name and he pauses. Is this outside of protocol? Dan, he offers, and she reluctantly tells him to have a good day and sets the phone down.

She thinks about walking away from the rescue, turning the television off, switching the live stream to the Vue down at Dune Allen. Or even the rooftops at Rosemary. But she is frozen. She watches as the lifeguards tie a rope to the buggy, anchor the vehicle and start the wade out, two go in, wrapped in the rope, the other stands sentry. She watches as they wrestle with the waves, then wrestle with the yellow jacket, then wrestle with their equipment and start the slow drag and crawl back to the relative safety of the wet sand.

She watches as they perform mouth to mouth, and she sees no signs of life. The jacket (hoodie?) never went under! Did it?! Was she not watching closely enough? Did she not call quickly enough? The ambulance arrives, bouncing the stretcher across the dunes and rain-splattered sand and they strap the body onto the gurney, the yellow jacket gone. But there is no black bag, so that must mean life, right?

She wants to call Dan back and ask him to find out what happened.

Every morning, Arden wakes up at three a.m. with black dread pressing her down. She manages to shake it by five a.m. most days. Today, the dread has come back and this unshakeable trepidation clings to Arden like a pop star’s sickly sweet perfume at T.J. Maxx. She is due to arrive in Blue Mountain tomorrow. She will roll in by seven p.m., just in time for dinner at Dewey Destin’s at the Bay. Perhaps she will get a basket the next morning and fill it with cinnamon rolls and cinnamon banana bread and chocolate puddles and blueberry muffins from Blue Mountain Bakery and take it, with coffee from Sunrise, to the sheriff’s office and try to find Dan and thank him. Apologize?

There are two people she can call who will understand, but one is always ahead of the other on her do-tell list, alphabetically, historically. She likely won’t answer, and she will have