Camino Ghosts

Old Dunes is a Florida development corporation, secretly owned by Tidal Breeze. Tidal Breeze evades the IRS, maintaining profits from the offshore company. Judge Salazar’s son Lenny owns a building company and has partnered with Old Dunes to build its new condos.

Mercer continues teaching at Ole Miss, but her mind is on Lovely’s deposition. Lovely is in the courtroom with Steven and Diane. A Tidal Breeze lawyer questions her about her family and why she left the island in 1955. Lovely argues that she and her parents were born on Dark Isle. As the years passed, everyone in the community died, and she and her mother left. She describes the unmarked cemetery and knows its exact location. For hours, the lawyer questions her genealogy. However, when Diane studies the copy of the deposition later that day, she notices many “discrepancies” between it and Lovely’s memoir.

In early December, Mercer and Thomas return to Camino Island for the holidays. She wants to paint her grandmother’s cottage amid writing. On Christmas Eve, Bruce hosts a party and a reading at the bookstore. Mercer reads one of her old stories about a Christmas she and her sister spent with their grandmother Tessa, who told them that snowfall was rare in Camino Island on Christmas: It had happened only once in 50 years.