Little roadside restaurant we artfully complain
Groovy tells the waitress that his chicken died in vain
Most every day goes by according to design
I live this dream but still it seems I have you on my mind

Garrett squinted as he walked into the bar. Crawdad's? What kind of name was that for a bar? He sighed. He guessed he was just too used to Irish names. This was definitely a waterfront bar...fish on the walls, nets hanging from the ceiling. The contrast between the bright daylight outside and the darker atmosphere of the bar made it difficult to see for a minute. Then he spotted Kathy at a corner table, waving him over.

He made his way over to the table, stopping to ask the waitress for a beer. "Hi, Kath," he said, hugging the woman again.

"Found the place just fine, I see," she replied.

"Yeah."

"Garrett, I'd like you to meet one of the best ME's I've ever worked with or had the opportunity to help train – Suzanna Lynn Howerton – but everyone calls her Lynn. You call her Sue or Suzanna and she'll bite your head off."

Garrett shook hands with the blonde woman. "Hi...how are you?"

"I'm fine."

Garrett sat down with the women. The three made small talk for a few minutes – weather, fishing, their flight from Nevada. Finally Garrett cut to the chase. "Kathy tells me that besides being an ME, you also do underwater body retrieval."

"Yes. I have for the past 15 years."

"Dive master?"

Lynn nodded. "But I don't teach diving. I leave that to someone else."

How many UBRs have you done?"

Lynn took another swallow of beer. "Quite a few – last count it was somewhere around 68."

"Conditions?"

"It varies. Sometimes it was a vehicular accident, sometimes it was a boat. Sometimes some poor sucker just decided to go headfirst over the bridge at Morehead. So it depended. As did the weather."

"Your ME record is impeccable."

"Thank you."

"And Kathy tells me you may be interested in relocating to Boston?"

"I might. Depends."

"On what?"

"I'd like to see your set up there before I commit to anything. Then it depends on the pay."

Garrett turned to Kathy. "Could that be arranged? Could you get someone to cover for her while I take her back to Boston for a couple of days?"

Kathy nodded. "Consider it done."

Jesus, what a lot to consider, Lynn thought as she walked the North Carolina coastline. She loved to walk the beach, even in the dead of winter, when she had a lot on her mind or she was working on a particularly difficult case. Walking gave her chance to exercise her frustrations. The ocean gave her perspective. She had done quite a bit of walking on this coastline since she relocated here...how long ago was it? Fifteen years ago? It didn't seem possible. She had spent slightly less than half her lifetime on this coast. She sighed. Uprooting to Boston, if she chose to, would be hard. The people here were like family to her.

She remembered when she had first decided to move to Wilmington. She had been twenty-seven ... fresh out of residency. Kathy had talked her into moving. Bill hadn't really wanted to....but that was a lifetime ago. With the money that they were agreeing to pay her, Mark just a toddler, and another baby on the way, the opportunity had been too good to pass up. So they all had moved.

It had been a good place to live...a good place to raise the children. Mark had excelled in school and in sports. He was now at Duke on an academic scholarship. His life, bless him, had seemed to be charmed. Lynn smiled wryly. That was good. At least one of them had been charmed. She was glad it was her son.

Her career had risen with the tides of the Atlantic. Her reputation as a ME was sterling and she was sure the DA would not be happy to see her go. Added to the fact that she was a diver, she knew they would be hard pressed to replace her. She had never planned on learning to dive at all, but her natural curiosity had gotten the better of her. She had signed up for a day trip with a local scuba shop. Funny how six hours of your time could alter your life and career....she wasn't a tall woman, but was physically fit. Barely tipping out at 5'3" and in a size seven dress, she could get in smaller areas that the male divers could not. Through the years she had built up the stamina that could keep her going dive after dive. The only thing that was bothering her more and more as the years passed was the cold temperatures of the water. But even technology was keeping up with that, designing better and better suits.

But if her career had risen with the waves, her marriage had gone out with them and was cut to pieces by the riptides. After 18 years of marriage, Bill had walked. She should have seen it coming. There were signs....but she chose to ignore them, thinking like so many of her friends, this can't happen to me. Well, it did.

The fact that it was with a younger woman hurt most of all.

Bill had blamed it on her, she had blamed it on him, but in the end it didn't really matter. It was over. Eighteen years shot down the tubes and except for Mark, there was really nothing to show for it. She sighed and threw a seashell back into the waves as she turned to walk back up to her home. Maybe it would be a good idea for her to go to Boston. Kathy said that if it didn't work out, she could have her old job back, no questions asked, no loss of benefits. She had her safety net.

Leaving North Carolina...leaving Wilmington...a chance to put all her unhappy memories behind her and really move on with her life. She wouldn't have to keep seeing Bill and his new girlfriend all over town...there would be new challenges, new people. Maybe even someone for you...her subconscious inserted in her thoughts. She grimaced. That was a place her mind still couldn't go yet.

A new start, a new beginning...leave the past behind. Yeah, I can do this, she thought, it's just going to be hard leaving that tiny grave behind at St. Mary's.