Free The Mangrove Coast by Randy Wayne White

little-girl quality that scared the hell out of me. ‘He thinks I’m pretty.’ My God, like all the confidence she’d once had had been destroyed when Frank split.
    “I’m no spoiled little brat. I don’t have to approve of the man my mother dates, but there was something … weird? … yeah, something weird about this guy. It really bothered me. Another thing was, the more she saw of Merlot, the more distant she became toward me. Same with her closest women friends, and she had quite a few. We almost never heard from her. That sense that something sneaky was going on—the same thing I saw in Jackie Merlot’s face the day I surprised them—I now began to hear and see in my mother. It wasn’t like her. I knew then what I’m now positive of: Merlot had control of her and, whether she knew it or not, my mom was in trouble.”
    Gail Richardson began to spend weekends at Merlot’s home. Then she spent whole weeks at a time; increasingly long periods when Gail seldom made an attempt to communicate with her daughter or her friends. Amanda had the strong impression that Merlot discouraged outside contact. She saw her mother briefly in September, then againaround Halloween. More than a month of silence followed before Gail finally replied to one of Amanda’s many phone messages to Merlot’s house. A few days later, Merlot had his telephone number changed.
    “It was getting pretty close to Christmas by then,” Amanda said. “I didn’t know what in the world to do, so I finally broke down, called Frank and I’d told him what was going on. What scared me most of all was the sound of Frank’s voice when I told him. He recognized Merlot’s name right away and I realized that maybe, just maybe, Merlot had been a patient of Frank’s instead of an early investor like Mom had told me.”
    “You say that just because of the way your stepfather reacted?”
    She was nodding, very matter-of-fact. Her expression said:
You’d have to know the guy to understand.
“The way Frank reacts, that’s the only way you’d ever know anything from his shrink days. He takes the ethics of his old profession very seriously. It’s the only thing that explained why he sounded so damn worried.”
    “When you mentioned Jackie Merlot.”
    “Exactly. When I told him, what he said was, ‘Jesus Christ, no wonder your mother didn’t tell me.’ And a little bit later, he said, ‘I thought Jackie Merlot would be in a facility by now,’ and then he clammed up quick, like it had just sort of slipped out. But he was worried enough to hire a professional to have Merlot investigated, and he also offered to go with me to Merlot’s house and insist that we be allowed to speak with Mom.”
    Which is just what they did.
    Confronting Merlot while briefly reuniting with her mother had created an awkward, emotional scene. Amanda had a tough time telling me about it. People who shield themselves with a hard outer core do it for reasons of protection. Her voice broke several times. She drifted between tears and rage, but each time fought her way back under control.
    Merlot had a rental in one of the older canal-front subdivisions off A1A, Lauderdale. That he apparently had a live-in male roommate was unexpected. Amanda described the roommate as tall, muscular, not really black but not really white, with some kind of heavy accent, maybe French or Creole.
    The roommate intercepted them and refused to let them speak with Merlot or Gail Calloway. Then Merlot appeared, saying he would call the police if they didn’t leave. Frank asked to speak with Gail alone, just to confirm that she was all right. No deal. Then he asked to speak with Merlot alone. Same thing, and Merlot again threatened to call the police.
    “It was the first time that I can say Frank ever really let my mother and me down. The son-of-a-bitch was ready to walk away, saying it was a legal matter or time to call a lawyer, something like that. Not that angry, just frustrated and maybe a