Authors: Cathy Holton
Beach Trip (64 page)
Despite her gloomy mood, Ava had been flattered by his enthusiasm. He was kind and considerate, the sort of man she liked to imagine she might one day wind up with.
“I can’t afford to quit my job and start all over again.”
“What do you have to lose?” he had said.
Ahead the road rose slightly, following a low ridge. A line of pink-blossomed trees with fringelike leaves swayed in the breeze. On the other side of the highway trailing vines mounded over distant pines and telephone poles and dangled from utility lines, creating a series of undulating green hills. The whole landscape was lush and alien; Ava had the feeling that any seed tossed haphazardly from the window of a speeding car would take root in the rich soil and blossom to monstrous proportions.
What do I have to lose?
she thought.
Nothing. Everything
. She turned her head and glanced at the ceramic urn in the seat beside her.
“Isn’t that right, Mother?” she said.
C
ATHY
H
OLTON
is the author of
Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes
and
The Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes.
She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Beach Trip
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Cathy Holton
Excerpt from Summer in the South copyright © 2010 by Cathy Holton
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint
of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.
B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. and to
Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., for permission to use “Sanctuary,”
copyright 1931, renewed © 1959 by Dorothy Parker, and “Observation,” from
The Portable Dorothy Parker
by Dorothy Parker, edited by Marion Meade, copyright 1928,
renewed © 1956 by Dorothy Parker. Used by permission of Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
and Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming title Summer in the South by Cathy Holton. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Holton, Cathy.
Beach trip : a novel / Cathy Holton.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51514-8
1. Female friendship—Fiction. 2. Reunions—Fiction. 3. Women college
graduates—Fiction. 4. Outer Banks (N.C.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.O494434B43 2009
813’.6—dcc22 2009005527
v3.0_r1
