The Gallery of the Dead (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 3) (21 page)

And so ends the story of one small corner of Tropical Breeze, a little theater where love died and hopes arose, only to be dashed. It was a little drama, as our life stories always are, but the stakes were high for the actors on the stage.

One more “Breezer” rests in the sandy earth of Tropical Breeze. Misty McBain joins the townsmen and farmers, the tailors and blacksmiths, and all the others who have moved through time in procession, making our town what it has always been: prosperous and idle at the same time, a jewel by the sea, and always, always, full of life.

Misty died too soon to prove herself to those who doubted her. Perhaps she would have prospered; perhaps she would have failed. But she deserved the chance to try. Justice prevails, we shake our heads, and the procession continues without a pause.

Our history continues to be written. The natives, the French, the Spanish, the English, all fought for these lands and passed them back and forth like chips in a deadly game. Then, quietly, they left it to the Americans and withdrew, leaving their comrades’ bones behind them. We have them yet, their tombstones melting with age, with deep-rooted live oaks to hold the dead and the living together in a tapestry of roots and branches. We have the old forts with doorways too short for our heads and the old redoubts whose boundaries were once breached by buccaneers, now overleapt by tourists.

And we have the ocean, the royal road from the old world to the new, still lying restlessly beside us. In these days, the invaders come with dollars and pounds and Euros, and we welcome them into our hotels and restaurants and shops, then breathe a sigh of relief when they fly away home.

And between times, when our streets are quiet and our beaches are lonely, we watch the ocean at night and feel the same breezes the pioneers felt, and gaze at the same golden moon making a path to us on the ocean, and feel the same wonder.

From the Article “A Historical Snapshot of Tropical Breeze,” by Bernie Horning, Editor-in-Chief of
The Beach Buzz,
available weekly, on-line and in newsstands, all over Tropical Breeze, Florida.

The End