The Seacrest (10 page)

I ran my hands along the scarred wooden table, noting how similar it was to our original.

I had to admit, Jax had done a super job.

The appliances were aluminum and shiny—quite different from our old white Westinghouse brand. I suppose that was one compromise I could learn to live with.

I stopped and leaned my back against the giant fridge. No magnets holding kids’ pictures or finger-painting drawings. Kind of sterile, and rather sad.

I stared at the table, wondering if Jax and Cora had sat together and enjoyed a cup of fancy coffee he may have brewed in that copper monstrosity on the counter near the stove. What did it make? Espresso?

Had Cora visited here? Had she sat at the kitchen table with Jax?

I pictured her laughing with him, touching his hand the way she’d touched mine when we first met.

Maybe they’d taken their steaming mugs out to the patio, through the glass doors that overlooked the ocean.

I followed the idea, unlocked and slid open the door, and stepped outside. White wrought iron furniture sat on the cold stones, conspicuously empty, achingly alone. An enormous gas grill stood cold and covered against the side of the house. A few pots of geraniums dotted the area, surprising me. I hadn’t pictured Jax tending to flowers. They looked dry. I found a watering can and filled it at the tap on the side of the house. A hanging plant—maybe it had been lobelia—had completely dried out and was dead, its brown tendrils blowing in the slight ocean breeze.

Somehow those dead leaves and stems swaying before me reminded me of all the senseless death around me. Dad. Mom. Eva. Gramps. Cora. Jax.

How can I be the only survivor?

I wished my grandfather were here to give me steady council. I needed it.

I stared at the overgrown blueberry fields to the left, the big cedar shingled barn, and swung my gaze back to the sea. Deep green today, it glistened in the strong midday sun.

My mind drifted to Cora again.

Was
she cheating on me? Or did she just meet with Jax for the first time to try to come up with a way to retrieve my inheritance?

If they were just meeting, though, why would they be in the same car? Wouldn’t they have met at a coffee shop? Or maybe here, at the house? She’d been bugging me for years to reconnect, to establish a relationship again with my brother. She wanted me to have closure. To forgive and forget.

I shook my head, pushing the pain away.

I couldn’t forgive him. Even now.

Why am I such a hard-hearted bastard?

Your brother is dead. You’ve had your revenge.

Get over it.

The thoughts hit me hard. It all made sense, sounded like the right thing to do, but I just couldn’t budge.

I’d never forgive him.

Chapter 22

July 31th, 1997

4:00 P.M.

I
guess it must’ve been fate. On that day—not even twenty-four hours after my dear Sassy and I made love on the beach and were caught by her father and his cop buddies—we found each other again.

I’d been scouring the area on my bike since my father let me off work at three. I decided to take the shore road to search among the wealthier properties, after I’d exhausted all the lower income neighborhoods. Frankly, there weren’t too many poor areas in Brewster, and it didn’t take long.

The sun had disappeared behind a white puffy cloud, providing a short stint of cooling shade. My tires crunched on the sandy road, and I cycled leisurely along the shoreline, checking out driveways for Sassy, or her bike, or her father.

Around the bend, a lone figure on a bike rode toward me.

Could it be?

My heart drummed beneath my ribs and I squinted to see. There, atop her bike, pedaled my love, with hair streaming and one hand wildly waving.

We dumped our bikes on the side of the road and ran to each other. I caught her in my arms and swung her around, laughing. “I can’t believe this. I’ve been looking for you.”

“Finn,” she said with a sighing, happy breath. “Oh. I knew I’d find you.”

“Isn’t your dad gonna see us? We’re right out in the open here.”

“He fell asleep,” she chuckled. “I guess he had a hard time sleeping last night after he found us like that.”

It didn’t seem to bother her at all. She just loosed a naughty smile and slipped her arm through mine.

My heart thumped faster.

“Listen. I have a plan,” she said.

“Tell me.” I leaned down to kiss her before she could answer. I couldn’t wait.

When we came up for air, she pointed and whispered. “There’s another place we can meet. It’s just up the street.”

“Really?” The thought of being with Sassy again made me crazy, and heat rose in my body barely before the thought registered. “Where?”

“It’s a place about a half-mile up this road, called The Seacrest.”

“Whoa, Sassy. That’s a mansion. Owned by rich folks. And will your father let you out on your bike again? I figured he’d chain it to the fence or something.”

“Um, he did. But I know where the key is.” She flashed a mischievous smile. “At night, nobody’s in that barn.” She smiled again. “It’s a real quiet spot, Finn.”

I frowned. “Sounds tempting. But how do you know about it? Does your dad work there?”

Her eyes went blank and she cast them downward. “Er…yeah. He does.”

Was she embarrassed that her father had a menial job. A chauffeur? A stable hand?

I tried to put her at ease. “Okay. You’ve got a deal. What time, and where do I meet you?”

“It has to be dark. Let’s try nine-thirty. I can’t show you now, ‘cause it’s broad daylight, but I’ll meet you out by the first driveway. It’s the one the help uses and it winds around up to the barn.”

I pulled her to me again, kissing her soft lips. “Okay. I’ll be there.”

She looked nervously up and down the road. “I’ve gotta get back. See you tonight.”

I watched her ride back in the direction she’d come, realizing it was toward The Seacrest. With a start, I wondered if they lived in one of the little cottages on the estate. I’d known the son of the cook once, who told me about the tiny house they lived in among several provided for the servants. Gardeners, stable hands, maids, cook. It was a veritable compound up there.

With a secret smile, I waited until I couldn’t see her peddling anymore. She disappeared around the bend, and I straddled my bike.

At least now I knew where Sassy lived.

Chapter 23

July 14
^th
, 2013

2:30 P.M.

U
pstairs in Jax’s bedroom, I found his computer still powered up and humming. It was a sleek MacBook Pro with a huge secondary monitor that had the best resolution I’d ever seen. Grudgingly, I admitted I could probably get used to some of the amenities my brother had amassed.

I clicked on the mouse and scrolled to his email folder.

Still open.

Wow, really? I figured I’d have to rack my brain to guess his password, so I could snoop into his private life.

He wasn’t very tidy about managing his inbox. There were 16,254 emails in the folder.

On the left side of the email page, he’d created folders. Bills. Finance. Legal. Overseas Accounts. Travel. Vacation.

No folder marked “Cora.” Partial relief. And no folder marked “Our Baby” with digital ultrasound scans tucked inside.

Had she really been pregnant?

Why the hell didn’t she tell me?

And had that little baby been mine, or my wife-stealing brother’s?

I scrolled down the list of unread mail in his queue, wondering if he had online friends I should notify of his passing.

I blew past all the “buy me” emails, deleting them as I went down the list. There was a note from Ed Sawyer, three days before Jax died. I ignored that, figuring Sawyer would have filled me in on any important details that had arisen since then.

There was nothing from Cora, but I’d only reviewed a week’s worth of mail and she could be in there, somewhere.

I wasn’t too proficient on the computer, but noticed a search box at the top of the page. I entered “Cora” and pushed the search button. It hummed a bit, and I got a few hits about a resort called Coral Shores in Bermuda, but nothing with Cora’s name.

I sighed and pushed back in the chair.

Maybe she wasn’t having an affair with him.

Wouldn’t they have exchanged email addresses if they were? Isn’t that how everyone communicated these days?

Maybe not. Maybe she’d texted him instead.

There was no phone left to check, it had gone down into the ocean that awful day.

I thought about it some more.

Wouldn’t the AT&T bill show the details of all calls and texts?

I decided to check it over when I got home. And maybe I’d pay it off—she was the only one with a phone, and since it was gone, maybe I’d just cancel the whole plan. Or maybe I’d get one of those fancy smart phones.

Having the choice—having money—was such a foreign feeling that I had to virtually shake myself to accept it, to believe it. Would I really not have to worry about paying bills for the rest of my life? Was it possible?

Did I deserve it?

Ace nuzzled my hand, breaking me from the reverie.

“Wanna go out, buddy?”

He got up and danced in place, confirming my suspicion.

“Okay, let’s get out of here. We can come back another day and check out the rest of the house.”

I glanced at the barn after locking up, wondering what kind of car Jax had in there. The place had been converted for cars in the past half century. If his current vehicle had careened into the ocean in the accident, then what car were the keys for that Ed Sawyer gave me?

I’d look into that later. I had plenty of time. My whole life, really. My whole life without my parents, sister, brother, or wife. Or child.

For a moment, I studied the dark mind that was me, and hated it. Sure, I had reason to be depressed, plenty of reasons. All of them dead. But I needed to try to shake myself out of it, somehow, some way. I needed to rejoin the living, or else I’d end up a bitter old man rocking on the porch, watching the sea, and lamenting his lost loves.

Meanwhile, I needed to get back to The Seacrest, find out what had driven Libby so crazy mad, and go through the phone bills.

“Come on, Ace. Let’s get out of here.”

My dog bounded ahead of me. After taking care of his business like the good dog he was, we climbed back in the Jeep and headed home to The Seacrest.

Chapter 24

July 31th, 1997

9:25 P.M.

I
hid my bike behind a grove of scrub pines where it wouldn’t be noticed, then checked my watch. Five more minutes.

Almost time.

Would she show up? Could she sneak out of that cottage with her father watching her every move? Did she really live here?

I stayed hidden in the shadows of the pines, watching the winding access road that Sassy said was for the servants. The anticipation of our clandestine meeting swirled through me, building me into a state of excitement I could barely tolerate. I thought of the sweet talcum powder scent of her, the soft smoothness of her skin, her lean arms encircling my neck. I remembered our impossibly beautiful joining, of the intense erotic sensations that erupted inside me.

And there she was.

She trotted toward me, wearing a white sundress reflecting the moonlight, shimmering and shifting in the night.

I ran to her, embracing her. “Sassy.”

“You made it,” she whispered.

“Of course,” I said. “What did you expect?”

She pecked my cheek and took my hand, leading me up the access road, stopping every few minutes to listen. We froze when the sound of someone calling a dog pierced the night.

She giggled, then sighed with relief. “It’s just the cook. She has an old basset hound.”

In a few minutes, the shape of a big barn came into view. White with gables and post and board fencing that seemed to go for miles, it loomed large and inviting in the moonlight.

Around another bend, and there stood The Seacrest mansion. With tall pillars supporting its front porch, it reminded me of a southern plantation home like those we’d seen in the movie, “Gone With The Wind.” The cedar shake shingles had weathered gray in the ocean mists, and the sea-glass blue shutters needed paint. But the house stood like a sentinel—proud, aristocratic, and steadfast. I looked at it, wondering how it would feel to belong to such a home.

Sassy led me toward the barn, where a few low lights burned in the aisles between the horse stalls. The animals munched hay and shifted on their legs, occasionally nickering to her. She reached in to pat a few who stretched their big heads over the stall doors to greet her.

I noticed she was barefoot. Each careful step she took seemed to belong to a dancer—so precise, so elegantly turned. I found myself excited simply admiring her ankles, and although it was strange, I imagined how the men of centuries past had romanticized that which they could only glimpse. Slim, shapely legs danced along the dirt aisle, and I followed close behind, watching her white dress billow and flounce behind her, nipped tight at the waist, and gently curving low at her neck. I wondered if her father had seen her in this dress, and if he would have let her out in public if he’d known how the lights of the barn backlit the fabric and silhouetted her shape so clearly beneath her clothing.

She began to climb a wooden ladder to the loft, and when I followed, I wondered if she wore anything beneath her white frock, for I saw flashes of skin where there should have been fabric, and the intensity of my feelings soared to near uncontrollable lust.

She helped me up the last few rungs. “Come on. I’ve got a special place for us.”

“You sure they won’t find us here?” I asked, hardly caring at this point. Prurient thoughts raged through me.