The Seacrest (12 page)

“That’s me.” She shrugged. “See? I knew you’d hate me when you found out.”

With dropped jaw, I pointed to The Seacrest. “You live
there
?”

She looked ashamed. “Yeah. I do.”

“Those are all your horses? This is your beach?”

She nodded. “Uh huh.”

I smiled. “Cool.”

“You don’t care?”

I shrugged. “Why would I care? You’re not a snob or anything.”

She sighed with apparent relief. “Oh, thank God.”

I tickled her arm. “When can we go riding? I love horses.”

She shook her head and laughed. “Not while my father is alive, I’m afraid.”

“What about tomorrow night? When everyone’s asleep.”

She squeezed my hand. “Okay.”

I pointed to the water. “Wanna swim?”

Her face softened and her eyes glimmered. “It might be cold.”

“I’ll keep you warm, Libby.” I loved the sound of her name as it rolled off my tongue. I said it again. “Libby.”

“It’s kind of nice to hear you say it,” she admitted. “I usually hate my name, but I like the way it sounds coming from you.”

“Good,” I said, drawing her toward the water. “I plan to use it a lot.”

Her mood suddenly changed, darkening her features. “Finn? I’m going to boarding school in Switzerland in the fall.”

“Switzerland?” My heart fell.

“Uh huh.”

“Well, that sure stinks.”

We moved deeper into the ocean. It was cold at first, but we got used to it and sank into the water up to our shoulders. I slipped my arms around her waist, pulling her to me. We floated—extra buoyant in the seawater. “Then we’d better take advantage of the time we have left, huh?” I kissed her lips, tasting salty ocean water.

“Okay,” she said, and began to kiss me back in earnest.

Chapter 27

July 20th, 2013

8:30 A.M.

A
fter I finished my chores at The Seacrest that morning, I headed up to the farm. Ace and I walked the overgrown trails between the blueberry bushes, pushing aside goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace, snapdragons and ferns. I reached for a handful of plump berries, shocked the bushes were still producing and that the fruit was only minimally infected with few withered berries or spots. Encouraged, I began to seriously consider re-opening the farm.

I thought back to the days when I drove the trolley through the access roads, picking up sweaty blueberry lovers along the way. Those days had been full of hard work, sunshine, and family. And I’d never been happier, especially when I met Libby that summer.

She’d been a confident, sensual girl, and I’d loved her madly until the day she broke it off violently, for no reason I could fathom.

I’d tried to smother my long lasting feelings for her. Tried to contact her, tried to find out why she’d been so furious at me. She’d never responded, never called me back, and all my letters had been returned from Switzerland, unopened.

When Cora had come along in college, she’d worked on me until I agreed to marry her. I’d learned to love her, over time, but never in the same obsessive, undying way I loved Libby. Libby had been everything to me, my proverbial sun, stars, and moon.

Cora was helpful and friendly in the beginning, and little by little I’d found myself growing very fond of her. She was pretty, dark-haired, and elegant in an Audrey Hepburn sort of way. I’d been a hundred percent faithful to her our entire lives, devoted myself to her, given her everything, even though in the end we’d grown apart. I’d avoided the truth of it, studiously looked the other way when that bored expression crossed her pretty face, when her chocolate brown eyes went vacant when I mentioned having a family together.  

But the truth of it was, I’d never gotten over Libby, or discovered why she’d dumped me so brutally just before she went off to Switzerland in that fall of my sixteenth year. And deep down inside, it still gnawed at me, driving me crazy.

When I graduated from college, I’d still been in a fog over the loss of my parents and sister earlier that year. Rudy Vanderhorn had asked a mutual friend if I’d be interested in helping him out around the property, and when Libby returned from earning her master’s degree in equine studies, she’d been furious to find me working in her barn and around their gardens, until she discovered I’d married Cora, and she was the housemaid her dad had been raving about for the past year. She backed off, withdrew into her own world, and basically ignored me for the first few years.

As time went on, Libby’d treated me with icy civility, occasionally thawing to almost friendly behavior, but equally as often letting loose on me with a tirade like she did that day when I’d weed wacked around her mare, causing her to go ballistic.

I shrugged, realizing I’d probably never understand her.

Ace nosed around a rabbit hole, his tail wagging madly.

“Found yourself something to chase, buddy?” I smiled at him and wandered back toward the barn, jingling the car keys in my jeans pocket. “C’mon. Let’s check out the vehicles.”

I unlocked the door and slid it open, causing a cloud of dust motes to rise in the sunshine streaming through the back windows.

There were four bays for cars in the old barn, which in the past had been populated by tractors and farm vehicles, and before that, cows and horses. Now four cars sat quietly in the sun, their waxed fenders gleaming. My heart skipped a beat when I realized they were collector’s items.

I moved toward the vehicle closest to me, a 1965 Corvette convertible, with rally red paint, red leather interior, a white top, and four on the floor. Jax and I had lusted over this car in magazines and at car shows.

He’d finally bought one.

I scanned the other vehicles. Next in line was a 1959 Oldsmobile Super 88, silver. Beside it sat a dark blue 1967 Ferrari 330 GTS convertible. And finally, a vehicle I’d be able to live in for the rest of my natural life, a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, 10
^th
Anniversary model, in a bright white clear coat. I’d been eyeing this car for the past few years, salivating over it each time I drove past the dealers.

Jax and I had shared one passion, and that was for cars. We’d discussed them ad nauseum, and had memorized features and colors that went with specific years and models. I couldn't believe my brother had amassed such a collection.

I walked around to the Jeep, noticing that each vehicle was registered and inspected. Road ready. Every one. With a shake of my head, I realized that this Jax was quite a different guy than the twenty-three year old I’d given up on years ago. This was the prosperous Jax. The collector. The wife-stealer. The alcoholic. And the murderer of my wife.

I slid into the driver’s seat of the Wrangler. I touched the knob of the stick shift, noting its smooth feel, wondering how many times Jax had driven it, jerking the shifter around as he bounced over sand dunes or rocky trails.

Had he been alone?

On an impulse, I opened the glove box and rifled through the contents.

Registration.

I’d have to get that changed over to my name, using the paperwork Sawyer had given me.

Insurance card and sales receipts from the dealer, dated two years earlier.

Compared to my Jeep, this thing is just a baby.

My hand closed around another item—definitely not another paper receipt. I withdrew a coral necklace from the glove box.

My hand shook and my head began to swim. I held the necklace I’d bought Cora two Christmases ago, noticing it had a broken clasp. It had cost me all of my meager savings, and she’d said she lost it last summer when I asked her to wear it to dinner on our anniversary.

She’d lost it
last summer.

That meant she’d known my brother for at least one full year. Maybe more.

And she hadn’t said a word about him.

Had he accidentally torn if from her neck while they made out in his Jeep?

I lay my head on the steering wheel, trying to process the thoughts. I needed to do more digging, and remembered I hadn’t checked the phone bill for details of her calls. It occurred to me that I might do the same on Jax’s bill, and that I’d seen a collection of unopened bills on the kitchen counter.

I headed inside to check it out.

Chapter 28

August 2nd, 1997

1:00 A.M.

F
or the first time that summer, I came home as late as Jax.

Sassy and I had made love in the water twice—which I hadn’t been sure we could manage—but I’d held her with her legs wrapped tight around my waist, bouncing in the swelling waves in a new rhythm that sent us both to the moon and back, and in spite of all the sand that stuck to me afterwards in weird places, it was phenomenal. When it was over, we’d floated on our backs, holding hands and watching the white pinpricks of stars blazing in the dark velvet sky.

I propped my bike against the barn and turned suddenly when Jax’s headlights blinded me.

He skidded to a stop on the gravel drive and lurched out of his car, smelling of beer. “Hey, bro!” He thundered toward me, weaving along the grassy path. “You’re home late.”

I tried to beat him to the house so I could slip upstairs before him to avoid being caught by our parents, thanks to his loud tromping and obvious state of inebriation, but he caught up with me and slid an arm over my shoulder, breathing fumes into my face.

“Watcha doin’ out so late, little buddy?”

“Shh! You’ll wake Mom and Dad.”

“Aww, don’t worry so much. They’ll understand. A man has to have his fun.”

We made our way up the stairs, with a few fumbling slams against the wall, and I tried to get to the bathroom before him, but he pushed me away and shut the door in my face. I heard him being sick in there, and crawled into bed, trying to fake sleep.

My mother’s voice came from the hallway. “Jax? Is that you, honey? Are you okay?”

His thick words mumbled from behind the door. “I’m ’kay, Ma. No worries.”

“All right, dear. Try to get some sleep. It’s very late.”

“I know, Ma. Go back to bed. Everything’s good.”

I lay wide-awake on my side, turned away from the door. I’d slid out of my tee shirt and jeans, but my feet were still sandy and I smelled of the sea. I wanted a quick shower, but worried he’d never get out of the bathroom.

Finally, with a whiff of something I didn’t want to know about, he re-entered the bedroom and tottered over to sit on the edge of my bed. “Have a good night, bud?”

I ignored him, until he poked me hard in the back and I was forced to roll over and sit up. “Yeah. It was fine.”

“Who you porkin’ now, anyway?”

I stared at him. “Nobody.”

“I can’t keep mine straight. I think tonight was Sheila. She wanted me so bad. She’s a great lay.”

I wondered if Sheila—who I’d never even heard of—really wanted him, or if he always just assumed that with every girl he dated.

“Who’s she?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation away from my own evening of passion.

“Just a girl I met at the carnival. Her old man runs the Ferris wheel.”

“Yeah? Is she nice?”

“Nice and horny,” he brayed, then lifted a finger to his lips. “Shh. Mom’s awake.”

“Do you love her?” I asked, realizing as soon as I said it, it was a mistake.

“Love? Come off it, twerp. Love’s for sissies. I just like sex, plain and simple.”

My stomach turned. Although making love with Sassy—Libby, I corrected myself—was the best thing I’d ever experienced, I could never just think of her as a sex object. And I’d never be able to do it with just any old girl who happened along.

Maybe I was the weird one. I hadn’t heard too many guys my age talk about girls in a respectful way. I guessed I was a freak of some kind. Some kind of old soul, or something like that. I’d heard my grandfather call me that a few years back, and hadn’t understood. He’d called me a “romantic, old soul,” to be exact. I guess he’d hit the nail on the head. I believed in love because I was in love. Madly in love. Desperately in love. It hurt and it thrilled and it pained me so bad I could barely stand the thought of not being with my Libby forever.

What would I do in the fall when she went away?

Jax poked me again. “So, who were you with tonight?”

“Nobody,” I repeated.

“You’ve got a new hickey. I know you were with a girl.”

“So?”

“It was that girl from the trolley, wasn’t it? Sissy?”

“Sassy.”

“Yeah. Sassy. Pretty nice piece of ass, if you ask me. Sweet tits, too.”

I pushed him off the bed. “Take that back!”

“Whoa, buddy!” He got up unsteadily. “What’s the big deal? They’re all good for one thing, and that’s for fu—”

I launched myself at him. “Shut up,” I yelled. “You just shut the hell up!” I pulled back and threw a punch at his face, not really aiming, but reaching the soft pouch of his eye. It connected hard, and he howled.

My father flung open the door and glared at us. Jax held a hand over his eye, giggling drunk. “Geez, he packs a wallop, Dad.”

“Jax. Finn. What’s going on? It’s one o’clock in the morning, for goodness sake.”

I got back in bed and leaned against my headboard. “Nothing, Dad.”

He wrinkled his nose and coughed. “It smells like a distillery in here.”

Jax laughed. “Ha, good one, Dad.”

My father’s patience wore thin. “Jax McGraw, I am sorely disappointed in you. I’ve warned you about this kind of behavior. There will be consequences, serious consequences. I’ll discuss it with your mother, but you may be grounded for the next week.”

“Grounded?” Jax laughed again, still holding his eye. “Are you serious, Dad? I’m eighteen.”

My father glared at him. “I’m dead serious. Until you are twenty-one, you are under my control. And I have the power to take back that car, young man. Don’t ever forget it.”

Jax turned sour. “It’s all his fault,” he said, pointing to me. “He jumped me.”

I didn’t say a word, and my father glanced at me with an expression of understanding. He knew how hard it was to have a brother like Jax.