by Aaron Lazar
I stood at the front door of The Seacrest, pressing the buzzer. Normally, I just walked in the back, where the kitchen beckoned. Tonight I needed to speak to Libby, and I felt the only way to be sure of seeing her was to rouse the household to summon her from her quarters, where she usually spent her evenings.
Fritzi came to the door, opening it wide as if to greet a stranger. She frowned, stopped, and put both hands on her ample hips. “What you doing, you silly man? Why don’t you come around back, like usual?” Her German accent had remained strong over the years, and she still pronounced “w’s” like “v’s.” “And take off those muddy shoes!”
“Sorry, Fritzi.” I looked behind her, wondering if Libby was downstairs. “I’m here to see Miss Libby.” I kicked off my shoes and followed her inside.
She waved a hand, motioning me inside the tall-ceilinged entrance lined with antique wooden benches and long tables with fringed lampshades and bayberry candles in pewter holders. “Come. Sit in the library. I will call her.”
I usually didn’t frequent the nicer rooms near the front door, and it felt strangely luxurious to step barefoot along the thick Oriental rug. Realizing my cutoffs and old blue tee shirt weren’t exactly appropriate attire, I shrugged. The household could take me as I was. No pretenses. Just me.
I followed Fritzi through the library to a leather sofa appointed with so many buttons I couldn’t imagine any upholsterer who had enough patience to sew each of them into the back of the couch. Of course, it was an antique, and that particular craftsman was likely long buried, the product of his skilled hands outliving him.
I settled on the horsehair seat and looked toward the door as Fritzi ponderously made her way back toward the kitchen. Over her shoulder, she nonchalantly told me she’d ring Libby in her quarters upstairs.
“Okay. Thanks.”
Rudy strode past the opening, then stopped abruptly and backed up. “McGraw? What’s wrong?” He slicked back his long white hair and peered at me with near black eyes. “Everything okay in the stables?”
I jumped off the sofa, and if I’d had a hat I think I would have been wringing it in my hands before me. “Yes, sir. Everything’s fine. Just wanted a quick word with Libby, if I could.”
He shrugged, tilting his glass filled with an amber liquid in my direction. “Okay. Be sure she fixes you one of these if you want it. It’s a very good year.”
I smiled and nodded, feeling like an idiot around him. Like a servant and his lord, I was relieved when he left the room, kicking myself for my overly subservient “sirs.” Cripes, I was a millionaire myself now, and I still acted nervous around my boss. I’m such a dolt.
She came into the room in a storm cloud, her face drawn into a furious mask. “What the hell do you want, Finn? And why are you sitting in the library, like company?”
“I,” I stammered at first, then got hold of myself. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow? I was in the middle of an email. You interrupted me.”
I walked toward her, and her eyes widened, as if she thought I’d kiss her like she’d kissed me at the farm earlier. She held up both hands and backed up. “What are you doing?”
I stopped, reaching for her hand. “Geez, Libby. What’s gotten into you? Why are you acting so weird?”
She backed up a few steps and turned to the mantle, running her fingers along the silver frame of her husband’s military photo. “It’s nothing. Just ignore me, okay?” Her mood shifted and her face fell. She gazed at Ian’s photo. “It was all so good in the beginning.”
I sat in the stuffed red chair by the fireplace and she plopped onto the Ottoman nearby.
“Same with me and Cora. In the beginning.”
She glanced over, her eyes full of sadness. “Really?”
“I don’t even know who she was in the end. I’m pretty sure she didn’t love me anymore.”
Her brow creased. “Seriously? I thought you too were solid.”
I stood and paced, looking out at the black sea through picture windows that filled one wall. “Heck, no, Libby. You know she was in my brother’s car when they died.”
“It doesn’t mean they were together, together.” She traced a circle on the mahogany table beside her, eyes averted. “But I did kind of wonder what they were doing in that car.”
“I know,” I said, walking faster now, back and forth in front of the windows, my arms flying up and down as I spoke. “They’d never met, as far as I knew. And here they were in a car together, at night, when she was supposed to be at the college taking one of her damned classes.”
“Do you think they were having an…affair?”
I growled my answer, turning to the sea. “I have no fucking idea.”
“Geez,” she said. Empathy flowed through that one word, more than I could stand.
I paced some more, my anger building. “That’s not the worst part.”
She stood and walked to my side, touching my hand. “Really? There’s more?”
I swallowed hard. “There is.”
She waited until I was able to spill the words. I clenched my hands at my side, but it was my heart that constricted so tightly inside me. “Cora was four months pregnant.”
She turned me toward her, her eyes searching mine. “Oh my God. Finn.”
I nodded. “I don’t even know if it was mine.”
“You wanted to have children, didn’t you?”
“More than anything on this earth. But she fought me on it, since the day we were married.”
This time she took my hand in hers and squeezed. “I’m so terribly sorry. That really stinks.”
I pressed her fingers. “Yeah, it does.” I released her hand and looked back at the glimmering black sea, where moonlight played on the crests and valleys of the swelling water. “I may never know the truth.”
“You deserved so much better,” she said.
I turned toward the mantle, motioning toward Ian’s photo. “So did you, Libby.”
We stood in silence for the next five minutes. I never asked her about the kiss, or why she was so mad at me. That had been my original intent, but now seemed the wrong time.
I’d ask her another day.
I turned to head back to the cottage, where in spite of Cora’s lingering presence, I felt grounded and comfortable. Maybe one day I’d feel the same way back at the farm.
Libby stopped me at the door. “Finn?”
I turned. “Yes?”
She crossed the deep piled rug and stood before me, looking up with her dark eyes. I pushed away the memory of her kiss, guilt and pleasure mingling too strong to face, to difficult to handle.
“Why don’t you come for breakfast tomorrow?”
I shrugged, still depressed. “I could, I guess. Why?”
“Fritzi’s making blueberry pancakes. Her specialty.”
My stomach growled, and I realized with a start that I hadn’t eaten since my own breakfast, hours earlier. “Okay.” With a great effort, I brought forth a small smile. “Thanks. Sounds good.”
“Seven,” she said. “And bring Ace. He can have the leftovers.”
“Thanks.” I headed into the dark night, with strange mingled thoughts of betrayal and desire racing through me. I needed food and a good night’s sleep. It had been a long day.
Chapter 26
August 1st, 1997
10:00 P.M.
I lay beside Sassy in the loft the next evening, our lips nearly touching. Exhilarated and exhausted from two nearly consecutive lovemaking sessions—once on the bedroll and once over a saddle—I leaned forward a quarter inch to touch my lips to hers. “Love you, Sass.” I throbbed in every place she’d touched, and the pulsing sensations were almost too sweet to bear.
She stretched and smiled, skin glistening in the dim light from the first floor. “You do, don’t you?”
I traced my fingers lightly down her side and back up again, lingering on her breasts. “You know it.”
“I
love you, too.” She reached down and stroked me with soft fingers. “But I don’t think I’m ready for a third time.” She laughed softly. “Come on. Let’s walk on the beach.” She jumped up suddenly and extended a hand to me.
“I’ve gotta get my pants on,” I said, still sluggish from the afterglow.
“No. Let’s be wild tonight, Finn. Let’s go naked.”
I thrilled to the idea, but didn’t want her to get in trouble again. “What if someone’s out there? Or if your father looks out the window and sees us?”
She pointed to the sea through the open loft window. “Look. There’s no moon tonight. It’s cloudy. He’d never see us.”
I grinned like a goofball. “Okay.”
We clambered down the ladder—I was particularly careful to avoid splinters from the old wood in places that would really hurt—and when we dropped to the soft dirt floor, we clasped hands and began to run.
We flew out the door, into the night, with the unimagined freedom of wind whistling through every part of our exposed bodies. I couldn’t help admire the way Sassy looked when she ran. So fit. So slim. So incredibly lovely.
In minutes, we reached the beach, and soon walked in the surf, swinging our arms and turning to kiss every so often.
I took her in my arms, turning her toward me. “Sassy. Listen to me. I want to know who you are. I need to know your name.”
She looked up at me, all innocent and sweet. “Why? Why do you have to spoil things, Finn?”
“Why would it spoil anything? I know where you live now. It’s no secret. So why would knowing your name make one bit of difference?”
“Exactly. Why would it?” she said.
I huffed. “No. I mean why can’t you tell me? At least your first name?”
She turned away. “School’s coming up soon. Only another month.”
“I know, so why wait?”
“I might not be here, Finn.”
“What, are you dying or something?” I tried to make light of it, but she’d worried me.
“No,” she loosed a whispery laugh. “I might be going to another school.”
“Away from here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you moving?”
“No.”
“Then how can you go to another school?”
“Don’t worry about it, Finn. Let’s just enjoy the rest of summer.”
I stood my ground. “Sassy. I need to know.”
With a pout, she looked back toward The Seacrest. “You’re so persistent.”
“Come on, Sass.”
“Fine.” She took my hand and led me to the jetty, settling carefully on a big square granite rock.
“Seriously? Are you gonna spill it?”
“I guess.”
“Well?”
“My name is Elizabeth. But everyone calls me Libby.”
I leaned over to kiss her. “Nice! I like it. Was that so hard?”
“That’s not the hard part, Finn.”
“What do you mean?”
“My last name is Vanderhorn.”
I stared at her. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“You mean of the Vanderhorns? The richest family in Brewster? Maybe the richest on the whole Cape?”
“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.
After 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, 10th 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.
