by Zoe Carter
“Caleb,” Alice sobbed, and her hand rose to touch the bruise on her cheek. “He’s got the baby.”
My head reared back, stunned, confused. “What?”
“I tried to stop him, but...he was too strong.”
I looked over at Sarah, saw her face morph into fear, her shaky hand rise to cover her mouth. She stared at me, and I shook my head. “That wasn’t part of the plan. I don’t know what’s going on, Sarah.”
It shouldn’t have worried me, but it did. Caleb had lied to me, lied to my sister. Something was going on here, something I didn’t understand. I eyed my mother. Caleb had struck her. Gentlemanly, patient, loyal Caleb had violently wrenched my nephew from my mother’s arms. I looked over at Sarah.
Lucy had taken her son, and entrusted him in my mother’s care. This wasn’t on Alice, this was on me. Like everything else. Lucy had done something so stupid, so extreme, and now Elliot had been taken by a man we thought we could trust.
True fear for my nephew, for my sister, overwhelmed me. “I’m so sorry, Sarah.”
Sarah
Adrenaline surges through my body, renewing my strength. “Where is Elliot?” I shout at Alice, suppressing the urge to shake her until her teeth rattle. “Where did he take him?”
“He wants you to meet him on the jetty.” Alice clings to my arm, pleading with me to forgive her, but I shake her off. “I’m so sorry. I told him not to go, that this was no weather for a little baby. But he wouldn’t listen to me. I’ve never seen him like this. I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t.”
“Go get help, Mom. Now.”
Something about Maisey’s tone shakes our mother loose from her stupor and she heads toward the house, tripping over the debris that lies scattered on the sand. My sister is already sprinting to the jetty, and I follow, praying my baby will be okay. What’s going on? Why would Caleb take Elliot? Maisey said the emails were the work of Lucy and Lucy alone, but if that’s true, why would Caleb have taken Elliot?
My sister’s fear intensifies my own. What does she know that I don’t? Throughout our adolescence, Caleb had always been the one person we could trust after Dad died. It was Caleb we loved best. Caleb who would never hurt us. Caleb who would protect us from his monster of a father. Whenever he was around, Peter mostly left us alone. It was like our stepfather became a different person, the kind of father worthy of a son’s adoration.
Maybe Caleb took Elliot to protect him. Maybe he saw that Maisey was losing it and decided to hide the baby from her.
Faint hope gives my feet wings, and I pull ahead of my sister. Finally, I can make out the jetty in the distance, and there’s someone standing at its end, just like Alice said. When I see it’s Caleb, and that he’s holding something in his arms, my knees buckle with relief. Now that my ordeal is over, I can barely muster the energy to walk.
“Elliot!” I stagger toward my stepbrother, freezing in terror when Caleb swings his arms over the water, dangling my tiny son above the waves. Elliot kicks his legs and howls. “Caleb, no. What are you doing?”
What is he thinking? Is he mad? Has everyone in this family gone crazy?
Holding out my arms, I plead for him to hand over my baby. “Caleb, please. Why are you doing this? He’s just a child. He never did anything to you. Please give him back to me.”
My stepbrother’s face is chiseled from stone, his features betraying no emotion when he speaks. “Frankie was a baby too, Sarah. Don’t think you can trick me—if you come any closer, I swear I’ll drop him in the ocean. Don’t think I won’t.”
At the sound of Frankie’s name, something dies inside me. How does he know?
I appeal to the part of my stepbrother that used to adore me, the man who’d asked me to run away with him only two days before. “Please, if you ever loved me, you have to listen. It’s not what you think. You’ve got it wrong.”
“Love?” He throws his head back, mocking the furious sky with his laughter. “Ha! You have some nerve to mention love. Like you have any clue what that is. The only person you’ve ever loved is yourself.”
The harsh indictment hurts a lot coming from him, but I brush it aside. I have to concentrate on Elliot. Getting my son returned to me safe and sound is what matters. “Don’t say that. I’ve always loved you, Caleb. You’re the only man I do love.” It’s not true—not anymore...but it had been, until very recently.
“You have a fucking funny way of showing your devotion. First you seduce my father, and then you murder my little brother?” His eyes are as dark as the ocean, and I know I don’t have much time. At any moment, he could throw my child to his death.
Slowly, carefully, inch by inch, I shift myself closer to Caleb and Elliot.
“You thought I was too stupid to figure it out, but it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. I’ve heard you guys talking,” he says. “I saw your foolish little emails, listened to your mother’s drunken rants about Maisey pulling Frankie out of the pool. I may have been easy to screw around when I was younger, but I’m not a stupid kid anymore.”
The planks creak under my feet as Maisey joins us on the jetty. “She didn’t seduce your father. He raped her.”
Caleb smirks. “That’s what she wants you to think. Every time she moves her lips, she’s lying—don’t you get that? I saw you, Sarah. I watched you ride him, and you looked like you were having the time of your life. So don’t give me some bullshit story about how he forced himself on you. Maybe Maisey is dumb enough to believe it, but I’m not.”
The pain of learning Caleb witnessed what his father did to me is unbearable. How could he have ever thought I wanted it? How could he believe it was my idea? Caleb was the person who was supposed to love me no matter what, the one who understood me. But if he thought I’d wanted that, he didn’t understand me at all. “I never loved Peter. I hated him—I only loved you. You were the love of my life, always have been.” Why didn’t you do something to help me?
Caleb isn’t the same boy with stars in his eyes. I see that now. Something has curdled inside him. He’s not the person I once adored any longer. That young man is gone.
I shift closer to him and feel Maisey’s foot nudge my ankle. She is moving with me. She believes me. Finally it’s out in the open, every sacrifice I’ve made for her. Maybe at last she understands.
Thankfully, Caleb doesn’t seem to notice how we’re closing the distance between us. “Didn’t I say your bullshit wouldn’t work on me? You’re wasting your time. I told you, I saw you with Dad. You had a fucking smile on your face, Sarah. You were enjoying every minute of it.”
His words sting, and my face burns with the shame of it. I never wanted anyone to know. How I’d wanted that secret to die with me! And now, thanks to Maisey, everyone knows. It’s my sister’s fault this is happening. If she hadn’t started digging for the truth, if she hadn’t sent those god-awful emails to trick me into talking about it, Caleb would be none the wiser and Elliot would be safe. If anything happens to my baby, it’s on Maisey’s head.
I try again to reason with him, though I know it’s of little use. He’s too angry to think rationally. “Peter threatened me, Caleb. He made me act that way. I had no choice! If I didn’t put on a good enough performance, he’d hurt me. Or he’d go after Maisey. Or our mom. Whenever I cried, whenever I screamed, he’d strangle me. You saw the bruises on my throat that last summer, remember? You asked me how I got them. Peter put them there.”
“Don’t do this, Caleb. She’s telling the truth,” Maisey says. She nudges me again, urging me forward, but soon he’ll notice the progress we’ve made. “I realize it sounds crazy. I didn’t believe her at first, either. She was trying to protect me. If she didn’t do everything Peter wanted, he would have gone after me. He held that over her head.”
Perhaps Maisey doesn’t see how impossible this situation is, but I do.
I see it all too clearly. Peter may have been the monster that made our lives miserable, but he was Caleb’s hero. He put Caleb through school and supported his military training. To our stepbrother, Peter was a saint. There’s no way Caleb’s going to believe anything bad about him. If he believed our story, it would destroy every memory he has of his father.
Elliot reaches his arms toward me, begging to be held. The panic in his eyes breaks my heart. He doesn’t deserve to be involved in this. None of this has anything to do with him.
It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to run to him, but if I try, Caleb will kill him. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s serious about making good on his threats. Keep talking. Don’t give up. There has to be something I can say to make him see reason. Caleb is a good guy. He’s not a murderer. He doesn’t want to hurt Elliot; he’s just angry. If I can get him to calm down, I have a shot at resolving this without anyone getting hurt. Our family has suffered more than enough as it is.
“You have to believe me, Caleb, please. I’m not lying to you now. You’re the one I loved. I swear it. I never would have been with Peter if I’d had any other choice. I wanted to be with you.”
My stepbrother turns away, swallowing hard, and now I see what I missed years ago, the night he left me sobbing in the driveway. He knew. He’d watched me have sex with Peter and it had crushed him, destroyed any love he’d once had for me. How could he think I’d want anything to do with that loathsome man? How could he think it was a choice? I have to keep reminding myself that, to Caleb, Peter wasn’t loathsome. To us, he’d been a tyrant, but to our stepbrother, he was simply Dad.
“How could you do it? How could you sleep with him and then have sex with me? Do you get how disgusting that is? How vile?” His voice cracks, but whether with pain or rage, I’m not sure. “Dad was right. You’re nothing but a whore.”
Elliot screams, kicking Caleb in the chest. He may be a baby, but my son can kick. I’ve been the recipient of his assaults enough to know he can get you pretty good if he catches you off guard.
“Son of a bitch.” Caleb holds Elliot over the waves again. “Why should he live when Frankie had to die, huh? What did Frankie ever do to you?”
“Your dad was a monster. My sister was just a kid. She isn’t to blame,” Maisey says. “I can’t believe you listened to his lies. He was better when you were around, but you were still around for some of it. You saw how he treated us. You saw how he was with Alice.”
“You destroyed him.” He ignores Maisey, speaking only to me. He points a shaking finger in my direction. “He came to see me at the barracks after that summer, you know. Somehow he’d figured out why I’d left, why I never returned his calls anymore. He told me what you did, how you’d seduced him while Alice was pregnant. He knew it was wrong, but he was weak. He was so ashamed, so heartsick over what was happening between you, but he said he couldn’t resist you. He admitted everything, even though I didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to believe it. And that night, when he left, he was so upset. I didn’t want to let him drive but he insisted...”
I realize Caleb is talking about the night Peter died—that whenever he looks at me, he sees his father’s blood on my hands as well as Frankie’s.
“If it weren’t for you, my dad would still be alive. Frankie would still be alive. You ruined everything.” Caleb shouts over the storm. “Their deaths are your fault. You need to pay for what you’ve done. I would have gone to the cops, but prison is too good for you.”
“No—it was Peter. Peter ruined everything, for all of us. Please, you have to believe me.”
Caleb turns away from me, dangling Elliot over the jetty by the back of his sleeper. My son shrieks, and I can see the fabric of his little pajamas stretching, stretching...
“For years I’ve hated you, Sarah, and I’ve taken out that rage on everyone around me. Every woman who tried to get close to me, every soldier who assumed he could get the best of me. But it was you I needed to punish. I see that now.”
My sister creeps toward him, holding out her arms in supplication. “Don’t do this. Please give the baby to me. He’s scared, and he’s probably freezing. If you’re angry with Sarah, punish her, but don’t hurt Elliot. He’s innocent.”
Caleb backs away from her as much as he can, but he’s at the very end of the jetty. There’s nowhere else to go. His hand, the one that holds my son over the water, jerks downward as the fabric of Elliot’s sleeper tears under the strain.
“I even put up with Alice to find out where you were,” he yells at me. “Do you have any idea what I’ve had to deal with? How many times I’ve had to listen to her drone on and on about her little problems while pretending to be her loving son? She’s pathetic.” He scowls. “Both of you are so fucking pathetic, just like her.”
“Why are you doing this to us?” The pain in Maisey’s voice is so raw it hurts. She’s still in love with him, just like I was. “We’ve always been kind to you. Mother loves you. We love you. Give Elliot to me. Let’s go inside and talk about this. At least give us a chance to make you understand. We’ve been family too long to let it end like this.”
It’s as if she hasn’t spoken; he doesn’t bother to acknowledge her. “I was going to ruin you. I was going to come up here and shit all over your perfect little life. I’m sure your fancy husband and his family of elitists would love to know what a big whore you are. But when I discovered what you did to Frankie, I decided that wasn’t good enough for you. You need to feel as horrible as you’ve made me feel. You need to suffer.”
As he hangs Elliot over the waves again, I take my chance. Throwing my body forward like a football player, I rush him. I manage to snag the collar of his shirt before he jumps off the jetty, wrenching out of my hands.
Without thinking, I dive in after him, clawing blindly at the waves. The water is shockingly cold. The ocean has absorbed the power of the storm, and it throws my body about mercilessly. I’ve never been the best swimmer, and I’ve never swum in rough conditions before. I panic, my mouth filling with salt water.
Gasping and spitting, I lose my sense of direction as I fight to keep my head above the waves. Salt stings my eyes as I peer through the rain, searching for Caleb and my son, but the ocean is empty. Oh, my God, I’ve lost him. I’ve lost my baby.
The despair overwhelms me. I let the waves pull me under and close over my head. Being Elliot’s mother meant everything to me. Without him, nothing else matters.
My chest burns with an excruciating pain. I can’t hold my breath much longer. Squeezing my eyes shut, I stop struggling, letting the ocean take me where it will.
Just when I believe it is over, strong arms grab me around the chest and lift me to the surface. My head breaks through the water, and I gasp for air, coughing and sputtering. At first I think Caleb has reconsidered, that he doesn’t want me to die.
But it isn’t my stepbrother who’s rescued me—it’s my sister.
Maisey takes my arms and wraps them around something solid, one of the jetty’s support posts. I scrabble to hang on, my fingernails sinking into the wet wood. My teeth chatter so violently my entire body shakes.
“Can you hold on for a few minutes?”
I nod, unable to speak.
“Stay here. I’ll get Elliot and come back for you. Promise me you’ll hold on.”
Coughing, I manage to hold up a thumb. If there’s a chance my son is still alive, I’ll hold on forever. Maisey dives into the ocean without hesitation, disappearing among the waves. She was always the stronger swimmer, trained as a lifeguard when we were in our teens. It kills me not to go after Elliot myself, but if I try again, I’ll drown. I was close to death when she found me.
What if Maisey dies? What if I never see either of them again? I squint into the rain, trying to locate Caleb in the water, but I can’t see anyone and now my sister is gone, too. Using wh
at’s left of my strength, I grip the post with my legs, fighting against the hysteria that threatens to overwhelm me.
I’d given up hope when I at last catch sight of Maisey swimming in my direction. She is holding Elliot as high as she can, doing everything possible to keep his little face above the water. Taking a deep breath, I keep one arm around the post and let go with everything else, stretching toward her. I pray my son is still alive, although I know it isn’t likely. The shock alone would be enough to kill him.
“Take him. Hurry.” Maisey pushes Elliot into my arms. To my great relief, he is sputtering and cold, but breathing. Leaning against the post, I clutch him to my body to warm him.
Maisey holds on to the post as she regains her breath. “I think he’ll be okay. We just have to get him inside now.”
“Thank you.” The words are hollow, but I don’t know what else to say. “Thank you so much for bringing him back to me.”
We don’t notice Caleb swimming up behind my sister. I catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye and scream to warn her.
“Watch out! Maisey, he’s—”
It’s too late. Caleb seizes Maisey by the hair, forcing her under. A giant swell slams me into the post. The impact shudders through me. I want to help my sister, but now that I have Elliot, I’m powerless. I have to get out of the water, or my son will die. He’s fallen silent, the most frightening thing of all.
I can hear something over the storm, but I’m not sure what it is. It takes me a moment to realize someone is calling my name.
“Sarah!”
A person swims toward me, but he’s too far away to identify. I’m afraid it’s Caleb, and I keep the post between us, terrified my stepbrother will follow through with his horrible plan to punish me.
Then I see it’s Warwick.
I’ve never been happier to see my husband, and as he takes us in his arms, I hold on to him with every bit of strength I have left.
He sets off for shore, using one arm to get us to safety while his other holds us close. Straining to see through the storm, I can make out a cluster of people waiting for us on the beach. Keeping Elliot as protected from the waves as I can, I paddle hard, helping to bring us in.
