Last Kiss

by Luanne Rice

  Last Kiss

  Hubbard’s Point / Black Hall [6]

  Luanne Rice

  Random House Publishing Group (2008)

  *

  New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice returns to Hubbard’s Point, Connecticut, and to characters from her beloved Beach Girls, to tell the haunting story of a close-knit community grappling with a heartbreaking mystery, and of a woman rebuilding her world and reclaiming a love she believed lost a lifetime ago.

  A face on a poster, a name in the news, an inexplicable tragedy. A promising young man goes out one warm summer evening and is found dead - murdered - less than twenty-four hours later. No motive. No clues. No answers. Most people reflect briefly on the disturbing headlines, perhaps say a silent prayer of safely removed sympathy, and go on with their lives. But what if the young man was your son? Or your true love?

  Nearly a year after the death of eighteen-year-old Charlie, singer-songwriter Sheridan Rosslare still hasn’t played a note of the music that was once her life’s passion. Tucked away in the beach house where she raised her only child, she lives with her memories of him and a grief too big to share even with her beloved sisters or her dear friend Stevie Moore. Nor can Stevie comfort Charlie’s heartbroken girlfriend, Nell Kilvert, whom she regards as a daughter. Nell won’t rest until she finds out what really happened to the boy she loved. Out of the past she summons a man she believes cares enough, and is tough enough, to uncover the truth - Sheridan’s long-ago soul mate, Gavin Dawson.

  Now Gavin’s boat, the Squire Toby, sits anchored in the harbor within sight of the window of the woman he once loved, still loves, and will always love. Sheridan, too, had once fervently believed in the miraculous power of love and healing, forgiveness, connection, and reconnection. But that faith died along with her son..

  Unfolding among the Hubbard’s Point people and places that fans have come to treasure, and replete with feeling and mystery, Last Kiss weighs the power of the past to heal as well as wound, in a captivating tale of love, loss, and redemption that no reader will ever forget.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY LUANNE RICE

  COPYRIGHT

  For William Twigg Crawford

  PROLOGUE

  THE WATER WAS GLASS-CALM AND PITCH-BLACK, REFLECTING the summer constellations and the lights of the houses along the coast. Green light illuminated the chart table down below, but Gavin Dawson didn’t need to look at charts. Not once he’d passed the light at Race Rock: these were his home waters.

  His trip had been long. He’d been in Maine, resting up from a long case involving old Seal Harbor money, when he’d gotten the call: all the way down east, in a hidden harbor ringed by pines, where his only clock had been the sun and the tides. The message had been left with his service. He’d returned the call, listened just long enough to know he wanted to take the case, told his new employer they’d decide on terms once he had the chance to assess the situation.

  Then he’d started the engine, hauled anchor, and headed south. The weather had been fair; he’d skirted the tail end of a storm moving out to sea. His boat, the Squire Toby, didn’t mind one way or the other—she got the job done. She was as old as he was, thirty-three feet long, and tough as hell. The rebuilt twin 350 Crusaders throbbed belowdecks, better than music.

  Entering Long Island Sound, he was coming home. He found himself thinking of old friends, old faces. He thought of Sheridan. His skin started prickling; he thought about turning back. But he’d given his word, signed on for a job, so he kept going. Past Mystic, Noank, and Groton. He heard the engine of a small plane, watched it fly overhead and land at Groton–New London Airport. He saw the big stone buildings at UConn’s Avery Point campus, dark for the summer.

  He passed Ledge Light, the square brick lighthouse at the mouth of the Thames River; New London; Waterford. Once he saw the big ugly stack of Millstone Point, he knew he was practically there. Cruising past the power plant, he glanced over. Sheridan had always hated the place; she’d spent one summer protesting, a completely useless enterprise, just bobbing in her rowboat and holding up a big sign: YOU ARE HURTING THE SOUND.

  She cared, he gave her that. The way she’d sit there all day, getting sunburned and thirsty. She wrote a song about it. Everyone else was out making money, having fun. He remembered waterskiing by her one day, slaloming behind Tommy Mangan’s Boston Whaler, jumping the wake to impress her and spray her while she sat in the hot sun, holding her sign.

  “Thanks for cooling me off!” she’d yelled.

  “No problem,” he’d called back.

  He put the memory behind him as he rounded the headland and crossed the mouth of Niantic Bay, past Black Point and Giant’s Neck. Hugging the coast, he avoided the shoals he knew like the back of his hand. He and his friends had gone fishing here—either off the rocks with rod and reel, or spearfishing down below the surface.

  The ones with rich parents had scuba equipment and fancy fishing gear. The ones without rich parents just snorkeled or held their breath or fished with cheap poles. Either way, it didn’t matter; they’d spent hours here, season after season. Ed Moriarty had pointed a speargun at Gavin’s head once. Only once, and just as a joke; even so, Gavin had broken his wrist. Anger, his old demon.

  He slowed down, staring at this stretch of coastline. This was the east side of Hubbard’s Point, a rocky peninsula that jutted into Long Island Sound. The shingled cottages looked the same as ever. Their lights shone on the water, crazy orange and yellow lines scoring the black surface.

  The tide was low; he could smell the seaweed and marshes. Taking the last turn around the Point, he puttered between the big rock and the breakwater, skirting the raft twenty yards from the beach, next to the rock. He maneuvered between two other boats moored by the breakwater: a sloop and a fiberglass speedboat. Then he dropped anchor and turned the engines off.

  His ears rang from the long hours of engine sounds. He walked to the stern, stared across the water. Facing northeast, he saw Little Beach, dark and deserted, off to his left, then the thick woods, and then Hubbard’s Point Beach, the long strand of sand reaching toward the rocky Point.

  The longer he stood there, the more his hearing came back. He heard small waves slapping the hull, seagulls crying from their rookery on North Brother, kids laughing. He glanced at Little Beach, realized teenagers were still being teenagers: they were partying on the sand, behind the rock still painted with shark’s jaws, graffiti that had been there nearly thirty years. The kids held his attention for a few seconds, then he turned back to stare at Hubbard’s Point.

  His gaze went to the Point, the actual granite point that gave the beach its name. There were several houses built along its crest, some thirty feet up from the water. There were lights on in her house. One light upstairs, one downstairs. His hand closed around the binoculars, but he didn’t raise them to his eyes. Not yet. He pulled a deck chair close to the rail and sat down. The boat moved on the tide, straining against the anchor line. He
barely noticed.

  There was food down below, and ice, and scotch. He’d go get some or all of it eventually, but not now. First he had a job to start.

  He watched.

  CHAPTER 1

  NELL KILVERT LAY BACK ON THE GRASS, HEARING THE breeze rustle the leaves overhead. Her bikini was salt-and sun-faded, a pretty shade of rose; around her waist she wore a beach towel, still damp from her last swim. Around her ankle she wore a strip of cloth, so ragged it looked ready to fall off. Charlie had tied it there three hundred and fifty-something days ago, just before leaving Hubbard’s Point for college, at the end of last summer.

  Her long hair was dark brown. She had cat eyes: green, almond-shaped, unblinking. Right now there were tears pouring down out of them, into her ears, as she stared up at the gorgeous blue sky.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she whispered.

  “I know. So why are you crying?”

  “Because he can’t feel it…he’ll never feel summer again.”

  “Why do you come here?”

  “So I can be near him.”

  The boy—his name was Tyler—stared at her. She knew he was there, kneeling beside her, but she blocked him out. She focused completely on Charlie. Closing her eyes, she could imagine him right here with her.

  The cemetery was quiet. Located behind Foley’s Store, right in the middle of Hubbard’s Point—between the train bridge that separated the beach from the rest of the world, and the Sound—it was filled with tall trees. And it was filled with graves. One of them was Charlie’s.

  Nell lay on the ground by Charlie’s headstone. She came here often, at least once a day, before or after work at Foley’s, carefully timing her visits to avoid seeing his mother. Not that she didn’t like Charlie’s mother—Nell visited Sheridan often. They would sit quietly in the dark house, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Nell would look at the silent guitars and remember how when Charlie was young, his mother had filled their house with music. Nell craved those times with Charlie’s mother, her companion in grief. But here at the grave, Nell knew Sheridan needed her own time with her son.

  “Don’t you ever get spooked here?” Tyler asked, so close she could feel his breath on her forehead.

  “Why would I?” Nell asked.

  “Well, because it’s a graveyard.”

  “Once someone you love dies, you’re not scared of graveyards,” she said.

  “Huh,” he said, sounding unconvinced. An old tree creaked in the breeze, making him jump. She knew he’d like to book out of there, head down to the sun and fun on the beach, but he wouldn’t leave her.

  Nell had an effect on boys. It mystified her. It had started with Charlie, of course. She’d loved him as long as she’d known him. They’d spent the last few summers together, right here at Hubbard’s Point. He was the wildest boy at the beach, like a mustang running free. No one had been able to tame him, no one but Nell. That’s why he’d called her the Boy Whisperer….

  It still fit. Even though the beach boys all knew she was still in love with Charlie, they wanted to be with her. They wanted to tell her their secrets. She thought maybe it was the whisper of tragedy that surrounded her. Her mother had died when she was young. Her father had lost it big-time, until Nell had brought him together with Stevie Moore, the artist most people considered a witch. Now Stevie was virtually Nell’s stepmother, and the beach boys probably thought her witchiness had rubbed off on Nell. They dreamed of sex spells. And after Charlie’s murder, the boys had come flocking even more.

  But Charlie had had the magic, too. He was the great-grandson of Aphrodite, the doyenne of Hubbard’s Point beach magic. Her magic book had been the source of many of Charlie’s mother’s best songs, but not the inspiration for the film Charlie had wanted to make. As much as he disavowed it, Charlie had inherited his family magic; Nell used to tease him, that he had it in his kiss. The other beach boys wanted to make Nell forget Charlie’s kisses….

  Nell lay beside his headstone, staring down her right leg at the strip of beach towel he’d tied around her ankle last summer. It was all she had left of him. She wondered how he’d feel to know about the other boys. He’d never been the jealous type in life. He hadn’t needed to be, and he still didn’t now. He was her only one.

  She closed her eyes, and even with Tyler beside her, she let herself dream of Charlie. He’d been so comfortable in his own skin, in his own life. He’d wear jeans and a T-shirt, even when they were supposed to get dressed up for candlelit beach dinners at their parents’ houses. Well, his mother’s. His father was a no-show.

  That’s what Charlie had called him. Just one of those dads who bailed on their kids, no real explanation other than the fact they didn’t feel like showing up to raise their children—the opposite of Nell’s dad. Charlie was casual, tough, a little hardened by growing up without a dad. He’d had to figure things out by himself.

  But oh…he’d figured them out so well.

  He was competent. Nell found it sexy as hell, too—the way he could do anything he set his mind to. He could fix her car, catch huge stripers, identify raptors, film equally well using digital or Super 8. He had an artist’s eye but a rugged soul. His mom had gently steered him into therapy, to deal with his father’s absence, and Nell knew he’d gotten into the habit of figuring himself out. He was rigorous with himself.

  He’d been so practical, while his mother and her family had been so driven by magic. His mother was in touch with the spiritual, but Charlie had insisted on staying real, right in the world as it is. It was how he’d survived the disappointment of missing a father he never really knew. His mother had made up for it the best she could, trying to heal Charlie’s deep scars. And they were deep, Nell knew—but he’d learned to take care of himself.

  He’d think about things. That might sound so normal, so regular, but what eighteen-year-old boys do that? He’d really consider his choices, and if he did something he was sorry for, he’d always make it right. He was introspective while at the same time being tough. He was very physical, ran cross-country in school. He’d been captain his senior year, and he was known for taking the team on adventures.

  He’d run the team into Cockaponset State Forest, straight into the sixteen thousand acres of woods, made them find their way out. Another time he’d led them across the Connecticut River, over the catwalk beneath the Baldwin Bridge, one hundred feet up above the water.

  He’d loved the woods, he’d loved rivers, he’d loved running. And he’d loved Nell.

  They’d kiss. He’d make her tell him what felt good to her. She liked having her hair brushed, and he’d done that for her. Her big, muscular boyfriend had sat next to her, on the mattress in the attic, brushing her hair. She could almost feel it now, the way he’d kiss her neck while he was doing it. The memory made her tremble, because it felt so real and she knew it wasn’t, and she knew she’d never feel it again.

  “Oh,” she whispered.

  Tyler leaned over, touched her lightly. He stroked the inside of her left arm, but that’s not what gave her goose bumps.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “I can’t talk about it,” she said.

  “Charlie, right?” he asked, sounding disappointed.

  “Of course…. And about where I have to be,” she said, sitting up.

  Grabbing Tyler’s wrist, she checked the time on his watch. Nearly four. That gave her an hour to get to her appointment—five o’clock, an hour from right now. She’d timed it for her day off from waitressing at Foley’s. She’d seen the big boat come in last night. Partying at Little Beach with the other kids, she’d watched it round the Point and drop anchor off the breakwater.

  She stood up, brushing dry grass from her sweaty skin. Tyler put his arm around her, but she gave him a look and he dropped it. He stepped back, giving her a moment. She stared at Charlie’s headstone, at the name and dates. It seemed impossible in ways too huge to grasp, that last summer he had been her boyfriend and so alive and so strong
, and that this summer he was buried in the ground, and all that remained were words carved in stone. The breeze made her shiver.

  The shiver went deep, into her bones. She backed away, then headed toward the gravel path with Tyler, toward the beach and the boat and what she hoped would turn out to be the answer.

  SHERIDAN WORE HER OLD straw hat and yellow gloves, kneeling in the garden and digging in the earth. The soil was stony, but things grew anyway. It amazed her, the way the most beautiful flowers could take hold of so little, bloom all summer long. She grew roses and morning glories, clematis and delphinium. Day lilies, orange and yellow, bloomed along the privet hedge.

  Her favorite patch was the least showy: the herb garden. A raised stone circle, no bigger than a beach umbrella, was filled with rosemary, sage, wild thyme, mint, lemon verbena, lavender, and burnet. Her grandmother had used these herbs to make magic. Blind and unable to read, she had gotten Sheridan and her sisters to read the spells from her magic book. So many of the spells had involved plants right here in the round garden.

  Some of the herbs came back year after year: reseeded themselves, survived the harsh winter and salt wind. Others Sheridan would replant—she’d take trips to the farm stand, buy flats of herbs, and bring them home.

  Long ago, Charlie had helped her in the garden. Those times were engraved in her memory—even now, she could feel him right here with her—four years old, digging in the soil with his little spade. She could see him so clearly, laughing and pretending he was a pirate burying his treasure.

  No, sweetheart, she’d say, watching him empty his pocket, pour pennies into the hole he’d just dug. Don’t bury your ice cream money. Plant the herbs instead.