Last Kiss

by Luanne Rice

  Gavin scanned the comments left by Charlie’s “friends.” He couldn’t tell which had been written by true acquaintances, which by total strangers. Every note on the page had a tone of closeness, of strange intimacy. The ones from Nell included her signature picture—a photo of her with Charlie. Even here, for her own signature, Nell had chosen to show herself with the boy she’d loved, as if they were one.

  Staring at the picture, Gavin knew a little of what Nell was feeling. She still loved Charlie so much. The fact that he was dead did little if nothing to change that. Love was love. Gavin had felt it for Sheridan long after they had parted. They’d been together through their teens, into their early twenties. He felt it still.

  Nell and Charlie hadn’t had that long together. But still, gazing at their photo—arms draped around each other, Nell planting a kiss on his cheek—Gavin could see that the connection was the same. He bet they would have lasted—longer than he and Sheridan had, for sure. In the real world, too—in honest coupledom, not just in their minds.

  He scanned Charlie’s lists of “favorites.” The kid had had decent taste—or at least Gavin was able to recognize some of the books, movies, and music Charlie had cited. The one that really caught his eye, under “favorite bands,” was Cumberland.

  Gavin picked up the police report. He read the autopsy report first, saw what he already knew: that Charlie had died of a single punch to the side of his head. It had left knuckle prints and killed him instantly, and he’d apparently fallen to the ground right where he’d stood.

  His body had been found in the dirt, just behind home plate at the ball fields—a city park all the way east on Houston Street. Blood had trickled from his nose and mouth, post-mortem. Along with Charlie’s boot marks, there were fresh footprints of two other people. Among Charlie’s belongings had been the ticket stub to a concert at Club 192 in the East Village, found in his jeans. The band playing that night had been Cumberland.

  Gavin made a call on his cell phone, to Detective Joe Donovan, his old mate from the USS William Crawford—closer than a brother. Joe was his man in the NYPD.

  “Hey,” Gavin said when Joe picked up.

  “So’d you get the fax or what?” Joe asked. “You can’t be bothered to call and thank me? This isn’t even my case, but I look into it just for you.”

  “Thank you. I have a question.”

  “You’re welcome. Fire away.”

  “What about the band Cumberland?”

  “Uh, what are you talking about?”

  “The band Charlie went to see the night he died. What do you know about them, their fans, the people who were at the club?”

  “Hmm,” Joe said.

  “Nice. You didn’t look into them?”

  “First, it’s not my case, and second—why are you doing this?” Joe asked.

  “Has your department caught the guy who did it?” Gavin asked, anticipating the long silence that would follow. “No, I know they haven’t. So you know what that makes this? An unsolved case, a mystery.”

  “Unsolved case, yes; mystery, no. You know it, too, Gav. I hate to put it this way, because I know this is personal for you, but he was a young kid in the wrong place, and he got rolled.”

  “Listen,” Gavin began.

  “No. You’re forty-four, forty-five now, and in your own way you’ve started playing it safe. Have you forgotten what it was like to go wandering at night? Used to happen to guys from the ship all the time, right? Foreign ports, we used to think we were the U.S. Navy, no one going to mess with us, right?”

  “Right,” Gavin said, reflexively running his hand over the scar slanting down his right side under his T-shirt.

  “You got the scar to prove it,” Joe said, as if they were videoconferencing. “All you had to do was give up your wallet, and you could have walked away. And, uh, I seem to remember another time, Norfolk, Virginia…”

  “Okay, you made your point,” Gavin said.

  “You know, we’re not supposed to give high-profile cases extra priority,” Joe said. “But this one…”

  “Sheridan Rosslare’s son,” Gavin said.

  “Plus, she’s your Sheridan.”

  “She’s not ‘my’ Sheridan.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’m serious—you know…”

  “What I know is what I used to have to listen to, trapped in a sub with you, no escape. Sheridan, Sheridan, Sheridan…”

  “Okay, shut up.”

  “So, what I’m saying is, we went the extra mile on this one. Trust me, Gav—you’re not going to find anything more than what we already know. The best we can hope for is that someone knows something. Maybe our guy talked, or maybe the third party will get tired of protecting his friend.”

  “Third party?”

  “Three sets of footprints in the dirt.”

  “All guys, all around the same size,” Gavin said, looking at the police report. “Right?”

  “Size 11, size 12 boots—Charlie’s—and sneakers.”

  “What the hell’s that mean?”

  “Who knows?”

  “It might not have been random, Charlie going to hear the band,” Gavin said, staring at the profile still open on his computer screen.

  “No?” Joe asked.

  “Seems he was a fan of theirs.”

  “So were a lot of people. They’re popular. My daughter loves Cumberland. How do you know Charlie did?”

  “I’m going to send you a link to his Talk2Me page,” Gavin said.

  “We check MySpace, Facebook, Talk2Me routinely,” Joe said. “You’re on there?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Why would I kid?”

  “Great. You’re on Talk2Me. You and the pervs.”

  “Give me some credit,” Gavin said. “I’m solving a case.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Joe said.

  CHAPTER 8

  A FEW HOURS AFTER THE THUNDERSTORM, SHERIDAN and Bunny sat on the bluestone terrace, drinking lemon verbena iced tea and gazing across the bay. It had stopped raining, and they could see patches of blue behind torn white clouds. Haze hung over the landscape, a gauzy film caught on the rocks and in the rosebushes, and Sheridan felt haunted.

  “What a lovely boat,” Bunny said, binoculars pressed to her eyes.

  “Stop spying on him,” Sheridan said.

  “What’s he doing? He keeps pacing around…is he on a cell phone? Who’s he talking to?”

  Sheridan ignored her sister, concentrating on the taste of the tea. It was light and refreshing, infused with mint and orange rind, the perfect summer drink. It would be so much better with some Wild Turkey poured in. But she was trying to make it two days in a row bourbon-free, so she just sipped the tea instead and tried not to think about what had been bothering her all through the night.

  “Do you have his number? Why don’t you call and ask him for dinner?”

  “Because we said what we wanted to say on the boat last night.”

  “Sheridan, he’s all alone out there on his boat. Don’t you think he might enjoy a home-cooked meal?”

  “I’m not much of a cook.”

  Bunny was so intent on watching Gavin, she didn’t even lower the glasses to shoot Sheridan a look or tell her that wasn’t the point. She just kept her equanimity and continued.

  “I’ll cook. Or Aggie will. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I asked him to leave me alone.”

  Bunny gave her a look as if she was crazy. “Why?”

  “Why do you think? I can’t take any more pain. Please don’t ask me again.”

  Sheridan found herself following Bunny’s gaze across the water, staring at Gavin’s boat. Last night he’d said he would have helped raise Charlie. She thought of the words now, a promise that could never come true. Yet often, during Charlie’s growing up, she’d seen echoes of Gavin. He wasn’t her son’s father, wasn’t in his life at all, yet there were ways Charlie seemed so like him.

&n
bsp; Maybe it was because, like Gavin, Charlie had grown up without a father. Here at the beach, surrounded by kids with two parents, intact families, Charlie had always seemed tougher than anyone else. He would swim during hurricanes, ride the turbulent waves, test the sea. He’d always led the pack of kids that repainted the graffiti shark on the big rock over at Little Beach. She knew he wasn’t exactly a stranger to pot.

  Last night Sheridan had had to hold herself back from telling Gavin that Charlie was smart and tough like him. If Gavin had been part of their family, if he’d helped raise Charlie, would that have tempered her son’s wild side or made it worse?

  She had gotten through these last months telling herself that Charlie’s death had been random. It could have happened to anyone. He’d had too much to drink, wandered down to the river. There’d been a confrontation.

  But over what? Had someone wanted his money and his watch—the only valuables he’d had with him? Sheridan had been pushing down her own fears, that maybe Charlie had gone looking for trouble. Maybe he wanted to buy pot, or maybe he just wanted to claim the city for his own.

  She hugged herself, looking toward Gavin’s boat. Feeling pulled into the past and not knowing why, she just stared at the white hull shining in the sun. She and Gavin had been together for almost nine years, starting when she was fifteen. They’d grown up together, and she’d had to deal with her feelings about the way he loved to tempt danger. She remembered nearly passing out from the shock of seeing his scar. Brand new—raw, red, raised, running all down the length of his side. Looking at it, she’d felt sick.

  “What did you do?” she’d asked.

  “I just reacted, Sheridan,” he’d said. “He came at me, and I fought back…”

  “You make it sound like nothing, like it was no big deal. Gavin, if he’d cut you an inch closer to your heart…”

  “He didn’t, all right?”

  “No, not all right…”

  “You can’t change people,” he said. “People are who they are, Sheridan. Sometimes I get into fights…”

  That had made her think. She’d loved him for a long time, had believed herself capable of accepting the true, real, complete Gavin Dawson—differences and all. She believed in peace and love, he believed in military solutions. She was against guns, he was never without his pistol. She sang tender songs of love and healing, he couldn’t walk away from a knife fight. It made her feel insane.

  “You know what I think?” she asked. “I think you want to push me away.”

  “The opposite,” he said, reaching for her. “I want you right here.”

  “No,” she said. “You say that, but I don’t believe you. You’re trying to get me to leave you.”

  “Sheridan—”

  “I see it now,” she said, feeling pressure in her chest, tears building. “I keep waiting, thinking someday we’ll be happy. You’ll get out of the Navy, and we’ll live together. You’ll get the fighting out of your system. The anger. You’ll…love me.”

  “I do love you,” he said, his eyes wide. He was scared—she could see it. He sensed the change in her, saw that she had given up on them. And she had; in that moment, she felt everything shift inside her. She was tired of waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen.

  “It’s over,” she said.

  “Sheridan.”

  She shook her head, tears pouring down her cheeks. “I never thought I’d say that, and I never wanted it to happen. But I can’t go on like this, Gavin.”

  “I only have three years left on this tour…”

  “Three years.”

  “That’s not so long,” he said. “We’ve been together so long.”

  “I want a life, Gavin. I’d like someone to come home to, to have children with. I’d like to spend summers at Hubbard’s Point with you right there with me. I’d like to sit on the porch and look out to sea without thinking of you on a submarine under a different ocean. I’d like to know we’re going to grow old together instead of worrying you’re going to die in a stupid fight.”

  “Okay, I’ll never fight again,” he said.

  She’d stared at him, knowing he was lying. And in that moment, she felt it all drain away, the things that made love real and possible: trust, connection, the spark of belief that things between them would keep getting better.

  The sensation shocked her: she’d been so attached to Gavin for so long, and suddenly she doubted everything about him. She felt betrayed by her own good sense—why hadn’t she let herself see the truth? She began looking back, noticing ways she’d ignored the obvious, the way she’d fooled herself into thinking she could love him forever, just the way he was—instead of admitting to herself that she had needs, too. She’d been waiting for a change that would never come.

  Over the years since, she’d spent many sleepless nights wondering whether she’d made a mistake—whether her pride had gotten in the way. Should she have been more patient? Could she have waited longer, seen if he’d come around? Could she have met him halfway? She knew the answer was no.

  In spite of all Gavin’s rough edges, she’d never found anyone she’d loved more. The problem was, she wasn’t willing to give up the part of herself that craved meeting on common ground to be with him. He might not believe it, but loving him had hurt her so much more than Randy ever had. Randy had never had the same kind of power—not even close.

  Staring at his boat, she knew that Gavin would have understood Charlie. He might have helped him to know that what you feel as a young man is different from what you feel when you get older. He might have helped Charlie to know that he had to survive, to learn these lessons. The what-ifs were so impossible in a million ways…and still too much to bear. Sheridan stood up and walked into the house.

  “Are you okay?” Bunny asked, following her.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “It’s having Gavin here. He’s stirring everything up…” Bunny said. “How can he not? Let’s normalize the situation, just have him up for dinner.”

  “Bunny,” Sheridan said.

  “I always liked Gavin. Agatha did, too. We loved you two together…but we also just liked him so much. I guess, I don’t know…honey, we’d just like to spend a little time with him, so we can see how he’s turned out.”

  Sheridan stared out at the boat, rocking on its mooring. “I think he’s settled down some,” she said.

  “I’m sure that’s partly why he’s come back to Hubbard’s Point,” Bunny said. “To let you know that.”

  “He named his boat after one of Sheridan Le Fanu’s ghost stories,” Sheridan said.

  “Well,” Bunny said. “That’s like naming it after you.”

  Sheridan didn’t reply, but she felt color rising in her face.

  “Why don’t you invite him? Agatha and I would love to cook. I could make my curried summer squash soup, and she would make those tiny lobster canapés, and we’d collaborate on the main course…let’s see…maybe grilled striper with herbs from your garden?”

  “Bunny…” Sheridan said again.

  “Let us know when would be good, and we’ll get here early and help you clean up.”

  Sheridan looked around her living room. Books and music were piled everywhere. Her guitar cases were dusty. Cobwebs hung in the corners. The window glass was frosted with salt. She had done her best, but lately housework and everything else had been a little too much for her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “But I can’t, Bunny.”

  “Why can’t you?” her sister asked. “Listen to me now, Sheridan. You’re my little sister, and I’ve been holding my tongue long enough. You have to be careful, or loneliness will do you in.”

  Sheridan stared at her sister. Her mother used to say, You’ll have many friends, but only two sisters. She loved her two older sisters more than almost anyone. But sometimes she expected, or at least wanted, them to understand her a little more than they did. She turned toward the living-room window, looking at Gavin’s boat, out by the
breakwater. Her sisters were both happily married; they thought that love could cure or heal anything.

  As a Nashville singer, Sheridan had made a good living on that very premise. But losing Charlie had knocked it out of her. She couldn’t stand the idea of getting close to Gavin again.

  Loving him so deeply had nearly destroyed her once. She couldn’t afford to even get close to it again.

  SUMMER DAYS WERE ALL THE SAME for the kids of Hubbard’s Point. They were timeless, and if you looked from afar at the beach, you’d see kids sprawled on blankets and towels, working on their tans and listening to music, talking to their friends and falling in love. You might not have any idea of whether you were looking at this generation, or the last, or the one before that.

  Nell lay on her back, using Billy McCabe’s back as a pillow. Billy was Peggy’s brother, and very indulgent of Nell. After the thunderstorm, the day had cleared up, and everyone who wasn’t working had flocked to the beach. The sun was so hot, it dried the sand quickly. Nell had her eyes closed, listening to the waves and the voices of her friends.

  “Nell…”

  She opened one eye, saw Wes Stanfield crouched there beside her. He was tan and wore cutoffs; his body was wiry and hard from a summer of working outside.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “I was wondering,” he said. “You going to the movie tonight?”

  Movies on the beach, Nell thought. She shook her head.

  “No, not tonight,” she said.

  “Because I was thinking maybe we could sit together, and then head over to Little Beach afterwards. There’s a party…”

  Nell smiled. Wes was acting as if she hadn’t just said no already. His hope and attention were sort of touching. But Nell’s heart wasn’t in movies on the beach or parties at Little Beach or anything else. She just shook her head.

  “But…” Wes went on, touching her hand. He started to trail his fingers up her arm, until she pulled it back hard, gave him a cold look. Sitting up, she stared at him.

  “Didn’t you hear me say no?” she asked, so loudly everyone heard and turned to look at her.