Last Kiss

by Luanne Rice

  It was odd, and Jeff would never understand this, but even though he’d become a thief who sneaked into neighborhood houses to rifle drawers and cupboards, jewelry cases and silver chests, part of him believed that the objects he stole were gifts from his father. He knew it was crazy. It was after he’d taken a diamond ring, a very large one, from the red velvet case of a widow named Mrs. Grace Pleasant, and brought it to school to show his friends the beautiful ring his father had gotten for his mother, that a teacher saw and sent him to the principal. Who called the police.

  That was another stay in reform school, before his mother married John Thorpe. So that’s what John meant by Jeff’s having to prove himself, and earn the family’s respect. John used to say he’d as soon turn his back on a cottonmouth than on Jeff. He just knew Jeff couldn’t be trusted.

  Well, he’d been right. After Jeff had gotten out of reform school, he’d continued breaking into houses. And then Randy had come along—really stepped up to help Jeff, just like in his dreams and fantasies—and Jeff had stopped getting in trouble. Or he had until late last summer…

  Jeff, standing in the grove of pines up behind Charlie Rosslare’s grave, looked down at Nell and knew that John had really known what he was talking about. In spite of Randy trying to help him feel good about himself, Jeff couldn’t be trusted. That was a given. Now Nell knew, too, and she’d know even more before the day was over. Jeff cleared his throat and said her name one more time.

  “Nell.”

  “I heard you the first time,” she said.

  “You’re just going to ignore me?” he asked.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she asked.

  “I was hoping…I still want to talk to you.”

  “Like we talked out behind the Renwick Inn? Where you’re staying?”

  “You found out,” he said.

  “Uh, yeah. You must think I’m pretty stupid, that I wouldn’t.”

  “I don’t think that at all,” he said. “I just thought I’d find you again before you had the chance to go looking for me. You okay?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Well, you were pretty upset last night. After you ran away, I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk to me again anyway.”

  “You really think that?” she asked. “Considering you’re Charlie’s brother?”

  He shrugged. Where he came from, the brother bond—or half-brother or stepbrother—didn’t count for much. He’d always wanted it to, and staring at Nell, he told himself she might have been his sister-in-law if Charlie had lived. Nell and Charlie could have gotten married someday. Jeff could have been best man. He stared at her, into her magical green eyes, and could see why Charlie had been in love with her. It reminded Jeff of how he’d felt about Lisa….

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why are you turning red?”

  “Just,” he stammered, “I’m glad I found you here. I told you, I still want to talk to you.”

  “Where did you sleep last night?” she asked.

  “I—” he said, looking for a good lie to tell.

  “Don’t bother trying to come up with something I’ll believe,” she said sharply. “You either tell me the truth, or I’m out of here.”

  “I slept by the railroad tracks,” he said.

  She peered at him, shook her head and turned on her heel. “See you,” she said.

  “Okay, wait,” he said. “I’ll tell you. It is by the railroad tracks…up by that overgrown recreation area.”

  “On Oak Road,” she said, her eyes glinting. “Someone saw you. You were staying up there?”

  “Yeah. I found a house.”

  “You ‘found’ a house?”

  He nodded, ashamed. She was glaring at him, just like a cop. He’d gotten caught pretty much in the act, and he was going to pay for it.

  “Show me,” she said.

  And because she’d left him no choice, he shrugged and started leading her through the graveyard, up the steep hill where she’d chased him yesterday, and through the beach roads to the house where he’d spent last night not sleeping—just thinking, thinking and planning, planning.

  NELL FOLLOWED JEFF through the familiar landscape of Hubbard’s Point, but somehow, being with him made her feel as if she were in a dangerous dream. Anything could happen—monsters could jump out from behind trees, fissures in the earth could open and swallow her whole. This was exactly the kind of thing her father would warn her against: don’t go places with strangers.

  But he’d also taught her to trust her instincts, and right now her inner guidance was telling her to see this through, spend this time with Jeff and listen to what he had to say. They walked up Cresthill Road, turned left where the road branched, veered north toward the houses built along the railroad tracks. Heat rose from the tar, but the more they walked, the taller and thicker the trees grew, and Nell began to feel cooled by the spreading shade.

  This part of Hubbard’s Point felt almost like being in the woods. Nell had always loved the different sections of her beloved beach hamlet, and she knew Charlie had, too. There was the rocky Point, the sandy strand, the marshy swale, and this forested section. When they got to the fenced-in and no-longer-used Harry Anderson Recreation Area, she stared, remembering.

  “What’s in there?” Jeff asked, seeing the expression on her face.

  “A big swing set,” she said. “All rusty now…Charlie and I used to climb the fence, and we’d go on the swings at night, try to get going really high, our feet trying to kick the moon.”

  “Why’s the fence there, to keep kids out?”

  “Because one boy, back when Charlie and I were about eleven, played on the tracks—just what parents always warn you not to do.”

  “Did he get hit by a train?” Jeff asked.

  Nell nodded. “It was terrible. I wasn’t here that day, but Charlie was. He never stopped thinking about him. The beach shut down the recreation area after that—no one was ever allowed to play here again. Charlie and I…we just ignored the fence, and went in anyway. We’d never go near the tracks, but we liked those swings. I think being there made Charlie feel close to our friend, the one who died.”

  “What did Charlie do when he saw that kid get hit?” Jeff asked, seeming stunned by the image.

  “He told me he climbed down the bank,” Nell said. “The train…dragged Steven. Charlie was yelling, and the train brakes were screeching. That’s what he remembered, the sound. And he got to Steven, and tried to pull him out…but he was already dead. He wouldn’t leave him. Even when the train crew tried to get him away, Charlie fought them off and sat there with Steven.”

  “How long did he sit there?” Jeff said, his voice thick.

  “Until Steven’s mother came. His sister had seen what happened, and she’d run down Carrington Road to get her. Only five minutes away…Charlie said that Mrs. Mayles came right away, and just knelt beside Steven, holding him. That’s when Charlie knew it was okay for him to leave.”

  “He stayed with his friend,” Jeff said, staring through the wiremesh fence as if he could see Charlie and Steven down by the railroad tracks.

  Nell nodded, then gestured to Jeff that they should keep moving. Without another word, he led her through some backyards, behind the common hedge that separated them from the hillside sloping down to the tracks. Both she and Jeff glanced down at the rails; she wondered whether he was hearing those brakes scream.

  When they got to a hole in the overgrown privet, Jeff ducked through and Nell followed. They stood in the backyard of a small cottage. Nell didn’t really know the family who lived here—they didn’t have kids her age. But she recognized a typical Hubbard’s Point backyard: picnic table on the patio, the beach chairs and umbrella leaning against the house, gardens overflowing with flowers and vegetables.

  Jeff tilted a flowerpot back, picked up the key there, and inserted it into the door. As he did, Nell noticed a recently replaced windowpane—the wood frame around it was scored with chisel marks from being pried off
. She recognized the signs because she and Charlie had once had to break into his house—his mother was on tour, and he’d forgotten his key, so he’d had to take a glass pane out of the door so he could reach in and unlock it.

  “How’d you know where they hide the key?” she asked Jeff.

  “I don’t even want to tell you how easy it was,” he said. “Just remember this when you get your own house: don’t hide your key under something right next to the door. Everyone does it, and burglars know it.”

  “So, you’re admitting you’re a burglar?”

  “I used to be,” he said, opening the door and putting the key back. “And I guess I am again. Come on in.”

  “Inviting me into someone else’s house. Very nice,” she said, glaring at him and refusing to enter.

  “You might as well come in. At least we can have privacy. Out there,” he said, gesturing toward the street, “people will see us and think you’re with Charlie.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “You’re right. You are attracting a certain amount of attention.” She followed him inside.

  The shades were down, and the house was dark but for slices of sunlight coming around the dark green panels. Nell’s eyes got used to it, and she saw that at least he’d kept the place neat. She could see he’d slept on the couch—a sheet was folded on top of a bed pillow. He moved them aside so they could sit down.

  Now that they were still and sitting next to each other, she was able to focus on his face. Its sweet familiarity was both comforting and jarring. She forced herself to breathe evenly. She didn’t have to remind herself that this wasn’t Charlie—he was too rough-edged in just about every way. But if she stared into his eyes, she could go into a little trance that made it seem, just very slightly, as if Charlie had come back to life.

  But after a few long moments of silence, she began to feel uncomfortable. This wasn’t Charlie, and she couldn’t kid herself that it was. Jeff was gazing at her with such intensity, and a kind of longing that made her wonder what the hell she was doing in this house with him. His arm reached across the sofa back, almost as if he wanted to touch her. She inched away.

  “Okay,” she said. “So what do you want to tell me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “I wanted to see where Charlie came from. To meet you…and, well, at least see his house. See where his mother lives. And I had some business in town, too.”

  “You’re from Nashville, Tennessee. What business could you possibly have in Black Hall, Connecticut?”

  He fell silent for a moment, then reached into the back pocket of his jeans. He pulled out a folded piece of paper, smoothed out the wrinkles as he laid it on the cushions between him and Nell. She recognized the Black Hall Savings letterhead.

  “That’s where everyone in town does their banking,” she said. “Why do you have it?”

  “My father set up a trust for Charlie,” Jeff said. “A long time ago.”

  “I know,” Nell said. “Charlie told me about it. He…he didn’t care anything about the money.”

  Jeff gave her a skeptical glance.

  “Everyone cares about money,” he said.

  “Nope. Not Charlie.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because I know. He was going to use the trust to finance a documentary he wanted to make, about growing up without a father. He didn’t want to compromise his principles, but he thought there was a fitting symmetry to the whole thing.”

  “Which was?”

  “Well, using money his father was forced to pay, to film a documentary that would basically expose him—and absent fathers everywhere. That’s why I don’t get the whole Charlie-going-to-meet-him-and-keeping-it-secret thing. He was curious about his father, but he didn’t respect him.”

  “People change,” Jeff said. “Like I told you yesterday, even Randy.”

  “Think that if it makes you feel better,” Nell said, “but I doubt Charlie did. He spent his whole growing up without a dad. So did you, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jeff said.

  “Besides,” Nell said, tapping the bank letter between them, “forget all that. What do you have to do with Charlie’s trust?”

  “It stopped being Charlie’s trust,” Jeff said, his voice dropping. “After he died. But because Black Hall Savings had set it up in the first place, Randy left the account there. It just seemed easier than moving it down to Tennessee. Only one of the beneficiaries lives there anyway.”

  “Beneficiaries?” Nell asked, and he nodded.

  Nell watched Jeff fidgeting, his color rising, and his whole demeanor seeming more anxious and uncomfortable. That made her own blood start to race; and she stared at him, wondering what was going on.

  “If it stopped being Charlie’s,” she said, “whose did it become? Who has the trust now?”

  “It will be going to my other half-brother, Clint,” Jeff said. “And to me.”

  “That must make you happy,” Nell said, not taking her eyes off him. The moment felt charged, full of sparks, and she wondered if she might explode, if she should just run for the door, if he was confessing to having murdered Charlie for money.

  “It doesn’t,” he said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t at all.”

  “Come on—” she said. “You get all that money…is that why you came here?”

  “Randy changed things up. The bank won’t pay till we’re thirty.”

  “Well, that must suck.”

  He buried his face in his hands. Sobs tore from deep inside his chest, and he howled, almost like something wild, a creature locked in a cage. Nell couldn’t move. She wanted to run for the door, escape and get as far away as she could from whatever this was. But instead she felt herself pulled, sliding across the couch, the slipcover’s nubbly fabric on the back of her bare legs, to put her arm around Jeff’s shoulders.

  “Why are you crying?” she asked. “What is it?”

  “I did a terrible thing,” he said.

  “What?” she asked, her pulse thudding in her ears, in her mouth. She felt herself choking on her own heart.

  “I was there,” he whispered.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That night, with Charlie.”

  Nell’s throat closed up and she felt as though she were suffocating. Her mind went blank, as if every thought, every memory, had been erased, just wiped out as if they’d never existed at all. Sitting in the house of strangers, in the dark, a house broken into by Jeff Quill, she felt walls caving in around her. She was buried under rubble, and she couldn’t breathe or talk or move.

  “You already knew that, didn’t you?” Jeff asked, tilting his head to look at her with tearful red eyes.

  She shook her head.

  “I could have sworn you did,” he said. “The way you looked at me, back at Charlie’s grave.”

  “I know about your car,” she said. “That it’s registered to Randecker Records. And that they’re Cumberland’s label.”

  “My father owns the label,” he said. “It’s his car. He let me borrow it…”

  “Does he know you’re here?”

  Jeff shook his head. “No. He thinks I was going to meet up with the band. With Cumberland, the band Charlie came to see. I was there, I was with him at the club, I was with him by the river.”

  Nell’s mouth must have dropped open, because she felt herself closing it. Lips tightening, a solid line, no words could flow out. They were stuck in her throat anyway, all the words, and a scream, and all the emotions in the world.

  “You understand, don’t you? It’s why I came to Hubbard’s Point. Why I went to his grave. It’s because I had to explain…You talk about my father, saying Charlie, well, basically hated him. You’re right. He did, and he said so to his face that night….”

  “At the club?” she asked. “Your father was there that night?”

  Jeff nodded.

  “And was he with him at the river?”

/>   “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “Charlie lost it with Randy. He…told him what he thought of him.”

  “And he what? Randy killed him?”

  “I want to tell you, Nell.” He stopped, closed his eyes, spoke again. “When you talked about Charlie and Steven, Charlie being with that boy after he died…I knew what that was like. Because I was there with Charlie…”

  “Shut up,” Nell screamed. “Don’t you dare say it’s the same thing! Tell me what Randy did to him!”

  “I want to explain. But to someone else, too. There’s someone else who needs to know the whole story. I owe it to you…and to her.”

  Nell had heard about people losing it. She had herself, lost it big-time, after her mother had died. She wasn’t afraid right now—that wasn’t it. It was more that she was numb, exhausted suddenly, unable to stay upright on this sofa next to this man who’d been with Charlie the night he died. Nell’s mind was ringing with the words Charlie lost it with Randy.

  She wondered if he’d saved up all his eighteen years of outrage, let them loose on his father that night. She thought of the footage he’d already shot, the things he’d said, captured forever on film, about growing up without a dad. Had that triggered his father somehow? How could a man attack his own son?

  Nell’s cheeks were wet, and she couldn’t stop thinking of Charlie. She felt herself rise, as if she were a spirit, and float out the front door of the house. Jeff didn’t try to stop her. He didn’t seem to care who might see her leaving this supposedly vacant house he’d just invaded.

  She sensed him standing in the doorway behind her, but he didn’t make any moves to follow as she walked down the road, the familiar shady road that she and Charlie had walked so often—the same road Charlie had walked down after seeing Steven killed by the train—and Nell walked, then started running, straight toward the Point and home.

  CHAPTER 19

  VINCENT HAD OFFERED TO GET A CAR AND DRIVER, but once they touched down at Nashville International Airport, Gavin took over. They went to the Hertz counter, just like regular people, and he rented a midsize sedan. Vincent gave him a look out in the parking lot, somewhere between dismay and disbelief, that he was being expected to ride in a rental car.