The Last Train to Key West

by Chanel Cleeton

  I recognize him instantly.

  I’ve seen him lurking around the property, smoking a cigarette when everyone was boarding up the house yesterday, the one I thought might be one of the workers.

  There’s a knife in his hand, the metal gleaming in the ray of lantern light, desperation in his eyes.

  “If you scream, I’ll cut that pretty neck of yours.”

  My mouth goes dry, any noise I might make strangled in my throat in a morass of terror. Perhaps he came here searching for refuge from the storm. Or maybe he came here for something else entirely.

  “Give me the ring.” He strides toward me with heavy footfalls. He stops inches away from me, his body towering over mine.

  From a distance, he seemed physically imposing. Next to me, the knife in his hand, he’s terrifying.

  “Wh-What?”

  “The ring. Give me the ring. The one I’ve seen you wearing.”

  I glance down at my finger, at the enormous diamond Anthony placed there back in Havana. Despite the reservations I felt wearing it, there’s a sharp sense of loss as I slide it off.

  The man grabs the ring from me with one hand, the knife inches away from my body.

  Where is Anthony?

  The noises downstairs could have been from the storm. Or the man in our bedroom could have an accomplice. Is Anthony hurt somewhere? Dead?

  A loud thud hits the window, followed by the sound of breaking glass somewhere in the house. Outside, the wind rages and whines, a whistling sound filling my ears, the storm starting once more.

  “Give me the rest of your jewelry,” the man yells. “The cash, too.”

  Where is Anthony?

  “Give me the jewelry,” he repeats, the knife arcing closer to my body.

  I don’t argue, but instead walk over to the dresser, to the pretty wooden box I admired when I first explored the room. I lift the lid, scooping out the items Anthony has given me, a pang in my chest at the sight of the pieces I brought with me from Cuba, the necklace that belonged to generations of Perez women, that my father presented to me on my wedding day.

  It’s ridiculous, but it feels like I’m giving a piece of my family away as I hand the man the jewels, as he shoves them in his pockets.

  I open my mouth to call for help, and he lunges toward me, the tip of the knife nearly grazing my side.

  I gasp.

  “Don’t scream,” the man commands.

  Anthony walks into the bedroom.

  He freezes, his gaze darting from me to the man holding the knife to my neck. He drops the supplies he gathered from downstairs to the ground.

  He’s no longer my husband, no longer someone I recognize. Instead, a mask slides over his face, and the warmth I usually see in his eyes is replaced with a cold and calculating stare. He looks fearsome, and for once, it is the most reassuring thing I have ever seen.

  “Take your hand away from her neck. You don’t want to hurt her. You want money. I’ll give you all the cash you want.”

  Anthony steps forward, and the man jerks, his arm lashing out as Anthony sidesteps him, the blade barely missing his abdomen.

  “Not you,” the intruder snarls. “She can get it.”

  “There’s cash in the nightstand,” Anthony instructs me, his voice surprisingly calm. “Get the money and give it to him. Do you understand me?”

  I nod.

  “Drop the lantern,” the man orders, and I set it down on the floor beside me.

  I walk toward the nightstand, Anthony and the man squaring off behind me. I open the drawer, fumbling with the contents, my fingers curling around the crisp stack of bills.

  The cool sensation of metal brushes my skin.

  “She has the money,” Anthony says behind me, his calm voice a sharp contrast to the panic beating in my chest. “It’s enough for you to have a nice life somewhere.”

  The man is silent.

  “What else do you want?” Anthony asks. “You didn’t happen upon this house.”

  “No, no, he didn’t,” I say. “He’s been lurking around.”

  I should have said something to Anthony. I should have warned him, asked more questions about why the man was always around the house but I never saw him working.

  “I’m not just here for the money,” the intruder replies.

  “No, I didn’t think you were. Who sent you? Carlo? Michael? Frank?” Anthony asks.

  How many enemies does he have? How many enemies do we have?

  “Mr. Morgan sends his regards,” the man answers.

  “I should have known Frank was behind this—it’s his style to send his lackey after an innocent woman.”

  A loud bang hits the house from the storm outside, followed by a shrill whistle of wind, a shout piercing the night as Anthony moves, hurling his body at our attacker.

  They tumble down, their limbs entangled, rolling around the bedroom floor.

  It’s an easy decision to make. Whatever Anthony’s past, he’s outmatched in this fight, the man far too large for him to have a chance in hand-to-hand combat. The knife glints in the lantern light.

  I lift the gun I pulled from the nightstand—Anthony’s revolver—and point it toward them. Their images blur as they move, fighting for the knife, everything too fast for me to get a clean shot. Our attacker is a bigger target to hit by virtue of his size, but the darkness makes it hard to tell the difference between them, the lantern giving off enough of a glow for me to make out one of their features before they roll away again, the sound of the storm mixing with the growing rumble of their struggle, until—

  “Do it, Mirta,” Anthony shouts from the fray, his voice pained.

  My fingers shake as I pull the trigger.

  There is a shout, and then—

  All that is left is the wind bellowing outside, the storm pummeling the night.

  Twenty-Two

  Helen

  I lean against the pillows, gazing at the baby sleeping in my arms, her tiny body wrapped in a blanket we found among the cabin’s linens. In this moment, staring down at my daughter’s face, her lips pursed, eyes closed, cheeks pink, I know there is nothing I would not do to protect her, that all the decisions I have made in my life were meant to bring me to this moment.

  To her.

  My daughter.

  Lucy.

  I never knew it was possible to love someone so much, to feel this sense of completeness.

  She has my nose. Perhaps my mouth, too. I see little of Tom in her, or maybe that’s my own prejudice. Whoever she favors, she is wholly and utterly perfect.

  It’s late in the day, and the storm has worsened considerably in the last hour or so. Concern is evident on John’s face, his demeanor changing as he grows more silent with each passing moment. During the delivery and Lucy’s first moments in the world, he was so intent on making sure she and I were doing well that he seemed unaware of the storm. But now that Lucy and I are stable and the noises from outside are louder, he’s become tense, pacing back and forth.

  “The noises remind you of the war, don’t they?”

  “They do.”

  “Does anything help?”

  “Not much, unfortunately.”

  “It didn’t seem to bother you as much earlier. When the baby came. Maybe the distraction helped.”

  “Maybe. I was worried. Like I said, it’s been a long time since I practiced medicine, and these are hardly ideal conditions. You did well, though. You both did.”

  “I was terrified,” I admit. “But you calmed me. It seemed as though you had it all under control. Thank you for that. For being here. For all you’ve done for us.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I’m glad you weren’t alone. I’ve never seen the weather like this before.”

  “I haven’t, either. Everyone thought it would miss us.”<
br />
  Is Tom out on the water caught up in this mess? Is the storm hitting Key West, too? Maybe he doesn’t even know I’ve left yet; perhaps the hurricane is the perfect opportunity to disappear, to start over.

  I can’t go back to that life.

  “I hope Aunt Alice stayed behind at the Sunrise Inn. I hope she never went out on the road.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine. She probably realized she couldn’t drive. The roads likely won’t be passable for quite some time.” He swallows as another crash sounds in the distance. “How long do storms like this normally last?”

  “Hours. It depends on how big it is, how quickly it’s moving, which parts of the storm we get.”

  John grimaces. “As soon as it clears, we should try to get you to a hospital. Just to make sure everything is all right. I checked the supplies in the kitchen while you were sleeping, and they won’t last very long.”

  Another loud boom erupts, like the sound of something hitting the side of the cottage, and I grab John. His hand trembles in mine, and I offer a quick, reassuring squeeze.

  Lucy stirs, her expression sleepy, and I shift her to my other arm. Her lips purse, and her eyes close again.

  “She’s beautiful,” John whispers.

  “She is.”

  “What are we going to do?” I ask him.

  “There’s nothing we can do. Hope for the best, I suppose.”

  I hold on to John, exhaustion taking over, my eyelids fluttering once more.

  * * *

  —

  When I wake, it’s to another loud boom, a crash of metal, a terrible ripping sound, a sharp crack.

  The baby cries.

  Beside me on the bed, John’s body quakes, his arms wrapped around me.

  “What’s happening?” I blink, trying to adjust to my surroundings. “How long was I asleep?”

  “Not long. An hour at most,” John replies, his voice grim. “The sea is rising. Quickly.”

  “Is it close to the house?”

  “It is.”

  The bed is the highest point in the cottage, and there’s no building close by that’s higher in elevation. For the sea to overtake the cottage—

  There’s another ripping sound, like the top of a metal can being pulled off in one powerful motion, except much, much louder.

  I glance up at the ceiling. “Is that—”

  “We lost part of the roof,” he confirms.

  In the corner of the cottage, near the front door, rain begins falling through an open gap where the wind ripped the roof off. The floorboards are wet, and it takes a moment for me to realize that it’s not the rain that caused it to accumulate—the water is coming into the cabin from the ground.

  The sea is here. We have nowhere to go.

  I’m so tired from giving birth that I feel as though I am in one of my dreams, as though none of this can be real. It’s the dream with the boat again, and I’m rocking back and forth, swaying from side to side.

  Lucy cries once more, the noise piercing the haze, and I pull the neck of the nightgown Alice lent me aside, letting the baby nurse. It’s taken a few tries for us to get the hang of it, but now her mouth latches on hungrily.

  I stare down at the bundle in my arms, another wave of tiredness filling me. Maybe the exhaustion is a blessing, a way to numb the reality of the situation before us.

  But we’re still swaying. It’s almost like the cottage is moving, carrying on like a boat on the sea, the bed rocking, sliding.

  I try to move, but my body is so weak and I sag against the bed. Water splashes my leg, wetting the hem of my nightgown. The sea is rising, nearing the bed, moving on a steady current.

  “Is the house—” I can’t finish the thought, can’t accept what I’m seeing as true.

  “It’s floating,” John answers, his voice grim.

  I swallow. “Floating?”

  “The storm must have carried the house away. Ripped it off its stilts.”

  “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

  He doesn’t answer me.

  Is this it? All the years I spent hoping for a child, the months with the baby inside me, those first kicks, the tiny flutters that became all-consuming, my body changing, the child inside of me becoming a part of me until we were inseparable. The pain of a few hours ago, the dull ache in my back sharpening to something more unbearable, the sensation and emotion stealing my breath. All of the hopes and dreams for this baby, the stories I conjured up in my mind, the adventures we’d have, the simplicity of daily domesticity no longer me alone, but with a bright-haired child beside me, filling the spaces of our days with cheerful words and laughter. That first sight of my daughter’s eyes meeting mine, her little face scrunched up, her weight settled in the crook of my arms as though she belonged there.

  We can’t die.

  I hold on to Lucy as tightly as I can, John’s arm wrapped around both of us as the cottage floats along the sea, the storm battering the structure.

  How will we survive this night?

  Twenty-Three

  Mirta

  My limbs are frozen, an ache in my chest, my breaths coming in ragged spurts. The eye of the hurricane passed us, and the wind is back again, the water hammering the house, and as I feared, it is worse than before. It’s as though the world is ending, the fabric of it being ripped apart at the seams. And, of course, there is the dead body lying a few feet away from me.

  We covered the intruder’s body with one of the bedsheets, wrapping it around his bulk. We briefly contemplated dumping the body outside, allowing the storm to carry it away, but the weather was too dangerous, too unpredictable to risk it. A red stain grows over the white fabric, spreading larger and larger, until I can’t look away from it, the stain on me as well as the body.

  What have I done?

  “Mirta.” Anthony shakes me—once—twice. “Mirta.”

  My gaze jerks away from the dead man and up to my husband. Every action is a tremendous effort, my legs heavy as though they are trudging through the sand, my arms weighed down by the sea.

  “You’re in shock,” Anthony murmurs, rubbing my bare arms.

  There’s a splatter of red on the sleeve of my dress from where the man’s blood—

  I shudder.

  “You’re safe,” Anthony croons in my ear. “Everything is going to be fine.”

  I brush him off, a spark of anger breaking through all that cold.

  “I killed a man. How will everything be fine?”

  “He would have killed you if you didn’t kill him first.”

  “I killed him,” I repeat, scarcely able to believe it.

  “You did what you had to do.” He takes my hand. “You’ll get no judgment here.”

  No, I wouldn’t, would I? What sort of world am I entering into? And despite what my mother implored me, all of her earnestly imparted marital advice, I cannot resist the urge to speak my mind. What’s the point in pretending anymore if we’re only going to die anyway?

  “He came after us because of your job. Because of your enemies. As what, retaliation for the times you pointed a gun at a man and his family?”

  “I have never targeted anyone’s family. You can choose to believe whatever you’d like about me, but there is a measure of honor among the men of my acquaintance, some lines you don’t cross. Frank Morgan has no honor. To send a man like that to the home where I am spending my honeymoon, to have a man like that confront my wife—”

  “Why didn’t you warn me? You told me you had a bad business meeting, but I had no idea what that meant, that I should be on guard for someone trying to kill me. If I’d known, I would have told you when I first noticed him hanging around the house. I assumed he was one of the men who worked for you, and I didn’t want to cause problems. I wanted them to like me.”

  “You’re right. This is ent
irely my fault. I met with some of Frank’s local representatives down here to orchestrate a truce between us. It didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, but I didn’t anticipate him moving against me like this.”

  “Was he hiding here the entire time?” I ask.

  “Maybe he didn’t intend to strike this early, but the house was probably too good of a shelter to pass up. He was as trapped as we are.”

  “Do you think he came alone?”

  “I don’t know, but at least we’re prepared now,” Anthony replies, the gun in his free hand.

  There is nothing to do but wait, nowhere to go. Our fate is resigned to whether or not we can outlast the weather, and so we stay together in the corner, hoping the unknown men who built this house long ago did their job well.

  Minutes pass, an hour, more.

  I’m nearly asleep when Anthony nudges me awake. “It sounds like it’s over.”

  He’s right—it’s quieted down considerably.

  I take hold of his free hand, the gun in his other one, the lantern in mine, and we walk out of the bedroom, past the dead man, into the hall. I shine the lantern at the staircase below. Water fills the ground floor. It’s not as deep as I feared, certainly passable, but enough to cause serious damage.

  Anthony grimaces. “So much for the rest of the supplies.”

  “Something might be salvageable.”

  After the loudness of the storm, it’s eerie how quiet and still everything is.

  “Did you hear that noise?” Anthony asks.

  I strain to listen, the sound distant but audible—a soft swishing.

  My heart pounds.

  He walks down the rest of the stairs, his foot sinking into the water on the ground floor. It comes up to his knees. “It sounds like it’s coming from the front porch.”

  “Please don’t go out there,” I say, closing the distance between us. “The storm might not be over. It could be dangerous.”

  “I’m not going outside. I’m going to see if someone’s out there.”

  I grab Anthony’s arm to stop him, and he tenses, the expression on his face the one I imagine his enemies see in their final moments. Here is the man they whispered about in Havana, the ruthless criminal who won his fortune through force and cunning. It is both a little frightening and a little comforting to see this other side of the man I married.