289 Captain's Walk

by Katie Winters

  “It really is always a pleasure to see you, Marnie,” Olivia said. Her smile widened. “And if you want to stick around to work out the legalities of this will, I guess we’ll be seeing much more of each other! Maybe you can help me with some of the interior design in the old place. Paint colors, molding, that kind of thing.”

  Marnie fumed. She slid her slender arm through Zach’s monstrously muscular one and then dragged him toward the foyer.

  Sara’s eyebrows popped high on her forehead as she muttered, “Olivia, what’s gotten into you? It’s not like you to tempt the beast. You sound like Aunt Marcia.”

  Olivia chuckled. “That’s a huge compliment. Thanks, Sara. I’ll take it.”

  Chapter Three

  The following evening, after Chelsea had run off to a friend’s place, Jennifer stopped by Olivia’s house for a glass of wine. When she eased through the front door, which Olivia always kept unlocked, her red hair caught the light beautifully, and her smile was electric and welcoming, despite the small streak of chocolate across her lower lip. Olivia ruffled her black hair as she stepped over to hug her dear friend.

  “How was the chocolate eclair?” she asked.

  Jennifer furrowed her brow. “How did you—”

  But Olivia just chuckled and dabbed at her own lip. Jennifer licked off the frosting and joined Olivia in laughter. “I’ve created a better balance for myself in the past few weeks. On Monday and Tuesday, I’m at the social media office downtown and then Thursday and Friday, I spend my days at the Frosted Delights. But today, Hannah called in sick, and well, you know how it is on Saturdays. There is so much chaos and lots of chocolate to keep me going.”

  “That I do,” Olivia replied. She stepped into the kitchen and poured them each glasses of merlot.

  “I really need that,” Jennifer said as she took the glass. “And on top of everything, Derek ran off to the city this weekend to check in on Emma. It’s all gone so fast and I know that but I have to admit, I miss him so much.”

  “That’s sweet,” Olivia said. “And it’s not like you’ve moved in together or anything.”

  Jennifer blushed. “I spent almost every night there this past week. Last night when I woke up, I was confused about why he wasn’t there.”

  “What is it they always say? When you know, you know?” Olivia spouted the expression, even without a full understanding of it. After all, the only man she’d ever been involved with, in her entire life, had up and left her six years before, moved off to Boston to start a new life.

  He had left a Tyler-sized hole in her heart.

  “I guess,” Jennifer said, shrugging her shoulders. She rolled her upper teeth over her lower lip and pondered this. “Well, anyway. The island is in uproar about the reading of the will last night. Marnie is really pissed about that old house going to you. I heard someone talking about it at the bakery today.”

  “That bakery is the birthplace of gossip,” Olivia said, leaning back in her chair as she swirled the liquid in her glass.

  “It sure is. We serve it up with the donuts,” Jennifer agreed.

  Olivia chuckled. “But yeah. She looked ready to eat me alive when she left Marcia’s place. And to be honest, I’ve been so petrified about the whole deal that I haven’t made it out there yet. I can’t remember the last time I saw the old place. It took me years before I even knew the house belonged to her. I think when I saw her there as a teenager...”

  “When she was up to no good upstairs!” Jennifer finished her sentence.

  “Yeah, then. I think I thought she’d just broken in, like me, which is hilarious, considering she owned the place.”

  “And now, Olivia Hesson, you own the place.” Jennifer arched her brow mischievously. “And what will you do with it?”

  Olivia looked at her friend and pondered over her words. She had no idea what would happen or what she would do just yet.

  The following Monday morning, Olivia picked up the key to the old building from the lawyer’s office, along with a statement of its historical importance for the island of Martha’s Vineyard. The lawyer seemed flustered and mentioned briefly that he’d been on the phone all day with the lawyers of the kids and grandchildren.

  “Let me guess. They’re not happy about this,” Olivia said.

  The lawyer looked up at Olivia, nodding in agreement. He’d begun to grey on at the sides of his head. He sucked in a breath, looking exhausted but not defeated.

  “You just promise me you’ll uphold your end of the deal,” the lawyer said tenderly. “She wanted that old house to be restored. She never got around to it in her lifetime, although I believe she had begun some work in recent months. You’ll have to head out there and check it out yourself.”

  The key was tremendously heavy, the kind with an ornate handle and a thick end, made of brass. She slipped it into her coat pocket as she walked the rest of the way to Edgartown High School. Once there, she laid it out across her desk. It looked incredibly bizarre next to her little award for “Best Teacher” from five years ago, and her framed photograph of her and Chelsea, when they’d taken a spontaneous trip together to New York City. Chelsea had been sixteen and deep in whatever self-hatred (and mom-hatred) had brewed in the wake of her father’s departure.

  There was so much Chelsea didn’t understand about the divorce. She’d placed so much blame on Olivia and in turn, Olivia had placed a lot of the blame squarely on her own shoulders. Even now, she sometimes awoke to the sound of her own inner-voice: Maybe if I had cooked better, or wanted to travel more, or been more creative, or laughed at his jokes. Maybe if I had changed myself in one single, solitary way, he would have wanted me enough to stay.

  But she also knew deep down it wasn’t her fault he had left. It had everything to do with him. At least, on her good days, she felt that way.

  Olivia pushed herself through the school day. Occasionally throughout, she received supportive messages from the girl's group chat —

  CAMILLA: I swear, this shift will never end. I hope you beauties are having a wonderful Monday!

  AMELIA: Isn’t the term “wonderful Monday” an oxymoron?

  CAMILLA: Jeez, somebody is crabby.

  JENNIFER: I! AM! FREAKING! OUT!

  OLIVIA: Someone in one of my classes just described Julius Caesar as a “player,” and I laughed out loud, which I don’t think I should have done.

  MILA: Yeah, Liv! Teach those students the important things in life. Like, who’s a player, and who is not.

  OLIVIA: Mila, you hate reading.

  MILA: Yep! Always have. Always will. But we love you, you weird brainiac!

  After the final period of the day, Olivia gathered together the papers she had assigned over Anna Karenina and set to work reading over them. That historic building, which held a big portion of her own history, called her name out by the water, but she used the papers as a crutch, something to hide behind. She wasn’t sure what she would find when she got out there. In a sense, she was petrified. It was going to require huge dedication from her.

  The papers were more-or-less standard. Nothing entirely brilliant had been written. She corrected bits of grammar, highlighted points that “didn’t make sense.” But when she reached Xavier — that arrogant, handsome young man, she dropped her bright red pen.

  The paper was strange. It started out with incredible intelligence, the likes of which she hadn’t seen Xavier muster throughout the entire school year and it ended with serious anger and volatility.

  ‘Tolstoy compares real and individual life to war because and stay with me here, Ms. Hesson, real life is a kind of war. You wake up every day in the trenches. You feel the impact of your time on earth on all sides. Will you survive this day? You don’t know. And you must charge forth, regardless.’

  Olivia chewed at her lower lip as she continued to read his essay. It seemed clear, after a second read-through, that the boy was terribly depressed. After nearly twenty years in the world of education, she’d seen the likes of this before. Ord
inarily, this kind of depression worked itself out in very intelligent students.

  She had also seen the damage it could do to students like this. She’d seen them years later, with a toddler in-tow at the grocery store. The emptiness in their eyes had told her everything she’d needed to know. Whatever sadness they’d had back in high school had only grown exponentially in the years afterward. They hadn’t managed life.

  Olivia gathered her things, donned her winter coat, and then slid the large key into her coat pocket. She walked out from the high school and glanced once more at that huge ancient oak, beneath which she’d liked to read as a teenager. It had gotten the best light, and she’d been allowed some of the better views of her classmates as they’d slid out from the hallways and into the beautiful, long-ago afternoon. Oh, how she ached to be a teenager like that, so void of responsibility.

  Still, she’d experienced her own darkness. Xavier was proof that that kind of thing wasn’t necessarily an “adult” thing only.

  Chelsea was proof of that, also.

  Instead of heading straight back home and to her car, Olivia turned her direction away from the high school and toward the diner. Chelsea had worked there as a waitress for the previous three years — only part-time before her high school graduation, and now full-time as a nineteen-year-old who, quote, “has no idea what the heck” to do with her life.

  Olivia, whose own mother had been a teacher also, had told her she would make a really good teacher. But Chelsea, who wanted nothing to do with her mother in a lot of ways, had only laughed. This had hurt Olivia’s feelings in ways she didn’t really like to look at.

  How difficult it was to be a mother.

  How difficult it was to be a person in this world.

  Olivia arrived outside the old diner and peered in to watch her daughter for a moment. Chelsea was a particularly beautiful teenage girl. She looked a lot like Tyler’s sister, who had been a beauty queen in her high school days, and she carried herself with confidence that she actually internally lacked. She had long, dirty blonde hair, and her eyes were bright blue, like her father’s. Olivia had been blessed to be able to look at that face nearly every single day of its existence. How grateful she was and still, how sad she was that they weren’t terribly close. She blamed herself. She blamed Tyler. She blamed time itself.

  When she entered, the bell jangled, and Chelsea glanced up to say, “Hey.” It wasn’t the kindest ‘hey’ Olivia had ever heard, but it had to do.

  “Hey,” Olivia returned. “How was the shift?”

  “It was good, got decent tips. I’m about to close out,” Chelsea told her. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

  Olivia shook her head. “Naw. Actually, I wanted to ask if you wanted to go for a drive with me.”

  Chelsea looked up at her mother, puzzled. “Is this another of your ‘don’t do drugs’ talks? Because I think we cleared that up about five years ago.”

  Olivia didn’t skip a beat. “No. It’s about something my Great Aunt Marcia left me in her will. A very, very old historic building, out by the water.”

  Chelsea tilted her head. Her eyes glistened with intrigue. “Huh. Weird.”

  Teenagers liked to say everything was weird.

  “You in?” Olivia asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “Sure. Let me just count the register. I’ll be out in a jiff.”

  Olivia hovered near the register and read Chelsea more information about the old building, all from the print-outs the lawyer had given her earlier that day.

  “Apparently, it was built in 1861, which was right smack-dab in the middle of the Civil War.”

  “Wow.” Chelsea’s “wow” didn’t even seem sarcastic but filled with intrigue. “And it belongs to you?”

  “Yep. She wants me to restore it to its former glory. Then what? I don’t know. Maybe make it into a boutique hotel or inn or?”

  Chelsea arched her brow. “An English teacher turned hotel owner?”

  “Something like that. Maybe...A classic story,” Olivia replied, chuckling.

  Chelsea slammed the register shut and gave her mother a funny grin. “All right. Let’s go check out this slice of history. If something belongs to you, it basically belongs to me, right?”

  Olivia winked. “Sure. Now hand over those tips. I want to buy some snacks.”

  Chapter Four

  Chelsea fiddled with the radio station as Olivia drove hands at ten-and-two, just as ever. Chelsea had teased her mother about this a great deal in the past, to which Olivia often said, “Hey. I haven’t had an accident in over twenty years. Guess I’m doing something right.”

  “This place is really far off the beaten path,” Chelsea stated as they continued further out from Edgartown. “Did you even know that Aunt Marcia owned this place?”

  Olivia thought for a brief, funny moment about telling Chelsea the story of the first time she and Tyler had come out here but immediately thought better of it. For one, she didn’t want to reveal something so personal and intimate from her teenage years; and second, any mention of Tyler often made Chelsea spiral into sadness or, if not sadness, a level of grumpiness that Olivia just couldn’t stand to be around.

  “I knew about it, yeah,” Olivia finally answered.

  Chelsea snorted. “Okay. You don’t have to be so guarded about it.”

  The first time Olivia had gone to the historic building, she’d walked along the beach and through the trees beyond. This time, she drove up to an enormous iron gate. The irons curved ornately into a beautiful R — the last name of whichever relative had built the place, probably, and dead vines had curled around it, tying themselves together.

  “It looks really haunted,” Chelsea said, leaning forward, trying to get a better look.

  “I guess maybe the gate is locked?” Olivia said as she parked the car outside and pondered what to do next.

  “Look!” Chelsea said suddenly. She unsnapped her seatbelt and leaped from the car. In seconds, she had paraded toward the far end of the iron gate, where there was an opening large enough for someone to pass through. Probably, teenagers with similar intentions as Olivia and Tyler had broken in for years. Olivia’s heart drummed with fear. What the heck were they about to walk into?

  Chelsea stepped through the opening and led her mother toward what had once been a curving, snaking driveway. On either side, massive trees lined the drive.

  “It must have been beautiful to come up this way,” Olivia whispered. “And then, when you reach the middle, you get the first view of the house. Just there.”

  She stopped short and gazed up at the beautiful stone building. It looked as though it had faced a thousand ocean storms. The ornate carvings were far more intricate than Olivia had remembered, and there were even several stone statues connected to the base and the top of the building. Due to decades of winter winds, several of the statues no longer had much of their faces — just little nubs as noses and hollowed-out eyes.

  “Wow,” Chelsea breathed. “I was right. It really is haunted.”

  Olivia chuckled and resumed her walk. In some respects, the place was haunted by her memory of that long-ago time, the only incident in her life when she’d ever been brave enough to reach out and grab what she wanted. Now, both the old mansion and Olivia herself had faltered. There was no answer to the demands of time.

  The front door looked on the verge of yanking itself off its hinges. An old iron knocker hung in the center, ornate, with a carving of a lion. Olivia turned to glance around the porch, stalling for time. This was when she noticed the twenty-four pack of Coors, located just a few feet from the door.

  “What the heck is that?”

  Chelsea laughed. “It’s beer, Mom. Ever heard of it?”

  “It’s just... why is it here?”

  “Probably people come out here to party. Who cares?”

  “But there are a lot of beers left,” Olivia said. “Why would they leave some—”

  Suddenly, there was the violent noise of someone stompin
g down the circular staircase inside. Olivia gripped Chelsea’s hand and leaped back. Somebody was in the house. Somebody on the run from the police, maybe? Hiding out there? Waiting for something? What?

  “We should go,” Olivia whispered.

  But just then, the front door burst open to reveal the source of the stomping. The man before them was over six feet tall, with the kind of shoulders that acknowledged a great deal of hard labor and wind-torn brown and grey shoulder-length hair, which was badly in need of a cut. He wore a thick, dark green sweater and a pair of worn blue jeans, which were splattered with white paint. His eyes were the only not-ferocious thing about him; they were soft and green.

  “Can I help you with something?” the man demanded.

  Olivia’s lower lip bobbed for a moment as she tried to regain her composure.

  “I should ask you the same thing,” Olivia finally blurted out. She was glad that her voice was hard-edged, the way she’d heard Amelia speak when she had to deal with something uncomfortable at work.

  The man arched his brow. “Listen, lady. I don’t know what you want, but what you’re doing right now is trespassing. I don’t want to have to call the cops or anything — not that the cops on Martha’s Vineyard ever do much of anything at all around here when you need them.”

  Olivia’s mind burned with a sudden burst of anger. She detested it when anyone talked ill about the island in any way. It was clear this man was an outsider.

  “Excuse me?” she said. “It’s you who’s trespassing, actually.” She leafed through her bag and drew out the deed, which had been passed over to her just that morning. “My Great Aunt Marcia left me this house. Not that I have to prove anything to you.”

  The man gripped the deed. Slowly, his shoulders sagged forward and he tilted his head to the side. “Huh. She was your great aunt.” His seafoam green eyes returned to hers as he opened the door enough to allow them all to pass through to the foyer. “Great aunt. Now, that is a pretty distant relative.”