Thomas worked and I leaned back on my elbows, watching him. Shirtsleeves rolled up, sun catching his muscles, his skin glistening. There was nothing that I wanted, nothing I needed. I’d never felt such clarity and certainty that this was where I was supposed to be.
Half an hour passed, maybe longer, and I heard shouting and scuffling from behind me. I jumped up and as I turned I saw Harry hurtling toward us.
“Thomas!” I shouted as I stood. But Harry was running at full speed. I tried to stop him, rushing toward him, but he pushed me down to the ground and kept on running out onto the pier. He lunged toward Thomas.
“Harry, stop!” I screamed, hearing my voice, high-pitched and frightened.
Thomas barely had a chance to get to his feet before Harry punched him squarely in the face.
“No!” I cried desperately. “What are you doing, Harry?”
Thomas almost fell backwards into the water, but he managed to catch himself and find his balance. Harry swung at him again. Thomas ducked and as he recovered he punched Harry in the jaw. Harry stumbled backwards and toppled straight back and off the other side of the pier. The ocean must have been twenty-five feet deep where they were and he splashed and went under.
“He can’t swim!” I shrieked, running toward the pier. “Thomas, he’ll drown!”
“God damn it!” Thomas shouted. “Stay where you are,” he called to me. There were gaping holes in the pier under his feet where planks of wood had fallen into the ocean. Harry was clinging to one of the single posts sticking up out of the water, but the waves were curling over him and he gasped for air with each break until the next wave rolled in. Thomas wiped blood from the side of his face, tore off his shirt and jumped in. I ran into the water, but the waves were breaking hard onto the beach now and they forced me back. I got up and tried again, my dress now heavy with water and seaweed, wrapping around my legs.
Thomas swam to Harry and dragged him toward part of the pier that was somewhat still intact. He pulled himself up, then reached down and hoisted Harry up, who struggled, crouching and coughing, before finally coming to his feet. He started swinging again.
I ran out onto the pier where they were standing.
“Bea, it’s not safe for you here.” Thomas reached for my hand, sending Harry into another fury.
“Get your goddamned filthy hands off her,” he spat, lunging again at Thomas, shoving him in the chest, but Thomas just stood taller.
“You’re going to get off this pier right now,” Thomas said, taking steps toward Harry, nearing the edge of the pier. “Then you’re going to walk off this beach, and leave us here, and you’re never going to look back, do you hear me?”
“Like hell I am.”
“Beatrice!” There was shouting on the beach. “Beatrice!” It was Winthrop and his wife. “Stay back!” Winthrop shouted. “He’s got a gun.”
“What?” I gasped.
Harry reached in his pocket and pulled out a pistol. “That’s right.” He waved it from me to Thomas, back and forth. “You son of a bitch, you don’t get to walk into my life and take my wife and take my child.”
“You know it’s not yours, Harry!” I cried. Fear spread over my body like a sea creature, wrapping its way around my legs, my body, up to my chest. I could hardly breathe.
Thomas stood in front of me, holding me behind him. “She’s staying here with me, in Montauk. She’s not going back with you. We’re going to walk away now. And then you’re going to leave Montauk and never come back.”
Harry’s face contorted as he pointed the gun at Thomas.
“Fire that gun and you might as well turn it on yourself. Your life will be over. Go on and live your life and let us live ours,” Thomas said as we started to back away.
“You think I want to be with her?” He spat onto the pier. “I never want to see her again, that dirty whore.” I was shaking behind Thomas, petrified of what Harry would do.
“Go, Bea,” Thomas said, still facing Harry while I turned and got off the pier to the shore. Thomas followed behind, took my hand, and we began to walk up the beach, leaving Harry on the pier and Winthrop and Gloria stunned at the water’s edge, witnesses to all that unfolded.
We walked fast, not looking back, gripping each other’s hands, yet it felt as if we were moving in slow motion, the distance from the beach to the cliffs an eternity.
“Thomas, I’m scared,” I said, tripping on my dress, weighed down with water.
“We’re almost there, my love. Soon this will all be over.”
Then I heard a shot, loud and thunderous. I turned to look but felt Thomas’s hand drop from mine and he fell to the ground.
“Thomas!” I cried, falling to my knees, seeing a wound and blood spreading on his back. “God, no!” I screamed. His face was pained and I struggled to turn him to his back. There was more blood on his chest. “Help him!” I cried out. “Please.”
Winthrop ran to us and knelt by my side. He pressed his hand on Thomas’s chest. “Get me something to stop the bleeding,” he demanded. Gloria gave him the wrap from her shoulders and he held it on Thomas’s wound.
“Thomas,” I said, but the words didn’t leave me. “Oh God.”
There was a second crack, not as loud, then a crashing sound in the water. The pier had collapsed. No one turned around.
“Milton!” I screamed, though he was all the way at the top of the cliff and there was no way he’d hear us. “Someone help us.” Thomas looked at me, his piercing blue eyes pleading with me as he tried to speak. He was sweating and breathing heavily.
“Don’t, Thomas, don’t say anything; just breathe, please, please.” Tears streamed down my face. “Please.”
“Go and get help,” I said to Winthrop, pressing down on the wound on Thomas’s chest. Winthrop looked at me, as if he knew it would be too late. “Now,” I begged. “Please.” I was desperate, willing to do anything, helpless.
“It’s too late,” Winthrop said quietly, taking his blood-soaked hands off Thomas’s chest.
Thomas’s eyes looked up to the sky and suddenly he didn’t seem in pain; he didn’t seem to know what was going on around him.
“Stay, Thomas!” I cried. “Stay with me.”
39
The next spring I bought the small yellow cottage on the bluffs with a pathway that led to the ocean. It had been damaged in the storm, just like everything back then, but I got it fixed up enough for us to be comfortable. On the warmer days I’d open the windows in baby Charlotte’s room so the sounds of the ocean could lull her to sleep. From a tiny window at the top of the stairs, you could catch a glimpse of the lighthouse. If our child wasn’t to know her real father or who he was, I at least wanted her to know and love Montauk the way Thomas had and the way he’d taught me to, through the ocean and the lighthouse and its natural beauty. She should be surrounded by all its goodness the way we had been that summer.
In those first unbearable months after what was ruled an accident, since Harry wasn’t there to bear the guilt of Thomas’s murder, I went through the motions of mourning in a state of numbness. “She’s in shock,” people whispered. “I’m worried for the baby.” The only relief I had was when they said, “She’s exhausted; she needs to rest,” because those were the times I could be alone and succumb to the gripping, gut-wrenching and perpetual grief that took over whenever I thought of Thomas.
I could never love anyone else the way I had loved Thomas, and now he was gone from me, from his daughter, from his son, from all the people who loved him, all because of Harry’s hatred and jealousy. But sometimes, at unexpected times, I mourned for Harry’s wasted, misguided life, too. I was overcome with remorse for my role in the loss of both men. After Harry fired the fatal shot into Thomas’s heart, the pier collapsed under him and he drowned while we tried to save Thomas. If I hadn’t gone to the lighthouse that day they would both still be alive.
I told myself the baby inside me needed me to keep going and stay strong for her sake. And once she was
born she brought me a joy and a love that I didn’t think I’d feel again. I had my writing still, which I knew I would continue, but what filled my heart and mind with purpose, love and duty was my daughter. Letting her fill my life with light left slightly less space for sadness and grief.
* * *
She was baptized at the church in Montauk—the same church I’d visited to talk to Charlie. It was only Elizabeth, Patrick, my parents, Dolly and the priest, and I was grateful that the press had finally stopped following the story, that this moment was private for me and the small circle of people I had left.
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, I baptize you Charlotte Olivia Holmes.”
I gave her my maiden name. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath when the priest said her name slowly and deliberately. The cold water trickled down her forehead between her bright blue eyes. She looked startled, then began to cry. The priest dabbed her head with a folded white towel, then passed her back to me, and the crying stopped, turning to a soft whimper.
I felt the presence of something or someone surrounding us, holding us, and I knew it was Thomas. I could feel his strong arms around me and our tiny baby and I felt the strength and courage that I’d felt when I was with him. In that moment I knew that while this was terrifying, this new life, this new child, completely dependent on me—me, who had barely been able to put one foot in front of the other for the past eight months, who had woken in the night and longed to give up, to make it all go away—I suddenly knew, with surprising confidence, that we’d make it through. I walked out of those enormous carved wooden doors that led back into the world with a renewed sense of hope and determination.
Outside we walked toward Montauk’s Main Street, to Trail’s End for lunch. Charlotte snuggled into my bosom and closed her eyes.
The cherry blossoms that lined the outside of the church were cloud-like in full bloom, the sun streaming through the branches and warming our skin. It had been a cold winter and the blossoms had lasted a few days longer than most years. They were at their peak, full and frothy, the petals a deep pink.
Elizabeth came up to me and put her arm in mine. “It was a lovely service, Beatrice,” she said. “And Charlotte was so well behaved, bless her.”
“It was lovely,” I agreed. “I always marvel at their fast, fleeting beauty,” I said, looking up to the trees.
She nodded and patted my arm.
“They bloom so quickly and so magnificently, and then they are gone,” I said.
A breeze rustled the cherry blossoms, easing the petals from their stems and releasing them into the late afternoon sun. They took flight around us like confetti. A single pale pink petal landed in the light dusting of hair on Charlotte’s head. I took it in my fingers and felt the urge to save it, but then I uncurled my fingers, let the petal dance on the palm of my hand for a moment and let the wind take it away toward the sea.
About the Author
Born in England, Nicola Harrison moved to California, where she received a BA in literature at UCLA, before moving to New York City and earning an MFA in creative writing at Stony Brook. She is a member of The Writers Room has had short stories published in The Southampton Review and Glimmer Train, and articles in Los Angeles Magazine and Orange Coast Magazine. She was the fashion and style staff writer for Forbes, had a weekly column in Lucky Magazine, and is the founder of a personal styling business, Harrison Style. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
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
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
MONTAUK. Copyright © 2019 by Nicola Harrison. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover illustration by Liam Peters
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-20011-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-20012-9 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250200129
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First Edition: June 2019
Montauk Page 40