The Seacrest

by Aaron Lazar

  I’d been more worried than I wanted to let on, because he’d lain so quiet in the car on the way over, panting hard in spite of the cool temperatures.

  I grinned with relief. “He’s gonna be okay?”

  He wiped his hands on his white coat and smiled. “Absolutely. You can take him home. But don’t let him run on that leg for a few days.”

  “Thanks, doc.”

  Fifteen minutes and almost five hundred dollars later, I arrived back at The Seacrest. To my surprise, the ambulance was still in the driveway. Dread filled my heart. Oh, crap. Did Rudy die?

  I told Ace to stay in the Jeep, settling him on a blanket in the back. “I’ll get you home soon, buddy. Just sleep now.” I figured the pain medicine the doc gave him might make him sleepy, and to my relief, he licked my hand and blinked, looking as if he would fall asleep in minutes.

  I found Fritzi sniffling in the kitchen, serving coffee to several police officers sitting around the table. Another group stood at the bottom of the stairs, writing on clipboards and talking into their phones.

  One tried to stop me when I approached the stairs. “Sir! You can’t go up there.”

  I slowed and turned to him. “I’m family. I need to see Libby.”

  “Okay, but at the top of the stairs, turn right. You can’t enter the crime scene.”

  “Right,” I nodded, and headed upstairs before they figured out another reason to stop me.

  Hurrying, I followed the sounds to her bedroom, where Rudy lay atop her down comforter, his arm enclosed in a blood pressure cuff being pumped by an EMT. The hefty man’s shirt was embroidered with “Ed” across the top of his pocket.

  Rudy’s dark eyes flashed with recognition, and he waved me inside. “Finn. Come over here.”

  “Finn!” Libby’s face flooded with relief. “Is Ace okay?”

  I nodded. “He’ll be fine.” I turned to her father. “What about you, Rudy? You scared the hell out of us.”

  The EMT flashed a half smile. “He’s okay. His blood pressure shot up, but I’ve been checking it regularly and it’s coming down. I think he’ll be fine to stay at home, see his primary care doctor during the week. Might need a med adjustment.”

  Rudy pushed back a stray lock of white hair and gave a weak smile, reaching for my hand. “You saved my life, Finn. I’ll never forget it.”

  I waved his praise away. “Thank Ace, if you need to thank someone. I didn’t know how I’d disarm him. Once Ace pounced, it was easier.” I squeezed his fingers. “Hand-to-hand combat isn’t exactly my specialty. I’m better at planting and riding than fist fighting.”

  Libby loosed a quivery smile and fell into my arms. “You and Ace both did great.” She shivered against me. “My God. I was so scared.”

  I held her, realizing with a start that in spite of the horror of what happened, our future now lay open. It might take her time to adjust and accept it all, but now a light flickered in our future where there had been utter darkness before.

  The coroner, Doc Fillmore, stuck his head in the doorway. “Finn? Can I see you? The cops wanna take your statement, too.”

  I hugged Libby once more, kissed her forehead, and started to back out of the room. “Be back soon.”

  She shuddered again, looked to her father, and grabbed my hand. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” I said, grateful she’d already started to emerge from that sad, defeated, zombie-like behavior of the past week.

  The coroner patiently waited. “Hey, Finn. Nasty business”

  “Stinker, I’m glad they sent you instead of one of your underlings. It’s good to see you, in spite of…” I gestured to the room down the hall. “In spite of all this.”

  He noticed the blood on my shirt and raised his eyebrows. “You get that treated yet?”

  I looked down, having forgotten about it in all the craziness. “Um.”

  I lifted my shirt. Blood oozed from a cut deeper than I’d imagined. “I didn’t think...”

  Stinker guided me back into the room and toward the chair in the corner. “Ed? Can you take a look at this?”

  Libby’s face registered horror. “Oh my God, Finn! Ian cut you?” She hurried from her father’s side to mine, pushing me into the seat and lifting the shirt again. “Oh, it’s bad. It’s awful.”

  I laughed. “Honest. I barely noticed it. It just stings a little.”

  Ed hurried toward me, having released Rudy from his blood pressure cuff. “Let’s get a look at it.”

  He broke open a pack of gauze, cleaned the wound, tut-tutted a few times, and covered it using steri-strips and adhesive tape. “It’s on the borderline. You might need stitches.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. Thanks.” No way was I going to the hospital if I didn’t have to.

  I headed out to the hall again, where Stinker led me past Ian’s room and toward the old morning room where apparently the ladies of the house used to write their letters and sip tea every day.

  “So, the soldier killed himself, huh?” Stinker said.

  I grimaced. “He sure did.”

  We’d stopped by the doorway, and I noticed the body bag on the ground, zipped closed. “No chance for him, right? Seemed like he died instantly.”

  “He did, “ Stinker said. “Hit himself square in the aorta.” He looked into the room, scratching his arm. “What the hell happened?”

  I shook my head. “He lost it, Stink. Thought he was in the war zone, I guess. Tried to kill Rudy. Tried to kill my dog. And did a pretty good job on me, too.”

  “I hear you held your own,” he said.

  “Just luck. I’m not exactly combat-trained. School yard scuffles, that’s the only experience I’ve had.”

  “Well. Either way. Rudy said you saved his life.”

  We headed down the hall. “With my dog’s help,” I said.

  Stinker ushered me into the room at the far end of the hall. “Police Chief Kramer, here’s another witness.”

  Kramer looked up, nodding slightly. “McGraw.”

  “Chief.” I waited for him to look up.

  He stopped writing long enough to motion me into a chair. “We can do this here, or at the station. Your pick.” He eyed my bloodstained shirt. “You up for it?”

  I sat, leaning back on the chair. “Sure. Fire away.”

  For the next hour, I answered questions in triplicate, finally satisfied Chief Kramer, and was let go by the time dawn streaked pink across the eastern sky.

  Chapter 65

  September 2, 2013

  Ian’s memorial service was understated, with just a few friends and members of the Vanderhorn family. Libby didn’t feel like celebrating her dead husband’s life any more than she wanted him in the family plot. She had him cremated, and arranged to have his ashes buried in a cemetery in Hyannis under a remote silver birch on the edge of the graveyard. It was an honorable burial for a dishonorable man. I admired her for not just dumping him into a trash bin, like I might have been tempted to do. Then again, my protective instincts reared high knowing what he’d done to her over the years. I still hadn’t quite forgiven the man for his treatment of her. I might never, it was hard to tell.

  I knew it would take her time to adjust, to deal with all the changes in her life. In the weeks to follow, she threw herself into her riding and teaching, opening up her schedule so that by August she had a full load of students all week long.

  To me she’d been polite, but reserved. I was quite sure there was a firestorm going on in her brain, and that it would take time for her to sort it all out. Like me, I assumed she felt guilty for cheating on Ian, even though she hadn’t known he was alive. Then there was the shock of seeing him morph from a sweet, childlike patient into a roaring monster. Never mind the fact that he killed himself in front of us, and somehow sensed that she and I had been involved. I still hadn’t figured that one out, but imagined that maybe he saw the way I looked at her, or felt the energy in the air crackling between us. Either way, he’d been right.

  So, I w
orked on my blueberry farm, pruning and weeding and removing tree saplings that had grown up between the bushes over the past decade. I thought of my mother and father, of little Eva, of my grandfather, and of Jax. The memories were less tainted now, and more populated with pleasant scenes of my youth.

  I spent hours in my parents’ old bedroom, which I’d converted to a studio, working on paintings, trying to get my technique back. It did return to me, without any problems. “Just like riding a bicycle,” I’d said to Ace, who never left my side now. I’d created many paintings of Libby in the old series I started in college, and had recently started on a family portrait of my father, mother, Eva, Jax, and me. I’d left Jax empty, just sketched in. I still had a hard time facing him, I guess.

  I harvested a few hundred pounds of berries and sold them in the roadside stand, surprised the bushes still produced after all the years of neglect. Former berry pickers came by in droves, reconnecting with me, telling me stories of the days when they knew my parents and remembered me as a boy. It was incredibly satisfying to talk with these people who had nothing but good memories of my family. I promised them all that next year I’d open the fields again for picking, and I intended to honor that promise. I worked harder than ever, from six in the morning until six at night. Ace—fully recovered now—stuck by my side the whole time, keeping me good company.

  On Monday, September 2nd, Labor Day, Ace and I drove to The Seacrest for a barbecue. Rudy had invited me. He’d been amazingly friendly since the whole Ian-with-the-knife incident, and had begun to treat me more like a neighbor and friend than an employee. After years of being part of “the help,” I appreciated the upgrade.

  They still hadn’t hired a replacement for me, so I kept coming by every few days to help with the heavier work. Libby’s students pitched in as well, which lightened the load for me.

  I hadn’t kissed Libby since the day Ian killed himself, and that had been just a peck on the forehead. I’d given her space, because I sensed she needed it more than ever before. But oh, I longed for her every second of every day, wanting to carry her off to the loft in the barn, the cove by the sea, or my big new bed, still not christened by our love. While working in the fields, I’d cast my mind back to our times together, cherishing the moments we’d stolen as teens and our most recent encounters at the cove and in my shower.

  When Ace and I arrived at The Seacrest, we entered by the kitchen—our usual way—and I already smelled the tantalizing aroma of Fritzi’s homemade baked beans bubbling in the oven. I plopped a watermelon onto the kitchen table, and Fritzi turned to welcome me with opened arms.

  “Mister Finn! Oh, it’s so good to see you again.”

  I laughed, hugging her. “I was just here two days ago, Fritzi.”

  “But it’s too long. We miss you.” She nodded to Libby, who was walking from the beach up toward the house over the grassy expanse of lawn. She carried a clam bucket and wore a pink sundress and a sweet smile. “Especially the missy. She needs you now.”

  Astounded by her candid admission, I stepped back. “How do you know?”

  She clucked at me. “I can’t tell all my secrets. But I see how she looks when you leave.”

  “Honest?” I watched Libby from the screen door, drinking in the beautiful sight of her. The wind blew her dark hair, circling it above her shoulders. Her dress rippled in the breeze, emphasizing her body in ways that affected my own body, in a manner not good for a man standing in full view of a matronly German cook.

  “You should go for a ride after the lunch. She needs to laugh again. She needs a man.” She came to me and poked a finger at my chest. “You.”

  I laughed, feeling a slight flush creep up my neck and onto my cheeks. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d blushed. “Fritzi. Come on. What makes you say that?”

  “I know things,” she said, in her strong German accent. “I just know.”

  “Okay,” I said, walking to the door to open it for Libby.

  “Hey, Finn.” Libby gave me a weak smile and hefted the big pail inside and onto the counter by the sink. “‘Okay’ to what?”

  I exchanged a glance with Fritzi, who nodded at me with encouragement. “Uh...I was just thinking it would be nice to go for a ride after we eat. You’ve been so busy with students, we haven’t done that for months.”

  She tilted a head toward me. “Really? Has it been that long?” She dumped the clams into the sink and started to rinse them, as if she didn’t remember the last time we’d ridden horses and made explosive, sensual love on the beach. “Okay. I guess that could be fun.”

  Fun? I felt a stab of doubt. What if she really didn’t want me anymore? Was she just being kind? Did she think of me as a friend now, our relationship forever tainted by Ian and his maniacal behavior?

  “Good,” I said. “Now let me help. I need to do something to contribute.”

  Fritzi pointed to the melon. “Here,” she handed me her best kitchen knife. “You can cut this up. Make it look…pretty.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Pretty? I’m not sure I know how to do that.”

  Libby snorted a laugh, but I couldn’t tell if it was her old mean Libby laugh or just an innocent chuckle. I panicked at the thought of her reverting to that Libby who had hated me all those years. Could she? Would she?

  “Just make the slices even,” she said. “Fritzi will add the mint leaves for garnish and arrange them on a big blue platter like she always does.” Turning to Fritzi, she nudged her. “And yes, it always looks very nice.”

  Fritzi chuckled as if vindicated, then opened the oven to stir her beans. “Naturlich.”

  Footsteps sounded from the stairway and came around the corner, and I was pleased to see Rudy emerge in a bright blue golf shirt and khaki shorts. “Hello, Finn.” He shook my hand, then turned to his cook. “Where’s my chef’s hat, Fritzi? I’m ready to rumble.”

  He turned to grab his apron from the hook on the wall. With a flourish, he wrapped the straps around his middle and turned to proudly display the lettering on the front. “Many have eaten here…few have died.”

  I sputtered a laugh. “That’s a relief.”

  Fritzi grabbed the hat from one of her pantry shelves and set it atop his head. “There you go, Mister Rudy. Now you look proper.”

  I slid out my new iPhone to take a picture. I still wasn’t used to having money, but this was one luxury I begrudgingly allowed myself. “Say cheese.”

  Rudy said, “Mozzarella,” and I snapped the shot.

  “Good one,” I said, passing it around to show everyone.

  For the next hour we all helped chopping salad ingredients, husking corn, boiling the clams, melting butter, and preparing the picnic table that had been moved out to the summerhouse. The smell of barbecued sausages wafted on the air, and in time we carried the heavily laden trays to the table. Ace followed, ready and willing to help with dropped bits of food. I kept stealing looks at Libby, but her reserved, unrevealing behavior continued. No sideways glances filled with love, no touches of her hand on mine. I started to get depressed.

  Rudy wheeled a cooler full of beer and iced tea to the celebration, and passed out the drinks. When we’d all cracked open our beverages and filled our plates, he held his bottle of Guinness Draught up for a toast. “I want to thank our good friends Ace and Finn. Without them, I might not be standing here to celebrate Labor Day.”

  I clinked bottles with all of them, slipped Ace a piece of turkey, and thanked him.

  Although I could only think of my upcoming ride with Libby, I patiently waited.

  Within the hubbub of good friends and laughter, we dug into the feast.

  Chapter 66

  September 2, 2013

  3:00 P.M.

  I ran a soft brush over Popeye’s smooth coat, taking care to clean all the muddy spots, then wiped down his dusty rump and back. He nudged his big head against my hand when I worked on his face and under his jaw—he loved that part. His black and white mane and tail flowed after the th
orough combing I’d given them a few minutes earlier.

  I glanced down the aisle every so often, watching Libby groom Serendipity. The horse’s white hair shone, even in the dark barn. Libby worked mechanically through the process, lips tight, eyes downcast.

  She’d been very quiet since we finished helping the protesting Fritzi with the cleanup after we’d all eaten our fill. I’d hoped to earn a small smile, or even a surreptitious glance, but none came forth.

  “Libby?” I said. “Bareback or saddles?”

  “Bareback,” she said. She’d changed from her pink sundress into white jean shorts and a green blouse.

  “Got it,” I said. “I’m almost done. Where’s the fly spray?”

  She grabbed it from a ledge on the side of the aisle and handed it to me. Her fingers brushed mine, and a surge of emotion filled me. I accepted the bottle, setting it down on the shelf nearby. Turning to her, I called her name softly. “Lib?”

  She stopped in the aisle, her back to me.

  I came up behind her, turning her shoulders so she faced me. “Don’t,” she said, looking away.

  I tilted her chin so her eyes met mine. “Don’t what?”

  She pulled back an inch, and I thought I saw fear flicker through them.

  Fear? What is she afraid of?

  “Finn! Just don’t.” She whirled away, grabbing a bridle from the hook on the wall. “Do you want to ride, or what?”

  Her tortured eyes broke my heart. I felt my chest hitch, and a leaden feeling sank to my feet. “Okay. Let’s ride.”

  We finished getting ready and in ten minutes our horses jogged along the path to the beach with Ace cantering behind us, occasionally making a foray into the woods when he caught a scent.

  We’re weren’t close enough for our bare legs to touch, but close enough that the heat from the horses’ bodies rose up between us. I sensed her angst in the air like a thunderstorm blackening the sky over a fancy dress lawn party. It was at that point I noticed the tears tracing her cheeks.