289 Captain's Walk

by Katie Winters

  289 Captain’s Walk

  Sisters of Edgartown Series

  By

  Katie Winters

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 2021 by Katie Winters

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Katie Winters holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Other Books by Katie

  Connect with Katie Winters

  Prologue

  Twenty-Three Years Ago

  Olivia Hesson crumpled against the base of the two-hundred-year-old oak tree just out front of Edgartown High School. She gripped her book, Anna Karenina with one hand and a pen with the other but continued to stare longingly at the bright blue sky. Only moments before, her junior year of high school had slammed shut and with this finality came enormous fears of whatever came next.

  Senior year. The future. The drama of it all pressed against her chest and made it difficult for her to do much of anything but curl up, panic, and wonder: Will I ever make it off of this island? Do I even want that? Along with some of the bigger, more frantic worries, like: Will I ever manage to kiss a boy?

  For reasons that were not entirely clear to Olivia — who had almost always been ranked one of the most stellar students at Edgartown High School — the issue of her less-than-stellar ranking with boys took a front seat to every other issue in her life. She hated it. It felt so typical.

  Olivia allowed her eyes to close for just the slightest second as she grew dizzy with worry. A split-second later, someone rushed her, tackled her, and cast her back across the soft pillow-like grass. The scream couldn’t have come from anyone else.

  “Michelle!” Olivia cried. Her eyes burst open as she held the weight of Michelle Conrad, the red-haired beauty, twin to Olivia’s other best friend, Jennifer. She always had more energy than she knew what to do with. It had often gotten her into trouble.

  “What?” Michelle curled backward and blinked at her with a big, goofy smile. “You looked like you’d just passed out or something. I had to wake you up somehow.”

  “Oh, cool. So that was for my benefit, then?”

  “Yep.” Michelle fell back against the tree, crossed her sinewy legs beneath her, and removed a little flask from her backpack.

  “What do you have there?” Olivia asked.

  “Well, it’s not a Pop-Tart. I can tell you that.” Michelle snuck a sip and gave Olivia a sinister grin.

  “Come on. Let me have a sip.”

  Michelle shrugged. Then, her eyes slipped across the yard to watch as still more students streamed out from the hallways. Laughter and raucous conversation buzzed from the doorway. And then, as if God himself was some kind of film director, there appeared center-stage— Tyler Radcliffe.

  “My, my, my. Tyler’s looking pretty good today, isn’t he, Olivia?”

  Olivia’s cheeks burned tomato-red. She shifted and beckoned again for the flask. “I don’t know,” she said, even though she very well did know. In fact, she’d spent the majority of English, History, and French class trying to catch Tyler’s glorious bright blue eyes. She’d had a crush on Tyler Radcliffe for as long as any of the Sisters of Edgartown could remember. It was just that, well — nothing had happened yet and probably, nothing ever would.

  “You want a sip of this? Go talk to him,” Michelle nudged her. Her eyes glittered malevolently.

  Olivia furrowed her brow. “No way. Not today. I’m exhausted, and I just want to read Anna Karenina in peace.”

  “The Russian novelists wrote only about love and loss, didn’t they?” Michelle demanded. “Tolstoy didn’t write big epics about girls who sat under trees their entire lives.”

  Olivia’s stomach shifted with resentment. It was the worst kind of resentment, as it came from a place of truth.

  Tyler had paused to chat with another football player. This gave Olivia yet another chance to gawk at his broad shoulders, his disheveled dark-blond curls, and a smile that seemed to tear her in half.

  “Come on, Liv. If you don’t live now — when you’re a senior in high school, for God’s sake, then when are you going to live?” Michelle demanded.

  “Oh my gosh, Michelle. Do you ever just shut up?” Olivia blurted. She then jumped to her feet, adjusted her black locks, and walked across the grass toward Tyler. She felt guided by some unknown force. Actually, she’d never felt this kind of strength in her entire life.

  The other football player stepped away from Tyler as none other than Jennifer Conrad marched past wearing her tight-fitting cheerleader uniform. Jennifer was widely known to be off the market, but the school still gave her plenty of attention — the kind of attention Olivia just never got. This distraction, however, turned Tyler’s eyes toward Olivia and when his bright blues connected with hers, her heart pounded like a drum.

  Something big was about to happen.

  The next few minutes were strange. Olivia felt them happen as though she were far away. There was the typical, “Hey, what’s up, Liv? We’re seniors now!” and then her girlish laughter, followed by, “Yeah, it’s crazy, right?” Then a pause, then her voice again: “Do you have plans later? I might hit up a party, but I thought about going for a walk on the beach in a bit.”

  What the heck was she doing?

  “Want to come?”

  When Olivia returned to Michelle beneath the oak, Michelle performed a slow clap, then passed the flask up for Olivia to drink. When she tossed it back, she tasted orange juice with the slightest hint of vodka. She made a face.

  “Well?” Michelle demanded.

  “Well. I guess we’re meeting on the beach. At six-thirty.”

  Michelle jumped up and wrapped her arms around Olivia. Her exuberance was infectious. “YES. My queen! You went out there and you got what you wanted! I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  EVER THE GOODY-TWO-shoes, Olivia arrived at the beach a full fifteen minutes early. She’d worn what she now deemed a ridiculous pink dress, with a bodice made almost entirely of lace and cleavage that demanded attention. She crossed her arms over her chest as the wind shifted strangely off the Nantucket Sound. What had been a beautiful late-spring day had now changed; dark clouds buzzed over the horizon. It almost looked like it would rain.

  Of course. The first time Olivia Hesson ever “shot her shot,” a lightning bolt would strike out from the sky and smite her. How fitting.

  And probably, Tyler would use the weather as an excuse to bail. And maybe she wouldn’t even hate him for it. Maybe she would pine after him all the more. She was so damn predictable.

  But no. A hand gripped her shoulder, a big one — the kind of hand that could thru
st a football many yard lines and she turned around to find those beautiful blue eyes again. The eyes said one thing: There was no way in hell I planned to bail on you.

  “Beautiful day for a walk,” Tyler joked.

  “Ha. I know how to pick them.”

  “No, really. I love when the ocean is like this,” Tyler said. “It’s so wild and free. Nobody can tame it. Sometimes, I think we like to pretend we can, though.”

  To Olivia, this felt endlessly poetic. Not even Tolstoy himself could have written it.

  They wandered down the beach. Their hair flipped wildly across their cheeks and forehead, and their voices grew louder with easy banter and laughter. They’d spoken for a matter of only a few minutes the entire year and yet it seemed they had a zillion things to say right then. Was it possible that Olivia’s love for this guy wasn’t so unrequited? Was it possible all her wildest dreams could come true?

  The thunder and lightning came upon them swiftly. Huge raindrops splattered across their cheeks. Tyler gripped Olivia’s hand and led her up the sand embankment, then through the trees, where it seemed an old, gorgeous building was tucked away, with only the slightest view from the sand. From beneath the trees, Olivia gaped at the splendorous old building. The carvings around the porch and the upper floors were incredibly ornate and artistic— the kind of thing that deserved to be returned to its former glory.

  “What is this place?” she breathed.

  Tyler’s eyes sparkled mischievously. “I don’t know. But if we don’t get in there right now, this wind might blow us away.”

  A long time ago, Jennifer and Michelle’s mother, Ariane, had sat the Sisters of Edgartown down in front of the television to watch a film about “safe sex.” Olivia had had nightmares in the wake of it, even as Jennifer, Michelle, Mila, Amelia and Camilla had all joined the folds of “womanhood” without a second glance backward. Olivia, still a virgin, just couldn’t imagine it.

  Was this really the place where she’d give it all away?

  Tyler tipped against the ornate door and led her into what had once been an illustrious foyer, with a beautiful spiral staircase that curved around and around to the upper floors. On the wall to the left hung a portrait of a handsome man in a top hat alongside a woman who seemed to be his bride, dressed in an old-world wedding dress with a high collar. Olivia, whose head seemed continually filled with books and ideas and love of past histories, immediately fell in love with the place.

  “I can’t believe I don’t know about this. I thought I knew all of the historical buildings on the island,” she breathed.

  Tyler seemed not to care so much about the dramatic history of the building. His eyes traced down her cheek, across her neck, toward her breasts. He placed a hand on her clavicle and dropped his lips against hers. Her heart raced like a rabbit’s. This stupidly, and also so beautifully, was her first kiss. She would never tell Tyler that. When the kiss broke, he gazed again into her eyes in a way that told Olivia that maybe she wasn’t half bad at the old kissing thing.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” he whispered.

  Olivia wasn’t one to argue. Besides, she really wanted to go up there and see the bedrooms. Maybe inspect any old artifacts, like antique mirrors or whatever else the previous tenants had left behind. She gripped Tyler’s hand as they traced up toward the second floor. As their feet pressed against the landing, thunder and lightning made the house shake.

  “Spooky,” Tyler murmured.

  They kissed again. Tyler pressed her against the wall, alongside an old grandfather clock that had long-since given up ticking. Olivia felt dangerous and strange, almost as if she was outside of her body, watching herself. First, a kiss, and then a break-in. Now what? She wished Michelle could whisper into her ear and give her that jolt of confidence because she really needed it.

  Just pretend you know what you’re doing. Just pretend you live like this all the time.

  “Come on,” Olivia breathed. She laced her fingers through Tyler’s and led him down the hallway. She gently pushed open several of the doors as they passed. Some of the rooms seemed fully intact, just as they’d been, with gorgeous four-poster beds and antique desks.

  When she reached the final door, she spun back into Tyler and kissed him with more power, more passion, than she’d ever mustered. She then placed a hand on the door and pressed it open. When she turned, she found just what she’d imagined: the master bedroom, with an enormous bay window that cut out toward the trees and offered a view of the tossing waves far beyond. This was where she wanted to lose her virginity. This was it.

  But as she pressed open the door, even more, there was a cry of alarm. Suddenly, it was clear— they weren’t alone in the house. Her eyes whipped to the left of the bay window, where an older woman and a slightly younger man were in various stages of undress. The younger man had the woman pressed against the wall, much in the way Tyler had pressed Olivia against the wall and the woman’s long grey hair had spilled across her shoulders.

  Immediately, Tyler jumped back and said, “Come on, babe! This one is taken!” His laughter echoed through the halls.

  But Olivia was frozen. For when her eyes locked with the older woman’s across the room, there was a stab of recognition and fear in her gut.

  She knew this woman.

  This woman was her Great Aunt Marcia.

  Great Aunt Marcia whispered something into her lover’s ear. She then collected a cardigan from where she’d slung it over an antique desk, wrapped it over her shoulders, and stepped around the man. Her eyes continued to bore into Olivia’s.

  Of course, the first time I break-in somewhere, my family awaits.

  But what the heck is she up to?

  Who is this younger man?

  What is this place?

  When Great Aunt Marcia reached Olivia, she leaned forward and delivered a sneaky smile. She placed both hands on Olivia’s shoulders and then spoke words that would forever burn themselves into the back of Olivia’s skull.

  “Well, well. Look at what we have here. Olivia Hesson. It looks like you’re a great deal more like me than I ever thought. You, my darling, like to create your own chaos. Don’t you?”

  Chapter One

  “Can you feel it?” Olivia stood center-stage in front of her high school class of senior creative writing and English literature students. She spoke in a whisper, her hands on her hips. “Can you feel what Anna feels as she walks that train track in total despair with nowhere else to turn?”

  Olivia placed her hand on her chest and acknowledged the drooping heads of her seventeen and eighteen-year-old students. It was the final period, on a Friday in January, and not a single soul before her seemed at all captivated with Anna Karenina, or Tolstoy, or any literature at all.

  “Xavier. What about you?”

  Xavier sat toward the back. His black curls were like a mop atop his head, and he hadn’t bothered to open his copy of Anna Karenina throughout the entire period.

  “What about me, what?” he asked. His voice was flat, in that “ever the cool kid” way. A few of the other students snickered.

  “Can you describe what Anna felt as she walked toward her death? Can you point out some of the ways Tolstoy paints this picture for the reader? Can you —”

  But before she could finish, the last-period bell rang. Students gathered their things and seemed to immediately fall into whatever conversation they’d been in the midst of before the period had begun. Olivia remained upfront and tried her best to howl out final instructions.

  “Remember! I want a 1000-word essay on Tolstoy’s comparison of individual life versus life at war! And don’t forget to double-space!”

  Xavier walked past her with his books at his side, gripped loosely beneath his fingers. With a funny jolt, Olivia was reminded of Tyler Radcliffe, the boy she’d pined after through all of elementary school, middle school, and into high school until she had ultimately married him and had his baby. Tyler had had this level of “cool,” too. She’d been capt
ivated with it.

  But when she looked at Xavier, she saw nothing but a lost, angry boy — a boy on the verge of becoming a man.

  “Xavier,” she said, just before he slid into the hallway.

  He paused. “Yep?”

  “Make sure you finish reading the book, like your other classmates. I know you’re entirely capable,” Olivia told him.

  “Sure thing, Ms. Hesson. You got it.” His voice was layered in sarcasm. With that, he disappeared into the never-ending stream of students.

  And Olivia, now without the watchful eyes of twenty students before her, fell into her desk chair and placed her head in her hands. Gosh, it had been a difficult week. January was always a gloomy array of grey weather, everlasting snowfall, and a strange ever-present layer of Christmas-cookie fat at the base of her belly, which she spent hours running off to be rid of it by February. There was a discomfort in January, as though you had to grow accustomed to the new year. It itched and scratched like a new sweater.

  Her phone buzzed on her desk. It was her father, Dave Hesson. In the previous few months, since the death of Olivia’s Great Aunt Marcia, her father had called Olivia frequently, both to update her about her Great Aunt Marcia’s rather immense estate and, of course, to translate just how sorry he was the older woman had passed on. Throughout his life, Dave Hesson had treasured his Aunt Marcia. And there had been a good reason behind it.

  To put it plainly, the woman had been a spitfire.

  “Hey, Dad,” Olivia said. “You ready for the circus later?”

  Her father grumbled. “Ha. You know how I feel about those people.”

  “It’s just ridiculous that it’s been pushed back this long anyway. It would have been healthier for everyone to get it over with. Great Aunt Marcia wouldn’t have wanted this.”

  “Yes, but she knew her children and grandchildren would put up some kind of fuss,” her father answered. “A few weeks before she passed, she laughed as she said to me, ‘Dave, get ready for a storm. Duck under cover when they read the will.’ I have no idea what she meant.”