Cocoa Beach

  Samuel hands me a damp glass of lemonade. Our fingertips brush, and he doesn’t move away.

  “I didn’t realize Simon’s taste was so modern,” I say.

  “I didn’t either, when I first arrived. I suppose neither of us had the opportunity to know him particularly well.”

  “I knew him well enough.”

  “In hospitals and hotels. But you never set up a home together, did you?”

  The question is rhetorical. Samuel knows the solution to this hypothesis as well as I do. Wasn’t he the very man who drove me away from Cornwall, in an ancient Daimler whose cracked leather seats released a particular smell that still hangs in my nostrils? Still: “That’s true,” I say, and I settle in my chair, back still rigid, away from his looming figure.

  Samuel tilts his head and returns to his station by the window. “I am sorry about all this. It must have been the devil of a shock.”

  “Yes, it was. I still can’t imagine him dead.”

  “Neither can I. Of all of us, he was the one most alive.”

  “But you saw him dead. You identified the body.”

  “Only by the ring.” Samuel taps his finger on the window frame, and the action reminds me so much of Simon, I turn away to drink my lemonade. “The body itself was burned beyond recognition. Poor chap.”

  “Poor chap? You can still say that, after everything?”

  “Yes, I can. He was my brother, after all.”

  I think of Sophie, and the invisible thread that connects my heart to hers, even when an ocean opens between us. How my sister could commit no possible evil—even if she were capable of evil, and Sophie is as pure as a child—that would snap that thread.

  “I suppose so.”

  “And we had a row, you know, not too long before he died. The last time we met, a god-awful almighty row. I think you should know that, before you hear it from someone else. It’s been a weight on my mind ever since. And he stormed back to Maitland, to the plantation, and that was the last I saw of him. Until I went to identify his body. What there was of it.”

  My lips are numb from the ice. I set the glass on the round marble table next to the armchair, and as the two connect in a soft clink, something else occurs to me. “What ring?”

  “Ring?”

  “How you identified him. He had a ring, you said.”

  Samuel turns. “Yes. It was your wedding ring. The one you gave back. He kept it on him. I’m not sure how, in a pocket or something. The fire got to it. But I could still make out the inscription. Your initials, and his.” He reaches into his pocket. “Here it is, if you want a look.”

  I stare at his grim expression. At his outstretched hand. The sunlight catches a glint from somewhere within that dense landscape of palm and mangrove, and I think, It can’t be my ring; it’s too small. But of course it is. Dull and bent, no longer a ring but a piece of burnt scrap. It might be anyone’s old ring, but Samuel says it’s mine, Samuel says it’s the ring that Simon placed on my finger three years ago amid a litany of Christian vows, and unlike my late husband, and for all his faults, Samuel is a straightforward man who speaks only truth.

  I realize I have stopped moving, stopped breathing, and before this paralysis becomes permanent I spring from the armchair and make for the opposite end of the room, where a broad, high window looks not eastward toward Europe but north, in the direction of New York City. I place my hands on the windowsill and breathe in large, shallow gasps, staring upriver at the ships coursing the tranquil blue water.

  Behind me, Samuel swears and apologizes. I hear footsteps, and the click of wood, and the clink of glass, and a moment later, just as I’ve recovered the ordinary rhythms of respiration, my lemonade glass reappears at my elbow. I snatch it away and Samuel says, Careful!

  But it’s too late. I’ve already gulped down the first few ounces, and my throat bursts into flame. The cavities of my head fill with smoke.

  “My God! What did you put in it?”

  “Gin.”

  Another spasm. I set down the glass on the ledge. “Isn’t that against the law?”

  “Not to drink. Only to buy.”

  “You had to have bought it somewhere.”

  Samuel shrugged. “The liquor cabinet was already full when I arrived. What’s a fellow to do but drink?”

  I lift the glass again, and this time I sip more carefully, and the gin has its proper effect. Tamed by lemonade, in fact, it’s what you might call tranquilizing. My pulse settles, my nerves simmer down. The chasm between my ribs fills with something or other. The warmth on my shoulder, I realize, belongs to Samuel’s hand. I shrug it off and turn to face him, and that’s my second mistake, greater even than the reckless gulping of Samuel’s particular recipe for refreshment.

  Maybe it’s his grim, unhappy expression. Maybe it’s the color of his eyes. His smell, or the gin, or the memory of my wedding night, or God knows. Maybe it’s the effect of a sleepless Pullman sleeper, clackety-clack all the way from New York. My eyes, which have remained dry for the past three years, dry and dignified throughout every last thing, start to liquefy at last. I bend my face to the side, but not soon enough.

  “Stupid girl,” he says, “crying for him.”

  But his voice isn’t without sympathy, and his chest—broad, covered with characteristic plainness in a white shirt and a light gray jacket, unbuttoned—possesses a strange power of gravity, like the earth itself. I find myself leaning toward him, or rather toppling, like a stone tower whose foundation has just turned to sand. An inch or two away from his collar, I catch myself, startling, but not before his right hand discovers the blade of my shoulder, and this gentle, masculine pressure finishes me. My forehead connects with the side of his neck, at the slope where it meets his clavicle, and my fingers rise to hang from the ridge of his shoulders. He goes on cradling my back with his one palm—the other hand, I believe, remains at his side—and says nothing, not even the traditional Hush, now or There, there. Thank God. I don’t think I could have survived any words. His skin and his collar turn wet, though I’m not really sobbing. Not crying as you ordinarily imagine the act of sorrow. Just a small heave every so often, and the streaming from my eyes, which continues for some time. I don’t know how long. I’ve lost the sense of passing minutes, here in the damp, warm hollow of my brother-in-law’s neck.

  I wake unsteadily, discombobulated by the heat and the sunlight slanting through the window glass between a pair of pale, billowy curtains. By the unfamiliarity of the bed in which I lie. A white sheet covers me, and beneath that I’m wearing only a petticoat. A clock chimes from somewhere in the room, but by the time I remember to count the strokes, it’s too late. Several, at any rate. A soft knock sounds on the door, and I realize that’s the sound that roused me in the first place.

  I straighten myself. Lift the sheet to my neck, and that’s when I remember Samuel, and our embrace, and going to bed for a nap. The rest is blurry. I glance fearfully to the side, and I’m relieved to discover I’m alone.

  “Who is it?” I call.

  “It’s me. It’s Clara.” A tiny pause. “Simon’s sister.”

  There’s something about sisters, isn’t there? At the sound of Clara’s voice, I find myself struck by a gust of yearning for my Sophie, as fierce and destructive as one of those tropical hurricanes that are said to strike these shores from time to time. Sophie, all grown up now, whom I have left once more to bear the burden of our past on her own slim shoulders while I pursue some chimera of my own making, some delusion of salvation in a foreign land.

  Clara. Another surprise. But why not? Of course she would accompany her brother Samuel to Florida, since she didn’t have any other family of her own. Parents dead, and all the marriageable men killed in France. That’s what you did, if you were a good maiden sister: help your brother carry his burden. I should have been expecting her, really.

  “Come in,” I say.

  The door cracks open. “Someone wants to see you,” says a woman’s sweet voice,
and Evelyn races through the crack and bounds onto the bed.

  “Mama! Mama! Aunt Clarrie cake!”

  “Oh, my! Did Aunt Clara give you cake, sweetheart?”

  “I hope you don’t mind. Samuel said you needed rest, and that’s what aunties are for, isn’t it? Giving sweets without permission!”

  From the last time—the only time—I saw Clara Fitzwilliam, I retain only a vague recollection that her face was drawn and pale, and her voice was somber. But that was years ago, when her parents lay dying. Now she’s transformed. It must be the absence of grief, or maybe the Florida sun has touched some seam of gold inside her; who knows? Her skin is luminous, her dark hair bobbed and cheerful. She’s wearing a sundress of polka-dotted periwinkle blue, the hem of which flutters around the middle of her dainty calves. Beneath it, her stockings are white and extremely fine. She gazes on my bare shoulders without the slightest shred of embarrassment.

  “Of course I don’t mind. How are you, Clara?”

  A banal, inadequate question at such a moment, as if we’re the ordinary kind of sisters-in-law, meeting again after a month or two abroad. But if she finds me awkward, she doesn’t take any notice.

  “Hot and sunburnt! I’ve spent the day at the beach. I can’t seem to soak it in enough, after all those years in the English rain.”

  “But you’ve lived here for years, haven’t you? You and Samuel.”

  “Years? Dear me, no. Samuel came over all by himself, the rotter, the year after Simon left England. Leaving me all alone and friendless in soggy old Blighty. I only arrived last winter, after Simon died. Samuel cabled me. Simply ghastly. Have you slept enough? Your daughter’s charming. What a delicious surprise. We had no idea. A real live niece! Like finding a shilling in the pocket of one’s winter coat.” She goes to the window, throws open the curtains to their farthest possible extent, and closes her eyes like a goddess summoning the sun. (Or maybe sending it over the horizon—the quality of the light suggests sunset.) She adds, without opening her eyes, “You look well, by the way. Quite stunning. Far better than I imagined you would, after all you’ve been through.”

  Evelyn wriggles out of my arms and slides from the bed to join her aunt.

  “Thank you. What time is it? I suppose I should be dressing for dinner.”

  “Only seven o’clock. But—”

  “Seven o’clock! But Evelyn goes to bed in half an hour!”

  Clara turns and smiles. “I’ve already given her tea. That should suffice, shouldn’t it? But you needn’t wear anything particular. I’ll ring down and order us a supper. They do a frightfully nice supper, you know. And the best thing is, you don’t have to pay. Because it’s already yours!”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “Of course, I expect you’re used to being rich. But it’s all been rather novel for Samuel and yours truly. I say, I do hope you don’t mind that we’ve been living here like parasites, waiting for you to arrive? Or rather, I’m the parasite. Samuel works like a bee. No, not like a bee. Like a beast! A beast in harness, poor dear. But I’m simply useless. Just lying about in the sun, trying to warm my poor English blood, and then coming home to all this”—she waves her hand—“and drinking all your champagne.”

  I can’t help smiling. “You do know you’re not supposed to be drinking champagne in America?”

  “It’s awfully bad of me. But I promise, not a penny’s changed hands. So we’re quite in the clear, legally speaking, at least according to Samuel.”

  “Yes. Samuel.”

  She steps forward to sit on the edge of the bed, and Evelyn, who has been peering out the window behind her, sidles up to grab her knees. Without looking down, Clara covers Evelyn’s tiny fingers with her own, a gesture of unconscious affection that ought to disturb me, I suppose, since I hardly know Clara at all. She’s Simon’s sister, she’s almost a stranger. Instead the touch of hands warms me. I don’t know why. A craving for Sophie, maybe, who is so different and yet so strangely like this newfound Clara—full of energy and enthusiasm and a boundless capacity for love. A never-ending faith in tomorrow’s joys.

  “Samuel is such a rock,” she says. “I never knew what a rock he could be, until all this.”

  “Do you mean what happened to Simon?”

  She caresses Evelyn’s fingers, and her voice turns kind. “You say it so calmly. You’re not grieved at all?”

  “I’ve already grieved.”

  “Oh, you’re that sort, then.”

  “What sort?”

  “The practical sort, the kind who puts things behind them and moves on. How I envy you. I think about Simon every day. It consumes me. Wondering what I might have done differently, if I might have changed him somehow. How I might have saved things. If only I’d—” She glances at Evelyn. “Well, never mind. I suppose we’ll speak about it eventually. In the meantime, you must dress, and I’ll put our wee darling here in her bath.”

  “Oh, but I should do that.”

  “Dearest, it’s no bother. I adore children. And you must rest, you really must.”

  “But she’s only two—”

  “I promise, I shall keep my most beady of beadiest eyes on her well-being. You’re not to worry about a thing, do you understand? She’s my only niece, after all. I shall worship her idolatrously. My darling only niece.”

  I lean back against the pillows. “Yes. Of course. She’s your niece.”

  “There we are. Is there anything I can get for you?”

  “No, thank you. I believe my trunks are already unpacked.”

  “Yes, they are. I saw to it personally. Such fun, to be ordering maids about in your service. I do hope everything’s comfortable. I do so want you to be comfortable, after everything you’ve endured. Now that we’ve found you at last. Our sister.” She reaches forward and squeezes my hand.

  I thank her, and she hoists Evelyn onto her hip and carries her out of the room, like any adoring auntie, leaving the smell of roses behind her—a scent I hadn’t noticed until now, in the draft of her leaving.

  As she passes through the doorway, she pauses and says over her shoulder, “Oh! I’ve forgot. I’m meant to tell you that Samuel has gone to the docks to supervise some shipment or another. He won’t be back until late, so we’re not to wait up.”

  At the sound of the clicking latch, I gather up my knees in my arms. The sheets are soft and fine, and I realize this must have been Simon’s bedroom. Simon’s bed. Something about the size of the room, and the windows overlooking the river, and the white-painted door in the corner that leads, I suspect, to a private bathroom. Simon’s bathroom. Simon slept on these soft sheets and gazed at this ceiling and bathed behind that door. As I concentrate my mind, as I tread my gaze carefully along the pale walls and the draperies, the few pieces of dark, elegant furniture, this intuition grows into a certainty. This is Simon’s room. Simon was here.

  Simon is still here.

  I suppose you think I’m crazy. Simon’s death is a legal fact, after all. No one disputes the evidence. His own brother identified Simon’s burned body, and I have reason to trust the integrity of Samuel Fitzwilliam.

  And there is the ring. Who can argue with the presence of a ring, recovered from a body in a fire? I look down at my right hand, and there sits the battered gold band, fit with some effort around my fourth finger, just above the knuckle. It’s my wedding ring, my genuine twenty-four-karat wedding ring, the worse for wear; I don’t question that fact for an instant.

  But the sight of this poor, tormented bauble, curled in the center of Samuel’s palm, struck me not with grief—as Samuel supposed—but with something else. Some kind of psychological crisis, some kind of dissonance of the mind, in which the solid, indisputable object before your eyes clamors against the understanding in your brain, and that understanding is defeated, pulverized, crushed under the physical evidence of your husband’s demise. And how are you supposed to contemplate what remains? You can’t. You fall asleep instead.

  But now I’
ve awakened. I have awakened in Simon’s bed and spoken to Simon’s sister, and the cool suggestion of Simon’s presence returns to me, as naturally as the sun climbs above the ocean in the morning, as unsettling as the fingers of a wraith pressed against your neck.

  The faint sound of running water drifts through the plaster walls—a sound that should probably fill me with anxiety but instead leaves me weightless with gratitude. Aunt Clara, giving my daughter her evening bath, so I can rest at last. Our sister, Clara said. And it was true. All along, as I plodded through my days in New York, waiting for some kind of inevitable denouement, I had this family. I had a brother-in-law, and a sister-in-law, and a husband whose existence I tried to ignore. And I know nearly nothing about them. The history of the past three years is as mysterious to me as the mangroves growing on the opposite shore of the river, the mangroves surrounding Simon’s burned house on Cocoa Beach.

  I turn my head to the window, and the hot blue sky of this foreign land. This Florida, where Simon went to seek his fortune after I left him in Cornwall three years ago, and where he has met some kind of end, and now the remains of him drift about me, his presence slips in and out of my vision, and I have got to find a way to grasp him.

  Because that’s the real reason I’ve come, isn’t it? Not because of duty, and certainly not because of love. Not even in order give my daughter a sense of her father, or any of those fine, sentimental things.

  No. I’m here because I’ve done enough running away, haven’t I? Enough hiding from what terrifies me. I’m twenty-five years old, a wife and a mother and a sister, and I’ve just watched a jury of twelve sensible men convict my father of murdering my mother. I’ve survived the worst possible ordeal, the question that’s haunted me since I was eight years old, the source of all my waking dread. I have courage now. I have resolve. I have discovered the truth about one man.