Chapter 25
Nick’s hands seem frozen to the steering wheel of our rental. The engine of the Porsche is running, but we haven’t yet left the nursing home parking lot. He’s barely uttered a word since we got into the car.
I’ve been quiet, too, giving him time to process. Waiting for him to decide it’s safe to open up and let me in. All I know is that his father slept through the brief visit. Nick almost seems relieved by that fact. Based on how distressed he was when he came out of the room, I can only imagine how difficult it would be for him to face the man when he was awake.
My heart still reverberates with the sound of his soul-wrenching sob. I want to hold him, but all I see when I look at him now is his urge to escape. His mind seems fixed on a point that’s somewhere a million miles away from where he and I sit.
Or maybe not that far at all.
I think he’s still trapped in a place located somewhere back in the Keys. One Nick thought he’d left behind him when he was eighteen years old.
I look at him and I’m terrified that he’ll remain trapped in that awful place forever.
“We should go,” he murmurs without looking at me.
When he puts his hand on the gearshift, I cover his fingers with mine. “Go where?”
“Home. Back to New York. I’ll phone ahead to my pilot so he can file a flight plan for us.”
“Nick.” I keep my hold on his hand, giving him no choice but to look at me. “I don’t think leaving right now is a good idea.”
“I sure as hell don’t want to stay here.”
“I know,” I offer gently. “But I think you have to. This isn’t over. It won’t be until you put all of your demons to rest.”
He scoffs. “The only demon I have left to contend with is the shriveled bastard lying in that nursing home. Far as I’m concerned he’s right where he belongs. And now I want us to go back to where we belong.”
“I can’t do that, Nick.”
His face hardens, brows coming together in a scowl. “I need you to.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, that’s not what you need. You need to confront the things that happened to you in your past. All of them, Nick. I think you need to go back to the place it all began.”
The curse that rips from his throat is vicious. “I’m not going back there. I can’t.”
“You can.” I stroke the scarred hand and the knuckles that have gone white from his iron grasp on the gearshift. “You came here to try to forgive your father. If you weren’t able to do that today, then maybe you need to find some way to understand him . . . and what he did.”
“What he did?”
I search for gentle words, even though I know there’s no soft way to bring up the subject of Nick’s abuse. But does he really think I haven’t been able to see the obvious signs? I’ve been there too. I see my broken pieces reflected in him every time I look into his eyes.
“Nick . . . I know you were harmed when you were young. You can tell me. You know I’ll understand. You know it won’t diminish anything I feel for you.”
His head snaps back slightly, as if his mind is just returning to the here and now. “You think my father raped me?” He glances down, frowning. When he looks back up at me, there is a bleakness in his eyes that breaks my heart. “It wasn’t my father, Avery. It was his father. My grandfather.”
~ ~ ~
I haven’t seen the old house on Key Largo since I was eighteen.
Parked in the overgrown, weed-choked dirt driveway in front of it now, it looks like a nightmarish relic from a swamp monster horror film set. Fitting, I think, as I cut the engine on the rental car and stare out at my childhood home through the windshield.
“Are you ready?” Avery asks from the passenger seat.
I don’t imagine I will ever be ready to reenter the scene of my own nightmares. But I nod at her and open the door. We climb out together and she meets me in front of the vehicle, taking my hand.
I can feel her apprehension as we walk toward the sagging front porch of the waterfront bungalow. It’s still daylight out, so the house is visible in all its neglected glory. In the five years since my father has been at the nursing home, it’s obvious that no one has kept the place up.
The canopy of moss-draped trees are scraggly and brown. The tall swamp grasses in the yard have long gone to seed. The bungalow had been painted crisp white by my mother’s own hands before she got sick. Now the wood and cinderblock structure is peeled and weathered to a dingy gray.
As we approach, I catch Avery straining to see past the modest place I was raised to the other, bigger house that looms behind it on a small incline. If it could be called a house anymore. As bad as my childhood home looks, this other one is completely uninhabitable.
The broad stairs leading to the entrance of the pillared home are caved in, inaccessible. The roof has been crushed by a huge oak, most likely uprooted during an old storm. Windows in front gape like a toothless grin. The house is monstrous and even though it’s obviously vacant, I have a hard time allowing my gaze to linger on it.
“My grandparents lived there,” I tell Avery before she has to ask me. “The old captain’s house and the land it’s built on has been in the Baine family for generations.”
Only now does her gait falter. Her look is grim with comprehension. “He lived right in your backyard?”
I shrug, but the movement feels forced. “He and my father fished together on their boat every day for more than thirty years.”
She doesn’t move, just stares at me for a long, painful moment. “Nick, does your father know what happened to you?”
“He knows.”
As averse as I am to enter the bungalow, now that we’re here I can’t seem to stop my feet from taking me inside. Avery and I climb the two cement steps to the front door. My father never locked it, but even if he had the rotted frame wasn’t going to prevent anyone from breaking in.
Not that there is anyone here to worry.
Silt and sawdust from the termites that have likely infested the place explode in a soft cloud as I push the door open. Inside, the house is musty and dank, abandoned.
“Watch your step,” I tell Avery as we step onto the creaky, dust-covered floor of the vestibule.
A short hallway leads through the center of the house to the kitchen. Off to the left is the living room and a connected formal dining room that we never used after Mom was gone. To the right, a staircase leads to two bedrooms on the second floor and a trapdoor that opens into the attic.
I notice the pale carpet runner is the same as it was when I was a kid. Beneath years of neglect, I can still see the splotch of dark paint I spilled on the third step during the summer after fifth grade. The rusty stain looks like blood. I know that’s what’s on Avery’s mind when I see her glance at it too.
“I was painting in the kitchen while Dad was out fishing. I lost track of time, and when I realized he would be coming in soon, I hurried to put my things away before he saw them.”
She nods, already familiar with the fact that my father disapproved of my love for art. “Did he ever see any of your work? It seems like if he saw your talent—”
“He wasn’t interested in anything I did, least of all my painting.” I shrug, leading her away from the stairs and further into the house.
“You said your mother was a painter. Did he disapprove of her art too?”
“No. He adored her and everything about her. I suppose the only thing she did that didn’t earn his approval was me.” When Avery tilts her head in question, I fill in the blanks. “He told me more than once that he never wanted kids. He was thirty-six when he met my mom while delivering some sea bass to a hotel in Miami. They got together and she ended up pregnant soon afterward. If not for that, I don’t think he ever planned to marry, either.”
We end up in the kitchen, even though I have nothing specific to see in the house. I’m shocked to see the small breakfast table. It seemed so much larger when my dad was hunched over it drinking a glass of Jack like it was morning coffee while he paged through the newspaper.
One of those papers is folded neatly on the table, yellowed and curling up at the edges. Next to it is an empty, salt-filmed juice glass. Both items waiting for him to return, as if he has just stepped away for a few minutes not five years.
For some reason I pity the man now that I’m stepping through the remnants of his empty, angry life. I walk over to toss the old paper. When I drop it into the open trash can at the end of the counter, I disturb the mouse and her half a dozen babies who have made their nest behind the bin.
Avery yelps as the rodents scatter around her feet. I can’t hold back my chuckle as she flees the kitchen for the apparent safety of the dining room as if a herd of wild animals were chasing her.
“It’s okay, they’re gone,” I call to her. “You can come back.”
But she doesn’t.
“Avery?” Now I’m the one gripped by sudden, irrational fear. I bolt for the dining room.
And find her standing inside, her gaze riveted to a framed piece hanging on the wall.
“Is this one of your mother’s paintings?”
When I step beside her I feel all of the blood drain out of my head. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
“No. It’s not hers. It’s one of mine.”
“One of yours?” She places her hand on my back, gaping as openly as I am. “If this is one of yours, Nick, then does that mean—”
“It’s the only one left.”
My voice is wooden, but I can’t help it. I only had five paintings I was proud enough of to keep when I got out of the hospital and finally left this place for good. I took those five paintings with me to New York. A couple of years later I destroyed them all, consequences of my own pointless anger at Kathryn . . . and myself.
I thought this one had been destroyed too.
Not by me, but by my father the night we fought just a few paces from where I stand with Avery now.
I’m in complete shock to see my painting again. Even more so, to see it hanging in the old man’s house.
I stare at the expressionist painting of a white bird soaring over the surface of crystalline blue water, its feathers just skimming the waves. Above the glorious wings, a brilliant sunset explodes in vibrant shades of gold. I remember working on this piece, my sense of accomplishment in seeing my vision of fire and water and the slim plane of harmony that exists between them take shape on my canvas. I had been ridiculously proud of this one.
Avery rests her head against my shoulder as she studies my work. “You painted him too. Icarus.”
“Yes.” I smile, turning my head to press a kiss to hers. “I can’t believe it’s here. That he kept it. I thought he threw it away after he ruined it that night.”
She looks at me, frowning. “What night?”
“The night we fought over there in the living room.”
“That’s the room? That’s the window that he—”
I nod, my scarred hand clenching at the memory.
“Tell me what happened, Nick.”
I see the night playing out in my mind as I reach up and carefully remove my painting from the wall. I set it down on the dining room table, my breath gusting out of me on a long, heavy sigh.
“I was eighteen and I’d been out drinking with a group of friends at some rich fuck’s house party down by Tavernier. I noticed he had a lot of art on the walls. Some of it was shit, but some of it was good. Really good. We started talking and I told him that I painted too. I told him as soon as I saved up some money I was going to move to Miami and try to make a go of it with my work, and he said he’d like to see what I had. He said to bring my best piece around in the morning and maybe he’d buy it.”
At my side, Avery glances at me cautiously. “This painting?”
“I didn’t want to wait until morning. I didn’t want to take the chance that he might change his mind in the meantime. So I went home. Dad was already stinking drunk when I got here. He started in on me about where I’d gone and a dozen other complaints he felt he had to air. I told him I didn’t have time for his bullshit and I ran upstairs to get my work.”
Avery leans against the table so that she’s facing me, her expression tender but etched with dread.
“He followed me upstairs, carrying a glass of bourbon. The way he was talking and swaying on his feet I figured he’d already had several before I got home. I made the mistake of telling him what I was doing, the interest someone had in my art. I thought it might get him off my back but it only made him nastier.”
“Nastier, how?” She asks when it takes me a moment to decide how to continue. How much I should say. “Nick . . . what did he say to you?”
I choke out a brittle laugh. “He went back to one of his favorite cuts—that the last thing he wanted was to raise a son who was a pussy. That I needed to forget about painting and toughen up or life was going to chew me up and spit me out. He said he didn’t want to have some artsy fag for a son, that for my own good I needed to get my hands dirty like a real man. Like him and his father.”
Avery winces. “Jesus.”
“He was drunk,” I say, unsure why I feel the need to defend him. “I’d never seen him so wasted. So fucking belligerent. But I was drunk too. I lost it. Before I knew it, I was saying things I’d never said to him before. ‘You want me to be a real man, huh? A real man like you, a disgusting drunk and a pitiful excuse for a father? Or maybe you think I ought to be a real man like your father, is that it? A sick monster who gets off on fucking little boys.’”
Avery’s eyes close briefly, but not before a tear leaks down her face. “Oh, Nick.”
She reaches for me, and it takes all of my willpower to stand still and accept her comfort. I’m vibrating with anger at these memories. But I can’t stop them from flooding in now.
“I’ll never forget his expression. His entire face just . . . sagged. As if it were melting because of what I’d said. Then his fury erupted. He called me a liar. He said I was making it up, just trying to hurt him.” I laugh absurdly at the idea. “Jesus Christ, as if what happened to me would hurt him at all. He exploded. Just fucking lost his mind with rage. He threw the glass of bourbon at me, but I ducked out of the way. Instead of hitting me, it smashed against my painting.”
My right hand moves to the small tear that’s been patched from underneath but is still present in the canvas. The faint stain of thrown whiskey still darkens some of the purity of the bird’s feathers.
“He ruined it,” I state flatly. “I couldn’t take it to the man who might have bought it after that. My father destroyed my work. He destroyed my first potential chance to get out of this godforsaken swamp. With or without the painting, I decided I was going to leave that night. Why the fuck didn’t he just let me go?”
“What did he do?”
“He followed after me when I headed back downstairs to the living room. He kept calling me a liar, telling me what I said about my grandfather wasn’t true. But it was true. All of it. How could he not see the evil in his father? He spent practically every day of his life on a boat with the asshole. He had to know something of what his father was really like, didn’t he?”
She slowly shakes her head, seemingly at a loss for words. There are no words that can change what happened. Nothing can be said that will erase the damage.
“I wanted to hurt the old man the way his denial was hurting me. So I told him everything. I gave him details—ugly ones. Graphic ones. I didn’t spare him a thing. Not even when he started hitting me, telling me to shut the fuck up. I just kept talking. I told him how it started—Grandpa inviting me to his house after Mom died, telling me I could cry in front of him if I felt like it, that he wouldn’t make fun of me the way Dad did. He started touching me soon after that. He said it was okay because we were family. Then the other stuff began. I described it all to my father, delighting in his repulsion, in the anger he couldn’t control. At some point, I remember thinking that I just wished he’d finally kill me. If he wanted to shut me up, deny everything I had experienced, why didn’t he just fucking end me right there? The next thing I knew, I was crashing through that window. “
“Oh, my God,” Avery murmurs, her voice catching. “Nick, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for what you went through. I’m sorry that your father refused to believe you—that he could hurt you like that.”
I scoff. “The fact that he called me a liar was worse than the rest of it. Worse than the injury to my hand and arm. Worse than the loss of my art.”
She nods, and I know she understands. Avery, of all people, understands what I’m feeling and how hard it’s been to keep all of this inside for so long.
Her touch is a warm comfort, her gaze fierce and loving. “You haven’t lost all of your art, Nick. He kept this for you.” She grows quiet, considering in silence for moment. “Nick, maybe he was sorry for what he did to you that night.”
Could that be true? It’s almost impossible for me to fathom. The old man never said he was sorry. Not for that night. Not for a goddamn thing.
I glance at my depiction of Icarus lying on the table. “I never thought I’d see this again. It was gone when I got home from the hospital after my injury. I just assumed he’d thrown it away.”
“It looks like he tried to restore it.”
I nod, feeling oddly numb as I run my finger over the crude repairs. Why would he bother? Why would he keep it on his wall when he couldn’t stand the idea of me painting when I actually lived here?
I may never have those answers. I doubt I’ll ever be able to comprehend my father’s animosity toward me or his vehement denials of everything I told him.
But Avery was right that I needed to see this house again. I needed to walk through this place and realize there’s nothing left here that can hurt me.
Not my father’s confounding hatred of me.
Not even the hideous memories of what my grandfather did to me.
None of those things can touch me so long as Avery is standing at my side.
I kiss her, holding her close for a long while. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For loving me. For being with me. I never would’ve come here if not for you.” I press my lips to her forehead. “You were right, Avery. I had to do this. I’m glad I did. And now I’m ready to leave.”
“Yes.” She smiles lovingly and nods. “But not without this.”
She carefully picks up the framed painting and a puzzled look comes over her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. There’s something—” She turns the frame around.
Taped to the back of it is a yellowed envelope. One bearing my name and the address of Baine International’s office in New York, written in my father’s bold scrawl.
“What the hell?” I remove the envelope and lift the brittle seal. “There’s a letter inside.”
I take it out and unfold the single sheet of handwritten words.
My father’s words, a confession dated only weeks before his stroke.