Cocoa Beach by Beatriz Williams
Prologue
May 16, 1919
My dear wife, Let me tell you about this pen.
Handsome object, made of black enamel, repeating fleur-de-lis motif in gold leaf. Casing somewhat scratched owing to years of hard use (rather like its owner). Knows you well enough, I expect, to write this letter without instruction. Anyway, I wish it would. I have been holding the damned thing for an hour at least. Turning it about between my fingers. Getting up and walking around the room. Sitting and staring and resolving.
The truth is, I’m afraid I don’t know what to say—I don’t know what to write to make you believe in me again. I stand accused and convicted of a despicable crime, and you never allowed me a word in my own defense. If I could, I’d whisper in your ear the entire truth, but I suspect you wouldn’t believe me, would you? God knows, as a practical matter, you shouldn’t believe me. Anyway, I can’t tell you the truth, at least not yet, so that’s that.
Instead of relying on your faith, then, I shall have to attempt the next best thing, the hardest thing. I am going to prove my—I was going to say innocence, but that’s not quite true enough, is it? I am not an innocent man, and I’ve never pretended to be, at least with you—the one person with whom I never pretended. But I can insist I’m innocent of this one crime at least—that I married you for yourself alone—and since I’m afraid, in the wake of my parents’ deaths, the house must now be sold for taxes and the estate broken up, I shall take up the last inheritance remaining to me and make something of myself at last: something, I hope, you will one day recognize as the man you thought you had married.
I shall write my next letter from the mosquito-bitten town of Cocoa, Florida, at the head of a once-grand shipping empire, which I intend to resurrect for your sake. And then—well, what? You will decide, my own dear phantom, my irreplaceable and inalienable wife, my own Virginia. If you’ll remember—if you’re honest in remembering me—I have always allowed you to choose for yourself.
In the meantime, may God watch over you.
Yours always, S.F.
Chapter 1
Cocoa Beach, Florida, June 1922
Someone has cleared the ruins away, but you can still see that a house burned to the ground here, not long ago. The earth is black and charred, and the air smells faintly of soot.
In the center of what must once have been a courtyard, a modest stone fountain has toppled from its pedestal. Already the weeds have begun to sprout from the base, encouraged by the hot, damp sunshine and the fertile soil. Everything grows in Florida. Grows and grows, unchecked by any puny human efforts to control nature’s destiny. I sink to the edge of the pedestal and call to my daughter, who’s poking a stick through the long, sharp grasses that grow along the perimeter of the paving stones. She looks up in surprise, as if she’s forgotten I exist, and runs to me on her stubby bare legs. On her mouth is the same startling smile that used to light her father’s face, and there are moments—such as this one—when the resemblance strikes me so forcefully, I can’t breathe.
“Mama! Mama! There mouse!”
“A mouse? In the grass? Are you sure?”
“Yes, Mama! Mouse! He run away.”
“Of course he did, darling, if you poked him with your stick.”
Without another word she burrows her hot, wriggling body into my chest, and I’m not one to waste such an opportunity. Not me. Not now. I clasp Evelyn between my arms and bury my face in her sweet-smelling hair, and I breathe her in, great lungfuls of Evelyn, as if I could actually do that, if I inhaled with enough strength and will. Breathe my daughter’s spirit into mine.
I haven’t told her that her father died here four months ago, on this very patch of ground, or even that he built this house and lived in it while we—Evelyn and I—inhabited our comfortable brownstone on East Thirty-Second Street in New York City, together with Grandpapa and Aunt Sophie. For one thing, I don’t want to frighten her with the idea that a person could burn to death at two o’clock in the morning in his own house, just like that. For another, she’s not that curious about him, not yet. She’s not yet three years old, after all, and she doesn’t know any other little girls. Doesn’t know that most of them have both mothers and fathers, living at home together, sometimes with brothers and sisters, too. One day, of course, she’ll want to know more. She’ll ask me questions, and I’ll have to think of plausible answers.
And there is another reason, a final reason. The reason I’m here in Florida to begin with, examining this blackened ground with my jaded eyes. I suppose I’ll tell Evelyn about that, too, when the time comes, but for now I’m holding this reason inside my own head and nowhere else. I’ve learned, over the years, to keep my private thoughts strictly to myself.
Behind us, Mr. Burnside clears his throat in that slight, unnecessary way that lawyers have. I imagine they think it conveys discretion. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” he says.
“Yes, Mr. Burnside?”
“Have you seen enough? I hate to hurry you, but we do have a whole mess of appointments this morning.”
Mr. Burnside, you understand, likes to keep to a tight schedule, especially in the face of this shimmering June sun, which forces all business around here to conclude by lunchtime. After which Mr. Burnside will spend the rest of his day inside a high-ceilinged, north-facing room, sipping a cool, strong drink while an electric fan rotates above him. If he can spare the energy, he might turn over a paper or two on his desk.
On the other hand, he’s an extremely competent man of affairs, as I’ve had plenty of occasion to discover in the past two months, and the sound of his voice—practical, confident, somewhat impatient—is enough to stiffen my resolve. To blow away the dust of regret, or nostalgia, or grief, or whatever it is that’s stinging my eyes, that’s clogging my chest as I hold Simon’s daughter in my arms and try to imagine that Simon is dead. Dead. What a word. An impossible word, as unlike Simon as clay is to fire. I kiss the top of Evelyn’s head, detach her from my arms, and rise to my feet. The early sun catches my back. Not far away, the ocean beats against the yellow sand, and the sound makes me want to take off my shoes and socks and wander, aimless, into the surf.
Instead, I say: “Are you certain the remains belonged to my husband?”
“Yes, ma’am. His brother identified the body.”
“Samuel.”
“That’s the man. Big fella.”
“And this was Simon’s house, of course. There’s no mistake about that?”