The Beach House (31 page)

It is almost as if Evan, Everett, whatever it is he is actually called, has spent his entire life waiting for this moment, his entire life knowing that it would come full circle, that he would not end his days without somehow seeing Nan again, making amends, acknowledging his mistakes and his wrongs, and trying to right them again.

He just never thought it would happen like this.

When Bee first told him about Nantucket, that she and Daniel were going, first on a weekend they had won, and then for most of the summer, Evan had felt his heart almost stop, and he had known then that the time was almost upon him.

He had never figured out how he would make his way back to Nantucket, but had turned it over to God, had accepted that somehow it would happen. And he had thought he had prepared himself, thought he had known what to say.

It turns out he was entirely wrong.

All those years ago, he had lost everything. All he could think about, from the minute he awoke to the minute he went to bed, was how to get out of the mess he was in.

First, there were the small poker games on the island, then the large games in New York, where the stakes became so high he was throwing in things he didn’t have—a Hinckley yacht that belonged to a friend but was moored by the house, giving the false impression it belonged to the Powells, large sums of nonexistent money, jewels that Everett couldn’t find when it came time to pay, Nan having wisely hidden them, more to protect them from the scores of strangers constantly passing through the house, never thinking the greatest threat would be her husband.

He would wake with a vice of panic around his heart, have breakfast with his son, Michael, and feel the vice grow ever tighter as the bills came in, people needing to be paid, then phone calls from the bank managers requesting he call them back urgently.

All he needed, he kept telling himself, was one big win. He had won before, it was surely only a matter of time before he would win again. He would turn it around. He had to. What other choice did he have?

Then came that final game, the game when he had been winning, when his luck had finally turned around. The buzz, the surge of adrenaline, and the final hand when he looked down and had a full hand, the best hand he’d had in months, the kind of hand that didn’t come along too often, at least not in his lifetime, and he knew he’d won, knew this was the moment he’d been waiting for.

It was only him and James Callaghan left in the game, and Callaghan was known for his bluffs. Everett knew he would win, and he silently pushed everything into the center of the table, the chips, the notes, everything that he had, and much that he did not, and he showed his hand triumphantly as the rest of the men in that quiet room held their breath. He smiled as he sat back in relief, preparing to gather his things, to start afresh with his family, to stop gambling and never put them in this precarious position again.

Callaghan leaned forward, and Everett stared into his eyes, waiting for him to throw his cards down, but he turned them over, expressionless, and still, to this day, when he thinks about it, it feels as if he were watching it happen as if in a dream.

Ten, jack, queen, king and ace of hearts. A royal flush. The world stopped and Everett knew that his life was over. He got up, still in a dream, and went back home, completely numb.

The idea came to him that night, after he’d kissed Michael, who had grunted and stirred gently in his sleep, after he’d sat for hours in the window seat looking at the harbor, making his way through a bottle of single malt.

He had gazed at Nan, sleeping soundly, before he left. Kissed his fingers and held them to her lips, then padded out of the house, under cover of darkness, careful not to let anyone see him as he made his way to the harbor, folding up some clothes and his father’s watch, leaving them on the beach as he went.

Nan would be okay, that much he knew. She was the strongest woman he had ever met, and as hard as it was for him to leave the woman he loved, she would claw her way out of the mess he had got them into, would get over his loss, would continue to have a full and fulfilling life.

And Michael? Michael who adored his father, who begged to come along wherever his father was going? It was heartbreaking to leave him, but better to leave, better for Michael to think his father had died than to know what a failure he was. Everett hoped Nan would never tell him, never reveal the trouble he had left them in.

There wasn’t another way, he thought, hunched up in the corner of the old ferry, coat collar pulled up high, hat pulled down low, not looking at the few people on the boat that early in the morning, careful not to draw any attention to himself.

He got to Hyannisport, and hitched a ride into New England, ending up in New Haven. It was a big enough city for him to remain anonymous, and far away enough from New York to ensure he wouldn’t bump into anyone he knew, anyone who could dispute his suicide, for he knew that’s how it would appear, knew it was the only answer, the only thing that would make any sense, particularly after Nan found out the full extent of their debt.

In many ways he wished he
had
been brave enough for suicide. He had thought about it, God knows he had thought about it, and as he gently placed the pile of clothes on the beach in the black of night he had wondered how hard it would actually be to set foot into the icy waters, to let the waves carry him away.

He couldn’t do it, and New Haven turned out to be the right place for him to reinvent himself. Here he was no longer Everett Powell, scion of one of the East Coast’s great families, but Evan Palliser, from Cape Cod, a divorced man who had moved to New Haven to start afresh.

Unlike Everett, who had been brought up in the lap of luxury and had never had to work, Evan was going to be different. Evan was going to stand on his own two feet, find a job, build some semblance of a life, learn to live with the guilt that followed him around every second of every day.

First, he had to conquer his demons. He went to the only place he could think of, a place he hadn’t visited in years, a place he thought had no meaning in his life.

He went to church.

There, for the first time in his life, Evan fell to his knees and prayed for forgiveness. He knelt until his knees were sore, his bones creaky and painful, and he asked to be shown the way. As he knelt there, with only a couple of dollars in his pocket, no place to sleep, nowhere to go, he felt a peace settle over him, and he realized that if he were ever to believe that someone like him would have a spiritual awakening, if indeed he even believed in the possibility of a spiritual awakening, it was highly probable that he had just experienced one.

The reverend walked in at five, found Evan still kneeling, saw the suffering in his eyes, and brought him into the back to make him coffee. Evan confessed he needed a job, a place to stay. By the end of the night he had been set up with a bed in the home of the McCoughlin family, and a job working in the family business, making steel locks.

He didn’t speak much in the beginning. He worked hard, kept his head down, kept his secrets to himself. The McCoughlin family was impressed, particularly Donald McCoughlin, the son of Scottish immigrants who had built the business from nothing; he saw that Evan had a bearing, a class that would serve them well.

He began selling the locks, swiftly rising to become head of the sales force, buying a small and rather ordinary house on the fringes of an up-and-coming neighborhood, doing it up on evenings and weekends, taking books out of the library to learn how to carve trim, how to lay a wood floor, how to install window frames.

He would go to sleep at night and dream of his family, dream of going back, finding them again, making it right; but news of the Powell tragedy had reached them in New Haven, and he knew he had to let sleeping dogs lie, knew that to do otherwise would perhaps cause them all more pain. He had caused enough.

The poker games still called him, but he relied on God to get him through, and he found that as long as he went to church, stayed industrious, kept himself busy, the callings were fewer and fewer.

He saved his money, and when his house was done he didn’t sell it, as so many might have, he kept it and rented it, and bought another, and soon another, and another.

Evan first saw Margaret at the McCoughlins’ house, but only got to know her properly at a dance. He hadn’t wanted to go; he continued to feel shame, and guilt at having fun, at doing anything other than working and paying his penance for his previous life, but this was a company dance and Mr. McCoughlin had demanded he be there.

Margaret was Mr. McCoughlin’s daughter, and when he saw her at the dance it was the first time, since Nan, that he had looked at a woman with interest, thought of anyone other than his wife.

They chatted, shared one dance, and when he left she smiled at him and told him he ought to socialize more, ought to join her and her friends one night, for she had been watching him, had wondered how he could be such a recluse at such a young age, particularly when he clearly had so much to offer.

They were married two years later, Evan knowing he was committing bigamy, but telling himself it was okay because he was no longer Everett Powell. Marrying as Evan Palliser seemed somehow more acceptable. Margaret was desperate to get married, and it was true that he loved her; and he saw a chance, as selfish as it sounded, of happiness again.

Bee was born nine months after their wedding day, and from the moment the doctor stepped outside the delivery room to tell him he had a baby girl, Evan fell in love.

He had loved Michael, but things had been different then. He had been a terrible father to Michael, too consumed with gambling to pay him any real attention, constantly planning his next game, a new strategy, his next win.

Second time around he could be the father he’d never been, the father he knew he
could
be. From the beginning Bee was a daddy’s girl, the apple of his eye, the daughter who could do no wrong.

Bee didn’t need to know secrets, didn’t ask questions about his past, how he grew up, where—questions he had learned to evade, dismiss, waving his hand as if they weren’t important and swiftly changing the subject, trying to ignore the growing pain in his wife’s eyes.

There were still many occasions when Evan woke up in the middle of the night, got out of bed and tiptoed down to the kitchen in their grand 1830s colonial—the nicest one in town, for Mr. McCloughlin had become ill and Evan, said to have the golden touch, had taken over the company, with grand plans for expanding it—and drank tumblers full of whiskey, shame building as he thought of Nan, thought of Michael, thought of what he left behind.

He knew, by that time, that gambling was, for him, an addiction, a drug in the same way that alcohol was to an alcoholic, and he knew that he could never attend even one poker game, make one bet, or he would be right back at the beginning, living in the fog he had finally cleared.

For his life with Nan, with Michael, had been a fog, his clarity clouded by his constant need to gamble, and now, although he loved Margaret, there was always a piece of him he couldn’t give to her, a piece of his heart that belonged to Nan, and a regret for the life he could have had if he hadn’t messed it up so badly.

In the beginning Margaret found it fascinating that he was a mystery, that he wouldn’t talk about his past. He would tell her about his life, but only talking about a life that started once he turned up, seemingly out of nowhere, in town.

Secrets take their toll. Evan wasn’t surprised when Margaret left him; he found that he had subconsciously been waiting for it for years, part of the penance he knew he would, at some point, have to pay.

He has been single since then, has attempted relationships, but they have always been half-hearted, and the memories of Nan, of what he left behind, have only grown stronger over the years.

Still, he didn’t think he could go back, not until Bee brought up the subject of Nantucket, out of the blue. Then he knew it was finally time.

Evan was incredulous, stunned, and scared, when Daniel drove the car up the old driveway of Windermere, and he turned to Daniel, about to ask whether this was some sort of sick joke— how had he known?—when he looked up and there was Nan. As beautiful as when he last saw her.

He turned white, and watched the expression in Nan’s eyes change from a friendly greeting to a slow recognition and pure and absolute shock.

As if she had seen a ghost, she sank slowly down, and Evan sat shaking, unable to move.

Nan opens her eyes and finds herself on a sofa in the living room, Daniel and Daff bending over her, looking concerned.

“Here,” Daff hands her a glass of brandy, “have a few sips of this.”

“I . . .” Nan is confused, and for just a few seconds she looks far older than her years. “I thought I saw a ghost. I thought I saw Everett.”

Daff and Daniel exchange a glance, then the door opens and Bee stands there, her father just behind her. Bee’s face is white as she gestures for them to come out.

“Where are you going?” Nan calls.

“We’ll just be a second,” Daniel says gently. “Don’t worry.”

He walks out and looks first at Bee, then at Evan.

“What the hell is going on?”

“I can’t talk,” Bee says finally, her voice a dull monotone. “I can’t believe what I’ve just been told.” She refuses to look at her father before turning and walking outside, sitting down quickly in one of the Adirondack chairs on the porch.

“What is it?” Daniel looks at Evan, and Evan starts to tell his story.

Daniel returns to the living room to find Nan now sitting up, resting her head against the cushions on the sofa.

“So strange,” Nan murmurs. “I had a dream about Everett just last night, so vivid I didn’t know what it meant, and then I thought I just saw him. What do you think it means? And who was that man? Or did I dream that too?”