The interstate petered out into a road that bumped over a metal drawbridge and crossed the Intracoastal Waterway. Clouds consumed the Carolina-blue sky, and the world turned gray. He had reached the end.
Felix parked in an empty lot and, tugging up the collar of his donkey jacket, headed toward the roar of the Atlantic Ocean. If Tom were alive, he would applaud.
The beach and pier were deserted but for a handful of spindly-legged birds skittering in and out of the ocean. His Dr. Martens sank into waterlogged sand, and he became a blip—a tiny, colorless ant in a world without horizons. Monstrous gray waves reared up, crashed apart, and re-formed to barrel forward with the force of a marauding army. The sun appeared for a moment and cast his shadow across the sand, creating a distorted Felix with grotesquely long legs. Next to his left foot, the water had regurgitated the rotting carcass of a pelican.
Wind rustled the sea oats with a tinkling like chimes, but the moment he turned and walked away from the pier, it battered his eardrums and stole his breath. His eyes stung as if pelted by Lilliputian spears. Felix trudged across sand the color of wet concrete. With each step, he could have been dragging chains.
He zigzagged onto a thick layer of shells that crunched and splintered under his boots. Walking became easier, and he marched across the flat grayness as if he were the last soldier on a battlefield.
Mad dogs and Englishmen.
Except not even a stray dog was crazy enough to walk on the beach in this weather. There was no one around, just the mad Englishman. He laughed, actually laughed. But there was nothing funny about the sound. His hands tingled with cold, and he shoved them deep into his pockets. Maybe he should walk into the ocean and disappear. Would that be so hard? If he removed himself from the picture, maybe Ella would come back to her senses and be the Ella who would never do something as desperate as hand over care of Harry to him.
That was the truth she was hiding, and the reason she had met with Dr. Beaubridge alone. Rightly or wrongly, she believed her life was in danger. Which left Felix facing the real ghoul under the bed—his true self. If he did what Ella was asking of him, would he discover the cause of the anger that bubbled constantly under his skin? Would he discover he was indeed his father’s son?
Colors leaped up from the compacted sand. Warm colors of amber and mauve, tan and russet. Felix stopped, bent down, and reached for a shell streaked with tones of caramel, vanilla gelato, and iced coffee with whipped cream—colors from another season. Brushing off the sand revealed not a whole shell but a fragment. The elements had turned the edges smooth like a river stone or a piece of sea glass. When he closed his fingers over it, the shell that wasn’t a shell fit snugly into his palm.
More colors called to him from the sand. Soon his palm was filled with four, five, six shell pieces—each different in size, shape, and pattern. They chinked together like loose change in a trouser pocket, and he started walking again. These broken remnants made no sense. They weren’t perfect, they weren’t symmetrical, and yet, as he rubbed them, they became as warm and as comforting as his wife’s wedding ring.
Ella might never heal, but maybe time would smooth out her broken edges, make her even more beautiful. Because the heart attack could never alter the truth: she was Ella Bella. Mrs. Felix Fitzwilliam. The only woman he had ever loved.
Eyes watering heavily, Felix planted his feet wide apart and turned to confront the Atlantic Ocean. The crash of waves obliterated the thunder of the wind. Of the two titans, the sea was stronger, an unharnessed force of nature that could rise up and annihilate him on a whim. And yet. Even the strongest wave was powerless to do anything but sigh and retreat when it reached the shore. He could do that; he could roar and retreat. Wasn’t that what Pater always did? But he wasn’t Pater.