We’re only a mile or two from the ruins of Simon’s house, and a few miles more from the center of Cocoa, which still simmers with boomtown energy even in the sweltering start of summer, Florida’s off-season, when most sensible midwesterners and New Englanders have retreated to their native lands. If I look behind me, I can see the creamy glow of lights on the night sky, but building lots and civilization haven’t reached this far along the stretch of barrier sand, and the windows behind me are all shuttered, the doors bound tight. Not the slightest crack of light escapes. If you were plying your boat along the Atlantic shore this evening, you wouldn’t know the place existed. The beach is as deserted and wild and midnight dark as an island in the Pacific.
Only the hum of gaiety betrays us.
In a few steps, my shoes have filled with grit. I take them off, balancing drunkenly on each foot. After a moment’s consideration, I remove my stockings, too. The sand feels pleasant, still warm on the surface from the infinite sun, and then cool underneath, soothing my aching soles, which have been confined too long in sharp new leather. In pointy-toed glamour. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, the palms form shadows against the sky, and the sand takes on a slight luminescence from the stars, and I fall once more into enjoyment of my drunken state: the hazy peace, the physical comfort, the way you abandon thought and simply observe the altered world around you.
After a hundred yards or so, the gay noise recedes, and I settle myself in the sand, all blissfully alone for the first time since—well, I can’t remember the last time I was alone. Not in New York. Certainly not since Evelyn was born. It’s rather lovely, this solitary communion with the ocean. As I said, there isn’t any moon, and the surf is gentle, building and cresting and surging and receding in succession. The bubbling phosphorescence fascinates me. Overhead, the palm fronds whisper to one another. The minutes leak away. I collect a few shells and stack them into a shaky tower, and when I lift my head again to stare across the vast dark water, I catch a flash of light.
Or maybe it’s my imagination. The flash was so brief, a tiny explosion on the surface of the sea, and I can’t be certain. Sometimes your eyes play tricks; sometimes your head plays tricks. Sometimes champagne plays tricks, God knows. I shouldn’t have drunk so many glasses, with so much at stake. Shouldn’t have let Clara pour so democratically. I draw my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them and peer into a bar of surf, more curious than alarmed, my heart quickening pleasurably. But the flash doesn’t repeat itself. The sea remains quiet, just the subdued crash of the miniature waves, and I am struck without warning by a sense of vital longing for my daughter.
Since her birth, I have felt this thing, this need to touch her skin, to hold her safe in my arms, to experience the movement of her breath and heartbeat: a need that supersedes all other physical requirements, for sleep or food or water or friendship. Almost all mothers experience this impulse, I’m told, and yet it remains so constant and so important, inhabiting my viscera, I wonder sometimes if I haven’t poured all that repressed love for her father—that adoration cut off at the flood—into Evelyn’s small body, swelling ordinary maternal instinct into something gargantuan, supernatural. That’s what the psychologists might say, I suppose. Or maybe it’s just that I have so little innocence left to me. Well, whatever. The flood swells anew, interrupting my peace, and I know I’ve made some kind of mistake; Marshall’s right, I have no business here, no business staking myself in the middle of a game I don’t understand.
I must return to Evelyn. I must protect her. I must make her safe.
And for God’s sake, why did I ever leave her in the first place?
I rise to my feet and snatch up my shoes and stockings, and that’s when the flash returns, a little longer this time, and then two quick additional flashes. I stand transfixed, articles hanging from my hand, waiting for the next tiny burst of light from the ocean, and concurrent with all this—the longing for Evelyn, the strange terror of the flashing lights—comes another awareness, most urgent and visceral of all.
Someone is watching me.
But there’s no time to reflect on this sensation, to examine its authenticity or even to prepare myself to act on it. A pair of immense hands closes around my upper arms and yanks backward, throwing me to my knees, while a first connects against my left cheekbone.
I spin rightward. Crash into the sand. Dazed, without breath, brain white with pain. My mouth fills with grit; the sand coats my lips and tongue. I lift my face and spit and stagger back to my knees. Rise and turn. Someone seizes my shoulders, and I lift my head, and for an instant a spasm of yellow light illuminates his face, before another blow connects somewhere—my temple, possibly, though the impact strikes my entire head at once—and that’s it.
Except for a pair of hazel eyes, barbarically fierce in a familiar face: an image so vivid that even as I drop into blackness and plop motionless at the bottom of the pit, the face remains, observing me in my unconscious state as if from a photograph stuck to the inside of my skull.
Simon’s face.
Chapter 12
Versailles, France, August 1917
In the gardens of Versailles there are fifty fountains, but they don’t all run at once, except on special occasions. I don’t think there’s enough water in France for that, and anyway, in the hot August afternoons of 1917, France had other things on her mind.
“They’re a glorious sight, les Grandes Eaux,” Simon told me, as we sat by the edge of the Grand Canal, cooling our feet. “I once saw the whole show when I was a young man.”
“My goodness. You can’t be that old?”
“Surely you’ve noticed my gray hair.”
“How old are you, then?”
“Thirty-six.” He paused. “I suppose that seems frightfully ancient to you.”
“Not at all. I guessed thirty-five. And thirty-six is young enough. If you were over forty, now . . .”
“Ha. That’s generous, coming from an absolute ingenue like you.”
“I’m twenty-one. Not so very young.”
“My God. You’re a child.” He sighed and swung his legs in the water, causing currents to ripple into my skin. “I was about your age when I first came here. Just after university. Eons ago.”
“Only fifteen years.”
“Oh? And where were you, fifteen years ago?”
I didn’t answer.
“Exactly. Still in pinafores, no doubt. Six years old. It doesn’t bear thinking about. What a wretch I am. Were you a pretty child?”
“No. My type never is. Too pale and dark-haired and bony.”
“Well, you’ve aged beautifully. At this rate, you’ll be another Helen in a year or two. Of course, I rather think you already are.” He lifted my hand unexpectedly from the edge of the canal and kissed the knuckles.