28. Blythe
— ? —
Blythe
Half of Newport was crammed into folding chairs, watching four generations of Chadwick sold off in lots.
The auction house was usually reserved for estate sales and antique furniture, the genteel disposal of old money’s accumulations. Today it was selling off the last of Chadwick Shipping, everything from office equipment to artwork to the company yacht.
The room buzzed with barely contained excitement. This was the social event of the season, better than any gala or charity ball. The mighty had fallen, and everyone wanted a front-row seat.
I sat in the third row with Reid’s hand in mine, watching the bidders circle.
“Lot eleven,” the auctioneer called. “A collection of maritime paintings from the Chadwick offices. Opening bid at five thousand.”
Paddles went up around the room. The price climbed, six thousand, seven, eight. I watched without really seeing, my mind elsewhere.
The captain had gone to the police. And so had Dario.
I’d gotten the call three days ago. Detective Callahan, the same man who’d stood in a doorway back in June looking like the only person in that station who believed me, promoted since, and personally attached to my case in a way I suspected wasn’t entirely procedural, his voice careful and professional: “We have a new witness. Reyes - the man who was at the helm of the Anchorage II that night. He’s prepared to testify.
And the harbormaster has records that back him up. ”
Reyes, who’d been at the wheel the night I went into the water, who’d done what Stan told him and hated himself for it every day since.
And Dario Tarino, harbormaster, who’d kept his own mouth shut for months because his son worked for Chadwick, because he couldn’t afford to lose that connection, because speaking up would have meant risking everything he’d built over forty years on the water.
But there was no Chadwick anymore. No company. No leverage. Nothing left to protect.
So they both came forward.
Dario brought the harbor records, the fuel log, the float plan, the time in and time out he’d written down himself the night the Anchorage II came back one passenger light.
And Reyes brought the tender’s GPS, which he’d quietly kept for two months: the track that showed exactly where the yacht had been when I went overboard, and exactly how long it had stayed there before leaving.
Under two minutes. That’s how long the yacht had held its position after I went over the rail, under two minutes, and then it had simply got under way.
And Reyes remembered being ordered to leave me in the water. He remembered it in detail. Stan’s voice, calm and cold, telling him to turn the boat around. Telling him to go.
“Lot twelve,” the auctioneer said. “Office furniture from the executive suite.”
I squeezed Reid’s hand. He squeezed back.
Stan was somewhere in the building. I’d seen him come in earlier, flanked by lawyers in expensive suits, his face tight with fury. He looked terrible, thinner than I remembered, his skin sallow, dark circles under his eyes. The past few weeks hadn’t been kind to him.
Good.
Birdie was with him, the baby in her arms, looking lost and confused. She’d dressed up for this, a designer dress, careful makeup, like she still thought appearance mattered. Like she didn’t understand that it was already over.
They’d been required to attend. Something about asset verification, legal obligations. I didn’t care about the details. I just cared that they were here. That they had to watch.
“Lot thirteen. A collection of navigational equipment from the Chadwick fleet.”
The door at the back of the room opened.
I turned, along with half the audience.
Two police officers walked in.
They moved down the center aisle with purpose, their uniforms crisp, their expressions professionally blank. Their eyes were fixed on something, someone, in the front row.
Stan stood up. His lawyers stood up. Everyone was standing, craning their necks to see.
“Stanley Chadwick.” One of the officers reached him. “You’re under arrest for the attempted murder of Blythe Montrose Navarro.”
The room exploded.
Gasps everywhere. Whispers building to murmurs building to outright exclamations.
Phone cameras came out, dozens of them, recording everything.
Stan was saying something, “This is ridiculous, you can’t do this here, I have rights, my lawyers will-”, but the officers were already moving, already putting him in handcuffs, already reading him his rights in that flat, practiced cadence.
Birdie was crying. “No. No, no, no. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.”
But it was happening. Right there, in front of everyone. In front of the people Stan had grown up with, the people he’d partied with, the people who’d looked the other way while he cheated and lied and tried to kill his wife.
Attempted murder, in handcuffs, in public.
I watched it all with a kind of distant satisfaction. This was what justice looked like. Not quiet and private, but loud and public and humiliating.
“Lot fourteen!” The auctioneer was trying to regain control, his voice cutting through the chaos. “The yacht Anchorage II! Opening bid at two million!”
In the back row, Birdie sat alone with the baby against her shoulder, in a dress I recognized from three seasons ago.
She had watched every lot go, the paintings, the silver, the pieces of the life she’d stolen, without moving, without bidding, without anyone sitting down beside her.
But when the auctioneer said the yacht’s name, she looked up, and her eyes found mine across the room.
I didn’t look away.
She did.
Reid stood up.
I looked at him, confused. He wasn’t supposed to be bidding on anything. We’d agreed we’d just watch, just enjoy the spectacle.
He raised his paddle.
“Two million to the gentleman in row three,” the auctioneer said, clearly grateful for something normal to focus on.
“Two point two!” Someone across the room.
“Two and a half.” Reid’s voice was calm, steady.
“Three million!”
“Five.”
The room went quiet. Even the officers escorting Stan paused to watch. Five million dollars, for a boat worth maybe half that, offered in the tone of a man ordering coffee.
“Five million to the gentleman in row three. Do I hear five and a quarter?”
Silence. No one moved.
“Five million going once. Going twice.”
I grabbed Reid’s arm. “What are you doing?”
He looked down at me with that rare, real smile.
“Buying our boat.”
“Sold! To the gentleman in row three for five million dollars.”
The gavel came down.
Reid Navarro now owned the Anchorage II. The boat where Stan had pushed me overboard. The boat where I’d almost died.
And Stan was watching the whole thing from between two police officers, his face white with rage.
Reid looked at him. Smiled pleasantly.
“I’ll take good care of her,” he said.
Stan lunged. The officers held him back, their hands tight on his arms, and he was screaming now, obscenities, threats, promises of revenge. But the door closed behind him and suddenly the room was quiet again.
Birdie stood frozen in the aisle, the baby crying in her arms. She looked at me, and for one moment I saw fear in her eyes, or regret. Or just the dawning understanding that she’d bet on the wrong horse.
Then she turned and followed Stan out.
The auction continued, but nobody was really paying attention anymore. The story of the day had already been written: Stan Chadwick arrested for attempted murder while his ex-wife’s new husband bought his family yacht out from under him.
Posy Wetherell was going to have a field day.
After the auction, I found out what had happened to the rest of them.
Priscilla and Sandrine had been charged too, for the drugging, for the years of conspiracy the investigation had uncovered, and Birdie as an accessory, for everything she’d known and helped bury.
Stan was facing the worst of it, but Blair’s lawyer friends said Sandrine wouldn’t be walking away with a fine and an apology either, not with seven years of pharmacy records sitting in an evidence box.
And all of them, whatever the courts decided, had already been handed the sentence that mattered most in a town like Newport: nobody would ever sit with them again.
They’d moved to a rented house in Middletown, I heard. Priscilla and Birdie and the baby, crammed together in three bedrooms with no invitations and no prospects. Discovering that they had nothing in common except the ladder that wasn’t there anymore.
The Chadwicks were finished. The Montroses were finished. Four generations of old money and careful scheming, brought down by a woman they’d all thought was decorative.
By every right I should have been savoring it.
Instead I mostly felt tired, and ready for what came next.
Reid found me outside the auction house, sitting on a bench, watching the police cars pull away.
“Hey.” He sat down beside me. “You okay?”
“I think so.” I leaned against his shoulder. “It’s a lot to process.”
“Take your time.” His arm went around me. “We’ve got nothing but time.”
We sat there for a while, watching the crowd disperse. Newport’s finest, heading back to their summer houses and their charity galas, already spinning the story of what they’d witnessed.
“So,” Reid said finally. “I bought a boat.”
I laughed. “I noticed.”
“I thought we could fix it up. Rename it, maybe. Make it something new.”
“What would we call it?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I was thinking… the Timmy.”
I looked at him, confused. “Timmy?”
“It was my father’s name.” His voice was soft. “Michael Timothy Navarro. His friends called him Timmy.”
My eyes burned. “Reid…”
“We don’t have to. It’s just an idea. But I thought-”
I kissed him.
Hard and fierce, right there on the bench outside the auction house where his father’s killers had just lost everything.
“It’s perfect,” I said against his mouth. “It’s absolutely perfect.”
He smiled. The unguarded one, the smile I was starting to see more often.
“There’s one more thing,” he said.
“What?”
He stood up, offered me his hand.
“Would you like to take a ride on the Anchorage II?” He paused. “One last time, before we change her name?”
I looked at his hand. Looked at the harbor in the distance, where the yacht was waiting.
The boat where I’d almost died. The water that had almost swallowed me.
And the man who’d pulled me out of it.
I took a deep breath.
And nodded.