Chapter 1
Heath (Long Ago)
“The last one there’s a rotten egg!” Kat calls as she zips past me. Her long brown hair flies out behind her, and she leaps down a sand dune completely out of my line of sight.
“Maybe if you’d actually carry something, we could see who’s the fastest,” I yell. But my pleas are swallowed by the wind as it rushes through the dunes.
I see her flat out running twenty feet below me through the sand barefoot—her shoes are in my hands, along with the big throw Mother insisted we bring and a canvas bag full of homemade cookies, juice boxes, and empty jars for collecting things.
Kat stumbles once and falls all the way to the ground. She recovers fast and kicks up sand as she beelines to the rolling waves.
“We’re not supposed to go in the water,” I call, but my voice is drowned by the thunder of the waves.
Kat has always lived right next to the ocean, away from the city. But I moved here from our small apartment in the Bronx after her mother passed away, and Mr. Shaw needed someone to look after his children.
“Wait for me,” I call to her, jumping the same dune, but with more apprehension.
She’s my closest friend, even though we’re different. Kat doesn’t know how to ride the train in the city, but I don’t know how to swim. Kat can play the piano and knows how to ride a horse, but I know how to get to Yankee Stadium or use my mom’s EBT card at the store.
But we love the beach, spring, summer, and fall, and we come out here to collect things, and look for buried treasure that might have washed up on the shore.
Her long wavy hair is loose, and she bats it away from her face as she wades ankle-deep into the foamy waves. A splash of summer freckles decorates her face
“Mom says the undercurrent is strong enough to pull you in,” I warn her.
I drop our things in the sand at my feet and try to regain my breath.
I roll up my pants legs as Kat kicks water into the blue sky, where it arcs and falls in a hundred sparkling droplets.
The girl herself is equally as stunning as the scenery out here.
I heave myself forward and grab her hand as we scan the shallows, looking for shells or creatures or forgotten pirate gold.
“Where do you think people go when they die?” Kat pulls a strand of hair from her mouth and squints at me in the bright sunlight.
I know without asking that she’s thinking about her mom.
My dad has always been gone, so I don’t think about it all that much.
An old lady who lived in my building once told me my dad’s in jail.
But Mom says he’s gone, and the far-away look in her eyes makes me bite my lip to keep from asking any more questions.
“You mean like heaven?” I ask her.
The water is warm, and the sun and salt on my skin is a feeling I’ll always associate with the Shaw’s estate. I went to the beach a couple of times before we moved here, but it never looked anything like this.
“What if people end up in the sea?” Kat asks. “How come heaven isn’t in the ocean? It’s as pretty as the sky.” She leans down, scoops up a sand crab, and lets him roam all over her palm, searching for an escape.
“I don’t know where heaven is. Maybe it’s not in the sky or on Earth,” I tell her. I spot a spiral shell in the clear tide pool and grab it, shake the sand off underwater and toss it in my pocket. “But I think wherever your mom is, she’s probably watching us.”
I don’t know if it’s true, but Kat always goes out of her way to make me feel like I belong, so I want to return the favor and let her know I’m on her side.
I take the spiral shell back out and give it to her.
I already have enough in my collection anyway.
She smiles at me, and her earnest blue eyes match the color of the Montauk sky.
“Race you to the jetty?” Kat challenges.
“You two dumb shits are not supposed to be in the water!”
We both hear Henry despite the wind, and Kat’s grip on my hand tightens.
Henry is Kat’s older brother by three years, but it might as well be by a million. He acts like he’s the man of the house and bosses us both around like he’s our parent.
“We’re not swimming!” Kat retorts and begins to pull me down the beach.
Henry grabs our bag and dumps it out on the sand. After grabbing a cookie for himself and stuffing it grotesquely in his face, he dumps the rest out, ruining our picnic.
“Punk,” I say under my breath.
Kat sticks her tongue out at him.
A hint of rage crosses Henry’s usually blank and bored expression, and he runs at us full-speed, tearing through the water. Kat tries to make me run, too, but I stand my ground. I’ve seen bigger bullies than Henry Shaw on the playgrounds where I grew up.
“You better run, you dumb little trash,” he taunts.
I take a deep breath before he crashes into me full force and knocks me down into the shallow waves.
Kat screams. “He can’t swim!” I hear her cry right before he pushes my head underwater.
I open my eyes into the salty sting and see his poker face distorted above me. I try to talk, but salt water rushes into my mouth. It’s true, despite my many visits to the beach at Wainscott Hollow, I still don’t know how to swim.
Then Katelyn is on top of Henry, trying to pry him off me.
She scratches his face and wraps her skinny arms around his neck.
My lungs ache as I hold my breath until I can’t anymore.
The saltwater feels like razor blades as it rushes into my lungs.
Panic bubbles up in my throat, and I freeze, wondering if this is what it felt like when Mrs. Shaw went under.
My mind flashes to my mother and the scream she’ll let loose when Kat tells her I was lost to the angry sea, too.
The water churns above me as Kat and Henry scuffle, and when I think I can’t take the pain any longer, suddenly, the weight is gone, and I see the bright sun lighting up the water over my face.
I crawl to standing and suck air into my ragged lungs, shaking off the water and regaining my bearing.
Henry shoves Kat to the sand by the shore and takes off, running back toward the Shaw estate, Wainscott Hollow.
“Kat, you okay?” I shout as I make my way to her. She’s on all fours in the sand, and her dress is soaked.
“I hate him!” she cries when I reach her.
I help her up and give her a hug, trying not to look at her tears or notice how her nose runs into my shoulder.
From the moment we arrived, I could tell Henry was going to be a problem.
He’s got a mean streak as wide as this beach and seems hell-bent on proving himself to everyone who crosses him.
At first, I guessed he was angry because his mom died until Kat told me that Henry’s always been mean and didn’t even get along with his mom.
A bad seed maybe, someone who never had an ounce of good inside him, like some of the pushers in my old neighborhood my mother warned me to steer clear of.
Kat reaches out and touches my temple, and I wince in pain. When she pulls away her hand, it’s got blood on it from where Henry smashed my face into the shells and sand.
“You’re bleeding.”
“No biggie,” I say. I shrug to show her I can handle the pain.
“Let’s go home. I can put some stuff on it,” Kat tells me.
We hold hands and walk in the surf until we get to the path through the dunes.
I look back over my shoulder and squint at the sea before we begin the climb back to Wainscott Hollows.
In every sense, this life of mine is an improvement over what we had before.
I’ve traded fire escapes for real balconies overlooking the sea, crowded train platforms for wide open beaches, and noisy city kids for the bravest explorer in Katelyn Shaw.
Better in all ways, except for her wicked brother, who seems to hate us all.
* * *
From one day to the next, my mom is gone.
I can’t cry. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m not sad.
On the contrary, the sadness is so deep, I’ll never reach the bottom of it.
What gets me now, what courses through my brain and won’t stop, is the idea that this place is haunted.
Maybe not haunted, maybe cursed is the word.
Wainscott Hollow destroys women. It swallows them whole.
First, Mrs. Shaw, and now my mother. Mom wasn’t sick in the Bronx.
She had a cough, sure, but she was as strong as an ox, working two jobs and showing up every day to pick me up from school.
It happened while we were at school. Fairmont. A school my mother could never have afforded in a million years if it weren’t for Mr. Shaw. The school counselor came to get me out of chemistry class, and I thought maybe it was regarding my grades, but apparently, mom had a fall. A fall?
I wipe the warm tears from my face, even though I didn’t know they were falling.
Kat squeezes my hand and reminds me that I’m human.
“Not only a good housekeeper, but a good mother, and a good person,” the priest says. He looks directly at me when he says the word “mother.”
This priest doesn’t know mom. This wasn’t her church.
She went to Our Sister of Mercy back in Mott Haven, whereas this congregation is made up of rich Long Islanders who didn’t even know her.
They’re here for Mr. Shaw, to look good, and to gossip about me.
But I’m sure I’ll be on a Jitney back to the city before the weekend.
Shaw will ship me off to some distant relatives I’ve never even met.
I’ll lose my best friend. I’ll lose the ocean.
I’ll lose my entire future. But maybe it’s for the best. I belong to the streets, not these dunes and these waves.
Mr. Shaw signals me to exit the pew and grab onto the casket. He asked me this morning if I felt strong enough to be a pallbearer. I couldn’t say no, despite not feeling very strong. Mom carried me for nine months. The least I can do is carry her to the cemetery.
“Come on, son. I’m right behind you,” Mr. Shaw says, putting his big hand on my shoulder.