Chapter 14
Katelyn
What makes staying in Montauk bearable is the beach.
So many dark secrets to haunt me, but the waves of this ocean help wash away the evil and console me.
I swear I can still hear the faint sound of two young lovers laughing as they splash in the water.
My shawl slips off my shoulders as I wander into the tide, and my long gauzy cotton dress blows around me in the balmy erratic wind of the oncoming storm.
The fickle ocean reminds me of him. Beautiful, wild, constant, but unpredictable.
Heath has changed. I can see it in his eyes, in the way he moves through the world.
He’s hardened, and whatever experience he’s had in the last five years has unmoored him, taught him to rely only on himself.
His trust is gone, and maybe I’m to blame for killing the gentle side of him.
But just as time has molded him to be harder, it’s done the same for me.
I am not the same girl he fell in love with.
“Kat.” I hear him call to me in my head. “Kat, don’t.”
He used to hate it when I’d go deep into the waves, always worried that if something happened, he couldn’t save me. Heath wasn’t a swimmer, and the ocean held a certain morbid fascination for him. As it should for me, considering my mother walked into these waves and never came out.
I used to ask him what he’d do if I drowned in the sea, caught by a strong current or riptide, and he’d always respond the same way.
I’d follow you, Kat. Because there would be no point in living without you.
I doubt he feels the same way now.
I ignore his distant calls in my head and keep walking forward as if the sea beckons me into its permanent embrace.
From what I can tell, it looks like life went on for him.
But my life stopped in all the ways that mattered when I pushed him away.
He recovered, found success, and I ran from the arms of one abuser to crash into those of another.
Time stopped for me when Heath left Wainscott Hollow.
Without Heath, I couldn’t breathe, and I became another shadowy spirit that wandered these shores in mourning.
The cherished paths of our love became my plank of penitence, the worn trails of a dead woman walking.
I’m glad he moved on with his life, but I’m also jealous of time because for ten years it had him, but the clock stopped for me the minute he looked back at me through my window at Wainscott Hollow, and his footsteps took him away.
I finger the silver locket on my neck that I never take off. His mother’s, the one that holds his black and white baby photo, the same locket I told Eddie belonged to my mother so I could have him close to my heart, secretly, forever.
I don’t notice the drop-off since I’m treading water until I try to touch down with my feet, and the sandy bottom has disappeared.
The choppy water pulls me under and tugs my form like a ragdoll.
The once airy and light cotton dress becomes a heavy entangled web that yanks me under the waves.
But the strangest part is that I don’t panic, I don’t feel fear.
I don’t care enough to try to fight it. A peculiar calm washes over my tired body and tattered soul, and I resign myself to my fate.
“Kat, Jesus, fuck. Kat. For Christ’s sake.”
Even in the end, it’s his voice that comes to me.
A swift tug lifts my arms and pulls my head momentarily above water. But I fight the renewed buoyancy and make myself a deadweight in the rough water.
“You crazy fuckin’ bitch.” Heath’s voice comes again, angry, vengeful, mean. “You don’t get to do this, Katelyn. Fuck you! You don’t get to leave me again. You never get to leave me unless I fucking slit your throat myself.”
My head is above water, and his strong arm is across my chest, holding me afloat. He drags me to the shallow surf, a rock of resilience against the powerful tide and the downward pull of my relinquished body.
Not just a swimmer, but a strong swimmer to battle these currents.
We hit the sand, and I cough up salt water while Heath’s chest heaves with exertion. Then he cradles me in his arms, much like a mother would her young child.
My eyes open to his beautiful face, his brow knit in concern, his jaw tense with incredible anger. I decide I must be dead if I’m back with my love. My Heath.
The soft sand clings to my skin as he lays me down gently and peers at me before raking his hands through his wet hair. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
My throat burns, and I spit water as I gaze up at an angel. “You can swim?”
“Fucking hell, Kat. After a stunt like that, I should drown you myself.”
“Heath,” I whisper, my voice raspy with abrasion. I raise my hand to his cheek and run my fingers along the dark stubble that shadows his strong jaw.
“What the hell were you thinking, Kat?” he demands.
“I thought maybe I could go back in time that way. See my mom. Find you again.”
“Why?’
“I need to escape this place, Heath.”
His face abruptly appears within centimeters of mine, so close I feel his rapid breath as his lips hover over mine.
“You can’t escape me, Kat. I told you once that if you died, I’d follow, and I meant it.
It’s me and you and eternity, Katelyn Shaw.
I’ll kill us both myself if you ever try to leave me again. ”
Heath gathers me in his arms and lifts my weakened and soaked body.
He marches off the beach, not to the home I share with my husband, but to Wainscott Hollow, my hell and my salvation.
Hallowed ground where I fell in love with him, the same house that stole my innocence and in which my very worst nightmares were realized.
The monument to my family’s severe dysfunction.
I married Eddie to escape, only managing to lock myself away in another prison.
Wainscott Hollow, the house where my dreams died, and my nightmare began.
The X that marks the exact spot of the original sin.
“Eddie will be furious. He’ll kill me. You better take me home, Heath.”
Heath laughs and keeps walking, trudging through the sand as the wind whips up a frenzy of the brewing storm. The storm in my heart mirrors the aberrant weather.
He doesn’t look at me, just forges straight ahead and holds my body closer to his. So close that I can feel the drumming of his heart pounding against the walls of his chest like a warning, a smoke signal to guide me home.
“I am taking you home, Kat.”