The Whiskey Sea Read online

  Hicks squinted up at her, and his gaze held all the sadness of this tragedy. He didn’t even attempt to brighten his voice, just said flatly, “About to go out. Want to come with me?”

  She shook her head, gazed out at the water, and searched out her voice. All she could see in the water now was that dreadful last scene . . . It would always be seared in her mind. Rudy’s body lit up with flames. Skin peeling off his face. His eyes destroyed. And this water, this sea, was nothing now but the scene of her crimes. “I’m never going out there again.”

  After a moment, as if considering what she had said, Hicks stepped up onto the pier and took her arm ever so gently. “Then sit with me for a bit.”

  She let him settle her on the weathered wood pier, and they sat side by side with their legs dangling over the water, just as they had on that fateful day when he’d first told her about rumrunning. Only four years had passed, but everything had changed. She had lost Silver, Bea, and Charles. And she would never stop seeing Rudy’s sightless eyes.

  Hicks breathed steadily—in and out, in and out.

  She finally gulped, trembling, and said, “I messed up real bad, Hicks.”

  Hicks looked down at his hands, looked over at her, then back at his hands.

  Swallowing, she fought against a suffocating sensation. “And it won’t ever be over.”

  Hicks followed her gaze over the bay. “I know you won’t believe this right now, and it may not ever be over, but it will get more bearable.”

  “I don’t know how to live with this regret.”

  He looked at her now with the eyes of one who saw everything. All along he had seen the possible, far-reaching consequences of rumrunning and had kept himself out of it. He had been one of the true adults. How she wished she had taken his course. “If you didn’t regret what happened, you wouldn’t be human. Seems to be a universal condition.” He glanced away. “I’ll sell you the boat if you want. Maybe that will help.”

  Frieda shook her head. “I gave all the money I’d saved to Rudy’s wife so she can take care of him and the boys. And everything I can possibly spare from now on is going to him, too. Besides, I don’t want the boat.”

  His voice gentle, he said slowly, “But you love it.”

  Shaking her head again, she wrapped her arms around herself, even though the day was warm, the air still.

  Hicks said, “You’re just lost right now. Give it time. Time really does heal, at least somewhat.”

  Heal? Rudy would never heal; he would never see again. He would never get the sailboat he dreamed of. He wouldn’t see his boys grow up, watch them graduate, marry, or see his grandchildren. “I don’t think so.”

  She looked north up the shoreline where Silver’s house—now her house—sat. That was the place where her life had truly begun; how had she managed to muck it up so badly in the years since? She had to turn away from the house and face the water. Sunlight shimmered on little whitecaps out in the blue beyond. Boats bobbed against the blinding horizon. Blinding.

  “Things happen, Frieda. Bad things happen. And sometimes they happen to good people.”

  Frieda remembered the day Rudy had told her Charles actually wasn’t too good for her. Voice trembling, she breathed out, “The best person.”

  Hicks nodded and stayed quiet.

  Minutes passed, then Hicks broke the silence with the kindest of voices. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Up the shore a wave washed in and slipped away. “It was my job to take care of the engines. Instead, I was sick over my personal life and sick with fear. I didn’t do my job. He did it for me, and now he’s . . .” She hadn’t said the word blind yet and couldn’t make herself say it now.

  Hicks just sat, listening, waiting.

  Blind. Blind.

  Hicks said again—ever so softly, barely above a whisper—“It wasn’t your fault.”

  He scooted closer, curved his arm around her, the same way Rudy had done on the boat that night, and Frieda finally let the fear, anger, and self-loathing pour out of her body. Not caring who saw or heard, she sobbed wretchedly into her hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  On the day she was to see Bea, Frieda dressed well. She slipped into one of the sheath dresses Bea had left behind and put her hair up under a hat. She didn’t want to embarrass her sister by her appearance, and she didn’t want to stick out today. She had important things to do.

  They met at a café near the university and sat outside at a tiny table on even tinier round chairs. The last heat wave of the Indian summer had rolled in, and Bea was dressed in summery perfection. She was still a daisy, with her plum cheeks, perpetual smile, and waves of styled blond hair. But the expression in her eyes was not one Frieda recognized. She couldn’t put a finger on exactly what it was, but perhaps Bea had matured. She seemed older. She had grown up.

  Bea ordered coffee and then, with shimmering concern in her eyes, asked, “So, how are you? Please tell me the truth.”

  Frieda folded her hands on the tabletop. “I’m not here to talk about me. I’m here to ask for your forgiveness.”

  Bea waved a hand in the air. “You’ll do nothing of the sort.”

  “Listen to me, please,” Frieda pleaded, pulling in a ragged breath. “I tried to tell you what to do with your life, and I shouldn’t have. Your decisions are yours alone. I was angry; I no longer am. If you’re happy, then I’m happy.”

  Bea looked at her sister skeptically. “You haven’t answered my question, not that you need to. I can see it written all over you. You’re in anguish.”

  Frieda fought the swell of tears. Since she’d cried with Hicks, all the pent-up tears of a lifetime had kept pouring out of her. She had watered the ground with them, drenched her clothes, and dropped them into the sea. She had never known that tear ducts could produce so much. “All I want is your forgiveness.”

  Clearly moved by Frieda’s emotion, Bea took her sister’s hand. “You’ll always have that.” Bea squeezed Frieda’s hand and continued to study her sister. “What happened with Charles?”

  The oxygen drained from the sun-filled day. “Nothing,” Frieda answered with a hard-fought breath. “Absolutely nothing, except that I went a little crazy.”

  “Lots of people went a little crazy. All that excitement, all that money. It wasn’t just you.”

  “I went a little crazy long before that. I wish . . .”

  “What?”

  Despite the purity of her thought, Frieda had to squeeze out the words. “I wish I’d been more like you.”

  Bea sighed through a sad smile. “We’ll always be sisters, you know.”

  Frieda said chokingly, “Thank you. Thank you.”

  “I should be thanking you. After all, if you hadn’t made all that money I wouldn’t have come to the city and met August. But you know what? Much as I love him, I don’t talk to him the way I talk to you. It’s not the same. I need you both.”

  Frieda couldn’t speak. Here was the girl she knew so well, that everyone had always loved. And rightfully so.

  Bea said, “So, what will you do now?”

  With one hand Frieda pushed away tears, lifted her cup, and swallowed a sip of coffee that burned on its way down. Her throat was too dry. With her other hand she squeezed back. She dared not delve too deeply into what might lie ahead and all that would be missing now from her life. “I suppose I’ll work on boat engines. I need to make a living, but I want nothing more to do with rumrunning.”

  “Understandable,” said Bea.

  Her vision blurred by tears, Frieda looked deep into her sister’s eyes. “I was so stupid . . .”

  “There’s plenty of blame to go around. I never tried to stop you, not really. I lived off what you made, and truth is I enjoyed the money. It was hard to resist, and no one’s perfect. We’re all just . . . people, you know.”

  After that they held each other’s hands in a silence of simple understanding.

  Bea finally spoke. “I want you to stand up for me at the
wedding.”

  Frieda blinked hard. “I . . . I’d be honored.” She hadn’t thought of anything happy, such as a wedding, in . . . forever. A moment later she almost managed a smile. “You can even choose my dress.”

  Bea gave her that look. “Yes, please.”

  A short while later Frieda walked through the city, her thoughts a jumble of past memories and regrets, hopes and dreams. Two little girls left orphaned by the dockside had survived after all, and one was happy, which made the other happier. It was time to go back home. But her heart had other plans and drew her to the one place she shouldn’t go. But then again, hadn’t she always known she would do this? Hadn’t she always known that she would seek some answers before closing this chapter of her life?

  Standing in front of Charles’s family townhouse, she had no idea who would answer. It could be one of his parents, a servant—or no one at all. The house sat still and quiet. She waited for a long moment, her heart racing, before ringing the bell. But she wasn’t surprised when Charles answered the door.

  He was dressed casually in fashionable baggy slacks and a striped shirt. His curious gaze softened when he laid eyes on her, and it was as if he’d been bathed in a big wave of relief. “Dear Frieda, I knew you would come for me. I knew I could count on you. What took you so long?” Without waiting for her response, he said, “Please come in.”

  She moved not an inch. But her stomach swayed with the impact of seeing him again. His beauty still stole her breath, but the memory of him swimming away wouldn’t leave her mind and never would. She had been so clouded by his beauty and his need that she hadn’t seen what everyone else had so easily seen. Falling in love with him had been like plunging into a pit of ignorance, unwarranted hopefulness fueling her fall. He hadn’t taken them seriously. He had played with her for a while and then left her. She would never forget the moments when it was good, but it had—in the end—been simply a summer fling.

  Despite it all she missed him. She had not yet completely subdued her feelings for him. She looked softly into those eyes she’d once adored. “I only came to tell you that Rudy will live. His burns are healing, and he’ll be taken care of.”

  He nodded. “Good to know.”

  There was no trace of remorse, hysteria, or guilt. His cool, confident, classy costume was back on, perhaps for good. This was her answer. Charles was an unfathomable person. Perhaps he was an island unto himself. An island whose winds would soon blow away any trace of her. And yet he was human. She could hurt him.

  He said, “Terrible thing that happened out there. But don’t ask me to regret any of it. If I hadn’t gone there, we would never have met.” She lost herself back in that night, and all she saw were the arcs of his arms as he swam away, and all she could hear were the splashes he’d made as he left the three of them on their own. Such a selfish flight, such a tragic flight.

  “Yes,” she finally said.

  He must have known what she was thinking, because he said, “I warned you about me. I told you all along I wasn’t worth your adoration. And still you fell for me, dear girl.” He opened the door wider. “Come in. I’ll make you a drink and we can catch up.”

  So he hadn’t come for her, but now that she’d come to him, he was willing to resume the relationship? She hadn’t been worth seeking out, but now that she’d made it easy he was capable of carrying on?

  Somehow her feet stayed glued to the stoop. She had not loved him less because of his shortcomings; his flaws had only made her want him more—he was vulnerable and in need of her love. Doesn’t a part of everyone want to bring out the best in another? Doesn’t that same part of everyone want to save another from themselves, to see that person rise higher, lifted by the power of love?

  But love had slipped away like a dream that drifts just beyond your grasp, and nothing can bring it back. And just because something didn’t last, it didn’t mean it had no value. Charles had opened the world to her and made it bigger. He had opened her mind. She would always be grateful for that. But she didn’t want him any longer. Not only because of that night but also because the love she wanted was not the kind he was able to give. However, she could forgive him. How could she ever have asked him to be more than he was capable of being? He was who he was. With no malice or bitterness whatsoever, she said simply, “Good-bye, Charles.”

  It took a few days for a quiet calm to settle over her.

  She was free.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A week later, the day bloomed with lemon sun and sweet air, another example of Indian summer perfection. Overhead a flock of ducks flew in V formation, going south to a better place for the winter. At first she felt forsaken, watching them leave. But then something broke free in Frieda’s ragged heart. She suddenly felt glad to be alive at that minute, able to see something as simple as the flight of birds.

  She walked down the pier and into the moment when her memory had first simmered to life when she was about four years old. With her mother beside her, she had stood very still on this very pier and really seen the ocean for the first time. She had gazed at the distant swells, gulls swooping overhead, sparks of light waltzing on the peaks between troughs, and the sea moving like a billowing bolt of silk.

  She remembered nothing of what had happened before or after this moment—just this one intense speck in time, and what she was left with forever after—how huge, eternal, and magnetic was that water, and how much she loved it then . . . and still did.

  Hicks stood waiting at the Wren. He said through a long exhalation, “Frieda.”

  “Hicks.”

  He smiled, and a rush of something sweet and warm and lovely settled over her skin like a layer of the finest sand. She let it sink in from skin all the way to bone. It sent her back to very old feelings that had become lost behind the curtain of everyday struggles—a belief in honor, a longing for something shared, a solid shoulder to lean on, the touch of a caring hand. Could it be that love had always stood before her but she had been too foolish to see it? In a frenzy she had focused her attentions in the wrong direction, on the wrong person, when a man more worthy, kind, and loving had always stood right beside her. He had taught her so many things—including the importance of being yourself. At one time she had known who she was, then lost it, and now she had to learn it all over again. With the gentlest of touches Hicks had guided her back. He had waited for her a long time. But she could not come to him now, not in this weakness. She would come to him only in strength, only strength.

  Would he wait longer?

  He said, “Are you ever going to call me by my given name?”

  Frieda looked away, toward the sea. There was no such thing as stagnation there. Even if the surface was calm, the underworld was swirling with life. Fish came out of rocks to hunt, dolphins swam, and farther out, whale-giants of the sea surfaced to breathe. Perhaps the idea of change could keep her afloat for now. And maybe someday she would be able to shine the light of forgiveness on herself.

  Stepping up to help her on board, he asked, “Are you ready?”

  She grasped his hand. “Take me out, Sam.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am deeply indebted to many wonderful people who have assisted in bringing this novel to life. Lisa Erbach Vance, my agent—you are an author’s dream representative. Jodi Warshaw, my editor at Lake Union—your support and guidance made the book possible. Amara Holstein—your excellent suggestions and guidance helped make the book stronger. Marcus Trower—your copyediting was meticulous. The team at Lake Union Publishing—thanks for support during every step along the way.

  Many fine resources contributed to the preparation of this novel, among them Capital of the World: A Portrait of New York City in the Roaring Twenties by David Wallace, The Black Ships: Rumrunners of Prohibition by Everett S. Allen, The Confessions of a Rum-Runner by James Barbican, and Rum Row: The Liquor Fleet That Fueled the Roaring Twenties by Robert Carse.

  As always, to my friends, family, and Joe a special thanks for
putting up with me throughout it all.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2015 Whitney Raines Photography

  Ann Howard Creel was born in Austin, Texas, and worked as a registered nurse before becoming a full-time writer. She is the author of numerous children’s and young adult books as well as fiction for adults. Her children’s books have won several awards, and her novel The Magic of Ordinary Days was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie for CBS. Creel currently lives and writes in Chicago.