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I wander upstairs like a blind man through the many halls that are at once familiar and completely foreign at this moment. I’ve lived in this house as a servant for endless days, and now I am an equal.
Sweat mixed with blood streams down my back as I make my way to Kat’s room. I stumble across the threshold and see her in her large four-poster bed nestled into a book.
“Oh, my God, Heath! What happened?” she asks, dropping her hard cover.
She grabs me as I crash into her mattress, feet still on the floor, arms flung out over her. She pushes my hair from my temple and kisses my forehead. Tears stream down my face unabated as I feel utterly gutted and empty over the loss of Mom. She was the only one I ever had, Mom and me against the world, but now she’s gone and I’ve got to fight this battle on my own. I belong to no one. I’m not a Shaw. I am utterly alone.
“I don’t even know who I am anymore, now that she’s gone,” I sob.
Kat holds me steadfast and I feel her strong heartbeat through the fabric of her nightgown. Her tiny kisses flutter across my face and her sweet breath fills my nostrils.
“You’re Heath Cliffton, my best friend. You’re family to me, and I’ll never leave you. I promise,” Kat swears.
Her eyes fill with tears and spill over, mixing with mine as she kisses my cheeks and brow.
“You have me, Heath, and nothing will ever tear us apart.”
Chapter Two
Heath
I have never seen her get squeamish. She baits the worms or the small fish without a flinch and yanks the catch from the hook like a salty old seaman.
“Do you gut them, too?” I ask her.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all to tell you the truth. Kat lost her mom long enough ago that her father raised her as one of the boys. Kat is a wild, untamable thing, and God help the son of a bitch whoever tries to reel her in. Her beauty and grace stand in constant contradiction to the wildness that lives right under her skin.
She gives me a dirty look and grabs the largest flounder from our cooler, chops off its head and tail with a single blow of her cleaning knife. Kat splits the seam and tears the fish apart, her short half-moon fingernails filling with blood.
She tears out the guts with her nails and tosses them over the side of the bridge, then filets the meat with the practiced hand of a surgeon.
I nod, impressed. “You ought to become a merchant marine, join a commercial fishing outfit.”
She’s clad in old jeans rolled to the knee and waders in case she has to get in and “untangle lines.”
“When the zombie apocalypse comes, I definitely want you on my team,” I tell her.
Kat’s cheeks are pink from the sun, and her eyes are shining bright. She loves to spend the day outdoors, running, exploring, and catching fireflies in the moonlight. If she could have it her way, she’d probably camp the whole summer outdoors, away from the creature comforts of Wainscott Hollow. While most of her contemporaries like collecting Chanel purses, Kat likes risking her life by swimming in the strong currents in the channel. Or tracking animals, looking for starfish in tide pools, finding little-known constellations, or building a fire from nothing and dancing around the flames that leap into the night like a mad woman.
This is her favorite fishing spot, and I’m almost embarrassed to say that Kat’s the one who taught me to fish. But, as it turns out, I’m pretty fucking good at it. We spend hours on this bridge, riffing and joking, insulting one another until the tension runs high, and we have to change to another activity—like jumping off the edge a few feet onto the craggy, rocky bottom below.
Kat always jumps first, and it’s a wonder neither of us has ever broken a limb. She climbs the protective rail in her waders, unfazed as usual. But this time, as she balances on the edge, a gunshot erupts, and she startles and falls, flailing to the creek bed below. A host of startled field sparrows lifts off from the tall wetland grasses at the sound.
“Kat!” I yell, leaping to her rescue. I don’t care where the shot came from, only whether my friend is all right.
Gunshots in my old neighborhood always spelled trouble. Here in Montauk, they often signal grouse or pheasant hunters or some wealthy gun owner doing target practice on their estate grounds whenever they want.
I skirt the edge of the bridge and run down to the ravine below, wading into the water to aid Kat, who’s recovering from her fall. She’s cradling her arm, but it doesn’t look broken, and she spits blood into the water.
