Chapter 1: A Toast to the Past
The air in the ballroom was thick with the smell of gardenias, aged wood, and expensive perfume. Conrad Black stood near the grand piano, a glass of whiskey hanging loose from his fingers. He was a pillar of stillness in the swirling sea of silk and suits. The candlelight from the chandeliers caught the sharp line of his jaw, the hollows under his cheekbones, and did nothing to warm the ice-blue of his eyes.
He was watching her. He couldn’t stop.
Isabel laughed at something a cousin said, the sound cutting through the murmur of the room and hitting him directly in the chest. She touched the man’s arm, a casual, friendly gesture, and Conrad’s knuckles went white around his glass. Two years. It might as well have been two hours. She wore a dress the color of champagne, and it clung to her in a way that was both elegant and quietly devastating. Her brown hair was swept up, exposing the line of her neck—a neck he had kissed a thousand times in the dark.
“Everyone? Can I have your attention?”
Jeremiah’s voice, cheerful and amplified by a few drinks, cut through the haze. He stood near the head of the long dinner table, a flute of champagne raised. He looked happy. Guilt, sour and familiar, coiled in Conrad’s gut.
“I just want to say a few words,” Jeremiah said, his smile wide and genuine. He slung an arm around Isabel’s shoulders, pulling her into his side. She smiled up at him, that same sun-kissed, open smile Conrad had fallen for at seventeen. It didn’t quite reach her eyes tonight. “First, to my beautiful bride. Izzy. You’re it for me. You know that.”
Polite applause. A few wistful sighs from aunts. Conrad took a long drink, the whiskey burning a path down his throat that felt like punishment.
“And second,” Jeremiah continued, turning his gaze across the room. It landed on Conrad. “To my brother. My best man. Seriously, man, I wouldn’t be here without you.”
Conrad forced a nod, a tight lift of his chin.
“No, really,” Jeremiah insisted, his voice softening with a sincerity that was worse than any joke. “You brought her into our lives, Con. Remember? That summer at the club? If you hadn’t been too cool to talk to her, I never would have gotten the chance.” He laughed, a fond, easy sound. “So really, this is all your fault. Cheers to you, brother.”
The room erupted in laughter and a chorus of “Hear, hear!” Glass chimed against glass. A symphony of good intentions.
Conrad lifted his whiskey, a mechanical motion. His eyes, against his will, locked with Isabel’s across the twenty feet of polished floor that separated them.
The noise of the room—the laughter, the music, the clinking—muffled, then faded into a low hum. In her green eyes, he saw the same memory, sharp and clear as the crystal in his hand.
Two years ago. This same room, empty after a party. Just the two of them and the moonlight streaming through the windows. Her feet were bare on the cool mahogany. She’d been dancing, her hair a wild mess, her laughter echoing off the high ceilings. He’d pulled her close, breathing in the scent of her skin and summer night. The small velvet box was a burning weight in his blazer pocket. His heart was a hammer against his ribs. He’d opened his mouth to speak—
“Conrad?”
The memory shattered. His mother was at his elbow, her face etched with concern she couldn’t fully hide. “You’re not drinking your toast.”
He looked down. The whiskey was untouched. He drained it in one go, the heat doing nothing to dispel the cold emptiness in his veins. “Need some air,” he muttered, his voice rough.
He didn’t look at Isabel again. He couldn’t. He just turned and walked, navigating the clusters of family and friends with a stiff grace. Their conversations washed over him—talk of honeymoons and real estate and the terrible band at so-and-so’s wedding. It was all static.
The French doors to the terrace were heavy. He shouldered them open and stepped into the cool, damp night. The scent of rain and wet earth was a relief. He leaned on the stone balustrade, pulling a cigarette and his lighter from his pocket. The flame was a tiny, shaking star in the darkness. He inhaled, the smoke mixing with the misty air.
From here, he could see the blurred, golden squares of the ballroom windows. Shadows moved behind them, a pantomime of celebration. He could pick out Jeremiah’s broad-shouldered silhouette, animated, talking. And next to him, the slimmer, graceful shadow that was Isabel.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. A text from inside: You okay? – Jere.
He didn’t answer. He just smoked and watched the ghost of his past moving behind the glass.
The door behind him opened again, sending a slice of music and light onto the terrace. He didn’t need to turn. He knew the rhythm of her breathing.
“It’s getting cold out here,” Isabel said. Her voice was quiet, closer than he expected.
He didn’t turn. “I’m used to it.”
She came to stand beside him at the railing, not touching. He could feel the heat from her arm, a mere inch from his. She was hugging herself, the thin silk of her dress no match for the night chill.
“Jeremiah didn’t mean anything by that,” she said finally. “The ‘you brought her to us’ thing. He’s just… he’s grateful. He loves you.”
“I know what he meant.” Conrad took a final drag and flicked the cigarette into the dark garden below. The ember died before it hit the ground. “He’s right.”
“Conrad—”
“Why are you out here, Izzy?” He finally looked at her. In the pale, diffused light from the windows, her face was all shadows and sorrow. The careful wedding-day joy was gone, stripped away by the quiet. “You should be in there. With your fiancé.”
The word tasted like ash.
She looked away, out over the dark expanse of the lawn that sloped down to the sea. “It was a lot.In there. All the eyes. All the… expectation.”
“You used to love a party.”
“I used to love a lot of things.” The words were out before she could stop them. She winced, as if hearing how they sounded. “That came out wrong.”
“Did it?”
A silence stretched between them, taut and fragile. The only sound was the distant sigh of the ocean and the muffled thump of bass from inside.
“Do you remember,” she began, then stopped. She shook her head. “Never mind.”
“Tell me.”
She turned toward him, her eyes searching his face. “That night. After the Summer Gala. Right here. You were going to say something to me.”
His breath caught. Every detail was etched in fire in his mind. The feel of her waist under his hands. The way a strand of hair had stuck to her damp temple. The terrifying, glorious certainty he’d felt. And then the crushing doubt that had followed, the voice that whispered he would ruin her, that his own darkness would swallow her light. He’d kissed her instead of speaking. He’d let the moment pass.
“I don’t remember,” he lied, his voice barely a whisper.
She held his gaze, and he saw she knew. She’d always been able to see straight through him. A sad, knowing smile touched her lips. “Right.”
From inside, Jeremiah’s voice called, bright and searching. “Izzy? You out here?”
The spell broke. Isabel took a small, sharp step back from the railing, from him. The distance felt like a canyon.
“I should go,” she said.
She hesitated for one more second, a lifetime of words and what-ifs hanging in the air between them. Then she turned and walked back toward the light, toward the sound of her future husband’s voice.
Conrad waited until the door clicked shut. He pulled out another cigarette, but his hands were shaking too badly to light it. He gripped the cold stone until his fingers ached, staring into the nothingness of the night, listening to the waves crash against the cliffs below—a sound that was both constant and infinitely lonely, just like the ache in his chest that had never gone away.
That night, they all headed to the Black’s beach house where they were staying for the weekend before the wedding.
The drive was quiet. Conrad took his own car, needing the space, the roar of the engine to drown out his thoughts. The beach house emerged from the pines, a sprawling shingled silhouette against the moonlit ocean. It smelled the same—salt, pine sap, and the faint, musty sweetness of old books. He carried his duffel up the familiar creaking stairs to his old room.
Nothing had changed. The twin bed with its navy quilt. The shelves of trophies and waterlogged paperbacks. The window that stuck unless you lifted it just so. And on the nightstand, in a simple wood frame, the photograph.
He and Isabel at seventeen. She was on his back, her arms locked around his neck, both of them laughing so hard they were blurry. The sun had been in her hair. He remembered the exact, weightless feeling of that afternoon, the certainty that it would never end.
His throat tightened. He picked up the frame, his thumb brushing over the glass where her smile was. For a long moment, he just held it, the ghost of that joy a physical ache in his hands. Then, carefully, deliberately, he turned it face down on the wood.
The soft click of the frame meeting the table was louder than any slam.
He headed downstairs. His mother’s car was pulled up on the oyster shell drive, trunk open.
“Oh, honey, you’re an angel,” she said, handing him a heavy weekender. “I overpacked. As usual.”
“Some things never change,” he said, hefting another bag. The normalcy of the task was a relief. He made two trips, lining the luggage by the stairs.
Headlights swept across the drive, then cut out. Doors thumped shut.
“Finally!” Jeremiah’s voice cut through the quiet night. He emerged from the dark, an arm around Isabel’s shoulders. “I thought you’d never get here. We stopped for fries.”
“You were starving,” Isabel said, her voice teasing but thin. She carried a small bag, holding it in front of her like a shield. Her eyes found Conrad in the dim light of the porch. They flickered to the luggage at his feet, then back to his face.
“Just helping Mom,” he said, by way of explanation.
“Always the gentleman,” Jeremiah said, clapping him on the shoulder as he passed. He dropped a kiss on their mother’s cheek. “This place looks great, Mom. Totally ready for a party.”
“It’s a wedding weekend, Jeremiah, not a fraternity bash,” she said, but she was smiling. “I’m turning in. Don’t stay up too late.”
The door clicked shut behind her. The three of them were left standing in the pool of yellow porch light, the sound of the surf filling the sudden silence.
Jeremiah yawned, stretching his arms wide. “I’m wiped. Rehearsal dinners are more exhausting than the actual thing, I swear. Coming up, Iz?”
“In a minute,” Isabel said. “I want some air.”
Jeremiah nodded, already heading for the stairs inside. “Don’t catch a chill. G’night, Con.”
“Night.”
The door closed again. The distance between Conrad and Isabel on the wide porch felt both vast and impossibly small. She set her bag down and walked to the railing, mimicking his pose from earlier. He didn’t move from where he stood by the luggage.
“You turned it down,” she said, not looking at him.
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Seemed like the right thing to do.”
She let out a short, breathy sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Right.”
A moth batted itself against the porch light. Conrad watched its frantic dance. “You should go in. He’s waiting.”
“I know.” She didn’t move. She traced a pattern in the condensation on the railing. “It’s just… it’s harder being here than I thought it would be.”
Every cell in his body screamed at him to cross the space, to pull her away from that door, from that staircase, from that future. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “It’s just a house, Belly.”
Finally, she turned. Her eyes were bright, too bright, in the low light. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t do that. Not with me.”
He held her gaze, the truth a live wire between them. He gave one slow, almost imperceptible nod. An acknowledgment. A surrender.
She picked up her bag. Her hand was on the doorknob when she paused. “Thank you,” she said softly, her voice barely carrying over the waves.
Conrad stood alone on the porch for a long time, listening to the house settle, waiting for the light in the hallway upstairs to go out.
He finally went inside when the chill seeped through his jacket. The house was silent, save for the old refrigerator humming in the kitchen. He climbed the stairs, each creak a thunderclap in the hush. He passed the closed door to the master bedroom—his mother’s—and then the next door, slightly ajar. Through the crack, he saw a slice of moonlight falling across the floor, a discarded pair of heels. He didn’t let himself look. He kept moving.
His room was a tomb of dead adolescence. He didn’t bother with a light. He shucked off his clothes, left them in a pile on the floor, and fell into the narrow bed. The springs complained. He stared at the water-stained ceiling, listening to the endless rhythm of the ocean until it blurred into a formless roar inside his head.
Sleep was a shallow, fitful thing. It pulled him under for what felt like minutes before images fractured behind his eyelids—Isabel laughing on his back, the frame face-down on the nightstand, Jeremiah’s grateful smile, the velvet box he never opened. The dream was sound and color without sense, a relentless replay of loss he’d authored himself.
He jerked awake, the thin sheet tangled around his legs. The room was pitch black. He was drenched, a cold sweat plastering his hair to his forehead and making the sheets cling. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic animal trying to escape. He fumbled for his phone on the nightstand. The screen blazed to life, the numbers searing into the dark.
2:15 AM.
The silence in the house was absolute and oppressive. It felt like a weight on his sternum. He couldn’t stay here, in this small room that smelled of lost time. He needed air that wasn’t freighted with memory.
He swung his legs over the side, the wood floor cold under his feet. He pulled on a pair of shorts and didn’t bother with a shirt. The hallway was a tunnel of deeper black. He moved by feel, past the closed doors, down the stairs, his hand skimming the familiar banister. The front door latch clicked open with a sound like a gunshot.
The night air was a slap. It was cooler now, carrying the full, briny force of the ocean. He crossed the dew-slick grass, his breaths pluming in faint ghosts. The old dock stretched out before him, its gray boards silvered by a sliver of moon. His feet carried him down its length, the wood groaning softly beneath his weight.
At the end, he descended the rough wooden stairs to the sand. It was cool and giving, each step leaving a perfect, temporary imprint.
He stopped at the water's edge, where the foam fizzed over his feet. He looked back at the house, a dark shape against the sky. In one window, the one he’d refused to look at, a soft, golden light glowed.
A nightlight. She still used a nightlight.
The reality of it, simple and domestic and utterly final, detonated inside him.
She was in there. Asleep. In a room down the hall from Jeremiah. Her fiancé. Her husband in forty-eight hours.
She was marrying Jere.
The thought wasn’t a thought. It was a physical event. A sledgehammer to the center of his chest.
A sharp, stunning pain bloomed behind his breastbone. He couldn’t breathe. He clutched at his chest, fingers digging into his own skin as if he could rip the feeling out. He bent double, a low, wounded sound escaping him. The air wouldn’t come. It was thick, solid, stuck in his throat.
His breaths came in ragged, useless gasps. His eyes burned, hot tears blurring the house, the sea, the sky into a smear of darkness. A high, thin ringing filled his ears, drowning out the waves. The tightness worsened, a band of iron tightening around his ribs, squeezing his lungs empty.
He sank to his knees in the damp sand. His hand clutched his chest tighter, nails leaving pale half-moons on his skin. He gasped, a raw, desperate sound that was swallowed by the vast, indifferent night. Each inhale was a fight, a shuddering victory that brought no relief. He knelt there, paralyzed by the sheer, physical agony of understanding.