EPILOGUE
Anna
The taxi driver pauses in front of the enormous iron gates.
“Is this the right place?”
There’s a bronze plaque on the stone post connected to the gate—I remember all too clearly the day that Robert stood outside and watched as the workers affixed it. He popped a bottle of champagne, offering me some, and even though decades have passed, I still recall the sensation of the bubbles exploding in my mouth as it slid down my throat.
The effervescence of the bubbles mixed with the bitter taste of fear and nerves, my stomach rolling and pitching at the thought of what we were embarking upon. The house was—is—too big, too demanding, like we were Icarus flying just a bit too close to the sun.
I open the car door and climb out, my heels sinking into the familiar swampy muck. Some things never change. I walk toward the gate and stop in front of the sign, tracing the letters there.
Marbrisa
I shiver.
A memory fills me, of the day I met Michael, almost thirty years ago, when he showed me the plans for the house, when I traced over the name he had scrawled there.
It seems fitting that his legacy would be left on the house, that he would be the one to name his creation.
“It’s the right place,” I call back over my shoulder.
When we received the creamy invitation to commemorate the hospital’s opening, my first instinct was to burn the thing, and then throw its ashes in the trash. But I didn’t. Instead, it sat on the entry table in our home in Rhode Island for a week, then two, before I broached the subject with Michael.
“We’ll walk the rest of the way,” I say impulsively, wanting this moment alone with the house, eager to have the privacy of my memories. I glance over to see that Michael has gotten out of the car as well, his gaze like mine affixed on the name of the house that he dedicated the best part of his career to. We each have our own peace to be made.
The taxi driver gives me a dubious look.
“I can manage the distance,” I say, my voice wry. “I’m not that old. Sixty-seven isn’t dead.” In fact, I walk the cliffs at Newport when the weather isn’t overly blustery. It’s one of my favorite parts of the day. “We’ll meet you back here.”
We paid the driver the full fare in advance, and I can only hope he’ll be waiting for us when we return. I have no desire to be stuck here any longer than necessary.
“Fine with me. They tell stories about this place. Say it’s haunted. Some real scary things have happened here. Now the War Department is turning it into a hospital for the soldiers coming back home from serving overseas. Can you imagine?”
It has been over three years since the United States entered the war, since Pearl Harbor was bombed, life as we know it changing so quickly. It’s strange to think that the first time I saw this house was at the end of one world war, and now I’m back and we’re in the thick of another one.
This time, at least, I wore more sensible shoes.
I can tell the taxi driver is curious about us, wondering why a woman in her sixties and her husband would hire a taxi to bring us out here. From what I gather from the one-sided conversation he engaged in on the way to Marbrisa, the locals mainly stay clear of this place.
Maybe he thinks we’re ghost hunters.
“Can’t think why the War Department wanted this place,” the driver says. “Now, the owner, he was desperate to unload. I suppose it’s big enough to be a hospital. They say it has one hundred rooms. Can you imagine?”
“It has sixty-one,” Michael replies, the figure coming to him as swiftly as my birthday might.
I squeeze his hand.
I’ve never asked my husband what it feels like to create something, to pour so much of yourself into a project but never to enjoy it for yourself, never to live in the rooms you designed, but instead to watch as others move in and inhabit the life you drew. I never asked him what it must feel like to see your masterpiece become the source of so much grief. There are some things we simply do not speak of, some silent, mutual agreement to put the past behind us and move forward with our lives when we ran off together.
Except for today.
Michael takes my hand, and we set off toward the main house, neither one of us speaking, the taxi driver’s inquisitive gaze burning a hole in our backs.
It’s a longer path than I remember, and I almost regret the decision to not have the taxi driver take us to the front as the other guests are doing, cars whizzing past us, but I sense that my husband needed this, that each step is a memory for him, each piece of gravel beneath our feet part of the vision he brought to life.
Michael catches sight of the house a moment before I do, his body stiffening, the hand holding mine going slack.
I stop in my tracks.
The entryway is as grand as ever, the intimidatingly long driveway flanked with palm trees. They’ve grown in the years since I fled this place, towering even further into the sky than they used to. In an instant, I am transported back to the first time Robert showed me the house, to the men hauling palms around, to Robert’s snappy little roadster, the peacocks with their elaborate plumes.
Tears fill my eyes.
I can see it all now, as though I’m watching a movie. I wish I could interrupt the scene and offer some sort of warning, that somehow if we had taken more care with each other, if things had gone differently, perhaps so much destruction wouldn’t have been wrought.
I see us hurtling toward an inevitable tragedy.
I glance over at Michael.
He wears an equally stunned expression on his face.
I squeeze his hand. “It’s still beautiful.”
And it is.
The house looks like a phoenix rising from the ashes, whatever scandals Robert and I laid at its feet, whatever tragedies happened after us not diminishing the work of art Michael created. We were Marbrisa’s custodians for a moment, but its legacy will far outlast us.
I hope that in its new iteration, in offering people a chance to heal, there is peace in Marbrisa’s future.
We walk toward the house together.
The house is locked up for today’s event, no doubt readying itself for necessary remodeling to turn this grand home into a working hospital. Truthfully, I don’t think I could bear going inside, anyway. There are too many difficult memories there, too much fear, too much pain.
It feels a bit like visiting my own grave.
The grounds are a far cry from how I remembered them, and I can tell by looking at Michael that it pains him to see the estate in such disarray. The taxi driver told us no one has lived here since the deaths four years ago, and it shows.
We walk around the main house to the back.
The once perfectly manicured lawn is overgrown and patchy in places. I shudder to think what lingers in the grass, fully expecting to see a snake or an alligator slither by. The peacocks seem to have multiplied in our absence, and the estate is overrun with them, their loud cries echoing in the silence.
Vines crawl up the sides of the mansion, bushes growing out of control. The maze that was once flawlessly symmetrical now looks particularly ominous—a cavernous, overgrown space threatening to swallow you whole.
The War Department certainly has a project on its hands.
Perhaps that’s the magic of the estate—its ability to shape-shift, to be paradise for some and a source of damnation for others. The night of our party, the night Lenora Watson died, it was the envy of Miami society.
Now it lies in ruin.
I walk to the water’s edge and look out at Biscayne Bay, at the spot where Lenora was killed, where everything changed. Michael leaves me be, his focus on the house, and I take a deep breath saying my own goodbyes.
As I turn away from the water, I glance down at the ground. There are two stone markers lying side by side, names etched on each—
Lenora Watson. Carolina Acosta.
“It didn’t seem right to put your name out here,” a voice says quietly.
I whirl around, my heart pounding.
A young woman stands a few feet away. There’s no one else around us, no one watching this tableau. I knew that coming here was risky, knew there was a chance I would be recognized, but when Michael received the invitation with his name on it, I had to come. Who knows how many years I have left? This was a peace I needed to make.
“I’m sorry. I should start over. I should explain.” Her lips curve. “My husband says I can be too direct. I’m Carmen Hayes. Carolina was my sister. I sent Michael Harrison the invitation.”
Awareness dawns. When the incident happened four years ago, it made national news. After all, it had all the makings of a good story—secrets, betrayal, wealth, murder. The press loved it. I followed the events, clipping the newspapers, wondering what role Robert and I had to play in all of it, if things could have ended differently if I had known he had fathered a child, if he had never met Lenora Watson, if he’d never pushed her into the bay.
“When my brother-in-law and I decided to offer Marbrisa as a hospital, we thought it needed an event like this,” Carmen continues. “A chance to reconcile the past and present before it became something new. I wondered if you would come. I hoped you would. I recognized you from your painting. Would you like to see it?”
Surprise fills me. “Is it in the house?”
She nods.
I hesitate, not sure I’m ready to face the house, not sure I’ll ever be.
Carmen must read the fear in my eyes, the hesitation, because she reaches out her hand to me.
“I can go with you if you like,” she offers.
I take her hand.
I walk out of Marbrisa into the sunlight, tears dried on my cheeks.
Michael is standing near the entrance steps, looking up at the house. I’ve known and loved this man for nearly three decades, and still, I struggle to read the expression in his gaze. If he’s surprised I went inside, he doesn’t show it.
“The former owner’s sister-in-law wanted to show me the painting,” I say. “The one you did of me in the garden. It’s hanging in one of the guest rooms.”
“Ah.”
“It’s beautiful.” And sad. “She offered it to me, but I couldn’t see it fitting into our house in Newport. Into the life we’ve built together.”
“Better for it to stay here,” he agrees. “To remain a part of the house’s history.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
When I left Robert that night, I knew that for people to believe I had drowned in the bay, I couldn’t take anything with me, couldn’t risk anything showing up as missing. And there was also a part of me that wanted the fresh start, not to carry anything over from my old life at Marbrisa to my new one.
“How do you feel?” I ask Michael.
He sighs. “I’m not sure how to put it into words. It’s hard not to wonder if these deaths could have been prevented if I’d never built the place.” He reaches out, brushing a stray strand of hair from my face. “And at the same time, how can I regret the thing that brought me to you?”
“Are you ready?” I ask him. “I’ve said my goodbyes.”
It’s not the truth, not completely, but there are some things that are too difficult to explain.
He nods. “I have, too.”
We walk away from the house together, and when we reach the end of the driveway, I turn and glance back at the house, knowing with certainty that I will never see it again in my lifetime.
That first day that we met, Michael spoke of houses as having a life of their own, and it’s extraordinary how much of an impact this one has had on mine. It has been both my destruction and my salvation, and now it’s time for me to move on.
I close my eyes, the ocean breeze on my face, and I say the goodbye I didn’t dare allow myself to voice out loud.
We were happy once. Even now, I can look back and say with certainty that there were moments in my marriage to Robert when I was the happiest I have ever been in all my life, just as I can say with certainty that I am in a far better place now than I ever was as his wife. I don’t know exactly when it was that we went wrong or if our end was always fated and we simply played the roles the stars had dealt us, but I feel both deep, unending regret and eternal gratitude for where I am now. It’s funny how a body can contain so many emotions, how a house can hold so many memories.
Michael and I walk hand in hand, leaving Marbrisa behind us.
When we reach the entrance to the estate, the grand house no longer in view, I’m gratified to see that the taxi driver did indeed wait for us like he promised.
“Glad y’all survived. You had me worried for a minute. Wouldn’t be the first people who disappeared in that house.”
Michael puts his arm around me, tucking me against the curve of his body, and I wonder if he’s remembering that night like I am—
The night I disappeared.
“It’s a shame,” the driver says as we climb back into the car. “People say they used to give some real fancy parties here.”
“Just one,” I reply softly.
I wait for him to bring up Lenora Watson’s death, but he doesn’t say anything, merely starts the car, Lenora’s life relegated to a footnote in Marbrisa’s history given the more recent, salacious events.
We drive on, and with each bit of distance we put between us and the past, it feels as though the tightness that has resided in my chest for so long unspools.
“I’m glad we came,” I whisper to Michael.
“Me, too,” he replies.
“Where are you all visiting from?” the taxi driver asks.
“Rhode Island. Newport,” Michael replies.
“Newport. Now that’s a fine city. The wife and I came down here six months ago from New York, and I’ll tell you, we’re ready to leave. Between the bugs and the humidity, the lizards and the alligators, the hurricanes, the people—I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would want to live in Florida.”
I can’t help but laugh. “You’d be surprised. Strangely, it grows on you.”
There’s potential in Miami, a dream that everyone chases. Not necessarily what it is, but what it could be. And I suppose for some—many—that dream is worth a thousand alligators and lizards the size of dinosaurs.
Michael reaches out and threads his fingers through mine so that our linked hands rest on the leather seat between us. I close my eyes, the breeze off Biscayne Bay wafting in through the open car windows, the warmth of the sun heating our skin.
On a day like this, it’s easy to see how you could mistake Miami for paradise. On a day like this, it’s easy to see how anything can be possible here.
The taxi hurtles down Cutler Road, carrying us north, and I stare out the window at the thick canopy of trees that frames our drive, their intricate trunks forming their own unique history of all that has happened and all that is to come.
The driver slams on the brakes, a curse exploding from his lips.
An alligator slithers by.