7

J. Land Crockett sat in an overstuffed chair on the windblown sun porch of his isolated Maine summer house, on his island in Blue Hill Bay. All around him, he could smell and hear the sea. It was cold and damp out on the porch, but he was bundled up in a heavy sweater and thick blankets. He was an old man with fierce deep blue eyes and sagging, wrinkled skin. He liked the cold. It reminded him he was still alive, even if he didn’t particularly care. Sometimes he’d sit out on the porch all night. He found comfort in the shadows there.

And he liked Maine in the fall. The lobsters were more plentiful, the ocean quieter, the tourists gone. He was a billionaire and a recluse, the nominal head of a diversified corporate giant. Crockett Industries. The company would carry the family name long after he was gone. It had begun as Crockett Oil on Spindletop in 1901, when for the first time in his life Johnny Crockett had been in the right place at the right time. Not one to stand on ceremony, the soft-spoken, unpredictable Texan was Johnny to everyone—rich, poor, educated, illiterate, it made no difference to him. Nor was he one to give a damn about money. He always said if he didn’t have so much of it, he’d probably have gone broke.

When Johnny died in 1941, control of the Crockett fortune and the Crockett Oil Corporation went to his son, a tougher, harder man than his father. Crockett to everyone, never Johnny and rarely Land, he was just as unpredictable as his father, but he was also impatient, gruff, often remote. In the late 1950s, he’d turned the day-to-day running of the company over to his son-in-law and retired to his ranch northwest of Houston and his island off the coast of Maine. As his fortune had grown into the billions, he’d removed himself further and further from human contact.

Which, Crockett thought, was the way he liked it. He had his memories. They were all he needed.

And last night, the memories had been particularly vivid. Crockett had felt as if Judith were there on the island with him, laughing with her mother.

“Daddy, won’t you go on our picnic with us?”

“Another time, sweetheart.”

“Judith, you know Daddy needs to rest. He works so hard. We’ll go, just the two of us. Maybe we’ll see some porpoises today.”

“Whales, Mama! I want to see whales!”

He had loved them both more than he could ever love himself. He would have died for them, gladly. Instead they were the ones who had died, first Judith, the mother, then Judith, the daughter.

He choked back the tears, but he couldn’t stop the images from coming.

Judith had been so beautiful the night of the Christmas ball in Vienna. Her hair was shining, her eyes never so blue, her face never so happy. She had chosen an off-the-shoulder silver gown startling for its simplicity. There was nothing to distract the eye from the glittering natural beauty of Judith Land.