Page 1 of Chasing the Horizon

Chapter One

June 2025

Just as soon as it hit the flame, the title page turned to black ash, rising up through the Nantucket winds and tracing a line down the sand.Good riddance, Victor thought, reaching for the second page. It felt particularly dramatic to burn each one after another, to feel the density of his and Valerie’s words disappear into the air. But he was prepared to be out here all night.

A book is a dangerous thing, Victor thought.It’s too honest. It betrays too much.

It was a chilly fifty-eight degrees despite the day’s high of nearly eighty, but Victor had been too distracted to grab a sweatshirt. Instead, he stood in a pair of jeans and a white tee, shivering as he continued to burn the manuscript. It was the only copy; he’d deleted everything else off the cloud, his computer, and his emails. The modern age made it difficult to really get rid of anything fully, but he was adamant that it be gone.

Too much had happened in the Sutton family. Why had they thought it was a good idea to dredge all that up? Why had he thought it would all be okay?

After he burned the eighth page, he glanced back up at the house to see the upstairs light still on, proof that Esme was in bed but still awake, snuggled in and maybe reading her book. His heart seized with a painful love for her. What would she say if she looked out the window and saw him like this? Would she say she knew he couldn’t change?

He knew he wasn’t good enough for her and his family’s love. He knew he was too angry, too prone to emotion, too messy.

A strange voice in the back of his mind told him to call his therapist and talk this over. But Victor shook that voice right out. The fact that he even had a therapist was a rather new development and one he hadn’t entirely gotten used to. Victor Sutton, world-renowned family psychiatrist, had a therapist of his own? Who was he kidding? How could he possibly trust anyone with his innermost thoughts? How could he trust anyone to “fix” him?

After page ten, he threw a big chunk of the manuscript into the flames and watched it erupt. His heart was pounding. Suddenly exhausted, he sat on one of the camping chairs around the bonfire and wrapped the rest of the manuscript into a tight cylinder. Here was another thought he couldn’t banish: What would Valerie say when she found out he’d burned the manuscript?

And then another: She didn’t want anything to do with him.

Victor knew it was too late to apologize.

Victor knew that at this rate, Valerie would never talk to him again.

What would happen when the baby came? Would Victor be allowed to meet him? Would Victor be allowed to play “grandfather” from the beginning rather than trying to makeup for lost time, as he found himself doing with Rebecca’s and Bethany’s children now?

He loved his grandchildren. He did. But sometimes he had the sense that they still thought of him as a stranger or a man who was around right now but wouldn’t be forever. He couldn’t blame them. Children knew their environments. They could sense things others couldn’t.

Suddenly, the door to the back porch opened, and light illuminated the backyard all the way to the frothing waves along their stretch of beach. Esme was on the porch in her pajamas, a look of confusion and fear warping her pretty features.

Victor prepared a lie.I’m just thinking. I made a fire to calm myself down.

But Esme didn’t give him a chance to say anything.

“It’s Valerie,” she cried, scurrying down the porch steps in her bare feet. “It’s Valerie. There’s something wrong.” She took Victor’s shoulders in her hands to support herself. It looked as though she couldn’t stop shaking.

Victor stuttered. “What are you talking about?”

“What about the baby?” Esme rasped, her eyes enormous. “What if there’s something wrong with the baby?”

Chapter Two

October 2024

Eight Months Earlier

Valerie was almost too frightened to enter the clinic. Poised outside with her hand on the railing and the October sunshine on her back, she gazed through the glass door at the waiting room, filled with other expectant mothers, fathers who looked jittery and nervous, and toddlers who played with wooden blocks on the floor. Valerie had been inside such clinics before. She’d received marvelous news, shared smiles with other pregnant ladies, and counted down the days till she became a mom. But previously, those “joyous” days had died abruptly. She’d become a woman who’d had a miscarriage. She’d been a woman who was cursed.

Was it possible for curses to just go away?

“You ready?” Alex’s voice was soft in her ear.

Valerie turned to gaze into his puppy dog eyes. His hand was on the handle to the clinic door, and it was turning, turning. Shehad to be ready, she knew. They had to be brave and confident and sure of this next step.

They were back together after years apart: a married couple who’d never bothered to get divorced and who’d almost immediately gotten pregnant after their reunion.

It was almost too much to bear.

---