Belle-Île

By J.D. Hammerton

Just before the untimely death of his father, young Lile Lament, who suffers daily humiliation because of a hideous facial scar, learns that his biological mother died when he was a baby. He is now left with his stepmother and half-brother, whom he always believed to be his true family. Lile must face a turbulent adolescence while confronting the dark secrets of his fathers past. Tension builds between Lile and his handsome older brother, Nicolas, after they learn of their fathers love triangle with their mothers and the true nature of their brotherhood. As Lile desperately searches to unravel the mysteries surrounding his real mother, the bond between him and Nicolas becomes ever thinner as their sibling rivalry spirals increasingly out of control. Belle-le, the island that witnessed the violent events of their parents past, will become the ground on which the boys competition threatens not only their relationship but also their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491836491

J.D. Hammerton

Jacquelyn DeeAnn Hammerton was born and raised in Tennessee. She graduated from Rhodes College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and creative writing, and she has spent the last couple of years traveling and teaching English abroad. This is her first novel.

Book preview

1

The stench of rotting lilies filled my nostrils, and my stiff black suit rubbed my skin raw. I touched the polished mahogany of his casket and felt a tingle of satisfaction at the sight of my own fingerprints on its gleaming surface. My father was a good man.

He worked for Au Vol Nautique in Paris, designing sailboats: sloops, cutters, schooners, multihulls, keelboats, catboats, and dinghies, each one dreamed up in his private workshop on the outskirts of Paris. He’d stay out there for days at a time, eating kebabs for dinner and sleeping on a cot in the corner of the room. I’d often visit him after school, taking the number 11 to Marie de Lilas. I’d lean over him as he sketched his latest model, his large, dry hands brushing over the penciled lines on the page to make the lead fade. He even carved wooden catboats using a sloyd knife my mother, Valerie, bought him for his birthday several years ago. They say that a man who works with his hands is an honest man. I’m not so sure anymore, for it wasn’t until I turned fourteen that my father finally told me the truth—Valerie was not my real mother.

Your mother, he had said solidly, died in a hospital when you were very young.

We were floating in a dinghy off the coast of Belle-Île, the island my father once said saw both the beginning and the end of his troubles. Until then, I had always thought he meant his work, as it was there in his childhood that he discovered his great love for sailing. My family visited our island cottage every summer when the tourist season hit Paris. It sat in the hills above Sauzon, one of the harbor towns on the northeastern coast. The candy-colored houses lined the streets with flowers spilling from their balconies, while the steeple of Saint Nicholas Church towered over them. When the sun rose over Sauzon in the morning, its light cast such radiance, the blue bay lit up with thousands of sparkles. It was easy for us to ride our bikes to the harbor to go sailing. Usually my father took my brother, Nicolas, and me out to sea together, but that day he left Nicolas on the shore alone. I watched him kick at the rocks as my father rowed away without him.

Was she sick? I asked.

My father nodded slowly.

Like you?

He looked up as if startled by my question. I had known he was sick for a while, but I had never spoken about it.

"Non, he said, his eyes softening. Not like me. She was sick in a different way."

I looked at him, but he didn’t return my gaze. His blue eyes settled on the rocky coast.

Then, is Nicolas my stepbrother?

Half brother, he corrected. I thought about this for a moment. Nicolas was only a year older than me, but before I could ask another question, my father reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small photograph. He held it out to me, his face unchanging. I took it carefully and stared into the face of a young, blonde woman cradling a blanketed baby on a pebbled beach.

Is this her? I asked. My father didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I lost myself in her calm, unsmiling face. She held the blanket in a tight grip. The child’s face was curled up against the bronze skin just above the swell of her breasts. I searched my memory for the faintest trace of her, but I found only a fog like that which drifts from the sea and settles over the harbor in the early hours of a cold morning.

I held out the photo to my father, but he told me to keep it. After looking at him for a moment, I realized how old he appeared. Drinking had taken his health; the skin on his cheeks sagged from his bones, making him look like a lonesome dog.

My stomach tightened against the rocking of the sea, la mer. In the glossy surface of the photograph, I saw my own reflection: a stranger mangled and deformed by a diagonal scar splitting my face. It began just above my right eye, then shot downward across my cheek and reached my lips, splitting them in quarters. My father had explained once before that there were complications during my birth and that a subsequent infection had made the scarring even worse. As I sat in that dinghy with my father, I began to wonder whether my mother wasn’t the only thing he had lied about. I stared at myself, and I wondered.

Do I look like her? I asked. The question made me feel sick. I didn’t know whether my father could respond; I didn’t know what I expected him to say. He turned his eyes to me. It was the closest I ever came to seeing my father cry. He bit his lip and lowered his eyes.

Once, when you were a baby, you looked a lot like her. Now I think you look more like me. Perhaps what my father wanted to say was that I didn’t look like either of them. I looked like a scar.

As the sea rocked our boat, I recognized where we were. We were sailing the same course as the annual sailing competitions. The year before had been my and my brother’s last year as junior sailors, and we had to compete with the younger kids. I remember sailing all alone on my boat, always looking ahead at the gray horizon. I really thought I was going to win. But a younger boy with short, red hair standing under his red sails starting gaining speed and passed me on the left. Seeing a boy who resembled his own boat, or vice versa, made me want to laugh. He was wearing a white uniform, as though he were part of a sailing club. It made me feel sorry for him. I came in second. When I docked at the harbor, Valerie rushed to me, shouting and jumping around as if I’d won. My father arrived a few minutes later with a camera and took a picture of me in my boat. We waited for Nicolas for a long time, and when he finally arrived he didn’t talk to any of us. He never looked up as he docked his boat. My father asked Nicolas why he let a bunch of eleven-year-olds beat him. He didn’t respond. My parents wanted to get a drink at Roman’s café to celebrate, but I followed Nicolas up the hill instead to watch the adult competition. As we sat on the wall watching what looked like a hundred white sails gliding across the water, Nicolas clenched his jaw and said, Papa gave you the better boat.

My father reached out and touched my arm, waking me from my memory.

You’re in your own world again, he said. He took the wooden oars in his hands and eased them into the water. Sometimes, he continued, I can see her in you. She used to be a dreamer, too.

The day after my father’s death, when Valerie went to his workshop outside the city, she discovered something that sent her into hysterics for hours. There, sitting on the work table, was his masterpiece. The last vessel he ever made was not a boat but his own coffin. He must have known he was going to die before he had his aneurysm. He must have known it when he was on that dinghy with me for the last time the summer before, and every time he poured bourbon into a cold glass.

I ran my hand along the mahogany coffin one last time. Looking back, I should have asked more questions. I shouldn’t have been so afraid to know more. I stood for the last time in the presence of my father, peering down into his calm, unsmiling face. As I drew my fingers along the wood, admiring his work, I saw in the corner of the casket, hidden within the spiraling ivy trim, the name Marine. He had named his coffin as if it were one of his boats, I thought. I stepped back and watched as others came to his side to say good-bye or to pray. Everyone focused so much on his face that they didn’t even notice the beauty of the casket or the majestic name of his vessel hidden in the ivy trim. I smiled and kept the secret name, Marine, to myself, as if this discreet engraving connected my father to me even in death.

If there’s one thing you should know before I begin, it is this: there are two sides to every story. It means that we must remember to look at the world objectively, to understand both points of view of disputing persons and the reasons for their actions. I’m sure you are well aware of this expression and what it means. What you may not be aware of is that in the midst of a dispute, a rivalry, or a war, no matter how well you understand both sides of the story, there are the innocent, who get caught in the destructive wake. Our actions affect the people around us. If you look at the bigger picture, you might see just how much power you have to save a life—or to ruin one.

2

After the funeral, we returned to our apartment in the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris. We lived within walking distance of Montmartre and the famous red-light district, Pigalle. We used to live on the outskirts of the nineteenth arrondissement when I was a kid, but when my father’s catboat designs caught the attention of the chief engineer at Au Vol Nautique, we were able to afford a chic apartment within the city. We had a spacious, uncluttered apartment on the seventh floor of a gothic, gray-stoned building. It had been built sometime in the late nineteenth century, but renovations on the plumbing and electricity made the inside of the apartment more modern than its outer appearance. Tourists often stopped outside to take pictures of the architecture and the flowers cascading from the balconies in the springtime. They needed to be wary when the tenants watered their plants in the morning, for the water often spilled from the pots and splashed them just as they snapped their photographs.

Our large flat was complete with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a dining room where my great grandmother’s Blackwood table sat, a living room, a kitchen whose floor sank near the refrigerator, and a study facing the courtyard. The study was the only Parisian-looking room in the house, with my father’s books crammed tightly in the bookcases, the walls decorated with maps of the places he had sailed, and old photographs of his mother and father, who had died before I was born.

Since no one else in the apartment building cared much for the garden in the courtyard, Valerie had her own place to plant red poppies and marigolds. In January, however, the garden was a grim thicket of weeds and withered vines stretching up the stones walls like varicose veins.

The space in our apartment was large enough to fit everyone after the funeral. My father didn’t have any brothers or sisters. Only his friends and coworkers, as well as Valerie’s side of the family, came to the funeral.

Nicolas didn’t stay long. He stood in the corner of the room for a while, scratching his palms, his feet itching to escape. When I walked over to him, he told me he was going to the Sacré Cœur to meet up with Anne or Sophie or Anne-Sophie. I wanted to go with him, but I was cornered by my aunt, Monique, who forced me to drink a glass of her homemade exotic fruit juice.

That’ll make you feel better, my dear, she said, kissing my cheek. When your grandmother died a few years ago, the grief was more than I could handle. Your uncle Robert had to force me to eat sometimes. Just remember to keep eating foods rich in vitamins and protein, okay, my dear?

"Merci, Monique," I said.

Go on, she insisted, Drink it.

I smiled weakly at her, realizing that her mascara was smudged from her tears and her nose slightly pinked. I could feel the warmth radiating from her skin, the salt from her tears mixing with her Chanel perfume and turning the sweet fragrance stale and melancholic. I raised the glass to my lips and finished the juice in three thick, sweet gulps. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was.

By the time I looked up, Nicolas had fled the apartment. I thought of going after him, but with each step I took toward the door, I was stopped by people offering me their sympathy. I listened to Monique’s