The Last September

by Nina de Gramont Narrated by Rebecca Mitchell

Overview

The suspenseful tale of love and murder, by an acclaimed writer at the top of her game, offers a taut psychological mystery whose answers lie hidden until the final pages.



Brett had been in love with Charlie from the first day she laid eyes on him in college. When Charlie is brutally murdered, Brett is devastated. But, if she is honest with herself, their marriage had been hanging by a thread for some time, especially after Charlie had an affair. The recent reappearance in their lives of his unstable younger brother, Eli, further strained their relationship until Brett, ever steadfast in her devotion to Charlie, began to question her own commitment in the days leading up to his death. Though all clues point to Eli, who's been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years, any number of people might have been driven to slit the throat of Charlie Moss-the handsome, charismatic man who unwittingly damaged almost every life he touched.



Now, looking back on their lives together, Brett is determined to understand how such a tragedy could have happened-and whether she was somehow complicit. Set against the lush yet desolate autumn beauty of Cape Cod, The Last September is a riveting emotional puzzle. Award-winning author Nina de Gramont takes readers inside the psyche of a woman facing down the meaning of love and loyalty in a mesmerizing novel that is as moving as it is unpredictable.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

One of Ten Great Fall Thrillers from Entertainment Weekly

"With an artist's eye and a poet's heart, de Gramont realizes a world of love, mystery, and the shattering sorrow of mental illness, deceit, hope, and lives cut short. Impossible to put down." —Library Journal (starred review)

"The Last September is a wonderful early fall read. As a picture of a marriage struggling under the weight of expectation and mental illness, it is nearly flawless. De Gramont should be proud.” —New York Journal of Books

“A moody murder mystery . . . De Gramont's latest boasts lovely, understated writing, sharply drawn settings—Boulder, Amherst, and Cape Cod—and, once again, characters who are irresistibly attractive, flawed, and dangerous . . . But it is also an emotionally intense study of how a transcendent love becomes a fraying marriage . . .  A fine literary whodunit from an accomplished storyteller." —Kirkus Reviews

“Brilliant rendering of love story, murder mystery, pitch-perfect study of horrific 'ordinary' mental illness, and that rare coming of age novel that deals with adults, who actually do come of age in the most difficult ways. I was hooked by the first paragraph, which somehow contains all the beautiful, luminous grief of the whole story, and I truly did not want to let it go in the end.” —Brad Watson, author of Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

“The Last Septemberis a wonderful, glowing book populated by characters that become a part of your life long after the last page has been turned. It is the type of novel writers admire and readers long for.” —Jason Mott, author of The Returned

“Nina De Gramont’s The Last September portrays an immediately gripping world of secrets, trauma, and conflicting loyalties.  Spanning mental illness, the meaning of family, and the lengths we go to for love, this novel begs to be read in a single sitting. . . A literary novel of both suspense and emotion, this flashback-filled murder mystery has broad appeal.”—Foreword Reviews

“Nina de Gramont writes excellent characters and a dazzling storyline involving mental illness, family, infidelity, relationships, love and murder.The Last September is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s a masterful mediation on relationships.”—Entertainment Realm

“A convincing and suspenseful novel, well-written,  precise,  and poignant in its depiction of human nature in dire distress.” —Sheila Kohler, author of Dreaming for Freud

“The Last September is a riveting emotional puzzle that takes readers inside the psyche of a woman facing the meaning of love and loyalty.”—Story Matters

“A highly readable novel, the emphasis here is on a troubled marriage and not the murder mystery.”—Swiftly Tilting Planet
 
“Full of poignant prose, a brilliant presentation of Eli’s illness and the toll it takes on his family, and a plot that ebbs and tides with the ocean and sand dunes, The Last September in non-put-down-able.  Sleek and elegant, The Last September is a must read.”—The Review Broads

 

Kirkus Reviews

2015-06-09
A moody murder mystery infused with love and grief—and a fascination with Emily Dickinson. "Because I am a student of literature, I will start my story on the day Charlie died. In other words, I'm beginning in the middle." This is Brett Mercier, named by her English-professor parents after Hemingway's Lady Brett Ashley and herself a scholar of American Renaissance poetry. She meets her future husband at college in Colorado through his brother Eli, a pre-med student, her good friend. After one unforgettable night of love and cross-country skiing, Charlie disappears. The next year, she loses Eli too, when he's sucked under by schizophrenia. By the time the brothers reappear in her life, Brett is in grad school, engaged to someone else. De Gramont's (Gossip of the Starlings, 2008, etc.) latest boasts lovely, understated writing, sharply drawn settings—Boulder, Amherst, and Cape Cod—and, once again, characters who are irresistibly attractive, flawed, and dangerous. "This wasn't a murder mystery," Brett announces to the reader late in the novel. It is a murder mystery, actually, as is any book that starts with a homicide and ends by revealing the culprit. But it is also an emotionally intense study of how a transcendent love becomes a fraying marriage, buckling under the weight of financial troubles, early parenthood, Brett's frustration at having no time to work on her research, and Charlie...just being Charlie. By the time crazy ol' Eli shows up for an unwanted visit, setting in motion the events of the horrible day, the couple and their baby are living in a ramshackle beach house borrowed from the brothers' dad. Eli is in the yard freaking out when Brett arrives and finds the body, then he runs. He must have done it, right? A fine literary whodunit from an accomplished storyteller.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170069347
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	09/15/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

1

Because I am a student of literature, I will start my story on the day Charlie died. In other words, I’m beginning in the middle. In medias res, that’s the Latin term, and though my specialty is American Renaissance poetry, I did have to study the classics. Homer, Dante, Milton. They knew about the middle, how all of life revolves around a single moment in time. Everything that comes before leads up to that moment. Everything that comes afterward springs from that moment.

In my case, that moment—that middle—is my husband’s murder.

WHEN I LOOK BACK NOW, it hurtles toward us like a meteor. But at the time we were too wrapped up in our day-to-day life to see it. Charlie and I lived in a borrowed house by the ocean. Our daughter, Sarah, was fifteen months old. September had just arrived, emptying the beaches at the very moment they became most spectacular: matte autumn sunlight and burnished eel grass. Cape Cod Bay was dark enough to welcome back seals but warm enough for swimming, at least if you were Charlie. He made a point of swimming in the ocean at least one day every month, including December, January, and February. I used to joke that he was part dolphin.

But this was late summer, and unseasonably warm. You didn’t need to be a dolphin to go swimming, and on Charlie’s last day he had already been in the water by the time Sarah woke up from her morning nap. At eleven thirty, he carried her into the extra bedroom I used as a study. If I’d run my hand through his hair, I would have felt the leftover grit of salt water. But I didn’t run my hand through his hair because I was too angry. I was generally angry at Charlie that fall, and it didn’t help, his tendency to wander into the room where he knew I was trying to work. Sarah still wore nothing but a diaper, and obviously not a clean one. Between jobs since his restaurant failed, Charlie had spent the morning working on reshingling the house, which belonged to his father. Like Sarah, he was half naked; he wore khaki shorts and no shirt. Ignoring my pointed glance, he lay down on the worn, woven rug, crossing his long legs at the ankles. His curly blond head rested on his hands with his elbows pointing toward the ceiling. Sarah squatted about six inches away, her gaze focused on her father, concentrating in that intense toddler way—almost as if she knew these hours constituted her last chance to see him alive. Remembering that look, I like to think of Charlie’s face imprinting itself on her subconscious, the memory as intrinsic as the strands of his DNA. Sarah was a thoughtful child who already had an impressive vocabulary—twenty words that she said regularly, more popping up here and there. But she was slower to walk. She hadn’t begun crawling until past her first birthday; she often stood up on her own, her face scrunched in a grimace as if she were planning to walk, but she had yet to risk a step.

I sat at my desk, reading a collection of Emily Dickinson’s letters to her sister-in-law. My dissertation was on these letters, their hidden code. Charlie had promised to watch Sarah but instead was letting his parenting time spill into mine—lounging with only one halfhearted eye on his daughter. I tried not to move my eyes from the text. If I indulged in my usual gaze out at Cape Cod Bay, it might imply availability. I’d spent the early morning with Sarah and would have her again in the afternoon. Now was the time for Charlie to remove himself and our child from my work space. Staring down with unnatural concentration, I marked a line that I had already underlined many times, grooves surrounding it so deeply that you could almost read a sentence on the next page through the wear. Sue, you can stay or go. I dragged my pen beneath it, drew another large star in the margin, then put down my pen and sighed.

Just as Charlie raised his eyes to mine, Sarah teetered to her feet. She pushed up with one hand on the teepee of her father’s crooked elbow. Then she let go, picked up one bare foot, and stepped closer to him. I pushed my book aside. This was the moment I’d been waiting for, checking milestone charts, harassing the pediatrician.

“Did she just take a step?” I asked, as if I hadn’t seen it myself.

Sarah broke into a smile. Her fat little legs began to shake with the effort. Charlie and I froze as she lifted her foot to step again, then collapsed in a triumphant, diapered heap on his chest.

“Step,” Sarah said, her voice filled with the finality of the achievement, and the prospect of a new world of movement.

Charlie got to his feet and swooped Sarah over his head in one fluid motion, so her white curls grazed the exposed beams of the sloped, second-story ceiling. Two identical pairs of blue eyes smiled at each other. Everywhere Sarah and I went people asked, “Is she yours?” assuming I must be the small, dark-eyed nanny.

With a smile that mirrored his rosy mirror self, Charlie pretended to take a congratulatory bite out of Sarah’s cheek. Not a giggler, she didn’t laugh, but just looked quietly and enormously pleased. Clearly she understood her accomplishment and all that it presaged. She had spent months thinking it through, and finally the road lay passable before her. We cheered, Charlie bringing her down to his chest so I could step in for a family hug. His bare skin felt warm against my forearms. Sarah’s spicy baby scent bonded the three of us into a single entity. We could hear the flutter and chirp of swallows outside our open window as they staged for their journey south. The Saturday Cove church bells chimed the half hour, mingling with the salty breeze off the ocean. Our home’s musty disrepair transformed, as it sometimes did, into something almost magical.

“My God,” Charlie said. “I love you so much.”

He squeezed his hand at my waist, a degree of fervency, as if he had something to prove to me. So I said the only possible thing, reflecting the dominant, if not sole, emotion: “I love you, too.”

Charlie kissed my forehead. And Sarah—who deeply approved of any kind of affection—put one hand on her father’s bare shoulder and one hand on my T-shirted breast. Then she laughed.

I hope I’m not just being charitable toward myself but am remembering correctly, because it seems to me now that in that moment, I thought: if Charlie left for work every morning in a coat and tie, we might have enough money to pay our bills or move out of his father’s summer house. But we wouldn’t have been in the same room, all together, to witness Sarah’s long-awaited first step.

And that moment is what should have remained of the day—happy and indelible, an entry in a pale pink baby book. If the phone hadn’t rung two hours later, I never would have known to regret using up our luck so early. When I think about the rest of that day, and how it unfolded, there are too many stretches of time that would require rewriting, if ever the chance presented itself: to do everything over again.

I WAS AT THE POST OFFICE when Eli called Charlie. All traceable moments were carefully detailed later, in police reports, so I know that at the precise instant the phone rang back at the Moss house, I was standing in the vault of mailboxes staring at a postcard from Ladd Williams. Sarah had one sticky hand wound into my hair and she stared down at the note intently, as if she could read it, too. Ladd had funny, distinctive handwriting—all sharp angles and cubes. I recognized it without having to look at the signature.

I turned the card over. On the front was a picture of a toucan. Honduras, it read, under the bird’s otherworldly green, red, and blue beak. Todo Macanudo. Ladd had gone there with the Peace Corps, but apparently he was back—the card was postmarked Saturday Cove. The note, which I’d already memorized, read: Dear Brett. Staying at my uncle’s cottage. He has some books you used to want, you can stop by to borrow if you like. Best wishes, Ladd.

I closed our box, leaving the rest of the mail—bills we couldn’t pay—untouched. As I pushed through the door into the sunlight, Sarah plucked the postcard out of my hands. “Cat,” she said, looking at the bird. Cat was her standard word for anything new. Then, as if she knew this wasn’t quite right, amended, “Kitty.”

How like Ladd, I thought, not to include a phone number or tell me the title of the books. If I wanted to know, I’d have to show up on his doorstep. The last time I’d heard from him was just before he left the country, a little more than two years ago. He’d written a sort-of love letter intimating that I was the reason he needed to go away. But it was a convoluted piece of writing, filled with erasures and apologies and semisarcastic jokes, and I didn’t know how seriously to take it, or if I’d interpreted it correctly in the first place. I’d also never mentioned it to Charlie.

Sarah brought the postcard to her lips, nibbling delicately on one corner. Part of me wanted to take the bait immediately and drive over to his uncle’s compound. I wondered if anyone had told Ladd that I’d had a baby. I buckled Sarah into her car seat and pried the soggy postcard out of her grip. Instead of putting it in my pocket, I just tossed it onto the backseat, where Charlie could find it if he had any interest, which he probably didn’t. Charlie never got jealous.

And that’s what I thought about on the short drive home: a postcard from an ex-boyfriend. My husband’s general lack of jealousy, and how it was probably founded. If Ladd could see me now—with my hair unwashed and sweatpants doing nothing to camouflage the still-leftover pregnancy pounds, not to mention the child all but sewn to my hip—he probably would not be writing cryptic love letters.

What did I know about the way my life would change in a matter of hours? Absolutely nothing. Murder. It’s a word out of potboilers and film noirs. It leaps from the TV screen during police dramas or the evening news. It doesn’t sound real. It’s nothing you ever think will have to do with you.

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