The Last Train to Key West (The Perez Family, #3)

by Chanel Cleeton

When he is home, it is a pair of hands around my neck.

In a cramped cottage, in a cramped marriage, you learn to use the physical space around you as a buffer of sorts, to make yourself fluid and flexible, to bend to the will of another.

It used to be, you had to have a boat to get here, but now there’s the railroad that runs over the ocean, connecting the little islands that make up the Keys to the mainland and Miami,

Mr. Henry Flagler—one of the richest men in the country when he was alive—was ridiculed for when he announced the project decades ago. But Mr. Flagler pressed on, and the railroad was built, bringing jobs to people like my father—native

A long time ago, before I was born, Key West was the largest and wealthiest city in Florida. But even before the rest of the country felt the effects of the crash in ’29, Florida struggled.

The Florida East Coast Car Ferry Company offers daily service to and from Havana, Cuba.

Flagler’s vision of connecting New York City to Havana is made possible by a few days of travel on his railroad plus several hours’ ferry journey from Key West.

Life happens whether you’re worrying about it or not, and it seems presumptuous to think we have much of a say in how things play out.

Much of the town has given the veterans a wide berth, complaining of general drunkenness and disorderly conduct when they come down to Key West for the weekends.

People are a mystery, and the second you think you have them figured out, they surprise you.

I pray the sea will keep my husband and he will not return to me.

When my father supported President Machado, our position was secure, and we lived within the insular world of Havana society.

now Fulgencio Batista—elevated to colonel—pulls the strings in Cuba and is the one to whom we must ingratiate ourselves.

There was a circle of families who, like my father, lost their position after the revolution in ’33 that brought Batista to power.”

They whisper that Anthony was a bootlegger before the United States government ended Prohibition two years ago, smuggling alcohol and contraband between Cuba and the United States.

following my family’s wishes without protest is what I have been raised to do.

My father owned shares in this railroad once upon a time when I was still a girl living in a gilded world. Before the crash. Before we lost everything. Before he killed himself.

Tom says too much reading in a woman—which is any reading at all, really—is a dangerous thing.

people tend to show the truest parts of themselves when they’re dealing with those who serve them,

The helplessness is the hardest part, that sensation of being trapped by life, by circumstance and all the things out of your control wearing you down day after day,

“Money doesn’t buy everything.” Spoken like someone who has an ample supply of it.

“Prohibition’s over.” “It is, but that doesn’t mean the criminal element has disappeared.

When Prohibition ended in ’33, we still had a list of people we knew were involved in criminal elements and part of larger organizations.

I’ve been poor for so long, six years since the Great Crash that set everything in motion, that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to not worry about such things, to stay in some of the finest hotels money can buy without blinking an eye.

“The day we stop fighting for others is the day we might as well pack it all up and go home.”

“They didn’t want us in Washington, causing trouble, reminding the American public—the voting public—that we weren’t taken care of,

A few years ago, many of the men who fought in the Great War went to Washington D.C. alongside their families to demand that the government pay the bonuses they were owed for their wartime service in an early lump-sum payout rather than making them wait years for the full payment in such desperate economic times.

My father believed he was untouchable once, thought Machado’s friendship would keep his fortunes secure. He never saw the coming wave of power that ushered in Batista, never envisioned our futures would end as they have.

I was ruined by the actions of others, so why not do it properly? Why not live on my terms

Nearly all of my childhood friends moved north when things got bad, when tourism dried up and the fishing industry changed

But he’s got you thinking you’re backed into a corner, that you have nowhere to go, no options but him, and that’s not true.

The bad ones will make you believe you’re nothing. They’ll make you small because that’s the only way they’ll ever see themselves as amounting to anything. It’s a lie.

The Depression has largely avoided families like the Worthingtons and their ilk. Fate is a capricious thing; there’s no accounting for whom it affects. One family is spared, while the next is utterly decimated.”

Almost forty million people died during the course of the Great War, and I’ve often wondered how many saw my brother in their final hours.

I don’t tell him my brother is the only thing standing between me and a marriage I’m desperately trying to escape.

“This is what happens when you have a problem you don’t want to deal with. You put it out of people’s sight, out of their minds, get them out of Washington with the hope that they won’t cause trouble anymore.”

I cannot help but wonder how many people made the same mistake I did, how many turned their backs on the veterans once the war drifted from their minds and they had their own problems to worry about.

I was so eager to leave New York, to escape the prying eyes and whispers, that it never occurred to me I’d miss it.

“He killed himself after the crash in ’29. He had an investment firm on Wall Street. He didn’t lose everything all at once, but it was a slow leak.

Billy Worthington, who “loved” me enough to take me to bed and then cast me aside like garbage when my family lost their fortune,

I like talking to people, learning about their lives. You can live a fair share of adventures in other people’s stories.

Mama believed the highest duty a woman could serve was to God. The second highest to her husband.

I can’t say I’m happy about the American Mafia’s presence in Cuba, either, but my opinion matters little. They’ve made their claim on the island, so it seems better to ally ourselves.

I foolishly viewed him as a white knight of sorts, the sort of man with whom a woman could be safe. It’s that betrayal that cuts the deepest.

Mr. Flagler’s mighty railroad lies in ruins, stretches of track destroyed, cars broken and twisted.

The evacuation train . . .” His jaw twitches. “It was swept off the tracks. Some people made it out through the windows, some held on to the tracks and the train, but many were swept up by the ocean and drowned.”

For as long as I remember, I was told not to want more than I could have, to be pleasing, and pliant, and subordinate my wants to the needs of my family,

It’s as though the hand of God has come down and reordered the world as we know it.

“In the war, there was so little to be done for so many. It was difficult to face a man and know he likely wouldn’t survive his injuries, that for all my training and experience, there wasn’t much I could do. I forgot how good it feels to give someone a chance.”

Sometimes I can’t understand the way this world works, why good people like Alice are taken while others are saved in spite of their wicked ways.