Элин Хильдебранд - What Happens in Paradise

Facing Mama and Huck to tell them I was pregnant was a bleak situation. Would any good be salvaged from it?

“I’m pregnant,” I said.

Huck turned from the stove.

“What?” Mama said.

“I’m pregnant.”

She set down her coffee cup and stood up. Her face was unreadable. Shock, I suppose. Huck was watching her.

“Oscar?” she said.

“Not Oscar,” I said. “It was a man at the hotel, someone you don’t know. I was stupid. He’s gone now and I don’t know how to reach him.”

There was a moment of such profound silence that I felt like the world had stopped. She was probably deciding whether or not to believe me.

Then, finally, she opened her arms, and I entered them.

Part Three The Soggy Dollar

Irene

Before she leaves for St. John, Irene has some loose ends to take care of.

A death certificate issued by the Department of Vital Statistics of the British Virgin Islands arrives in the mail in an unmarked envelope. Is it authentic? It seems so, though Irene has no way of knowing for sure.

So, obviously, Paulette received her message. There’s no note, no invoice, no mention of a fee. Irene has assumed that Paulette is the one who pays to maintain the villa—taxes (do they have taxes in the Virgin Islands?), insurance, landscapers, repairs, et cetera—probably out of a fund that Russ or Todd Croft set up…with cash.

She takes the death certificate to Ed Sorley’s office and drops it off with the receptionist, then leaves before Ed appears with questions.

She withdraws eight thousand dollars from the account at Federal Republic, using the drive-through window. The cash and the postcards from M.L. go right into Irene’s suitcase.

At Lydia’s insistence, Irene puts an obituary in the Press-Citizen, and she phones her close friends and neighbors to invite them to the house for a memorial reception. She tells them that Russ was killed in a helicopter crash; lightning was the cause. He was down in the Virgin Islands for work. He’s been cremated and the ashes scattered. This is a small gathering so his friends can pay their respects.

“No food and no flowers,” Irene told them. “I’m taking some time away, leaving Monday. If you feel you must do something to honor his passing, you can donate to the Rotary Club scholarship fund. It always goes to some terrific kid who really needs it.”

Lydia arranges for the Linn Street Café to cater the reception and Irene is grateful. Under normal circumstances, she would insist on doing everything herself—but these aren’t normal circumstances. The people from the café will drop off sandwiches, quiche, salads, and urns of coffee. Irene chills wine and rolls her drinks trolley into the parlor. With so many people in the room, it will be too warm to light a fire and Irene will be so busy visiting that she won’t have time to tend it.

Irene is anxious about facing everyone. She doesn’t want to be the recipient of sympathy or to be asked any probing questions. She nearly succumbs to the temptation of taking an Ativan right before the reception begins. She has the prescription bottle in her hand, but the doorbell rings and Irene hurries downstairs.

It’s Lydia, attended by Brandon the barista, who looks far more distinguished out of his leather apron. He’s holding Lydia’s hand, and with his other hand he offers Irene a platter of cookies.

“Homemade,” he says. “Lemongrass sugar.”

Irene tries out a smile. Lydia looks radiant. She and Brandon are delirious with infatuation, and Irene is, of course, happy for her friend. Brandon and Lydia take charge of setting out the food and cups for coffee and filling buckets with ice, leaving Irene idle to steep in her dread and count the minutes until she boards the plane.

The doorbell rings again. Irene mentally pulls herself up by her bootstraps. Compared to what she’s been through already, this is nothing. This is easy.

And for a while, it’s not so bad. The Kinseys arrive, followed by the Dunns; Ed Sorley and his wife, Anita; Dot, the nurse from Brown Deer; and some of the neighbors. Nearly everyone from the magazine attends, including Irene’s boss, Joseph Feeney, Mavis Key, and the receptionist, Jayne, who brings her newly retired husband, Rooney. Rooney is something of a blunderbuss. He’s always the first to get drunk and obnoxious at the holiday party. He speaks without thinking, he’s a know-it-all; honestly, Irene can’t stand him. Thankfully, he leaves Jayne to gush out the condolences.

“I’m so sorry, Irene, none of us had any idea! But it was unusual for you to be out for an entire week without any notice. Of course, once we learned that Milly had passed, it all made sense…none of us knew that Russ…I mean, you’ve had such a double whammy!”

A little while later, Irene notices Rooney pouring himself a scotch at the drinks trolley. She needs to find Lydia and tell her to keep an eye on him. But she’s too busy. She has to spend time with everyone, nodding her head and lying by omission.

Why is it the people you’d like to leave the party first are always the last to go? The party has thinned out to just Irene, Lydia and Brandon, Dot, Ed and Anita Sorley, and Jayne and Rooney. Irene finally allows herself to eat something—a lemongrass sugar cookie—and Brandon, ever the barista, steeps her a tea that he thinks will complement the cookie. Irene nearly laughs at the absurdity of the notion. It’s a cookie, Brandon, she wants to say. Irene hasn’t tasted anything since Russ died—except the fish that Huck grilled. That had been delicious.

Her thoughts are interrupted by Rooney, who raises his voice above the others and says, “Russ worked for a hedge fund, right? You’re aware, I assume, that the Virgin Islands were recently added to a blacklist of tax havens by the EU? What kind of business was Russ involved in? Are you sure it was aboveboard?”

Brandon, possibly attempting to head Rooney away from the topic, makes things worse. “What does that mean, a blacklist of tax havens?” He looks around the room and shrugs. “I can explain the difference between a latte and an Americano, but tax havens confound me.”

“What does it mean? ” Rooney asks in a way that makes it clear he isn’t sure what it means. He’s sitting in the velvet-upholstered bergère chair, holding court now. “It means they conduct business without obeying the tax code. We’re talking money-laundering, numbered accounts at banks in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, shell companies, dark money, terrorists, drug dealers, human traffickers…”

Irene shoots a look at Ed Sorley. The Cayman Islands?

Jayne emits a nervous laugh. “Rooney, stop, ” she says. “You knew Russ. He was…well, he was the nicest man in the world is what he was.”

“I second that,” Dot says.

“Sometimes it’s the nice guys who are the worst criminals,” Rooney says. “Because they’re the ones you’d least suspect of anything.”

Irene stands up. “I’m feeling a little worn out,” she says, and everyone takes the hint.

Monday afternoon, Irene’s ferry pulls in among the powerboats and catamarans moored in Cruz Bay, and Irene scans the crescent of white sand that’s home to a string of open-air restaurants backed by palm trees. She feels like she can breathe again. It’s bizarre that the place her husband conducted his wild and massive deception has become her refuge. Irene doesn’t want to overthink this and she doesn’t want to fight it. She’s now experiencing the emotions one should feel upon arriving on St. John: anticipation and joy.

Both of her boys are here, and her grandson. It feels like an embarrassment of riches, all of them choosing to be together this time, choosing to be in the paradise Russ unwittingly brought them to.