Элин Хильдебранд - What Happens in Paradise

“By all means, take it,” Baker says. “I hope everything is okay.”

“Me too,” Ayers says. “I’ll let you know. Bye.”

Baker stares at the blank screen of his phone. If Floyd weren’t asleep, he would play the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” at top volume. What the hell—he finds his AirPods and cranks the song up.

If I go, there will be trouble.

And if I stay it will be double.

Repeat song, repeat song, repeat song.

During his fourth time through—Baker is still waiting for the answer to be revealed—he sees a text from Anna. What does she want? he wonders.

Louisa and I have some concerns about you uprooting Floyd, the text says. Please hold off on your move until we talk. I should have some time for a conference call next week.

“Ha!” Baker says to the empty living room. “That’s rich. That’s really rich!” ‘Louisa and I have some concerns’ means that Louisa has concerns, because Anna said she was ‘K’ with it last week.”

Baker knows the text should persuade him to stay put, but it does exactly the opposite. Louisa has concerns about Baker uprooting Floyd to take him to St. John, but Anna and Louisa uprooting Floyd to take him to Cleveland was fine?

Ha!

Ha!

Another text comes in, and Baker assumes it’s Anna burying herself even further—she doesn’t even have time to talk about it until next week!—but the text isn’t from Anna.

It’s from Ayers.

Maia saw Mick kissing Brigid on the beach tonight. I’m giving the ring back.

Baker shuts the music off and heads upstairs to bed. He has an early flight in the morning.

Rosie

January 1, 2015

Love is messy and complicated and unfair.

I see Russ when he’s here, which is every few weeks for a couple of days. I’m elated for forty-eight hours before he arrives and devastated for forty-eight hours after he leaves. Actually, the leaving part is getting worse.

I see him often enough that it’s getting hard to keep secret. I have to lie to Huck, say I have friends from the States in town and would he mind watching Maia for a couple of days? Huck is always happy to do this. I think being with Maia helps get his mind off Mama. He’s started taking Maia out on the fishing boat. Even though she’s only five, he says she’s a natural, and it’s important for her to get her sea legs. Huck asked the names of my “friends from the States,” and I said Rachel, Monica, and Phoebe. He didn’t pick up on my joke—I knew he wouldn’t—but he must be getting suspicious. Since when do I have friends from the States, or friends at all except for Ayers? I’m sure he suspects it’s a man.

Russ and I can’t go anywhere or do anything; he doesn’t even want to risk a trip back to Miss Vie’s on Hansen Bay. I visit him in room 718 at Caneel, which requires me to sneak in the back way from the parking lot, or, if Russ has the yacht to himself, I visit him there.

I show him pictures of Maia. He wants to meet her but I’m not allowing that. Every time he leaves, I know I might never see him again.

Once you prove to me you’re staying here, I said, you can meet her.

June 24, 2015

Russ is leaving right before Carnival and he says he won’t be back again this summer, which means the earliest I’ll see him is September, but September is hurricane season and Caneel is closed, so it’ll most likely be October or possibly even November.

I considered traveling to the States for the summer. Lots of people here do it. But Russ says that he has some meetings with clients in Grand Cayman and Miami and then he and Irene are spending two weeks in Door County, Wisconsin.

I had never heard of Door County, Wisconsin, so I looked it up on my computer and what I found were photographs of lakes and barns and orchards and cute little towns with church steeples, ice cream parlors, and antiques stores. It looks like America in the 1950s. When I asked Russ what he and Irene did there, he said they hung out on the lake—fishing, water skiing, swimming. And then in the evenings they played cards, attended fish boils, listened to the loons.

He asked me how I would spend the summer and I tried to explain about Carnival—it’s a week of music, food, and dancing when nobody sleeps—and then the entire island needs a week to recover. I explained that Huck fished for blue and white marlin in the summer, which brought in a different kind of fisherman. And then in September, Maia would go back to school and everyone would pray there were no storms.

I told him four months was a long time to be apart. He said he knew that. Then he took me in his arms and kissed me and said that he realized our “arrangement” was unfair to me and he would understand if I wanted to find someone who could give me all the things I deserved—an engagement ring, a home, a future.

I said, “Yes, I should find someone else.” But I knew I wouldn’t. Because I love Russ. I didn’t tell him that. I want him to say it first. He didn’t say it, however, and what could I think but that he only loved Irene?

I kissed him goodbye and told him to have a wonderful summer. Enjoy the fish boils in Door County, Wisconsin, and the sound of the loons. I did slip another postcard into his duffel bag saying I would miss him. I didn’t warn him about it. If Irene happened to discover it, oh, well. Russ would have to explain or lie about who M.L. was.

I’m glad I didn’t allow him to meet Maia. My heart is in danger, but at least hers is safe.

November 9, 2015

Russ came back and he had good news, such good news that I’m almost afraid to believe it. His company, Ascension, was looking for investment opportunities and they partnered with a “local real estate concern” (he wouldn’t tell me which one) to buy a hundred and forty acres in west Cinnamon, an area known as Little Cinnamon. They plan to develop the hillside, hire someone to build luxury villas. But the even better news was that the local real estate concern had built one home on spec and lost a lot of money on it, so Russ had bought the villa himself.

I had questions. Why had Russ been the one to buy it and not Todd or Stephen?

“They don’t want a house,” Russ said.

“Really?” I said. Then I thought: Who doesn’t want a house?

“Really,” Russ said. “They have homes elsewhere. They offered it to me because they know I have interests here.”

“Interests?” I said. “You mean me.”

“Yes.”

“They know about us.”

“They do.”

“How?” I said. “Did you…tell them?”

“No,” he said. “But they’re not naive, Rosie.”

They weren’t naive; I’d never thought that. In fact, I’d always worried about it. This was a holdover from years earlier, the first time I laid eyes on the three of them, when it seemed like Russ was a sheep running around with a couple of wolves.

“The bigger news is that we’re doing more business down here. In both the USVIs and the BVIs. Maybe we could even go to the BVIs together.”

“You mean…Jost?” Jost Van Dyke was a party island. That was true when I was growing up but it’s even more so now. Everyone loved Foxy’s and the Soggy Dollar.

“I mean Anegada,” he said. “Have you ever been?”

I had been to Anegada once, long ago. Before Mama met Huck, she had briefly dated a lobsterman who took us to Anegada for the day on his fishing boat. Anegada is the most remote of the British Virgin Islands and unlike any of the others in that it’s just a spit of flat white sand. There are a few businesses, a few bars, a few homes, hundreds of flamingos, thousands of lobsters, and not much else. I hadn’t been impressed with it at thirteen, but now, as a lovers’ getaway, it held enormous appeal.