Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

And heaven help the poor soul now who tried to take those kids away from Andrea.

As the Chief was dealing with the remains of the personal effects, he noticed that the Ziploc bag with Tess’s iPhone was missing. He rummaged through what he had already pitched into the trash, thinking the bag might have gotten mixed in accidentally. He didn’t see it. He checked through the overnight bag-Greg’s boxers, the black lace lingerie thingie of Tess’s, toothbrushes, hair-brush, polo shirt, khaki shorts, Noxema, Advil. No phone. What had happened to the Ziploc? The Chief checked the mudroom. His family stowed every last pair of shoes they owned in there, so in total maybe fifty pairs of shoes were jumbled in baskets that Andrea bought from Holdeverything to contain the mess. The Chief sat down and dutifully emptied the boxes of shoes-nothing-and then got on his hands and knees and checked under the cast-iron radiator. Nothing. He checked the trash again.

Okay, the iPhone was gone. Someone had taken it. Andrea? She had been avoiding the bag of personal effects as if it contained the Ebola virus. So no. Kacy or Eric? It wasn’t impossible, but both Kacy and Eric had been quiet and introspective since the deaths, and considerate of their mother. They wouldn’t have removed anything from the Coast Guard bag without asking. Chloe or Finn? Chloe, maybe-she was seven going on seventeen-but was she sneaky or curious enough to lift her mother’s phone? There had been people in and out of the house for the past five days. It could have been anyone.

The cell phone. Jeffrey was still up there talking, now about Chloe and Finn and how it was the responsibility of everyone in the church to raise them into adults and remind them each and every day how much their parents had loved them.

Amen. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Including the Chief’s own. He pulled out a handkerchief. He had the summer cops outside to worry about, and opiates in Tess’s bloodstream, and two more children to raise when his own two were nearly out of the house, and a wife who would hit the anger stage of grief prematurely if April Peck and her mother dared to show up at the reception. She would attack like a Siberian tiger who hadn’t been fed in two weeks. And the cell phone (five calls from Addison in half an hour) was missing.

But the funeral was almost over; those caskets were going into the ground. It was unspeakably sad and awful and unfair, and the Chief was going to shed a few tears. He deserved it.

She couldn’t make herself cry during the funeral, no matter how hard she tried. She was rummaging for anything, even horror-after all, the dead bodies of her friends, Tess and Greg MacAvoy, were moldering in those caskets. But no, nothing. If she had feelings, they were shriveled and cold, hiding in a dark corner somewhere.

The recessional hymn played. Phoebe caught a glimpse of Chloe and Finn from the side. Finn was crying, and Chloe had her arms around him as if he were her child. She was whispering something. Phoebe watched her lips. She was singing the hymn. And I will raise you up. On the last day.

Phoebe was rapt. Something inside her peeled back, revealing…

In another second the priest would head down the aisle and the caskets would follow.

Phoebe got out of her seat. She scurried over to Chloe and Finn. She said something, inaudible to her own ears over the organ and the halfhearted singing, but Chloe and Finn seemed to hear her. They seemed to understand. They were nodding.

They understood her! Really understood. Phoebe could see it in their eyes.

You still have each other, she’d said. You still have each other.

He had given the eulogy because that was what had been decided on by the group. He said “the group,” but what he really meant was Andrea. Andrea had the final word on all things Tess-and-Greg-related. Andrea wanted Jeffrey to do the eulogy; he did the eulogy.

Now, as they were filing out of the church, Andrea approached him again.

“I need your help.”

Something other than delivering the eulogy? Something other than serving as a pallbearer for Greg’s casket?

“Anything,” he said.

“I need you to make sure that April Peck does not come to the reception.”

Uhhhhhhhh. Jeffrey had already received an earful of April Peck-inspired invective from Delilah when the girl and her mother had entered the church. Little slut, what makes her think, I mean, Jesus, she has to know she doesn’t belong here, she is the last person, all the lies she told, the heartbreak she caused, and I’m not only talking about Tess, I’m talking about Greg, too…

Jeffrey had shushed her.

To which she’d hissed, You are not my father!

Now Jeffrey made a pained face.

“I can’t have her there,” Andrea said. Despite her grief, or maybe because of it, Jeffrey thought Andrea looked especially beautiful. She looked twenty-five years old, not forty-four. Her face was thin. She was very tanned.

What exactly was he supposed to say to April Peck? On the night that Andrea had asked him to do the eulogy, she had told him, You always know just what to say.

And everyone, except for Delilah, had agreed.

“I’d have Ed do it,” Andrea said now. “But he’s… oh, hell, he’s busy being the police chief.”

“Okay,” Jeffrey said.

Andrea said, “Thank you, Peach.” Which was what she used to call him, twenty years ago.

“No problem,” he said.

He found April Peck and her mother, Donna, talking with Mrs. Parks, the former police dispatcher, who had to be eighty years old by now. Mrs. Parks, it seemed, had mistaken April and Donna for MacAvoy relatives-April a niece of Greg’s, perhaps, or Donna a cousin. Jeffrey loitered awkwardly at the edge of their conversation, waiting for April and her mother to separate so he could do the dirty business of letting them know they would not be welcome at the Westmoor Club. Jeffrey wasn’t sure if April Peck knew who he was. Would she know that Jeffrey and Greg had been friends? Obviously-he had just given the eulogy! He didn’t realize the kind of celebrity this would temporarily lend him until April’s mother stepped out of the chitchat with Mrs. Parks, touched Jeffrey’s arm, and said, “You did a wonderful job.”

Jeffrey was flustered. How to respond? “Thank you,” he said. He had Donna’s full attention now-Mrs. Parks had moved on to someone else-with April standing at her mother’s right elbow. “Listen, I don’t know quite how to say this…”

“I came out of respect for Mr. MacAvoy,” April snapped. She was just a floating head over her mother’s shoulder. Blond hair up-swept, mascara appealingly smudged, transparent pink lip gloss glistening. April Peck was a knockout. That was the problem.

“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “Thank you.” He let this expression of appreciation rest for a moment before he continued. “But because of the difficult situation-last year, I mean-the family has asked that you forgo attending the reception. They feel your presence would be inappropriate.”

Donna seemed truly astonished by this statement. She took a stutter-step backward, narrowly missing colliding with Mrs. Parks behind her, and her black headscarf slipped, revealing her bald scalp.

“I’m sorry,” Jeffrey said. “It’s just that it’s… difficult for the family.”

“It’s difficult for me!” April said. “He’s dead and I want to pay my respects! You think I don’t know my presence is ‘inappropriate’? You think I didn’t feel a thousand eyes on me? Of course I did!” April’s voice was loud. Her mother’s expression was one of horror, but whether that was because of April’s outburst or because of her own exposed scalp, Jeffrey could not tell. He was grateful that the church was emptying out. He didn’t want a scene, and he was sure Andrea didn’t want a scene either-but what had she expected when she had sent him on this mission?