Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

“Just for the summer,” Delilah said. “I have the boys at home all day anyway. Finn is in the same camps, the kids are on the same schedule. They’re best friends. I have all the toys, all the books, all the games, inside and out. We have the empty guest room, or they can do air mattresses and sleeping bags on the floor of the boys’ room. Like summer camp. It will be fun.”

“They need to be with family,” Andrea said.

“But you and Ed don’t need two seven-year-olds underfoot all summer. You were just starting to enjoy yourself.”

“It’s safe to say that enjoying myself is a thing of the past,” Andrea said. Her nose reddened and started to run. “It’s over.”

“Let me take them for the summer,” Delilah said. “You’ll see them all the time. Whenever you’re here and any other time you want. Then, at the end of August, we can transition them to your house.”

“One transition and then another?” Andrea said. “It will be too difficult for them. Think of the kids.”

“I am thinking of the kids.”

“You’re thinking of yourself. You want to be the one who swings in on a vine and saves the day by taking in the orphans.”

Delilah’s faith was gone; she was back to anger. “I don’t think of it like that at all. I was thinking of the kids, what would be the most fun for them…”

“Fun?” Andrea said.

“Yes, fun. There’s nothing wrong with fun. They’re seven, Andrea.”

“They need to be with family.”

It was time for her big gun. Her sure thing. But first she looked around. Jeffrey and the Chief were out on the deck. Delilah had forgotten about the Chief’s sandwich. She panicked for a second, the panic of a waitress who’d neglected to put in an order. Well, she would get to it in a second. Then she checked on Phoebe and Addison. Phoebe was asleep, stretched out on the sofa-Delilah watched for a second to make sure she was breathing-and Addison was slumped in the club chair, still muttering into his chest like a homeless person on the street.

Delilah said, “Why don’t we ask the kids? See if they’d rather stay with us or with you?” Ba-boom. She could almost hear the gun’s report, smell the bitter smoke.

But Andrea did not surrender. She said, “Why don’t we ask ourselves what Tess would have wanted? Would she have wanted the kids to spend even one night here?”

Delilah laughed. “Ha!” And busied herself with making the Chief’s sandwich. She was stunned silly by Andrea’s counterattack. Delilah had left herself open for this. Tess did not like the kids to spend the night at Delilah’s house. She had always been funny-strange about letting Delilah take the kids at all. Delilah knew that Tess believed the kids ate too much junk at this house (if you called freshly popped popcorn topped with freshly grated Parmesan cheese junk), they played too much Play-Station (though there was a house rule of one hour at a time, two hours if it was inclement weather), they didn’t get enough sleep (at home Chloe and Finn were in bed at six-thirty, a fact Delilah found unfathomable). Tess basically let it be known, without actually saying it, that she did not approve of Delilah’s parenting or the way Delilah ran her household. It was too free-form for Tess; there was too much left to chance. Tess had been extremely vigilant in the parenting department. Delilah had once watched her clean the inside of the twins’ ears with a Q-tip soaked in rubbing alcohol. Tess did not allow the twins to eat food from the school cafeteria. She did not allow PG movies.

But Delilah’s supervision had been okay with Tess-it had been a complete lifesaver -whenever Tess was in a jam. When she and Greg had in-service days at school and no one to baby-sit, who did Tess call? Did she call Andrea? No! She called Delilah. Who had Tess called when she and Greg had wanted to go on an anniversary sail, with a possible overnight on the Vineyard? She had called Delilah. Delilah rued her decision to allow Andrea and the Chief to take Chloe and Finn out of here that first night. She should have held on; possession was nine tenths of ownership.

Delilah said, “Let me take them for the summer. Please, Andrea? I’m not interested in a custody battle. I just think-”

Andrea said, “What about your work?”

Delilah smoothed mayonnaise over the Chief’s bread in careful stages, as if she were painting a wall. “What about my work?”

“You plan to work four nights a week, work late, and then come home and take care of four kids all day?”

Delilah laid down slices of Black Forest ham, Genoa salami, Lorraine Swiss, hothouse tomato and baby mâche from the farm, roasted red peppers, a few thinly sliced marinated artichokes. Perfection between two slices of country loaf. Okay, so now Andrea was going to attack Delilah’s job. Why not? Delilah’s job was as embattled as the Gaza Strip. Jeffrey resented it, he thought it was beneath her, he thought it was shabby. Delilah was little more than a glorified hostess in his eyes, her job was nothing more than a flimsy ploy devised to escape the kids and get free drinks at the end of the night. Delilah had stated her case again and again: She had been the dining room manager at the Scarlet Begonia for six years. She held the number-four position, behind Thom and Faith, the owners, and Donaldo, the general manager. She headed the waitstaff, she squared the bills, she tipped out Graham, the bartender, and the Salvadoran busboys. She made the deposit at the bank in the morning. She helped Donaldo sift through ninety or so applications when the college kids arrived in May, and she helped him fire anyone who didn’t work out. The Scarlet Begonia was a vibrant year-round business, it made buckets of money, and Delilah was a crucial part of the team.

“I’m thinking of quitting,” Delilah said. Her head was spinning. She was drunk. One of the signs of Delilah drunk was that she disclosed pieces of classified information prematurely. She hadn’t discussed quitting the Begonia with Jeffrey, nor with Phoebe-nor, properly, with herself. The thought was just floating around in her mind with sad inevitability. At the funeral reception, Thom and Faith had approached her together and told her to take as much time as she needed before she came back to work. They had been drunk at the reception. They were more or less always drunk or hung over, which was what gave the Begonia the whiff of disrepute among people like Jeffrey and Andrea. But Thom and Faith were good citizens, community people. They loved Delilah and they had loved Greg, who had played the guitar there for over ten years. Thom and Faith had, in their hippie, hazy, funky, freewheeling way, always treated Delilah and Greg as part of their family.

They had also had the misfortune of being present for the fiasco that was Sunday night, Greg’s last night alive. But Delilah wasn’t willing to discuss it with them; she wasn’t going to think about it. She looked at Thom and Faith-Thom with his gray ponytail and John Lennon glasses, and Faith with her signature rouge (some days it was applied more evenly than others). Delilah had tried many times over the years to imagine Thom and Faith making love, and had failed. Likewise, she could not imagine herself ever working a shift at the Begonia again. Thom and Faith feared this, maybe, and hence were offering her lots of leeway-anything to keep the door open. If Delilah could just be honest with herself, she would say that for her, the Scarlet Begonia had always been about Greg, and Greg was dead.

Andrea did not respond to Delilah’s revelation. No surprise there. She just closed the book on the conversation by saying, “The kids will live with us. We’re their family.”

Delilah cut through the Chief’s sandwich with her serrated bread knife and arranged it on a plate with a handful of chips. Jeffrey stepped in off the back deck and said, “What are you girls talking about?”