Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

Jeffrey was quiet. All Andrea could hear was the sound of the fans, which nicely mimicked the sound his spinning brain might make as it came up with myriad possibilities, then flung them away.

“Should I state the obvious?” he said.

“She was seeing someone?” Andrea said.

“She was seeing someone.”

They sat with that a minute, Andrea shocked by the sound of the words. Well, hello, she wasn’t an idiot. This possibility had shadowed each of Tess’s mood swings, each lie, and particularly the phrases “finished with the Lord” and “small potatoes” when used in regard to April Peck.

If April Peck was small potatoes, what was big potatoes?

Seeing someone? But who?

“She would have told me,” Andrea said.

“You’re right,” Jeffrey said.

“No, she wouldn’t have,” Andrea said.

“You’re right,” Jeffrey said.

“She thought of me as her mother.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint you.”

“I wouldn’t have been disappointed in her,” Andrea said. But even as she said them, the words felt false. Andrea had always had mixed feelings about Greg, but she believed in marriage. (She was Catholic! She grew up with a nun living in her basement!) When Tess and Greg had separated during that week in November, it was Andrea who had talked her into going back. It was Andrea who had made the picnic for the anniversary sail. She had broken the sacred rule of no gifts because she wanted Tess and Greg to be happy on their anniversary. She had sensed that Tess was getting ready to leave the marriage, and she had been saying, Stay!

She was seeing someone.

Andrea felt the firm clutches of certainty. Tess had been seeing someone. It explained everything.

She stood up to leave. She could handle only one revelation per day, and this was a biggie. But was it really as shocking as Andrea was making it out to be? Wasn’t it like a pile of dirty laundry in the corner with a blanket thrown over it? Pull back the blanket and there it was, just as you knew it would be all along.

Jeffrey stood as well. He was looking at her intently, and she couldn’t bear it, because this was goodbye. This was the end of the secret, strange journey the two of them had taken together. Andrea had entrusted her grief to Jeffrey, and he had been tender with it, he had spent hours and hours talking Tess’s life through. It was a painstaking process that no one else would have donated the time to. Andrea had come here because she loved Jeffrey, and Jeffrey let her stay because he loved her, too. Now they had come to the end of the life story of Tess DiRosa MacAvoy, and this meant that Andrea would stop coming here, there would be no more stolen hours in the sweltering attic, and this was its own kind of heartbreak.

He came closer, and she knew he meant to kiss her. It was okay. He was a matter-of-fact man; she believed in his moral compass, in his sense of right and not-right. He took her chin and kissed her with the same deft skill that he did everything else-slip an egg out from underneath a hen, bruise a basil leaf and inhale its scent. He kissed her goodbye, a key turning in a lock.

“I don’t want you to fret about this,” he said.

But both of them knew she would.

The freezer at the Juice Bar went on the fritz. It was such a sophisticated machine that they needed a team of NASCAR mechanics to fix it, and so Kacy had the night free from work. She had volunteered to take the twins out to Tom Nevers for the carnival, a shabby slice of mainland American life visited upon their beloved island for ten days. The carnival meant neon lights, rickety rides, rigged games with rinky-dink prizes, and heart-stopping, teeth-rotting fare such as cotton candy, fried dough, corn dogs, and sausage grinders. The twins had been begging to be subjected to the depravity of the carnival for nearly a week (Drew and Barney had apparently already been twice ), and the Chief was relieved when Kacy said she would take them. Andrea could not handle the manic chaos of the carnival, and the Chief felt he had put in enough carnival hours with his own kids. He gave Kacy eighty dollars, told her not to let the twins eat too much sugar, and wished her well.

He then called Andrea to see if she wanted to go out to dinner, just the two of them. Somewhere nice. The Straight Wharf?

She said no. She was exhausted. (From doing what?) She was going to take advantage of the peace and quiet by going to bed early.

The Chief was deflated. He was, if he could just say it, lonely. There had always been the specter of his own grief floating around somewhere, and he acknowledged it now. He, like Andrea, missed Tess, but he also missed Greg. Greg, despite his faults, had been his friend. The friendship had been uneven, sure. The Chief was the police chief, and Greg had been a rock star. Morally, they were a heavyweight and a lightweight, a total mismatch. But the Chief had loved Greg anyway.

If they still lived in the Before and the Chief found himself stranded at work without options or obligations, he would have wandered over to the Begonia, taken a seat at the bar, hammed it up with Delilah, ordered a bleu burger with extra onions, and listened to Greg play a set. It was, in the Chief’s opinion, a nearly perfect way to spend an evening.

He couldn’t handle the Begonia now: no Greg, no Delilah, Faith with her smothering concern, the grating Irish trio onstage. He had a pile of backlogged work on his desk, the result of his preoccupation with the details of the accident, his distracted frame of mind, and the extra hours he had to devote to Andrea and the twins. He should stay and work. He would ask Freda, the evening dispatcher, to pick him up a burger from the Begonia, even though Freda was unfriendly, and especially so when she felt like she was being treated like a secretary or an errand girl. He would have to ask nicely.

At nine-thirty he was still at his desk, the burger, fries, and double dill pickles demolished. He had eaten three Rolaids and was two thirds of the way through his stack of paperwork. The attendant feeling of relief and accomplishment was keeping his melancholy at bay. He wouldn’t even have realized it was as late as nine-thirty-his office was a concrete bunker, without windows-had Dickson not knocked on the door, making the Chief look up. Dickson had that goddamn look on his face.

“What is it?” the Chief asked.

“April Peck is here,” Dickson said. “She got called in by the bouncer of the Rose and Crown for trying to pass off a fake ID.”

The Chief fell back in his chair. “Jesus.”

“I dealt with her. She said she got it somewhere online, couldn’t remember the name of the site. I fined her three hundred bucks, took the ID, threatened to suspend her real driver’s license. She said she wanted to talk to you.”

“To me?”

“To you.”

“Jesus,” the Chief said.

“Normally I would have told her no. Normally I would have slapped her with a ninety-day suspension for trying to go over my head. But then I wondered if maybe you wanted to question her.”

Question her. Dickson understood more than the Chief wanted him to. The Chief’s stomach squelched. He’d eaten all that food and he hadn’t moved a muscle. And he was nervous.

“Send her in.”

Dickson opened the door and poked his head out into the hallway. “Hey, Dancing Queen,” he said, “the Chief has agreed to see you.”

April entered, resplendent in some kind of sparkly black-and-silver disco dress and silver stiletto heels. Her hair was up. She wore reddish black lipstick. She looked twenty-five, not eighteen.

“Miss Peck,” the Chief said.

“You can call me April,” she said. She offered her hand. “I feel like I know you.”