Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

“Do you?” the Chief said.

“Yes,” April said. She sat demurely, thank God, with her legs angled to the side. “Greg used to talk about you all the time.”

The Chief quietly burped up Roquefort and onions. “Greg?” he said.

“Greg MacAvoy.”

The name reverberated against the concrete walls of the Chief’s office. April’s face was open; her eyes were wide and innocent. She did not look like a kid who had just been booked for identity fraud. Was she drunk? She had been steady on the stilettos. Was she a good actress? Or maybe the three-hundred-dollar fine and the fact that she might not be able to drive for the rest of the summer didn’t bother her. Who was he kidding? If they took her license, she would drive anyway.

“Mr. MacAvoy was your singing teacher?” the Chief said.

“He was.”

The Chief looked at April’s shining blond hair and thought of how lost Greg must have been to let her lasso him. Had Greg been in that place men found themselves in when they needed bolstering? His sweet and pretty wife wasn’t enough? His two healthy kids weren’t enough? He needed more, he needed someone to worship him, someone to think he was a hero?

“And…?”

“And he was my friend.”

“Your friend?” the Chief said. Nerves jitterbugged across his chest and arms. April Peck should have been just another pretty girl in high school, not so different from the Chief’s own daughter, but instead she was a repository of information, answers, the truth. Had Greg and April Peck been having a thing-one time, three times, every week, every day? Would Greg have a reason to want to drug Tess? The Chief understood that knowing the answers wouldn’t bring Tess or Greg back, it wouldn’t help the kids, but the Chief, as an enforcer of the law, wanted the truth.

He had to be careful. April Peck had been brought in for trying to pass off a fake ID. She was not here to answer questions about Greg. He could not make her answer. For all the Chief knew, April Peck would leave the office saying that the Chief had been inappropriate with her. Thinking this, the Chief felt the first true wash of sympathy for Greg. April Peck was a suicide bomber. The Chief should send her out right now with a ninety-day suspension. If Andrea knew April Peck was here, what would she say?

April said, “I know what people think.”

“What do people think?”

“They think Greg and I were lovers.”

The Chief burped again, and whispered, “Excuse me.” He had to tread so carefully here. “Why would they think that?”

She shrugged.

The Chief said, “I’m a little confused, Miss Peck, about why you wanted to see me.”

Her face transformed from a placid surface to a stormy one. She was going to cry, and immediately the Chief’s guard went up.

She said, “This has been so hard.”

The Chief nodded, though barely.

“I wanted to talk to you about Greg.”

“What about him?”

“He was my friend. I miss him. I loved him. I mean, I really loved him. He listened to me. I have all this stuff going on-Derek, my ex-boyfriend, stalks me, my mother is dying of freaking breast cancer, and my dad and brother are in New York hell-bent on pretending my mother and I don’t exist…” She snatched a tissue off the Chief’s desk and noisily blew her nose. “And really, the only person I could talk to was Greg. He was so nice to me. He was kind. He was the kindest, because he could have gotten into so much trouble…”

“You accused him of sexual misconduct,” the Chief said. “He was nearly fired.”

“I know! I was confused. It was so completely fucked. I was jealous because it was clear he loved his wife and kids. I was never going to get the best part of him. They were.”

“So did you lie to the administration?” the Chief asked.

April narrowed her eyes at him as if he were crazy. Crazy to think she lied or crazy to think she would now tell him the truth? She blotted her eyes. “The amazing thing was that Greg forgave me. After all that, I mean. He forgave me, he listened, he was kind, and then…”

“And then what?” the Chief said.

“And then he died!” April said. She stood up and paced the back half of the Chief’s office.

“You were in love with him?” the Chief said.

April threw up her hands.

“Was he… did he say he was in love with you?”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” April said. In the back corner of his office was a filing cabinet topped with a philodendron and some framed snapshots of Kacy and Eric when they were young. April picked up the pictures and studied them. The Chief did not like her touching pictures of his family.

“What am I trying to do?” he asked.

“You’re trying to get me to admit to something,” she said.

“Admit to what?”

“See? You’re doing it again.”

Were you lovers? Was he in love with you? Would Greg have a reason to drug his wife? The Chief could ask April these questions and she could lie or tell him the truth and he wouldn’t know the difference. He cleared his throat. “Okay, Miss Peck, it’s time for you to go. We are going to issue a sixty-day suspension of your driver’s license.”

April whipped around.

“That’s a reduction of the maximum penalty, which is a ninety-day suspension,” he said. He could have lowered the penalty to thirty days, but he would not do it. And if she gave him lip, he would up it to ninety.

“You’re throwing me out?” she said.

“I’m not a therapist,” the Chief said. “I am the chief of police. Since you don’t have any new or pertinent information about Greg MacAvoy or your involvement with him, we have no further business. Should you ever decide there is something else I need to know, you are free to come in anytime and talk to me. Understood?”

April chewed her bottom lip. “Do you know what Greg said about you? Do you know what he told me?”

“Honestly, Miss Peck, I don’t care.”

She took a deep, resigned breath. “He said you were the greatest guy in all the world.”

She didn’t know what stage she was in anymore. She was in stage limbo. She missed Tess, she missed Greg, she missed Jeffrey, she missed Eddie and her kids, but mostly she missed herself.

She wondered, was she ever coming back?

There were certain things she could handle and certain things she could not. She could handle the fact that Tess had had a lover. Andrea was forty-four years old, old enough to realize that the heart wanted what the heart wanted whether it made sense, whether it was right or wrong. What Andrea could not handle was not knowing who Tess’s lover was. She had to find out. She wanted to know him; she wanted to make sure that he had loved Tess enough. Had it been someone at the funeral? Who exactly had attended the funeral? Should Andrea pore over the guest book? Andrea couldn’t recall anyone except their immediate group, the children, horrid April Peck and her mother, and Father Dominic. Finished with the Lord. Tess had stopped going to church altogether. Was Tess having an affair with Father Dominic? He was a young man, in his late thirties, and he was handsome as far as priests went. She could handle Tess having a lover, but not if it was Father Dominic. She struck his name off her mental list for her own sanity. She thought of other teachers at school, the principal, the superintendent. Flanders? Andrea stopped. Not Flanders. For a brief second, she smiled.

Andrea could handle small outings, but not big ones. Ed came home with two tickets to the Island Conservation benefit, a cocktail party on the savannah, that Phoebe was chairing.

“It’s on Friday night,” he said. “Kacy agreed to watch the kids. We’re going.”