Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

Andrea drank her wine. She said nothing.

She drank the whole glass in three minutes; Addison was timing her. He refilled her glass; his hand was shaking. He wanted her to say something, but he was afraid of what she would say.

I’m sorry, he said to Tess.

He felt a hundred pounds lighter. He felt like he could take the back stairs two at a time and leap across the swimming pool.

Andrea was staring into space; her face was halfway between contempt and what he thought might be relief. Andrea was tough, and always had been. Addison tried to remember when the two of them had ever been alone together like this for any length of time. In Vegas they had sought out the slot machines together. Andrea had been feeding the machine next to his when he hit for seventeen hundred dollars. She had been the first person to hug him and jump up and down as the machine blinked his good fortune. On September 11, she had come to the hospital where the doctor was examining Phoebe after her miscarriage. She had hugged Addison and moaned with him. She had checked in every day for weeks, stopping by with homemade soup and doughnuts from the Downyflake. Addison remembered wandering with Andrea through the National Gallery in London. They had stopped in front of Renoir’s painting Les Parapluies . And then there was the time Addison and Andrea had taken the surfing lesson in Sayulita, Mexico, with a grungy expat named Kelso.

Addison broke the silence by saying, “Do you remember that surfing lesson we took?”

She did not respond. Addison had been the most unlikely surfing partner in existence, but the Chief and Jeffrey in their stoic, stony way had flat-out refused, and Greg was such a good surfer already that he didn’t want or need to take a beginner lesson. Phoebe was too prissy, Delilah was too uncoordinated, and Tess was afraid of the water. Which left Addison. Andrea pleaded. Come on. I’ve never asked you for anything.

He gave in because she was correct, she had never asked him for anything. Together they donned wetsuits and paddled out on their boards to chest-high water, where Kelso, the goateed, tattooed, pierced, stoned surf instructor, pushed them into waves. Andrea stood first, then, a hundred tries later, Addison stood. It had been a revelation, riding the water like that, even for a few seconds before the inevitable crash. He and Andrea had talked about it with Kelso over beers at the cantina later.

As they were finishing their bottle of wine (it had taken them thirty-two minutes), the phone rang. Addison checked: it was Jeffrey.

He said, “Should I answer it?”

Andrea said, “Do you think now’s really the time?”

He said, “Would you like me to open another bottle of wine?”

She said, “Please.”

He opened the wine. The house was dark. Too dark to see the elephant in the room?

He said, “Are we going to talk about it?”

She said, “I’m curious. Why bring up the surfing lesson?”

“I don’t know. It just came to mind. It was something you and I did together.”

She said, “You went with me when no one else would.”

“It was no big deal. I had fun.”

She said, “Why didn’t you tell me about Tess earlier?”

Addison said, “Is that not obvious?”

“Tess…” Andrea said, but she couldn’t go on. The name hung there in the dark house. The name was nothing more than a breath. “I knew there was someone. I figured it out, finally. While she was alive, I thought there was something wrong. I thought it was me.”

“You?”

“She stopped going to church with me. Said she was finished with the Lord. Then I caught her lying about where she’d been and what she’d been doing, and my feelings were hurt. I didn’t understand.”

Addison reached for matches. He lit a few candles on the bar.

Andrea said, “Just recently I figured out it wasn’t me. I figured out it was somebody else.”

“It was me.”

“It was you.” Andrea shook her head. “Jesus, Add, what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I loved her.”

“You loved her?” Andrea said.

“Loved her, adored her, worshipped her.”

Andrea nodded. Her eyes were blazing in the candlelight. She reminded him of a lynx or a panther. “I would thank you for that, if it weren’t so wrong . What were your plans?”

“I wanted her to leave Greg. I wanted to live with her. Marry her.”

“Did she want that?”

“No,” he said. “If I were to be very honest with myself, I would have to say… I don’t think she did.”

Andrea nodded, nose in her wineglass.

Addison felt a shadow covering his head and shoulders, like a big, scary presence lurking behind him. He had never meant to disclose everything, but he saw now that it would be pointless to tell some but not all. “I wanted her to tell Greg about us on the sail. I asked her to tell him.”

“To tell him on their anniversary? ”

“I thought it would be a good time. They were going to be alone, without the kids.”

“Do you think she did it?” Andrea asked.

“I have this feeling…” Addison said. God, he had waited so long to say this, just say it . “That she told him and he killed her.”

Silence in the house. The candles flickered.

“And that would make it my fault,” Addison said.

She drove and drove. She crossed the state line into New York. Now, she was officially kidnapping. At every exit she thought, I should turn around. But it felt too good to be headed away from Nantucket. It felt good to be putting miles between her and the site of her agony. After she drove through Albany, she had to decide if she wanted to cross the state on the throughway or via the southern tier. Which would be safer? She suspected the throughway would have more troopers. She chose the southern route. Leatherstocking land, the stomping grounds of James Fenimore Cooper. It was literary, the path they were taking. Literary? She was crazy. As long as she knew she was crazy, she was sane, right?

Delilah was monitoring herself for signs of exhaustion. She had awoken that morning at five when Jeffrey left for the farm; she had gotten out of bed at six to go to the grocery store. It seemed impossible that this was still the same day. Ten-thirty, eleven-fifteen. Her heartbeat was irregular. By now Jeffrey would realize she was gone. Her cell phone was in her purse, but she had shut it off, and she decided she would not check it to see what it contained. She was both giddy and profoundly terrified. Her actions were irresponsible, criminal even, but what could not be explained were the dual monsters of her grief and her guilt. She had to try to outrun them.

She had no idea where they were headed. She wanted to start over; she wanted another life. The life she’d been given, she had ruined. Where could she get a new life? The first place that popped into her head was Sayulita, Mexico. She would put the kids in school, they would learn to speak Español, they would learn to surf, they would become as brown as the natives. Four sophisticated expat children. Delilah would open a fish taco stand.

She would not take the kids to Mexico.

She would take them to… South Haven, Michigan, the town where she had grown up, the house where her parents still lived. Was that where she was headed? Could Delilah show up on the Victorian porch of the Ashby homestead with four kids, two of them not her own? Would her mother let them in? Would she bake cookies and show the kids the path down to the lake? Lake Michigan was as big as the ocean. They could pick blueberries, take day trips to Saugatuck and Holland. Delilah could sleep in her childhood bed with Chloe next to her and the boys on air mattresses on the floor, and Delilah would finally be safe to think.