Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

Phoebe said, “What I did was no better. I gave her a pill I knew she couldn’t handle. I wanted to ruin her anniversary. Tess was having an affair with my husband and I wanted to turn her into a zombie. And then she died, Eddie. She is dead and Greg is dead, and it is my fault .”

“All you did was give her the pill,” the Chief said. “You didn’t make her take it.”

Phoebe would not be comforted. “It’s the strongest opiate out there. It’s not even legal, Ed. I would take one, you know, in the darkest days, and I would be in outer space. I couldn’t drive or make a sandwich. I couldn’t wash my hair. I was so out of it.” She looked at him. “I’m a monster.”

The Chief took her hand. The tent blazed before them like a big white birthday cake. Phoebe felt exhausted, weak, full of heartache. The fact of the matter was, she missed Tess. The absolute truth was that Tess and Addison could have gotten married and left Phoebe homeless and destitute, and it still would have been better than this, because Tess and Greg would be alive. They would all be together. Still.

Where, where, where?

He was the woman’s husband. He should know the inner workings of Delilah’s mind. And he did, didn’t he? It was Delilah’s belief that people were predictable. They always acted like themselves; no one was truly capable of change. Presumably she applied this theory to herself. In their first, torrid week of dating, she had described herself as a bird that was unable to be captured or caged. She told him the story of how she’d run away in high school. Every time he and Delilah argued, she threatened to leave. Her presence in his life, she’d always maintained, was temporary. This had felt like an empty threat, because Delilah had a deep dedication to house and home. Their house was a finely feathered nest; it was a haven for their children and their friends and their friends’ children. Would Delilah have expended so much energy building and nurturing a home only to abandon it? She assured him she would. And look, she had.

Jeffrey had called Addison and Phoebe at home, but no one answered; he didn’t want to bother them on their cell phones if they were still at the party and ruin their good time. He didn’t call the Chief or Andrea because he didn’t want either of them to panic-to put out an APB or call Delilah a kidnapper.

He told himself he was overreacting. Delilah had gotten stuck off-island and for some reason had not been able to find a way to contact him.

But he was a smart man and he knew his wife. This had to do with Tess and Greg. It had, Jeffrey believed, to do with Delilah and Greg. Delilah and Greg had worked at the Begonia together for years; they had spent God knows how many late nights together drinking, smoking dope, singing, and keeping each other’s secrets. Delilah always took Greg’s side; she was his champion. She was his closest friend in a circle where they were all close friends. Jeffrey was too proud to admit it, but their friendship had always gotten under his skin. He blamed it for certain deficiencies in his own relationship with Delilah. Greg got to be her boyfriend, leaving Jeffrey to be her… what? Her father. Here was Jeffrey now, another version of Nico Ashby, chasing down his daughter who was on the lam.

He took another beer out of the fridge and sat down in a chair, to wait until morning.

There was only an inch or so left in the second bottle of Mersault. Both Addison and Andrea were quite drunk, but despite the raw and emotionally treacherous nature of their discussion, they were having a good time. Or maybe it was just Addison having a good time. He and Andrea had stopped talking, but they were listening to jazz, bobbing their heads, and Andrea, while not exactly smiling, had softened her exasperated expression.

She said, “Tell me why you got kicked out of Princeton.”

“Ah,” Addison said. “The Princeton story.”

“Ed says it’s a great story.”

“But it’s just that-a story. I didn’t actually get kicked out of Princeton. I just didn’t graduate with my class because I was short on math credits.”

“Tell the story anyway.”

And so he obliged. The week before graduation, Addison and his buddy Blake Croft crashed a garden party that the dean was throwing for donors to the annual fund. Addison and Blake wore straw boaters and pastel dinner jackets. They drank Mount Gay and tonics and ate oysters from the raw bar to improve their virility. The dean, recently divorced, was at the party with an extremely beautiful and extremely young woman named Nadine. Nadine targeted Addison, engaged him in a private, racy conversation, and then led him by the hand to the powder room, where they… Here Addison wiggled his eyebrows, but Andrea did not crack a smile. Addison, in his defense, did ask Nadine about the dean, and she said, “Oh, he’s an old fuddy-duddy.” Addison happened to agree.

When Nadine and Addison emerged from the powder room, disheveled and glowing, the dean was standing there, waiting in line.

“But that wasn’t the bad part,” Addison said.

“What was the bad part?” Andrea deadpanned.

“Nadine wasn’t the dean’s date,” Addison said. “It was his daughter.”

“Oh,” Andrea said, nonplussed.

Addison shook his head. He was very drunk. Perhaps he’d told it wrong.

Andrea said, “Did that story teach you anything?”

“Yeah,” Addison said. “It taught me to be careful about women.”

“But not really,” Andrea said.

“But not really,” Addison said.

There was a clatter at the door. Phoebe and the Chief swung in.

“We’re home!” Phoebe sang out. She looked at the Chief. “Your wife is here.”

Andrea stood up and straightened the skirt of her red dress. “Nightcap,” she said. “And a little bonding. Addison just told me what happened at Princeton.”

“What happened at Princeton?” Phoebe said.

“I’m exhausted,” Andrea said. “I need my pillow.”

“God, me too,” Phoebe said.

The Chief took Andrea’s hand. “I missed you,” he said.

“And I missed you,” she said.

“And I missed you,” Phoebe said to Addison. She crossed the room and fell into his lap. She was quite drunk. She might have been drunker than he was. “Did you miss me?”

“I missed you,” he said.

In the chilly, dark depth of their middle-of-the-night bedroom, Addison and Phoebe made love for the first time in over nine months.

Addison felt Phoebe climb on top of him; he felt her shift her hips and breasts, he felt her mouth on his neck and her hands rubbing up and down his sides, and before he knew it, he was responding. He could not believe what was happening; he could not believe this hot, sweet, hungry person was his wife. She had been this way once, but that was a long time ago. This, right now, did not feel like a rediscovery, not just like riding a bike; it was as though another woman had sneaked into his room to entice him.

“Phoebe?” he said, just to be sure.

“Please?” she said. She thought he would turn her down. He had turned her down earlier in the summer. But tonight it was okay.

Why? He would wonder this only later, once he lay breathless and spent and Phoebe drifted off to her contented dreams. It had to do with the obvious: he had told the truth to Andrea. He had shared the burden, he felt lighter, and this was, he realized, the first step in letting Tess go and getting on with his life. Phoebe was his life. Then there was the other part of the night to account for. Phoebe’s benefit, a gorgeous, elegant affair, and her incredibly generous, surprisingly appropriate and touching announcement: a nature walk named after Tess and Greg. It was a magnificent gesture. The naming of the trail was a great, good thing that Phoebe had done. It accepted Tess and Greg’s deaths instead of trying to escape the reality.