Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

Delilah concentrated on breathing. She had not used Lamaze during the births of either of her children, but she was using it now. In deep, out in short puffs. She ran down the hall to the pool. The indoor pool was a sad turquoise rectangle in a disintegrating tile room that smelled strongly of mildew and chlorine. The plastic resin lifeguard chair was deserted, and a stack of scratchy white towels stood untouched. No one had been in here for days.

The adjacent game room held two old-fashioned pinball machines that flashed their lights and made distorted groaning noises, a defunct Ms Pacman game, and a foosball table with half the players amputated from the waist down. No Drew, no Barney, no Chloe, no Finn. She had managed to lose four children. Not only her own children, but other people’s children. She touched her face; her cheeks were burning.

The restaurant held a little more promise. It was hopping! Nearly all of the tables held families with small children eating pancakes meant to look like Mickey Mouse swimming in ponds of syrup and topped with butter meant to look like whipped cream. Delilah weaved through the tables. Had the kids been lured down here by the smell of bacon and sausage?

The kids were not in the restaurant. Delilah hurried back to the front desk. Lonnie was still there, looking as morose as ever.

“Did they come past?” Delilah asked.

Lonnie shook his droopy head.

Delilah walked through the automatic sliding door. She stood beneath the portico and surveyed the parking lot. Beyond this hotel was highway. Would they have walked? There was just no way.

“Drew!” she screamed. “Barney!”

Somewhere in the parking lot, a car alarm sounded. Had she set it off?

She raced through the parking lot. Lamaze breathing-but there wasn’t time! She had to find them! Delilah was not religious; she did not pray. This was a flaw, she saw now, a hole, a void. Tess and Andrea were Catholic, and Greg and the Chief, however reluctantly, had gone along with that strict and structured faith. Addison was Episcopalian, Phoebe had been Episcopalian but since 9/11 had developed her own religion, a cross between Buddhism and drug-induced hallucinogenic voodoo mysticism. Jeffrey was Presbyterian, a staunch farmer, pitchfork-wielding, American Gothic Protestant. He took the boys to the Congregational church on Sundays at 10:30 twice a month; he donated to the offertory basket, belted out the doxology, spent a month of weekends doing odd jobs around the antiquated, drafty interior. Delilah had been raised an unwieldy combination of Lutheran and Greek Orthodox but had dropped both. She went to church with Jeffrey on Christmas Eve because she liked the carols. But the rest of the time she was spiritually adrift.

Delilah circled the hotel, inspecting it from the outside. There were nooks and crannies, places to hide-service entrances, housekeeping headquarters, a separate, canopied entrance for the families who took their kids to the Holiday Inn for breakfast on the weekends as a treat.

“Barney!” she screamed. “Drew! Andrew DRAKE!”

“Mom!” someone shouted.

And then she saw them. She almost choked on her relief. It was a palpable thing, a thick chemical vapor that filled her up and made her wheeze as she tried to cry out. The relief nearly stopped her heart.

Behind the hotel, in what might have been called the back courtyard, was a playground. The skeleton of a swing set, two scabby seesaws, and the rusted disk of a merry-go-round on which spun Chloe, Finn, and Barney. Drew was pushing.

“Jesus!” she said. She was crying now. “I was so scared. I thought I’d lost you.”

They did not speak. They observed Delilah as if she were an alien just stepped off a flying saucer, as if she were some unidentifiable wildlife emerging from the bush.

“I was so worried!” she said. “Thank God you’re safe!” Thank God, thank God. She realized that this angst, this panic, this frantic hair-raising fucking worry was, of course, what Jeffrey, Andrea, the Chief, Phoebe, and Addison would be feeling once they realized Delilah was gone with the kids. Delilah couldn’t stand to think of anyone else feeling this way. Somewhere inside her guilty and broken self, there was a beating heart.

Delilah waited until the merry-go-round slowed, then she sat down between Finn and Barney. She gathered Drew and Chloe into her lap, and although they were way too old for this, they allowed her to hold them anyway.

“Are we going home now?” Barney asked.

She kissed the top of his head.

“Yep,” she said, like the unflappable mom she was. “We’re going home now.”

He was tired in the morning and suffering from something of a hangover. He’d considered taking a sick day from work, which he did once a year, but a call had come to the house from Dickson, asking the Chief to get down there as soon as possible.

The Chief did not like the sound of Dickson’s voice. “Why?” he said.

“April Peck is here to see you,” Dickson said.

“Oh, Jesus,” the Chief said. He was glad Andrea was still asleep. He hung up the phone. Kacy was buttering an English muffin at the counter. “What time are the twins due home?”

“Um,” she said. “I’m not sure.” She sounded funny. Or maybe that was because of the ringing in the Chief’s ears. He and Phoebe had danced awfully close to the band’s brass section.

“Okay, I have to go in to work. Please don’t wake your mother. Will you be around when the twins get home?”

“Um,” Kacy said. “I guess?”

April Peck, the Chief thought. Sweet Jesus. “I have to go,” he said.

He was unwashed, unshaven, in his street clothes, and he had to make do with the truly atrocious coffee that Molly made for the station. These were all bad omens. And somehow he had to make room in his mind for Phoebe’s confession of the night before. Greg had not drugged Tess. Phoebe had given her a black market pill. Addison and Tess had been having an affair. So now he knew where the opiates in Tess’s blood had come from, and the phone calls to and from Addison could be explained, but was the picture any clearer?

Dickson was standing at the threshold of the Chief’s office.

“She’s in there?” the Chief said.

Dickson nodded once. “Wants to talk to you and you only.”

“It’s okay.” The Chief opened the door to his office, and Dickson reluctantly returned to work.

She was wearing a gray T-shirt and running shorts. She wore no makeup, and her blond hair was in a ponytail. She was staring into her lap. The Chief set his coffee down and collapsed in his chair. He felt like crap.

“What can I do for you, Miss Peck?”

She raised her face. It was red and splotchy from crying. The Chief tried not to react. He couldn’t do this. Did the girl understand? He was not a therapist. He could not just sit here and “listen” while she talked about Greg.

“Miss Peck-”

“I was with him the night before he died,” she said.

The Chief did not move. Jeffrey had told him this, but was there more?

“What happened?” the Chief asked. “You say you were ‘with him,’ but what does that mean? What happened between the two of you?”

“It’s not what we did or didn’t do that’s important,” April said.

And the Chief thought, The girl is so misguided.

“It’s what he said . It’s what he told me.”

The Chief allowed himself to breathe; then he took a sip of the mouth-puckering coffee. “Okay,” he said. “What did Greg tell you?”

“He told me he loved his wife. He told me he would never in a million years leave her or his kids. He made me repeat it. You love your wife. He said he did not love me. He said he couldn’t be my friend anymore.” She sniffled. “He said he loved his wife.”