Elin Hilderbrand - The Island

She said, “What are you doing?”

He said, “What does it look like I’m doing?”

She stormed into the house.

On the third day, she stayed out of his way. There was a list of mundane things on the counter-take the recycling to the dump, order the flowers, run to Bartlett Farm for lobster salad and broccoli slaw. (She liked to have these things in the fridge, though she never ate.) At the bottom of the list, it said, Dinner 7 P.M .

She stayed on the deck off her bedroom for most of the day, and to interrupt her would be like waking a sleeping lion. As he wrapped things up at five o’clock, she came down the stairs in a white waffled robe. She was holding a navy blazer. He got a bad feeling.

She said, “Where are you going?”

He made a show of checking his watch. “Home to get my kids.”

“But you’ll be back at quarter to seven?” she said. “We’re expected at seven.”

“Expected where?”

“Dinner at the Straight Wharf. The Jamiesons and Grahams invited me and I can’t go alone.”

“Well, I can’t go with you.”

He thought she might pull a power play. He thought she would remind him how much she was paying him. (He reminded himself of that constantly. It was a lot of money.) Instead, she said, “You can’t?”

He said, “The kids.”

She said, “Can’t you get a sitter? This is important to me.”

He relented.

“Why?” Tate asked him. “Couldn’t you tell she was using you?”

He felt bad for her. She was deeply unhappy. He called a sitter for the boys. He wore his own navy blazer. He met Anita at the restaurant. She kissed him on the lips in greeting. She touched his leg under the table. He moved away. He talked to the other men at the table about fishing. He was the resident expert; the other two men listened intently. Barrett had thought he would be outclassed at this dinner, but he ended up feeling good about himself. These people wanted the real Nantucket; he was the real Nantucket.

Anita had been hitting the red wine pretty hard throughout dinner, and then with dessert, she had a glass of champagne. She was drunk, blurry-slurry, sloppily affectionate. Barrett drove her home. She tried to persuade him to come inside; he declined. She asked him to walk her to the door. Okay, he would walk her to the door. She lunged for him.

He said, “Good night, Anita.”

“So those were the three days,” Barrett said to Tate.

“And then what happened?” Tate said. “You just decided to quit?”

“No,” he said. “Then your father called.”

Grant Cousins called Barrett at eleven o’clock at night, as Barrett was driving back home to Tom Nevers. Mr. Cousins was going to surprise the ladies on Tuckernuck. He would land at five o’clock the following afternoon and needed to be picked up at the airport and transported to the island.

Barrett said, “I’ll send Trey. He’s the kid who works for me now.”

Grant said, “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like you to come, Barrett.”

Barrett was about to say that he no longer ran the caretaking business day-to-day. He was about to say it would have to be Trey or nobody. But Barrett found he wanted to be the one to deliver Mr. Cousins to Tuckernuck. He said, “Okay, yes, I’ll see you at five.”

In the morning, Barrett told Anita he had to leave fifteen minutes early. He explained why.

Anita said, “But you don’t work for that family anymore.”

Barrett said, “Right, I know. This is a personal favor.”

Anita said, “Well, you’re not leaving here one minute early to do a personal favor for that family. ”

Her tone bothered him. He said, “What did they ever do to you?”

Anita sniffed. She said, “Will you change the paper towel roll in the kitchen, please? We’re out.”

Change the paper towel roll? He had become the butt of his own joke.

“That was it?” Tate said.

“That was it,” Barrett said. “I left. Anita made her phone calls starting at 12:05, just like she promised she would, and by two o’clock in the afternoon, five people had called and hired me as caretaker.”

“You’re kidding,” Tate said.

“Including Whit Vargas, who has a huge estate in Shawkemo, and who said he will pay me double what Anita was paying me just because I left Anita. He said he’s very good friends with Roman Fullin and he’s a client of your father’s as well. He asked if we were still dating.”

“And what did you say?” Tate asked.

“I said yes.”

Tate felt both elated and panicked. She had Barrett back! But she was going to lose him.

She said, “I leave tomorrow.”

He said, “I know.”

She thought, Ask me to stay! Ask me to move in! I can help you pay Anita back! I can help you with the kids! I can fit right into your life here! I can, I can, I can!

Slowly! she thought.

She said, “I start a job in Reading, Pennsylvania, for Bachman pretzels on Monday.”

He squeezed her. “How long will that take?”

She said, “It depends on how bad it is. Five or six days?”

“And then you’ll come back?”

“Back…?”

“Back here?” he said. “Will you come back here when you’re done with that job? I know it’s expensive, but…”

“Oh, my God!” Tate said. “Expensive? I don’t care if it’s expensive. I don’t care if I have to fly back and forth a dozen times. Being with you is worth it. You, Barrett Lee, are worth it! ”

He shushed her and pulled her close. He didn’t want her to wake the children just yet.

She had heard of couples who divorced and then remarried each other. Everyone had heard of such couples. The story had a romantic ring to it, especially for the couples’ children, who had the singular experience of watching their parents get married. But in the case of her and Grant, Birdie wasn’t going to be such a sucker. She wasn’t going to be a pushover or a Pollyanna. She had divorced Grant for a reason: after thirty years of emotional wasteland, she was moving on. She would either live alone and have a full and stimulating life, or she would find someone new who enjoyed the same things that she did.

Birdie allowed herself one last, long, wistful thought about Hank.

Hank!

Grant Cousins was a known quantity to her. Lawyer, strategist, financial wizard, expert in accounting loopholes, golfer, aficionado of scotch, aged beef, cigars, and high-end automobiles. He had been an adequate father, she supposed, though only with Birdie’s direction. He was a generous provider, she would give him that.

How likely was it that, at the age of sixty-five, Grant Cousins was going to change? Not likely. It was more likely that a mountain would change, or a glacier. And yet the Grant Cousins who had shown up on Tuckernuck was a different man from the man Birdie had been married to.

The mere fact that he had shown up at all! Spontaneously!

“What are you doing here?” she asked him. “Really.”

“I told you,” he said.

“What about work?” she said.

“What about work?” he said. “I’m due about five years of vacation and I’m going to take it.”

“Yeah, right,” she said. She sounded like a sullen teenager, but could anyone blame her?

Later, after dinner, after an hour of reminiscing on the screened-in porch with India (Birdie noticed how kind Grant was with India, telling all those funny stories about Bill), they faced the awkward decision about where Grant would sleep. His suitcase remained in the living room.

Birdie said, “You can take the other bed in my room.”

“Are you sure?” he said.