Irene

She wakes up facedown on a beach. Someone is calling her name.

“Irene!”

She lifts her head and feels her cheek and lips dusted with sand so white and fine, it might be powdered sugar. Irene can sense impending clouds. As the sun disappears, it gains a white-hot intensity; it’s like a laser cutting through her. The next instant she feels the lightest sprinkling of rain.

“Irene!”

She sits up. The beach is unfamiliar, but it’s tropical—there’s turquoise water before her, lush vegetation behind, a rooster and two hens strutting around. She must be back on St. John.

How did she get here?

“Irene!”

A man is calling her name. She can see a figure moving toward her. The rain starts to fall harder now, with intention; the tops of the palm trees sway. Irene dashes for the cover of the tree canopy and wishes for a towel to wrap around her naked body.

Naked?

That’s right; she forgot to pack a swimsuit.

The man is getting closer, still calling her name. “Irene! Irene!” She doesn’t want him to see her. She tries to cover up her nakedness by hunching over and crossing her arms strategically; it feels like an impossible yoga pose. She’s shivering now. Her hair is wet; her braid hangs like a soggy rope down her back.

The man is waving his arms as if he’s drowning. Irene scans the beach; someone else will have to help him because she certainly can’t. But there’s no one around, no boats on the horizon, and even the chickens are gone. There will be a confrontation, she supposes, so she needs to prepare. She studies the approaching figure.

Irene opens her mouth and tries to scream. Does she scream? If so, she can’t hear herself.

It’s Russ.

She wipes the rain out of her eyes. Russell Steele, her husband of thirty-five years, is slogging toward her through the wet sand, looking as though he has something urgent to tell her.

“Irene!”

He’s close enough now for her to see him clearly—the silvering hair, the brown eyes. He has a suntan. He’s had a constant tan since he started working for Todd Croft at Ascension, thirteen years ago. Their friends used to tease Russ about it, but Irene barely noticed, much less questioned it. He was on business in Florida and Texas; the tan seemed logical. She had chalked it up to lunch meetings at outdoor restaurants, endless rounds of golf. How many times had Russ told her he would be unreachable because he’d be playing golf with clients?

Now, of course, Irene knows better.

“Irene,” he says. His voice frightens her; she digs her heels into the sand. Russ’s white tuxedo shirt is so soaked that she can see the flesh tone of his skin beneath. His khaki pants are split up one leg. He looks like he’s survived a shipwreck.

No, Irene thinks. Not a shipwreck. A plane crash. A helicopter crash, that’s it.

“Russ?” she says. He’s getting pummeled by rain, and Irene flashes back twenty years to a Little League game of Baker’s that was suspended due to a violent midwestern thunderstorm. All the parents huddled in the dugout with the kids, but Russ, in a show of gallantry, ran out onto the field to collect the equipment. Another father, Steve Sonnet (Irene had always rather disliked Steve Sonnet), said, Reckless of him, picking up those metal bats. He’s going to get himself killed.

There was another time she remembers Russ soaking wet, a wedding in Atlanta. The Dunns’ daughter Maisy was marrying an executive at Delta Airlines. This was five or six years ago, back when Irene and Russ found themselves attending more weddings than they had even when they were young. The reception was held at Rhodes Hall, and when she and Russ emerged from the strobe-lit dance floor and martini bar, it was to a downpour. Again, Russ insisted on playing the hero by tenting his tuxedo jacket over his head and dashing across the parking lot to their rental car. When he’d pulled up to the entrance a few moments later, his shirt had been soaked through, just like this one is now.

“The storm,” Russ says, “is coming.”

Well, yes, Irene thinks. That much is obvious. It’s a proper deluge now, and the darkest clouds are still moving toward them. “I thought you were dead,” she says. “They told me…” She stops. She’s speaking, but she can’t hear herself. It’s frustrating. “They told me you were dead.”

“It will be a bad storm,” Russ says. “Destructive.”

“Where should we go?” Irene asks. She turns to face the trees. Where do the chickens hide from the rain? she wonders. Because she would like to hide there too.

  

At eight o’clock on the dot, Irene wakes Cash. He has started calling her Mother Alarm Clock.

“I had another dream,” she says.

Cash props himself up on his elbows in bed. His blond hair is messy and he’s growing a beard; he hasn’t shaved since they left the island. Irene has put him in the grandest of her five guest rooms, the Excelsior suite, she calls it. It has dark, raised-panel walls with a decorative beveled edge at the chair rail and an enormous Eastlake bed with a fringed canopy. There’s also a stained-glass transom window that Irene got for a steal at a tiny antiques shop in Solon, Iowa, and a silk Persian rug in burgundy and cream that she purchased from a licensed dealer in Chicago. (She’d thought Russ might veto a five-figure rug, but he told her to go ahead, get it, whatever made her happy.) Irene’s favorite piece in the room is a wrought-iron washstand that holds a ceramic bowl edged in gold leaf; above it hangs a photograph of Russ’s mother, Milly, as a young girl in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1928. Irene remembers the joy and pride she’d felt in refurbishing this room—every room in the house, really—but at this instant, she can’t understand why. The Victorian style seems so heavy, so overdone, so tragic.

Irene has abandoned the master bedroom; she will never be able to sleep there again. Since she returned from St. John, she’s been using the smallest guest room, originally meant to be quarters for a governess. It’s up on the third floor, across from the attic. The attic is crammed with the bargains Irene scored at flea markets but couldn’t find a place for in the house along with all the furniture from their former home, since Russ refused to let her take it to Goodwill. Russ had remarked many times that he would have been just as happy staying in their modest ranch on Clover Street, and Irene had thought him crazy. Of course, that was before she realized that Russ had a second life elsewhere.

The governess’s room had been all but neglected in the renovation. Irene had simply painted the walls sky blue and furnished it with a white daybed and a small Shaker dresser. Now she appreciates the room’s simplicity and its isolation. She feels safe there—although she can’t seem to hide from these dreams.

“Dad was alive?” Cash asks.

“Alive,” Irene says. This is the third such dream she’s had since returning from St. John. Irene and Cash and Irene’s older son, Baker, all traveled down to the Virgin Islands upon receiving the news that Russ had been killed in a helicopter crash off the coast of Virgin Gorda. He had been flying from a private helipad on St. John to the remote British island Anegada with a West Indian woman named Rosie Small. Irene then discovered that Rosie was Russ’s lover and that Russ had left behind a fifteen-million-dollar villa and a twelve-year-old daughter named Maia. It was a surreal and traumatizing trip for Irene and her sons, and yet now, a week later, all of these shocking facts have been woven into the tapestry of Irene’s reality. It was incredible, really, what the brain could assimilate. “He was talking about a storm. A bad storm, he said. Destructive.”

“Maybe he meant the lightning storm,” Cash says.

“Maybe,” Irene says. The helicopter had been struck by lightning. “Or maybe it’s what lies ahead.”

“The investigation,” Cash says.

“Yes.” The week before, only a couple days after they’d arrived home from St. John, an FBI agent named Colette Vasco called Irene, Cash, and Baker to let them know that the Virgin Islands Search and Rescue team had contacted the Bureau with suspicions that there might be more to the helicopter crash than met the eye.

What does that mean, exactly? Irene had asked.

The damage to the helicopter doesn’t match up with a typical lightning strike, Agent Vasco said. There was lightning in the area, but the damage to the helicopter seems to have been caused by an explosive device.

An explosive device, Irene said.

We’re investigating further, Agent Vasco said. What can you tell me about a man named Todd Croft?

Next to nothing, Irene had said. She went on to explain that she had tried any number of ways to reach Todd Croft, to no avail. I probably want to find him more than you do, Irene said. She gave Agent Vasco the number that Todd Croft’s secretary, Marilyn Monroe, had called Irene from. Agent Vasco had thanked her and said she’d be back in touch.

More to the helicopter crash than met the eye. An explosive device. This was turning into something from a movie, Irene thought. Yet she suspected that it was only a matter of time before the next dark door into her husband’s secret life opened.

“Also, there were chickens in the dream,” Irene says to Cash. “A rooster and two hens.”

Cash clears his throat. “Well, yeah.”

Well, yeah? Then Irene gets it: Russ is the rooster, Irene and Rosie the two hens.

  

Other than Cash and Baker, no one here in Iowa City knows that Russ is dead; Irene hasn’t told anyone, which feels like a huge deception, as though she stuffed Russ’s corpse into one of the house’s nineteen closets and now it’s starting to stink. Irene quiets her conscience by telling herself it’s her own private business. Besides, no one has asked! This isn’t strictly true—Dot, the nurse at the Brown Deer Retirement Community, asked where Russ was, and, in a moment of sheer panic, Irene lied and told Dot he was on a business trip in the Caribbean.

And he couldn’t get away? Dot asked. Even for this? Dot was fond of Russ; she cooed over him at his every visit as though he had forded rivers and climbed mountains to get there, although she took Irene’s daily presence at Brown Deer for granted. Irene perversely enjoyed watching the shadow of disillusionment cross Dot’s face when she learned that Russ had put work before his own dying mother.

Russ’s footprint in Iowa City all but disappeared after he took the job with Ascension thirteen years ago. Russ used to know everybody in town. He worked for the Corn Refiners Association and was a social creature by nature. He would drop off Baker and Cash at school and then go to Pearson’s drugstore on Linn Street for a cup of coffee with “the boys”—the four or five retired gentlemen known as the Midwestern Mafia, who ran Iowa City. Russ’s coffee break with the boys was sacred. They were the ones who had encouraged him to run for the Iowa City school board, and they’d suggested he join the Rotary Club, where he eventually became vice president.

All of the boys were now dead, and Russ hadn’t been involved with local politics or the Rotary Club in over a decade. Irene occasionally bumped into someone from that previous life—Cherie Werner, for example, wife of the former superintendent of schools. Cherie (or whoever) would ask after Russ and then add, “We always knew he would make it big someday,” as though Russ were a movie star or the starting quarterback for the Chicago Bears.

But who from Iowa City remained in Russ’s everyday life? No one, really.

  

Now that the business of Milly’s death has been handled—her body delivered to the funeral home, her personal effects collected, the probate attorney from Brown Deer enlisted to settle her estate—Irene has no choice but to face the daunting task of contacting the family attorney, Ed Sorley, to tell him about Russ.

“Irene!” Ed says. His voice contains cheerful curiosity. “I didn’t expect to hear from you again so soon. Everything okay?”

Irene is in the amethyst-hued parlor, pacing a Persian rug that the same Chicago carpet dealer who’d sold her the Excelsior-suite rug had described as “Queen Victoria’s jewel box, overturned.” (Irene had bought it immediately despite the fact that it cost even more than the other rug.)

“No, Ed,” Irene says. “It’s not.” She pauses. Russ has been dead for ten days and this is the first time she’s going to say the words out loud to someone other than her sons. “Russ is dead.”

There is a beat of silence. Two beats.

“What?” Ed says. “Irene, what?”

“He was killed in a helicopter crash on New Year’s Day,” Irene says. “Down in the Virgin Islands.” She doesn’t wait for Ed to ask the obvious follow-up question: What was Russ doing on a helicopter in the Virgin Islands? Or maybe: Where are the Virgin Islands? “When I called you last week to ask about Russ’s will, he was already dead. I should have told you then. I’m sorry. It’s just…I was still processing the news myself.”

“Oh, jeez, Irene,” Ed says. “I’m so, so sorry. Russ…” There’s a lengthy pause. “Man…Anita is going to be devastated. You know how she adored Russ. You might not have realized how all the wives in our little group way back when thought Russ was an all-star husband. Anita used to ask me why I couldn’t be more like him.” Ed stops abruptly and Irene can tell he’s fighting back emotion.

Anita should be glad you weren’t more like him, Irene wants to say. Anita and Ed Sorley were part of a group of friends Irene and Russ had made when the kids were small—and yes, Anita had been transparently smitten with Russ. She had always laughed at his jokes and was the most envious on Irene’s fiftieth birthday when Russ hired an airplane to pull a banner declaring his love.

“I need help, Ed,” Irene says. “You’re the first person I’ve told other than my kids. The boys and I flew down to the Caribbean last week. Russ’s body had been cremated and we scattered the ashes.”

“You did?” Ed says. “So are you planning a memorial, then, instead of a funeral?”

“No memorial,” Irene says. “At least not yet.” She knows this will sound strange. “I can’t face everyone with so many unanswered questions. And I need to ask you, Ed, as my attorney, to please keep this news quiet. I don’t even want you to tell Anita.”

There was another significant pause. “I’ll honor your wishes, Irene,” Ed says. “But you can’t keep it a secret forever. Are you going to submit an obituary to the Press-Citizen? Or, I don’t know, post something on Facebook, maybe?”

“Facebook?” Irene says. The mere notion is appalling. “Do I have a legal obligation to tell people?”

“Legal?” Ed says. “No, but I mean…wow. You must still be in shock. I’m in shock myself, I get it. What was… why…”

“Ed,” Irene says. “I called you to find out what legal steps I need to take.”

There’s an audible breath from Ed. He’s flustered. Irene imagines going through this ninety or a hundred more times with every single one of their friends and neighbors. Maybe she should publish an obituary. But what would she say? Two hours after the papers landed on people’s doorsteps, she would have well-intentioned hordes arriving with casseroles and questions. She can’t bear the thought.

“When I called you before, Ed, you said Russ signed a new will in September.” Irene had shoved this piece of information to a remote corner of her mind, but now it’s front and center. Why the hell did Russ sign a new will without Irene and, more saliently, without telling Irene? There could be only one reason. “You said he included a new life insurance policy? For three million dollars?” She swallows. “The life insurance policy…who’s the beneficiary?” Here is the moment when the god-awful truth is revealed, she thinks. Russ must have made Rosie the beneficiary. Or maybe, if he was too skittish to do that, he made a trust the beneficiary, a trust that would lead back to Rosie and Maia.

“You, of course,” Ed says. “The beneficiary is you.”

“Me?” Irene says. She feels…she feels…

Ed says, “Who else would it be? The boys? I think Russ was concerned about Cash’s ability to manage money.” Ed coughs. “Russ did make one other change. After you called me last week, I checked my notes.”

“What was the other change?”

“Well, you’ll remember that back when you and Russ signed your wills in 2012, you made Russ the executor of your will and Russ made his boss, Todd Croft, the executor of his. In my notes, I wrote that Russ said his finances were becoming too complex for, as he put it, a ‘mere mortal’ to deal with and he didn’t want to burden you with that responsibility. He said Todd would be better able to deal with the fine print. Do you remember that?”

Does Irene remember that? She closes her eyes and tries to put herself in Ed Sorley’s office with Russ. She definitely remembers the meeting about the real estate closing—she had been so excited—but the day that they signed their wills is lost. It had probably seemed like an onerous chore, akin to getting the oil changed in her Lexus. She knew it had to be done but she paid little attention to it because she and Russ were in perfect health. They were finally hitting their stride—a new job for Russ, a new house, money.

No, she does not remember. She doubts she would have objected to Russ making Todd Croft the executor of his will. Back then, Todd had seemed like a savior. Todd the God.

“So Todd was the executor,” Irene says.

“And when Russ came in to sign the new will this past September, he changed it,” Ed says. “He made you the executor.”

“He did?” Irene says.

“Didn’t he tell you?” Ed says.

“No,” Irene says. Then she wonders if that’s right. “You know what, Ed, he might have told me and I just forgot.” Or I wasn’t listening, she thinks. It’s entirely possible that back in September, Russ said one night at dinner, I saw Ed Sorley today, signed a new will with extra life insurance protection, and I made you executor. And it’s entirely possible that Irene said, Okay, great. Back in September, this information would have seemed unremarkable, even dull. Life insurance; executor. Who cared! It was all preparation for an event, Russ’s death, that was, if not exactly inconceivable, then very, very far in the future.

Now, of course, the will has red-hot urgency. Irene is the beneficiary of the life insurance policy and she’s the executor of the will. This is good news, right?

“I have something else in my notes,” Ed says, and he sounds on the verge of getting choked up again. “When I asked Russ if he was concerned that being executor might be a burden for you, considering the complicated nature of his finances, he said, ‘Irene is the only person I trust to do the right thing.’” Ed pauses. “Those were his exact words. I wrote them down.”

Irene is the only person I trust to do the right thing. That seemingly simple sentence has a lot to unpack. Russ didn’t trust Todd Croft to do the right thing—no surprise there. Had Russ assumed that Irene would find out about Rosie, Maia, the villa in St. John? And if the answer was yes, did he expect that Irene would have enough forgiveness in her heart to make sure that Rosie and Maia were taken care of financially? If again the answer was yes, he had given her a lot of credit.

Irene sighed. Russ was right. Rosie is no longer an issue, but Irene most certainly plans on providing for Maia.

“What do I do from here, Ed?” Irene asks.

“I’ll need at least ten copies of the death certificate,” Ed says. “I’d like one as soon as possible so I can start the probate process.”

“Where do I get a death certificate?” Irene asks.

“Um… no one provided one for you? You should have been issued one from the state where Russ died.”

“He died in the British Virgin Islands,” Irene reminds him. “Between Virgin Gorda and Anegada.”

There’s silence from Ed. She might as well have named two moons of Jupiter.

“Baker was in charge of figuring out exactly who claimed the body,” she tells Ed. “And who performed the cremation. He had some trouble. It’s apparently very hard to get a body back from another country, and it was over the holidays. The regular people were on vacation.”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Irene,” Ed says. “My experience with this is limited. But you’re saying you didn’t get a death certificate while you were down there?”

“We didn’t,” Irene says. “Baker called the Brits, who directed him to the Americans, who sent him back to the Brits. Todd Croft had someone go down and identify the body—that was before we arrived—and he ordered the cremation without even asking me.”

“What?” Ed says.

Irene has opened the proverbial can of worms now; she may as well keep going. “Todd Croft has, essentially, vanished. I can’t reach him or his secretary, and the Ascension web page is down.”

“Jeez, Irene,” Ed says. “This is like something out of a movie.”

“Ed,” Irene says. “You didn’t know anything about Russ’s owning property in the Caribbean, did you?”

“In the Caribbean?” Ed says. “Heck no!”

“How much did you understand about his job?” Irene asks. “Did the two of you ever discuss it?”

“He worked for Croft’s hedge fund, right?” Ed says. “He was the front man?”

“Right,” Irene says. She relaxes a little. The way Russ had described it to her, the Ascension clients were investing such large amounts of money in such a high-risk environment, they needed a dedicated person just to put them at ease, and that person was Russ. Up until this very second, Irene wondered if maybe Ed Sorley was in on the whole mess, but now it’s clear from his earnest tone that he’s just as bewildered as she is. Ed wears sweater-vests. He handles wills, trusts, real estate closings, and the occasional dispute over property lines for the farmers of Johnson County. Russ and Irene hired him for their legal matters because he’s their longtime friend. Irene realizes Russ must have had a second lawyer, one provided for him by Ascension.

Real estate, though.

“I’ll call our bank, obviously,” Irene says. They used to keep a checking and savings account at First Iowa Savings and Loan, where their friend Jerry Kinsey was the president. But shortly after Russ started working at Ascension, they switched to the behemoth Federal Republic Bank because Russ insisted that that bank was better equipped to handle Russ and Irene’s “change of circumstance.” Irene recalls pushing back on this. Just because Russ had a shiny new job didn’t mean they had to change their small-town ways, did it?

Russ had looked at her like she was naive and Irene had capitulated. They opened a joint brokerage account at Federal Republic, although Irene defiantly kept a smaller account at First Iowa in her own name; that was where her paychecks from the magazine were deposited.

Now that Irene thinks about it, she realizes she never saw a balance of more than fifty thousand dollars in the Federal Republic account. They have several million invested, or so Irene has been led to believe, and the amount in the Federal Republic account was obviously replenished by Russ’s paychecks and bonuses. So there should be a money trail that leads to Todd Croft and Ascension. Irene never delved into the particulars of their new financial situation because, quite frankly, she had done her share of worrying—creating budgets, stretching their meager resources—for a long time, and it was a relief just to know that there was money now, so much money that Irene could take a bath in French champagne every night if she wanted.

Back when Irene was renovating the house, Russ had transferred money into an account dedicated solely to paying the contractors and estate-sale managers and rug dealers. But that account had been closed for a while now. “We bought the house and the lot here on Church Street outright,” Irene says. “That money was wired to our Federal Republic account from somewhere else. Would you look into it?”

“I can certainly do that,” Ed says. “It was seven years ago? We’ve gotten a whole new computer system since then, but we must still have the paperwork in a box in the attic. I’ll go upstairs and check.”

“Thank you, Ed,” Irene says.

“Aw, Irene,” Ed says. “It’s the least I can do.”

“Please don’t say anything to Anita,” Irene says again. “I’ll tell people when I’m ready.”

“You have my word,” Ed says. “Your job is to get a certified copy of the death certificate. Without that, Russ is technically still alive.”

Still alive, Irene thinks. Just like in her dreams.

  

Irene’s next move is a trip to Federal Republic. There’s a branch in Coralville, although she has never set foot in it. She manages to find the most recent statement, which shows a balance of $46,270.32. There was a deposit of $7,500 on Monday, December 10, and another deposit of $7,500 on Monday, December 24, at eleven o’clock in the morning. The withdrawals are automatic payments for the household bills—electricity, cable, heating oil. There’s a $3,200 payment to Citibank—that’s Irene’s credit card—an amount that was a little higher than normal due to Christmas.

Irene approaches the teller with trepidation, even though she has never seen the young woman before. She’s Asian and far younger than either Cash or Baker, which is good. Irene craves anonymity. The last thing she wants is to deal with someone who knows her family, even slightly. Irene checks the woman’s name plate: JOSEPHINE.

“Good afternoon, Josephine,” Irene says. She stretches her face into a smile, but she suspects it looks like a grimace. “I have some questions about my account.”

“Certainly,” Josephine says. She accepts the statement from Irene, then starts tapping at her computer keyboard. “Let me just bring this up on my screen.” She pauses. Her eyes grow wide.

What? Irene thinks. She’s worried she’s going to be exposed on the spot. She’d have to say, I’m here because my husband died under mysterious circumstances. I’ve just discovered he had a second life but I was never suspicious because, honestly, Josephine, I paid very little attention to him. And I know next to nothing about our current financial situation.

“You’re a valued and trusted account holder here at Federal Republic,” Josephine says. “With us since 2006?”

“Yes,” Irene says. She points to the amounts she underlined on the statement. “I was wondering if you could tell me where these two amounts were wired from? I don’t see any other account number or the name of the bank.”

Josephine checks the amounts on the statement, then blinks at her screen. “You’re referring to the seventy-five-hundred-dollar deposit on Monday, December tenth, and the seventy-five-hundred-dollar deposit on Monday, December twenty-fourth?” Josephine’s voice is very loud, Irene thinks. She seems to be intentionally drawing attention to her teller window. Irene quickly casts a glance around the bank. She lives in mortal fear of seeing someone she knows.

“Yes,” Irene whispers, trying to telegraph the delicate nature of the situation.

“Those deposits were made in cash,” Josephine announces brightly.

“Cash?” Irene says. She nearly adds: You mean to tell me Russ walked in here with seventy-five hundred dollars on his person and then did it again two weeks later?

“Yes, cash!” Josephine says with such gusto that Irene thinks, Why not just broadcast over the bank’s PA system that Russell Steele was a drug dealer?

“Okay,” Irene says. “Thank you. One more quick question.” She leans in, locking eyes with Josephine, hoping that Josephine will finally understand the need for discretion. “Are there any other accounts at this bank under my name or my husband’s name?”

Josephine pulls back a couple of inches. “Do you have the account numbers?”

“I don’t,” Irene says. She’s trying to choose her words carefully here, though really what she’s tempted to do is tell young Josephine a cautionary tale: I let my husband take over our finances and now I don’t know what I do or don’t have! “I think I may have a second account here, one I haven’t been keeping close tabs on. Would you be able to check using my name or my husband’s name, our address, or our Social Security numbers?” Here, Irene slides Josephine a piece of paper with both Socials clearly labeled. “I can’t find any paperwork on our other accounts but it’s a new year, so one resolution I made was to figure this out.”

Josephine presses her lips together in a way that lets Irene know she’s growing suspicious. Still, her fingers fly across the keyboard. She slows to punch the Social Security numbers in carefully, then waits for the results. Blood pulses in Irene’s ears, and her shearling coat feels like it’s made of lead.

“I don’t see another account under either name or Social,” Josephine says. “Nothing’s coming up. Would you like me to call over my branch manager?”

“No, thank you, that’s okay,” Irene says. “For all I know, the account I’m thinking of could be at a different bank altogether.”

Josephine tilts her head. “A different bank?”

Irene backs toward the door. She can’t get out of there fast enough. “Well, like I said, it’s my New Year’s resolution to get organized.”

“All righty!” Josephine says. “Good luck with that.”

Ayers

Huck has asked Ayers to help him go through the things in Rosie’s bedroom during the week, while Maia is at school. Ayers doesn’t make it up to the house on Jacob’s Ladder until the Thursday before the Martin Luther King Day weekend.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” Ayers says. “My life just got really busy all of a sudden.”

“Don’t apologize,” Huck says. “You have two jobs, and now that you’re back with Mick, I’m sure he wants your attention as well.”

Ayers sighs. She is back with Mick and he does want her attention. He admitted that seeing her with Baker (Mick calls him “Banker”) drove him crazy with jealousy, and he vowed not to let anything—or anyone—get between them again. Since they’ve been back together, Mick has stopped by La Tapa at the end of Ayers’s shift each night and walked her to her truck before heading back to Beach Bar until closing. He’s abandoned his usual ritual of late-night drinks at the Quiet Mon and instead drives straight to Ayers’s apartment in Fish Bay, where he spends the night. When Ayers works on Treasure Island, he meets her at the customs dock at four o’clock with a pineapple-banana smoothie from Our Market. On the one day off they’ve had together so far, Mick borrowed his boss’s boat and they cruised all the way up the north shore to snorkel at Waterlemon Cay. They spotted three basking sharks and two spotted eagle rays. Mick is as much of a snorkel-nerd as Ayers. When they saw the second spotted eagle ray rippling along the sandy bottom, Mick dived down and undulated right along top of it. When he and Ayers surfaced a few moments later, he pulled off his mask and grinned like a kid with a shiny new bike, and Ayers felt a wave of the familiar adoration. This was her guy.

They’d left Waterlemon and headed to Gibney for an hour on the beach. When Ayers’s stomach started to rumble, they climbed back into the boat and tied up to the dock at Caneel Bay. They strolled hand in hand, salty and sandy, to the Beach Bar, where Mick ordered a bottle of Moët, the conch fritters, and four sushi rolls.

Ayers had craned her neck to ogle the hotel rooms that lined the beach, each of them as luxurious and appealing as pearls on a string.

“I’m dying to stay here,” she said, then instantly regretted it. The champagne had gone right to her head.

“Guess you’ll have to wait for your banker to come back,” Mick said.

“Guess so,” she said lightly. Mick dipped a fritter in aioli and let the topic go. Maybe he was consciously avoiding a fight or maybe he wasn’t as jealous as he’d claimed to be. Maybe he was content to let the past be the past. Maybe he thought Baker Steele would never return to St. John. Maybe he thought he and Ayers could just continue their relationship where they’d left off, as though neither Baker nor Brigid had ever existed.

Ayers wasn’t so sure.

  

Huck leads Ayers to Rosie’s room and opens the door. Ayers has been in Rosie’s room only twice before, both times years ago. The first time was when they swung by after work so Rosie could change before they went dancing at Castaways. The other time, Rosie was at work and Ayers was off and Rosie had texted Ayers and begged her to grab her bottle of Percocet—she had just had all four wisdom teeth removed and was crying in pain. But that was it. They were grown women; they hung out in bars, not in each other’s bedrooms.

Ayers remembers, however, that while the rest of the house looked like it was shared by the protagonist of The Old Man and the Sea and the Little Mermaid (Huck and Maia), Rosie’s room was a sanctuary, cool and elegant, and it still is. The wallpaper is printed with pink hibiscus blossoms, and the hibiscus theme is echoed by a bush outside the open window. The queen-size bed has at least a dozen pillows artfully arranged against the rattan headboard. Rosie was a fastidious bed-maker, whereas Ayers sleeps in a tangle of sheets every night and sees absolutely no point in making a bed that she’s only going to climb right back into the next night. (Ayers gets a sudden vision of Rosie folding napkins at La Tapa. She was careful and precise in the task, like she was doing origami.)

Against the wall is a large teak bureau; over it hangs a giant, round silver-framed mirror. The door to the closet is closed tight. The only personal touches that Ayers can see are a trio of framed photographs in one corner and a copy of Jane Eyre on the nightstand. Rosie was a sucker for the classics, especially the novels of Edith Wharton, George Eliot, and the Brontë sisters, and it was nearly impossible to get her to read anything contemporary, though she and Ayers had made a deal: Ayers would read Middlemarch if Rosie would read Eat, Pray, Love. (Ayers hadn’t kept her end of the bargain, which she feels awful about now.)

Huck asked Ayers to “help” him go through Rosie’s things, but it’s clear he hasn’t been in here even once, and Ayers suspects Maia hasn’t either. The room is undisturbed, as if Rosie might walk back in at any moment, straw market bag over her shoulder, singing Aretha Franklin.

That, probably, is the point. If they go through everything and sort out what to keep and what to throw away, they’re admitting Rosie is gone.

“I’ll get started, I guess,” Ayers says to Huck. “I’ll make four piles—to keep, to give away, to throw away, and undecided.”

“Ayers,” Huck says.

She turns to him. She’s afraid he’s going to break down, and if he breaks down, she will too. They both vowed to be strong for Maia, and they have been, but this hasn’t left a lot of time for them to tend to their own grief. Ayers can practically hear the texture and timbre of Rosie’s voice: You make me feel like a nat-u-ral wo-man!

“Last Friday,” Huck says, “the FBI called.”

Ayers snaps back to reality.

“Virgin Islands Search and Rescue contacted them about the wreckage. The agent I spoke to said it looks like there might have been foul play.”

Ayers nods but says nothing. After she and Mick had left Caneel Bay and returned the inflatable dinghy, they’d continued on to Joe’s Rum Hut for happy hour, then they stopped at Woody’s for a drink, then they strolled down to Morgan’s Mango to have dinner. By that time, Mick was drunk enough to engage in some pretty wild theorizing. The bird Rosie was on did not go down by accident, Mick had said. I guarantee you that.

“Turns out the damage to the helicopter wasn’t consistent with a lightning strike,” Huck says. “They think there might have been a bomb aboard or that maybe someone tampered with the wiring to cause an explosion.”

Ayers blinks.

“I just thought you should know,” Huck says. “They’re still investigating.”

“Maia?”

“I didn’t tell her,” Huck says. “The less she thinks about the actual crash, the better.”

“Agreed,” Ayers says. “What about…I mean, do we know if…” She swallows. “Have you heard from Irene?”

“I made her promise she would text me once she made it home,” Huck says. “And she did. Then a day or two later, she texted to let me know that her mother-in-law, Russ’s mother, had passed away. Which I guess was something of a blessing. Though I don’t know…that’s a lot of loss for one week. I sent my condolences, then decided I’d leave her be for a while. So I’m not sure if she knows about this. Though I assume so. Have you heard from the boys?”

Ayers has not, which bothers her more than it probably should. Especially since she told both Baker and Cash to leave her alone. She was disappointed that they had lied to her about who they were, and besides that, she was back together with Mick. There was no reason for either of them to reach out to her, but their silence chafes nonetheless. They had both claimed to have feelings for her. Baker used the phrase “love at first sight,” and Cash said he thought he was in love with her. But now that they’re back in America, living their lives, Ayers has been forgotten.

Which is why she never dates tourists.

She is especially peeved at Cash because she had texted him the day before with a link to a job opening on Treasure Island. Wade, the first mate, was moving back to the States to manage a marijuana dispensary outside of Boston, and they needed to hire a replacement before he left in two weeks. Skip, the bartender at La Tapa, had expressed interest, but Ayers didn’t think she could handle dealing with Skip at both of her places of employment, and she suspects that James, the captain, would throw Skip overboard before they made it into British waters. The problem is that everyone on St. John already has a job, and anyone who’s not on St. John doesn’t have housing. Then Ayers thought of Cash. He had been a big help on that trip to Virgin Gorda. And he’d had years of experience as a ski instructor, which, as he pointed out, was exactly the same thing, only completely different. He’s probably certified in CPR. He would have to get his lifesaving certificate, take a marine-safety class, and, literally, learn the ropes. But all of that stuff is easy. The most attractive thing about Cash, other than his charm and love of the outdoors, is that he has a place to live.

Maybe it was a bit of a stretch to imagine that Cash would drop everything and move to the Virgin Islands in order to crew on Treasure Island. Maybe he thought Ayers was teasing him or taunting him, but if so, wouldn’t he have shot back a snappy response?

“Not a word,” Ayers tells Huck. She tries to make this sound like a good thing, but he must know better, because he pats her shoulder.

“Holler when you get hungry,” Huck says. “I’ll bring you some lunch.”

“Great,” Ayers says weakly. She thinks of the awful fish sandwiches on buttered Wonder Bread that Huck packs for Maia.

“I’m picking up barbecue from Candi’s,” he says, and Ayers perks up. “Thank you for doing this.” He casts his eyes upward. “I’m sure Rosie would prefer to have you discovering her secrets rather than me.”

  

Discovering her secrets makes the work sound intriguing when in fact it’s merely heartbreaking.

Ayers starts with the closet. Rosie loved to wear white; it made her skin look luminous. The clothes in the right half of the closet are all white. Shades of eggshell, ivory, ecru, and pearl mix with the most blinding of whites. Everything is crisp and ironed, even her jeans. The clothes in the left half of the closet are full of color—Rosie’s bright printed handkerchief halters, her bohemian blouses, her simple cotton tank dresses. Nobody rocked a jersey patio dress like Rosie Small. Ayers’s favorite is a ribbed cotton racerback in brilliant marigold. She fingers it, remembering some special occasion at Chateau Bordeaux. The two of them had gone for cocktails to enjoy the spectacular view over Coral Bay, and Rosie had been wearing that dress.

Beneath the clothes are shoes—sandals, wedges, and the pair of black Dansko clogs marked with green tape that Rosie wore when she waited tables at La Tapa.

Ayers inhales through her nose, trying to stave off the tears. Everyone at La Tapa wore black clogs, and on Ayers’s very first day of work, Rosie had advised making hers distinguishable in some way. She showed Ayers the green tape. Looks like we wear about the same size, Rosie said. But if I ever see these on your feet, I’ll cut you. Hear?

Ayers could take the clogs now, of course, and wear them as a tribute—but is she worthy? Rosie was hands down the best server at La Tapa, the best server on the island, period. The guests clamored for her; her name was mentioned something like a hundred and seventeen times on TripAdvisor. Ayers would also like the marigold dress and all of the pristine white jeans. The handkerchief halters are so quintessentially Rosie that Ayers can only imagine giving them to Maia to wear when she’s older. Much older.

Ayers throws herself down on the bed. She’d look awful in the yellow dress. But maybe she’ll take it anyway and hang it in her closet, a reminder of her beautiful friend.

Foul play. The FBI. Russell Steele was into something illegal. He had enemies. Someone wanted him dead, and Rosie was collateral damage.

Ayers pushes herself up and goes to the corner to study the photographs. The top is a photo of Rosie with LeeAnn and Huck. Rosie is wearing a white cap and gown; it’s her graduation from the University of the Virgin Islands on St. Thomas. Huck looks pretty much the same as he does now, maybe a few pounds lighter then with a bit more red in his beard. Ayers studies LeeAnn, Rosie’s mother. She was tall and statuesque and wore her reddish-brown hair in a braided topknot. Ayers had heard all about the glamorous LeeAnn—that she had modeled as a teenager and gotten as far away as the fashion shows in Milan but had come home to marry her childhood sweetheart, Levi Small, who’d ended up leaving the island for good shortly after Rosie was born. LeeAnn had then gone to school to become a nurse practitioner. To hear some people tell it, LeeAnn was the most qualified caregiver at the Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center, even better than the doctors. Ayers had found LeeAnn intimidating—initially, anyway. She exuded competence as well as something Ayers could only describe as a regal bearing. When LeeAnn first met Ayers, she’d seemed disapproving that Ayers had no college degree and no way to support herself other than the hand-to-mouth existence that waiting tables afforded. Don’t your parents want more for you? LeeAnn had asked. Ayers had tried to explain that her parents were wanderers without a home, without possessions, really, and that they counted wealth by life experiences. LeeAnn had met this news with a skeptical arched eyebrow. Don’t you want more for yourself? LeeAnn asked. Ayers had shrugged; she was twenty-two years old at the time. But it was LeeAnn Powers’s questions that led Ayers to get her second, slightly more professional job on Treasure Island. After that, LeeAnn’s opinion of her had seemed to improve. Learn everything you can about the business, LeeAnn said. Then save your money and buy it.

LeeAnn had been even tougher when dealing with Rosie. The worst insult LeeAnn could dish out was to say that Rosie took after her Small relatives. That look in Rosie’s eyes, for example, that fire, that defiance, was pure Small, LeeAnn said, and it had to be contained or the girl would ruin herself.

What would LeeAnn have made of the Invisible Man? Nothing good, Ayers guesses.

Ayers hasn’t said this out loud to anyone but she doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that Russell Steele, the “Invisible Man,” reappeared in Rosie’s life just after LeeAnn died. A few weeks ago, Ayers had learned that Russ was Maia’s father, meaning he had been in Rosie’s life a lot longer than anyone knew.

Oh, how Ayers longs to ask Rosie herself. You could have told me everything, Ayers thinks. I was a safe place for you.

The center photo is of Maia, taken outside the Gifft Hill School. She’s very small, wearing a backpack that is nearly as big as she is, and in the photo she’s on her tiptoes, reaching for the latched gate of the fence to let herself in. The picture is precious and Ayers can imagine Rosie in the parking lot, possibly crouched down between two cars so Maia wouldn’t see her, capturing this early expression of independence.

Maia’s relationship with Rosie had been less contentious than Rosie’s with LeeAnn, but that’s not to say it was all milk and cookies after school and snuggles and stories at bedtime. There was a ferocity that ran through the female line of that family—maybe LeeAnn, Rosie, and Maia were all too similar—and Ayers had seen Rosie and Maia butt heads again and again. When Ayers was called on to referee, she usually sided with Maia, causing Maia to utter the famous line that Ayers was like a mother to her but better, because she wasn’t her mother.

The third photograph is of Rosie and Ayers on Oppenheimer Beach, back when the tire swing still hung from the crooked palm that stretched out over the water. The tire swing was more fun to look at than actually ride on, as Ayers had learned the hard way, but this picture of the two of them in bikinis is the best picture of them ever taken. Ayers keeps the same photo on her phone as her screen saver, and she will never replace it.

She feels honored that she has earned a spot on Rosie’s bedroom wall. It seems to mean that Rosie considered her family.

Ayers can’t help but notice that there is no picture of Russell Steele on the wall.

If there are secrets to discover, Ayers predicts she’ll find them in the top drawer of the dresser. That’s where people put intimate things, right? Women their lingerie and men their condoms. Rosie’s top drawer holds the expected collection of bras and panties, some functional, some recreational, as well as teddies and slips, cotton socks, a box of tampons, two full carousels of birth control pills, and a plastic bag containing six tightly rolled joints, which Ayers slips right into her purse. Rosie would definitely want Ayers to take those so Maia doesn’t find them and get thoughts about experimenting.

The middle drawer is a jumble of bikinis, nearly all of which Ayers recognizes; at least half a dozen are white. The rest are black, red, blue gingham, kelly green with hot-pink piping. There’s a pink smocked top that Ayers loves, and then she remembers a supercool turquoise crocheted bikini that Rosie got from Letarte. Ayers digs for it, but it’s not there—maybe Rosie wore it to Anegada? A sobering thought. Then Ayers finds something intriguing. Beneath the bikinis is a layer of clothbound books. But they’re not books, Ayers realizes when she opens one and sees Rosie’s handwriting. They’re journals.

Ayers extracts the journals like she’s unearthing the bones of ancient peoples on an archaeological dig. She reads from the one on top.

January 1, 2000

 It’s not only a new century but a new millennium. I, Rosalie Veronica Small, am seventeen years old, a senior at Charlotte Amalie High School. I’m in love with Oscar Cobb and nothing my mother or Huck can say will keep us from getting married on my eighteenth birthday.

Ayers shuts that journal and scrambles for one closer to the bottom of the pile, from 2015. Her breathing is shallow.

January 1, 2015

R. has stayed in Iowa through the holidays because his older son is visiting from Houston with his new baby. I wanted to text him a picture of me and Ayers doing tequila slammers up at the Banana Deck but of course the rule is “no texting.”

Ayers closes the journal, then her eyes. Tequila slammers at the Banana Deck, New Year’s Eve four years earlier. Yes; they had stopped there after the end of service at La Tapa but before they went to the Beach Bar to dance to Miss Fairchild. It had been a fun night, recklessly wild. They had closed the Beach Bar, gotten high, skinny-dipped in Frank Bay, then crashed a party all the way out on Ironwood Road in Coral Bay and stayed up to watch the sun rise. Ayers knew then about the Invisible Man, but he was just some guy who showed up every now and then to wine and dine Rosie and give her lavish presents. If Ayers is remembering correctly, it was right after that New Year’s that Rosie got a new Jeep, a four-door Wrangler in stingray gray with all the bells and whistles.

Whose is that? Ayers had asked when Rosie pulled up in it.

Mine, Rosie said without another word of explanation. Ayers had known then that it was from the lover, the Invisible Man, and that was when Ayers started to wonder just how serious that relationship was.

Ayers turns around to make sure the bedroom door is closed. How is she going to smuggle the journals out of there? If there’s any question as to whether she’s the right person to read them first, she pushes it aside. God only knows what kind of details they contain; Ayers can’t risk letting Maia read them before she does. And Huck made his feelings clear.

Despite this, Ayers doesn’t want to tell Huck she’s found them.

Why?

Well, she’s not sure why. It’s just a gut instinct. What if curiosity or ego gets the best of Huck and he decides to read them himself?

Ayers can practically hear Rosie saying, Noooooooooo!

Ayers looks under the bed and on the floor of the closet for a duffel or a suitcase but finds nothing. Then she hears a car and peeks out the window to see Huck pulling out of the driveway. He must be on his way to get lunch from Candi’s—perfect. Ayers heads out to the kitchen and pulls a reusable shopping bag off the hook next to the sink. She loads the journals up and hurries them out to Edith, her truck. She throws a beach towel over them for good measure.

She goes back to Rosie’s room, replaces all the bikinis, and shuts the drawer. She sits on the floor. She’s short of breath. She has discovered all of Rosie’s secrets. They’re waiting like a time bomb in Ayers’s truck.

A few minutes later, Ayers hears the front door open and then Huck calling out, “Grub! Come and get it!”

Ayers is too keyed up to eat. She wants to get home and read the journals! She’s going to have to hide them somewhere Mick won’t find them or see her reading them.

Huck knocks on the bedroom door and swings it open just as Ayers pulls out the third dresser drawer, so they both see what’s inside at exactly the same time.

Ayers shrieks.

Huck says, “What the hell is that?”

It’s money. The bottom drawer is filled with money.

Cash

He’s having dinner with his mother at the Pullman Bar and Diner when she asks the question he’s been dreading.

“So what’s next for you? Back to the mountains?”

“Trying to get rid of me already?” he says.

“Not at all,” Irene says. “It’s just that I thought this”—she indicates the restaurant and their server, Ryan, whom she seems to be on pretty familiar terms with—“was the stuff of your nightmares. Stuck in Iowa City, eating the early-bird special with your mother.”

“It’s been only five days,” Cash says. “And Milly—”

“Milly is handled,” Irene says. “I don’t mean to make your grandmother sound like a loathsome errand. But I also want you to know that you don’t need to stay here on my account. Surely you have better things to do than listen to me describe my crazy dreams.”

His mother is right. Cash should load Winnie into his truck and return to Denver to clean up what’s left of his life there before he heads to Breckenridge for the remainder of the winter. But what had seemed so appealing before he got Irene’s phone call informing him his father was dead has lost its luster. He received no fewer than ten panicked voicemails from Dylan, the manager of Cash’s Belmar store, asking why there are chains on the door and why no one is answering the phone at the Cherry Creek store. (Cash finally responded: Business went under. I would offer you a reference but I know you’ve been skimming from the register. Sorry, bro, good luck out there.) Cash is two payments behind on his truck so he needs a job right away. But because it’s already January, all of the positions at the ski school have been filled. Cash called his buddy Jay, and he said Cash could sleep on his sofa for a week but that would be all his new girlfriend would tolerate and finding other housing at this point would be tricky, especially with a dog.

“You might want to cool your heels there,” Jay said. “And try coming out in March when everyone else gets cabin fever and leaves.”

Cool his heels in Iowa for two months? In winter? There’s no way he can do it, can he? And yet, what choice does he have? Living with his mother is free, the house is comfortable and plenty big enough, and she gives him twenties and fifties every time he goes out. She would probably make his car payment in exchange for him doing some simple handyman work.

But would his morale survive? He fears not. Earlier that day, his mother pressed two hundred dollars into his hand and sent him to the Hy-Vee for groceries, which he didn’t object to as he needed dog food for Winnie and some shaving cream for himself. And who should he run into at the deli counter but his high-school girlfriend Claire Bellows, the one who went to Northwestern and promptly slept with Baker?

“Cash?” Claire said, blinking like he was an apparition. “Cash Steele, is that you?”

Cash forced a smile while he cursed his truly terrible luck. And yet, this was what happened when you returned to your hometown: you bumped into the people you used to know. Claire Bellows looked basically the same, maybe a little older, maybe a little washed out; her face was wan, her hair colorless and pulled back into a sad little bun. She was pushing a cart that held two children, a toddler who was standing up among the groceries—his left foot perilously close to a carton of eggs—and a baby in a bucket seat that snapped onto the front of the cart. The toddler was a boy; the baby was swaddled in a pink fleece sack, her face obscured.

“Hey, Claire.” Cash said it casually, as though he’d just seen her the week before. He felt like he’d just seen her the week before because he and Baker had spent so much time talking about her. The good news was that the bad mojo of Claire Bellows had been exorcised. Cash felt nothing when he looked at her. He leaned in to kiss her cheek. “How are you?”

“This is like that song!” Claire exclaimed. “Met my old lover in the grocery store, the snow was falling Christmas Eve!”

Cash nodded along, trying to be a good sport. The lyrics rang a distant bell—Gordon Lightfoot, maybe? Simon and Garfunkel? Cash was reminded that Claire used to be a lyrics wizard, especially when it came to the music of their parents’ era, because Claire’s mother, Adrienne Bellows, was a disc jockey on the local easy-listening station. When Cash and Claire were in high school, Adrienne worked the evening six-to-ten shift; she was eastern Iowa’s answer to Delilah. While Adrienne Bellows was comforting the heartbroken and lovelorn who called in with their requests and sappy dedications, Cash and Claire were making out and, eventually, having sex in Claire’s bedroom.

“And who do we have here?” Cash asked in an attempt to be gallant. He was trying, he really was.

Claire looked confused until she realized he meant the children. “Oh!” she said. “This is Eugene and the baby is Mabel.”

Cash tried not to grimace. Claire had followed the trend of naming her children as though they’d been born a hundred and twenty years ago. “Nice,” he said. “Hi, guys.” The toddler turned to look at Cash, missing the eggs by a fraction of an inch, and Cash couldn’t help himself—he moved the carton to safety. “So you’re back in Iowa City?”

“Temporarily,” Claire said. “For the next five or six years. My husband is doing a fellowship in endocrinology at the university.”

Cash nearly said, And you? But he was afraid Claire would tell him that she’d given up her job as a marketing executive with Colgate-Palmolive in Chicago in order to follow her husband back to Iowa and then add that she was “okay” with it or else openly express bitterness. To extract himself from that awkward topic, Cash would then ask about her mother, and Claire, realizing that she was doing all the talking, would take the reins and say, What about you? Why are you in town? Cash could then say he was visiting his parents, which would be half a lie, although lying would be preferable to telling Claire that Russ was dead. Claire had loved Russ. She and Russ had had a thing where they told each other knock-knock jokes, which Cash had found annoying even at the height of his passion for Claire.

Knock-knock.

Who’s there?

A broken pencil.

A broken pencil who?

Never mind, it’s pointless.

He might be able to successfully evade the topic of his parents but there would undoubtedly be follow-up questions about where he was living and what he was doing—and then finally, as if it had just occurred to her for no particular reason, Claire would ask about Baker.

To avoid that inevitable moment, Cash smiled at Claire and said, “Well, at least Iowa City is a good place to raise kids. We learned that firsthand. See you later, Claire.”

“But—wait,” Claire said.

Cash did not wait. He sacrificed the half a pound of sliced turkey on Irene’s list and sauntered off in the direction of the bakery. Claire had always been socially awkward in a sweet way. When Baker hit on her at that frat party at Northwestern, it must have been like taking candy from a baby.

But, really, what did Cash care? He was over it.

Thinking about it now in the Pullman Diner, he can’t imagine spending two to three months here in Iowa City dodging land mines like his ex-girlfriend Claire.

To Irene he says, “I’m going to stay a few days longer. At least.”

She gives him a tight smile and Cash wonders if maybe she wants him gone.

“Let’s order,” she says.

  

He’s nearly asleep, sprawled across the massive acreage of the guest-room bed, when he gets a text on his phone.

Who would be texting him so late? Cash figures it must be Dylan again, telling Cash that he left his one-hitter behind the counter or complaining because he’s still owed for a day and a half of work. The first thing Cash notices when he picks up his phone is the time. It’s not late at all; it’s only ten o’clock. It just feels late because it gets dark at four thirty in the afternoon and there’s nothing to do in this town after the dinner hour. The second thing Cash notices is that the text is from Ayers.

Ayers.

Cash stares at the phone, wondering if it’s a trick. Did Baker somehow figure out a way to send Cash a text that looks like it’s from Ayers? Cash hesitates a moment, then swipes to open. The text isn’t a text but rather a link, and when Cash clicks on the link, it opens to the website for Treasure Island Cruises—Day Trips to the BVIs, St. Thomas, Water Island, and Beyond!

Beyond? Cash thinks. Beyond must be that place you visit in your mind after nine or ten painkillers.

This section of the website starts with Join the Treasure Island crew! In smaller print beneath that is We are currently seeking a first mate for our BVI routes. Must possess strong administrative skills and CPR and lifesaving certification; must enjoy working with people. Valid passport required, boating experience preferred. To apply, contact Ayers Wilson, ayers@treasureislandcruisesvi.com.

Did Ayers send this to him for a reason? Cash wonders. Does she think he should…apply? He has been boating exactly once in the past ten years—when he went on Treasure Island as Ayers’s guest. Yes, he’d enjoyed it, and yes, Ayers had asked him if he wanted a job. But that had been a joke. Right? And yet now, apparently, they were looking for someone.

CPR certification he has; lifesaving, not a chance—unless you considered avalanche-rescue certification “lifesaving.” Well, it was, but it wouldn’t help him save someone who was drowning. Cash is an okay swimmer and he does have years of experience working with people, but in his heart, he’s a mountain boy.

His thumbs hover over the keypad. It doesn’t matter why Ayers sent this; it only matters that she’s reaching out. She’s thinking of him.

He lies back in bed and tries to lasso his bucking bronco of a heart. Ayers had been so angry the last time he saw her, so indignant that two people she’d befriended had deceived her about who they were and what they were doing on St. John. In retrospect, Cash doesn’t blame her. They—meaning Baker—should have told Ayers who they were at Rosie’s funeral lunch. But okay, let’s say that would have been in poor taste. Fine. Cash should have told her who he was when he bumped into her on the Reef Bay Trail. No excuses; he should have and he hadn’t, and then once he’d spent the day with her aboard Treasure Island, he’d become infatuated with her and didn’t want to ruin his chances. The same had been true for Baker. And guess what—they both lost out. Ayers told them she had gotten back together with her old boyfriend, Mick.

Cash reads the link she’d texted him again. She must have sent it to him because she thought it would be a good fit. Right? Right? Or maybe it was a joke. For all Ayers knows, Cash is back in Colorado, skiing the bowl on Peak 8.

But he’s not. He’s in Iowa City without a job, without prospects. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine a life on the water.

With Ayers. He would agree to live in the space station if it was with Ayers.

He decides not to respond to the text right away. He wants to sleep on it.

  

In the morning, the text is still there and Cash is proud of himself for exercising restraint and not sending a knee-jerk response.

Winnie is asleep at the foot of the bed. When she feels Cash stir, she lifts her head.

“You liked St. John, right?” Cash asks. “Wanna go back?”

Of course, it’s not Winnie’s permission that he needs. Cash pads down to the kitchen in his pajama bottoms and a decade-old Social Distortion T-shirt he found in the bureau in his room. Irene is juicing oranges the old-fashioned way—by crushing the hell out of the buggers with a galvanized-steel juicer that had belonged to her own mother. Cash watches her as she presses and twists the orange under her palms. All of that energy for a dribble of juice. Though it’s probably not the worst way to release pent-up frustration.

“Mom,” he says. “I’m not going back to Colorado.”

“You’re not?” she says, relaxing her death grip on the orange in her hand and then tossing the rind in the sink.

“With your permission…” he says. His voice sticks. Asking her this is harder than he thought it would be. “I’d like to go back down.”

“Down?” she says, though he can tell she understands.

“To St. John,” Cash says. He clears his throat. “I have a lead on a job there. And I was hoping I could just stay in the villa.”

Irene abandons the juice project altogether in order to stare at him. He can’t tell what she’s thinking, but then, his mother’s expressions have always been inscrutable. Against all odds, they had both sort of fallen in love with St. John—at least, Cash did. He knows Irene had warmed to it as well; she went out fishing with Huck once in an attempt to get information, but she also took a second boat trip with him before she and Cash left. He supposes it’s possible that her feelings have changed since they’ve been back home and now the whole Caribbean represents an enormous, ugly deception that she doesn’t want to revisit. And maybe she’d prefer that Cash not revisit it either.

It’s the idea that Irene might say no, might ask him nicely not to go or forbid him to stay in the villa, that makes Cash realize how badly he wants to return and give life down there a shot. He won’t stay forever. Maybe just until summer.

“Is this about the girl?” Irene asks.

“What?” Cash says. He can feel his face turning red. “No, of course not.”

“Oh,” Irene says. “That’s too bad. I like her for you, you know.”

“So…is it okay?” Cash asks.

“Yes, honey,” Irene says. “It’s fine. The villa is just sitting there empty. Someone should use it. Let me buy your plane ticket and give you some money to get started.”

Cash wants to tell her she doesn’t have to—he’s too old to be taking handouts from his mother—but the fact is, he’s flat broke. Broker than broke.

“Thank you, Mom,” he says. “Thank you so much.”

Irene gives him a sad smile. “I’m jealous,” she says.

Huck

One hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars; this is how much cash Huck and Ayers discover in the bottom drawer of Rosie’s dresser. It’s all banded up in neat bricks, just like in the movies. After they count the bricks, they count them again, announcing the amounts out loud as they go so they don’t lose track. Then Huck says, “Come into the kitchen.”

“I don’t think I can eat,” Ayers says.

“I’m not talking about barbecue,” Huck says. “I’m talking about rum.”

Ayers shuts the drawer, and the blue Benjamins disappear; Huck ushers her down the hall. In the kitchen, he takes two shot glasses out of the cabinet and brings his trusty bottle of eighteen-year-old Flor de Caña—useful in most emergencies—down from the shelf.

He pours two shots and gives one to Ayers. “I don’t know what to say,” he admits, raising his own glass.

“Me either.”

They clink glasses and drink. He notices Ayers eyeing the barbecue spread out across the counter. She grabs a drumstick dripping with comeback sauce. Huck follows suit. No matter what the circumstances, Candi’s is too tempting to resist.

  

After Ayers leaves, taking one yellow dress and three pairs of white jeans with her—the rest of the clothes they should let Maia go through, Ayers said, as soon as she’s old enough—Huck picks up the money, armful by armful, and stashes it under his bed. He’s aware that it has remained undetected in Rosie’s room, but he figures it’s only a matter of time before Maia goes snooping. Maia will never voluntarily enter Huck’s room. He’s messy, and Maia has declared on numerous occasions that, despite Huck’s valiant effort with the laundry, his room smells like fish guts, rotten fish guts.

After the money is beneath the bed, he stacks all the issues of Field and Stream and National Geographic that he’s collected over the past twenty years around the bed so that if Maia does come poking around, she will see only that Huck is a packrat.

Money hidden, he feels a little better. He drives to Gifft Hill to pick up Maia from school.

A hundred and twenty-five grand. In cash. In a dresser drawer.

It’s a lot of money, but it’s not enough to kill two people over; that’s Huck’s thought as he pulls into the school parking lot.

Maia is lingering by the gate with her friend Joanie and two boys Huck recognizes but can’t put names to. All four kids have their phones out and they’re laughing at something on the screen. Huck knows Maia sees him and he also knows enough to be patient and not tap the horn or, God forbid, call out to her. That would be so embarrassing.

Maia runs over to his window and he cranks it down.

“Hello there,” he says. His voice sounds normal to his own ears, gruff, grandfatherly. All of his internal panic about having so much cash hidden under his bed is, he thinks, undetectable. “Are you not getting in?”

Maia bites her lip. “Would you take me and my friends into town so we can walk around?”

“Walk around and do what?” Huck asks. Cruz Bay is a small town consisting mostly of bars. Three o’clock is when happy hour at Woody’s starts, luring people off the beaches in the name of good, cheap rum punch, and at four o’clock, all of the excursion boats pull in and disgorge people who have been drinking all day, most of whom are interested in continuing their drinking on land. This is all well and good for the island economy—Cruz Bay in the late afternoons is one of the most festive places on earth—but it’s not exactly a wholesome environment for a bunch of twelve-year-olds.

Maia shrugs. “Get ice cream at Scoops, walk around Mongoose, maybe listen to the guitar player at the Sun Dog. He knows some Drake songs.”

Huck is pretty cool for a grandpa; he, too, knows some Drake songs. “All right. Pile in, I guess. What time should I plan to pick you up?”

“Joanie’s mom will bring us home,” Maia says.

“Fine,” Huck says. If Julie is on board with the kids going into town, then Huck figures it must be all right. Joanie climbs into the truck, giving Huck a fist bump, but the boys offer him scared sideways looks, like he’s Lurch from The Addams Family. This actually cheers Huck up a bit.

“Hey, fellas,” he says. “I’m Captain Huck. Remind me of your names.”

“Colton,” says one.

“Bright,” says the other.

Colton and Bright—Huck has definitely heard both names before, so that’s good. The four kids wedge themselves into the back seat of the truck’s cab, leaving Huck to feel like very much the chauffeur. He nearly asks Maia to move up front, but he doesn’t want to embarrass her and he supposes that part of the fun is being smushed up against a boy. This is how it all starts, Huck thinks. One minute you’re leg to leg with a boy in your grandpa’s truck during a ride into town, and the next minute you’re hiding a hundred and twenty-five thousand of that boy’s illegally gotten dollars in your dresser drawer.

Huck heads up the hill to Myrah Keating, then takes a left on the Centerline Road. At every curve and dip, the kids hoot as though the thrill of the ride is brand-new, even though they’ve all grown up driving on this crazy road. When they descend to the roundabout and Huck signals to go right toward Mongoose Junction, Maia says, “Actually, Gramps, can you drop us off at Powell Park? We’re waiting for some Antilles kids to get off the ferry.”

“Antilles kids?” Huck says. Antilles is the private school over on St. Thomas. “Not those rascals.”

One of the boys guffaws and Huck can practically hear Maia rolling her eyes. Waiting for the Antilles kids is fine, Huck supposes. Powell Park attracts a colorful cast of characters but it’s perfectly safe to hang out there in the midafternoon. So why does Huck feel uneasy? He knew these days were coming; Maia wasn’t going to stay a child forever. But he’s not ready. He should probably acknowledge that he’ll never be ready. He needs Rosie back from the dead; he needs LeeAnn. Ayers has offered to serve as a surrogate mother but she has her own life, two jobs and a boyfriend, so how much can he really ask of her?

Huck has gotten used to the solo life, but right now he could really use a partner.

Irene? He immediately chastises himself for the thought. He must be out of his mind.

  

That night, after Maia shows Huck her completed homework and then goes into her room to FaceTime Joanie and giggle about God knows what—probably Colton and Bright or possibly a boy who goes to Antilles—Huck climbs into bed with his Michael Connelly novel. He’s been reading this book since before Rosie died, which is an addling thought. When he first cracked open The Late Show a couple weeks ago, his life was one way, and now that he’s on page 223, it’s completely another. Now Rosie is dead—dead!—and he’s hiding a hundred and twenty-five grand under his bed. The book does the trick, though—keeps him engrossed for a few chapters until his eyelids start to feel heavy. He closes the book and turns off the light.

Sleep, he thinks.

But he can’t sleep. He might as well have a pile of uranium under the bed; the money feels radioactive.

A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. In cash.

Why?

Eventually, he drifts off; when he’s awakened by his alarm, his head aches and he’s in a foul mood. In his day, this was known as getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

“Let’s go!” he calls out to Maia. “I have a charter at nine. A bachelor party.”

Maia emerges from her room wearing a pink jean skirt, a black tank top, and black Chuck Taylors. She looks older, as though she aged three years overnight.

“I thought you hated bachelor parties,” she says.

“Put on something else,” Huck says. “That top is too revealing and that skirt is too short.”

“What are you talking about?” Maia says. “I wear this outfit all the time.”

“You do?” Huck says. He has to admit, he doesn’t usually notice what Maia is wearing and he has never commented on it before. “I guess maybe you’re growing, because it looks too small.”

“Maybe you need new glasses,” Maia says with a grin. She peers into the frying pan, where he’s scrambling eggs. “Cut the heat. They’re perfect now.”

Huck snaps the burner off. It’s an ongoing joke that Huck tends to overcook the eggs, and Maia feels about dry eggs the way that Huck feels about dry fish. No bueno.

“Serve them up yourself,” Huck says. “And make your own toast. I have to get ready.”

Maia stares at him. “Is this about yesterday?”

Huck stops in his tracks. He’s facing the refrigerator, where he’s about to grab Maia’s lunch box—packed with a peanut butter and jelly as per her request because all of a sudden sandwiches made from freshly caught fish aren’t good enough. “Yesterday?”

“Taking my friends to town,” Maia says. “You’ve been in a weird mood since then.”

She’s intuitive, he’ll give her that. He can’t very well tell her the truth—that what has put him in a “weird mood” is the hundred and twenty-five grand he found in her mother’s room—but neither does he want her to think that he minds driving her and her friends around. If she believes that, she’ll start asking someone else for rides, and he’ll lose his window into her world.

“That’s not it,” Huck says. “I enjoyed taking you to town.”

“Oh,” Maia says. “What is it, then? Is it Irene?”

At this, Huck does turn around. “Irene?”

“You miss her, right? That’s why you’re grumpy?”

Huck opens his mouth but for the life of him, he can’t think of how to respond. The night following Irene’s departure, he made the mistake of drinking a couple of shots of Flor de Caña and saying some things to Maia that he should have kept private. What exactly did he say? Maybe something as innocuous as I’ve never seen a woman fish like that before. Maybe something more revealing. But did he say he had feelings for Irene? No. Did he ever say he’d miss her? No.

Huck nearly snaps, I’m not grumpy! But he is, and it’s not Maia’s fault.

“Sorry, Nut,” he says. “I’m just tired, I’m missing your mom—and your grandma too, for good measure—and I’m dreading this bachelor party.”

Maia opens her arms to give Huck a hug, which he gratefully accepts. He loves this child to distraction, she’s all he has left, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let whatever mess Rosie was involved in affect her.

“Eat your breakfast,” he says.

  

Adam is late getting to the boat, which normally ticks Huck off, but today, he’s grateful. He has to think. What does he do about the money? He’s a human being, so part of him fantasizes about keeping it and slipping five hundred here and three hundred there into Maia’s college fund. He’s not rich, he might not even qualify as “comfortable,” but his house is paid off and so is the boat. He has money saved for a new truck once his old one finally dies and he has a fund for boat repairs. The money, if he kept it, would be a cushion. A really soft cushion.

He can’t keep it. He has to report it. But to whom? He’ll call Agent Vasco, he decides. He’ll call her today, after the charter.

But maybe he’ll call Irene first.

A dinghy putters up to the Mississippi. It’s Keegan, the first mate from What a Catch!, a friendly-rival fishing boat, dropping off Adam.

“Sorry, Cap,” Adam says, climbing aboard.

“He was up late talking to Marissa,” Keegan says.

Huck pretends not to hear this last comment, as though ignoring it might make the situation go away. Marissa is the daughter of Dan and Mrs. Dan, the Albany couple from Huck’s charter on New Year’s Eve. Marissa is the girl who did not cast a line, the one who barely took her eyes off her phone’s screen the entire time they were out on the water. Adam asked the girl out for New Year’s Eve, an act of desperation if Huck had ever seen one. But the date must have been a humdinger because after that, they’d been inseparable until Marissa left a few days ago.

The day before yesterday, Huck said to Adam, “Why pick a girl who doesn’t like to fish?”

Adam scoffed. “You know how hard it is to meet a chick who actually enjoys fishing?”

Huck nearly spoke up about Irene—the woman seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the front of his mind and on the tip of his tongue—but instead he said, “Maia likes to fish.”

Adam said, “Maia is twelve. She’ll grow out of it.”

Keegan putters away in the dinghy. Adam removes his visor, runs a hand through his hair, and gazes in the direction of St. Thomas, where they both see an airplane taking off, probably going back to the States.

“Head in the game,” Huck says. “Check the lines.”

“I have to talk to you, Cap,” Adam says.

Huck shakes his head. “Afterward, please. We have a bachelor party today, and you know how I feel about bachelor parties.”

Huck hates bachelor parties. Nine times out of ten, if someone calls looking to book the Mississippi for one, Huck will tell the person his boat is unavailable for the foreseeable future. With bachelor parties, something bad always happens. Huck keeps one case of Red Stripe on ice at all times—and one case only. Bachelor parties often bring an additional thirty-pack of Bud Light (undrinkable, in Huck’s opinion) as well as rum or tequila or sometimes punch in a plastic gallon jug. Huck gives extra alcohol the side-eye, but he has never flat-out forbidden it—that would be a fatal move for his TripAdvisor ratings—although he thinks to himself that what these kids really want is a booze cruise, not a fishing trip. He nearly always ends up with one participant completely jack-wagon drunk, puking off the back. He’s had guys fall off the boat, and he’s had fistfights. Huck never gets involved in the fistfights; he just turns the boat around and drops the group at the National Park Service dock without a word, regardless of whether they’ve caught any fish.

Huck agreed to book this bachelor party because he has been all but ignoring his business since Rosie died and he needs to get back into some kind of groove.

He pulls up to the National Park Service dock at ten minutes to nine but the only people waiting are four gentlemen, Huck’s age or maybe older. They’re in proper fishing shirts and visors and they have bags from the North Shore Deli, home of a roasted pork and broccoli rabe sandwich that Huck dreams about. He wonders if these guys are waiting for What a Catch! and feels a stab of envy.

Huck gives them a wave as he ties up and considers just poaching this foursome and letting Keegan and Captain Chris from What a Catch! handle the bachelor-party guys—who, Huck guesses, will show up late and hung over after a raucous night at the Dog House Pub.

One of the gentlemen, full head of snowy white hair, steps forward. “Captain Huck?” he says. “I’m Kyle Maguire.”

Kyle Maguire? That’s the name of Huck’s guy. These four geezers are the bachelor party! Huck laughs with relief. He’d been expecting Millennials with their hashtags and their GoPros and their swim trunks printed with watermelon margaritas.

“Welcome aboard!” Huck says.

  

It’s the charter of Huck’s dreams. The four geezers—Kyle Maguire, his brother Harry, and Grover and Ahmed, childhood friends from Worcester, Massachusetts—are in their sixties, like Huck, and Huck can tell right away that they are good guys. They grin with just the right amount of eager enthusiasm as they kick off their shoes without being asked, shake Huck’s hand, and climb aboard the boat.

Kyle, the groom-to-be, tells Huck he’s a hospital administrator at Mass General and that he has a home on Nantucket, where he goes fishing two or three times a summer. “Up there, it’s striped bass, bluefish, maybe bonito and false albacore if you’re lucky.”

Harry is a lawyer, Ahmed a retired ophthalmologist, and Grover a professor of business at the Kellogg School at Northwestern. Grover asks Huck about his USMC hat and Huck talks about his tour in Vietnam. Turns out, Grover was over there around the same time.

“Are you gentlemen okay with going offshore?” Huck asks.

“Let’s do it!” Kyle says.

Huck decides to take the boat out to the spot that he and Irene fished, what the hell, why not give it a try. The day is sunny and the water is flat; the men relax with beers, Ahmed chats with Adam, and Huck plays music—the Doors, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones. They reach the coordinates where they found the school of mahi before and start trolling.

C’mon, fish! Huck thinks. Maybe the luck he had with Irene will repeat itself.

Kyle gets a bite first. He reels it in as Huck stands alongside in case he needs any help. It’s a barracuda; they all gather around to admire it, then Huck throws it back. After that, it’s quiet for a while, which is when some people on these trips grow antsy. Often, that’s when Huck has to tell them, “That’s why it’s called fishing, not catching.” Huck nearly describes to these four men the day that he and Irene had out here—seventeen mahi!—but he holds his tongue because it doesn’t seem like history will repeat itself.

“So you’re getting married,” Huck says. “Is this your first time?”

“No,” Kyle says. “Been married twice before. First time to my college sweetheart. I have two boys from that marriage, but we split after five years. Then I met Jennifer and we were married for twenty-two years. She died in 2014.”

This story eerily parallels Huck’s own. He’d married his first wife, Kimberly, when he got home from Vietnam, and they divorced six years later, after her second unsuccessful stint in rehab. Then he met LeeAnn and they’d spent twenty blissful years together before she died in 2014.

“So who’s the new gal?” Huck asks. He knows that Maia would likely object to his use of the word gal, finding it old-fashioned or, possibly, offensive.

“Her name is Sheila,” Kyle says. He gives Huck a sheepish grin. “We met on the internet. Match dot com.”

“Really?” Huck says. Rosie used to encourage Huck to try one of those dating services, but to him it was utterly pointless. Who was going to want to move to St. John? A week’s visit, sure, two weeks maybe, but that didn’t make a life together. And no way was Huck moving back to the States. He didn’t care if Christie Brinkley came calling.

“Yep,” Kyle says. “She’s a civil engineer. She builds bridges in the Bay Area, the kind of bridges that can withstand earthquakes. Her husband died of Lou Gehrig’s disease two years ago. She has one son, grown up, who lives near me outside of Boston, so Sheila is moving east from Oakland and we’re tying the knot.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, how long have you been dating?”

“Nine months,” Kyle says. He waves his beer can in the direction of his friends. “They all thought I was rushing into things when I bought the ring after only six months. I can’t describe it. We just clicked. I flew out there one weekend, she came to see me on Nantucket a couple weeks later, then we went to Chicago, where she met Grover and he approved, then we did a week in Napa. At Thanksgiving she came to Boston and I introduced her to my kids. They loved her right away. I proposed when I dropped her off at the airport.”

“Are you worried about her moving in with you?” Huck asks. A week in Napa is one thing, he thinks; sharing closet space is another.

“I know it’s a gamble,” Kyle says. “But I’m sixty-four years old and life gave me another chance to be happy. Only an idiot would say no to that out of fear.”

Huck stares over the turquoise sheet of the water toward the verdant hills of St. John. Kyle must sense that his words have stirred something up in Huck because he claps Huck on the shoulder and says, “You hungry? We got enough sandwiches for everyone.”

They catch another barracuda, then Adam suggests heading over toward Little St. James and Huck agrees; the spot he picked has lost its magic, apparently. In the next place they troll, Ahmed catches a decent-size tuna, then Harry brings in a wahoo big enough to serve as dinner and Huck relaxes. He cracks open a Coke and turns up the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” and casts a line himself. He gets a fish on almost instantly and hands the line over to Grover, who reels in a second wahoo, bigger than the first. Then Kyle catches a tuna. Ahmed takes a nap in the shade. Huck overhears Adam talking to Grover about business school, and suddenly Huck knows what Adam wants to tell him—but he won’t let it ruin the afternoon.

At quarter past two, it’s time to turn the boat back. Kyle passes out Romeo y Julietas and Huck gratefully accepts one. He loves Cuban cigars. LeeAnn absolutely forbade them, so Huck can’t light up without feeling like he’s indulging in a guilty pleasure.

How does Irene feel about them? he wonders.

Life gave me another chance to be happy. Only an idiot would say no to that out of fear.

Huck thinks of the first time he saw Irene, her chestnut braid draped over one shoulder as she marched down the dock calling him “Mr. Powers.” Now that he knows her a little better, he realizes she doesn’t mess around nor suffer fools—but still, it was impressive, the way she talked herself onto his boat.

We just clicked.

Had Huck and Irene clicked? He would have a hard time saying they hadn’t.

Angler Cupcake.

There’s nothing like the wisdom of a twelve-year-old, Huck thinks. Maia was right. Huck misses Irene and that’s why he’s grumpy.

When they tie up back at the dock, Adam fillets the fish for the gentlemen and Kyle pours a shot of tequila for everyone. They clink glasses and throw back the shots. Kyle thanks Huck profusely and slips him a generous tip, which Huck nearly refuses because the guy has given Huck so much already. If nothing else, he has changed Huck’s mind about bachelor parties.

Temporarily, anyway.

They shake hands and say their goodbyes and Huck says maybe he’ll see them in town over the next few days, it’s not impossible, although Huck hasn’t been out since Rosie died.

“They were terrific!” Huck says to Adam once they’re gone. He slips Adam one of the hundreds that Kyle gave him. Those are the kind of men Huck would have as friends, if he had time for friends.

Adam stuffs the hundred in his pocket. “Cap,” he says. The boy looks green around the gills, downright seasick, as though he will be the one to upchuck off the back of the boat. And just like that, Huck is snapped out of the golden reverie that a good day out on the water provides. He’s back to real life: the money under his bed, the FBI, and whatever Adam has to tell him.

Huck decides to cut the kid a break and do the hard part for him. “You’re leaving me?” he says.

Adam nods morosely. “I’m moving to upstate New York to be with Marissa.”

Upstate New York? Huck thinks. What did this girl Marissa do to him?

“It’s cold in upstate New York,” Huck says. “It snows. A lot. And there’s no ocean.”

“I love her,” Adam says, and he swallows. “I’m in love with her.”

Huck nods. He yearns to tell Adam that, more than half the time, love dies, and it probably dies quicker in places like Oneida and Oneonta. But Huck won’t be that curmudgeonly skeptic today.

“They have lakes,” Huck says. “Great lakes. You can fly-fish.”

Adam looks so relieved that Huck’s afraid the boy might try to kiss him. “Yeah, that’s what I thought I’d do,” he says. “In the summer.”

Huck lights a cigarette and inhales deeply. “So you’ll leave in May, then? Or June?”

“A week from Tuesday,” Adam says.

A week from Tuesday, Huck thinks.

“Oneonta in January,” Huck says. “Must be love.”

  

That night after dinner—fresh, perfectly grilled wahoo that even Maia agrees is sublime—Huck heads out to the deck with his pack of Camel Lights and his cell phone.

Agent Vasco or Irene? He decides on one, then changes his mind and decides on the other. Then back, then back again.

Irene.

He’s almost more nervous about calling her than about calling the FBI. He is more nervous about calling her because he has no idea how the conversation will go.

She answers on the first ring. “Oh, Huck, is that you?”

Her voice stirs something in him. He exhales smoke. “It’s me.” He pauses. He had planned to say, I’m calling to check on you. Or I’m calling to see how you’re doing. But instead the words that fly out of his mouth are “I have a business proposition. My first mate, Adam, quit on me today and I can’t properly run my charter without a mate. So I’m calling to offer you a job.”

There’s a pause long enough for Huck to take a drag off his cigarette, consider the lights of the Westin below and the cruise ship headed to St. Croix in the distance, and castigate himself for acting like a fool. He should have gone with How’ve you been?

“What does it pay?” Irene asks.

He grins and tells her the truth. “Hundred bucks for a half day, two hundred for a full day,” he says. “Plus tips.” He clears his throat. “Plus fish.”

“That sounds fair,” she says. “When do I start?”

  

He has to rein in the joy in his voice before he makes the second call. He clears his throat, takes a cleansing breath, lights another cigarette, and dials.

“Colette Vasco.”

“Agent Vasco, this is Sam Powers calling from St. John. I’m Rosie’s—”

“Yes, hello, Captain Powers,” Agent Vasco says. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any further news—”

“I have news,” Huck says. He lowers his voice in case Maia happens to pop out of her room in search of some Ben and Jerry’s Brownie Batter Core. “I found a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars hidden in a dresser drawer in Rosie’s room. I thought you would want to know.”

“Yes,” Agent Vasco says. “Yes, you’re certainly right about that. What would be a good time tomorrow for me to stop by?”

Baker

When he tells his “school wives”—Wendy, Becky, Debbie, and Ellen—that Anna has asked him to get a sitter for Floyd so that she and Louisa can take Baker to dinner at Indigo and “civilly discuss arrangements,” they all start talking at once.

“Don’t let them railroad you,” Wendy says. “Ask for full custody if that’s what you want.”

Debbie slides a business card across the table: Perla Piuggi, Esq. “My divorce attorney,” she says. “Pitbull.”

“We’ve agreed to do mediation,” Baker says.

“Using words like civilly and mediation nearly always means an ambush is coming,” Becky says.

Baker slips the card into his pocket.

“I’m dying to eat at Indigo,” Ellen says. “Their tasting menus are the talk of the city. It’s neo–soul food.”

“I’m in,” Wendy says. “Let’s book a table the same night.” She cackles. “That way if things go south, you can come sit with us.”

“I thought Anna ate only pizza,” Debbie says. “Didn’t you tell me Anna hated going out to fancy places?”

“She was always too tired,” Baker says.

“But not anymore,” Ellen says with an eye roll.

“Call the lawyer,” Debbie says.

“And report back,” Wendy says.

“Also, take a picture if you can,” Becky says.

Debbie swats her hand. “We sound like a pack of catty teenagers.”

“I want to see if Anna looks happy,” Becky says. “I want to see if she has that glow.”

“Imagine,” Wendy says. “Anna, happy.”

  

Ellen wasn’t wrong; Indigo is a unique experience with its own set of rules and a robust social conscience—which must be why Louisa picked it (Baker assumes that Louisa picked it, since what Debbie said is true—Anna eats only pizza). There are only thirteen seats at a horseshoe-shaped bar, making for a communal experience, which Baker figures is both good and bad. On the one hand, things can’t possibly get too ugly in such a controlled environment, but on the other, their civil discussion of arrangements might become a group-therapy session. They are, blessedly, placed at the far side of the horseshoe with Baker agreeing to take the seat on the end, in a relatively dim corner. Louisa is next to him, Anna on the other side of Louisa. This feels weird and wrong—shouldn’t he be sitting next to Anna so they can talk about Floyd? And yet, it’s also symbolic; Louisa is, in fact, the person who came between Baker and Anna, as the seating now illustrates.

They’re asked to select their tasting menu; they can choose carnivore, omnivore, or pescatarian-chordate.

Pescatarian means fish, Baker knows. He hasn’t a clue about chordate, but listed underneath is the word amphibian, which probably means frogs’ legs, but it’s too risky to chance it. Baker chooses carnivore with a first course called Turtlenecks and Do-Rags, and the ladies—women!—choose omnivore and will enjoy a first course called Descendants of Igbo, which is apparently yams with marshmallows.

This place is truly an alternate universe, but at least it serves as a distraction.

Anna, not one for small talk, leans forward and says, “Louisa was offered a position in the neonatal cardiothoracic surgery department at the Cleveland Clinic and she’s going to take it, and she persuaded them that two heart surgeons are better than one, so they’ve offered me a job as well.”

“Turns out, they’re even more excited to get the great Anna Schaffer than they are to get me,” Louisa says, and she covers Anna’s hand with her own.

Baker gazes at the two of them. They seem like strangers to him, like people he’s met at jury duty. Anna is wearing her hair down and it looks lovely, like a dark velvet curtain. Louisa’s hair used to be dark and long like Anna’s—Baker has known her long enough to remember this—but now she has cut it very short and dyed it platinum blond. They’re both glowing; they’re both happy. It’s obvious that they’re in love, that they’re a couple. None of the other ten diners tonight would ever guess that Baker and Anna are the people who are married.

Immediately after making this observation, he processes the words Cleveland Clinic. They’re both taking positions at the Cleveland Clinic, which, if Baker isn’t mistaken, is in Cleveland.

He feels like he has to double-check. Hospitals all have satellite campuses these days.

“Are you talking about the Cleveland Clinic in…Cleveland?” he asks.

Louisa’s head bobs and he notices her grip on Anna’s hand tighten. “Yes, Baker,” she says. It’s probably not her intent to speak to him like he’s a moron but that’s pretty much what she’s doing. “We’re relocating to Cleveland.”

“Not with Floyd,” Baker says. “You aren’t taking my son to Cleveland.”

“That’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” Anna says. “There’s more than one way to look at this.”

“Oh, really,” Baker says. He runs his eyes along the horseshoe to the opposite side, hoping that he will see his four friends eating amphibians. He needs them now because it’s becoming clear that this is an ambush. Anna and Louisa have accepted positions at the Cleveland Clinic. They’re moving to Cleveland, Ohio!

“Yes, really,” Anna says. The server arrives with Anna’s and Louisa’s Descendants (yams) and Baker’s Turtlenecks and Do-Rags, which appears to be a crab dish (not actual turtles’ necks). Louisa and Anna dig in, but Baker can’t even remember how to use his cutlery. “Our first choice would be for you and Floyd to come to Cleveland.”

“What?” Baker says.

“You can do your job from anywhere,” Anna says. “You don’t have to be in Houston.”

“But…we have a house, Floyd has school, we have friends in Houston. A community. A life.”

Anna scrapes yams out of the bowl. “The deepest roots we have in Houston are mine, at the hospital. And I’m willing to pull those up for this opportunity.”

Baker stares at his crab, fervently wishing that Wendy, Becky, Debbie, and Ellen were here so he could inform them that his friendship with them is, according to Anna, shallow—or at least, not as deep as Anna’s career. The woman is so cold, so dispassionate, Baker can’t believe he ever decided to marry her. Good luck to Louisa!

“You and Louisa go to Cleveland,” Baker says. “Floyd and I will stay here. I’ll send him up to you on his vacations.”

“That’s our third choice,” Louisa says. “A distant third, because we’d obviously like to remain a cohesive family unit.” Baker very much resents her chiming in at all. She stole Baker’s wife and now she’s dragging her to Ohio. It’s clear that Louisa is maintaining some kind of utopian vision of the three of them as the parents in this “cohesive family unit,” with Anna and Louisa as the breadwinners and Baker as Floyd’s primary caregiver. “But we want to keep the transition as harmonious as possible, for Floyd’s sake. So we can try that option for the first year if you insist upon it. You and Floyd stay here and we’ll set up a realistic visitation schedule—holidays and summers.”

“Great,” Baker says. “You can be the Disneyland parents.” This is Debbie’s term. Her ex-husband, Jaybee, takes her kids only three weeks per year—to Martha’s Vineyard over the summer, to Aspen at Christmas, and to a different European city each spring. Baker considers the two very serious, accomplished women—people!—on his left. Sorry to say, they are no one’s idea of Disneyland parents.

And yet, this plan works for Baker. Because he is not moving to Cleveland.

“You should also know…” Anna says, and for the first time during this unpleasant and confusing dinner, she seems ill at ease.

“That I’m planning on getting pregnant,” Louisa finishes. She considers the yams and marshmallows on the end of her fork. “Using a sperm donor.”

The words sperm donor should never be uttered during dinner, Baker thinks. He has just lost his appetite.

Their server takes advantage of the pause in their conversation to whisk away their first-course dishes—Baker’s untouched—and set down the Homogenization of Mandingos (venison sausage with beets) for Baker and the Belly of the Beast (boar ribs) for the ladies. Women. People. Baker has some other words to describe them at this point, words that don’t fall in the category of “civilly discussing arrangements.”

“So Floyd will have a half brother or half sister, in a sense, and we obviously want them to have a relationship,” Anna says.

“Cohesive family unit,” Louisa says again. Those are her buzzwords, and it takes all of Baker’s willpower to keep from shouting at her that Anna, Baker, and Floyd are—were—the family unit. Louisa is the interloper. The homewrecker!

Baker reaches for his beer, which he’s been too distracted to drink. He takes a long sip, buying himself time. Anna has left herself wide open here.

“I thought you said you didn’t want any more children,” Baker says. “You were adamant about it, in fact. And now you’re talking about a baby.”

“Louisa will have the baby,” Anna says.

“And yet you want a cohesive family unit,” Baker says. “So you’ll be co-parents.”

“Of course,” Anna says, shrugging. She doesn’t meet Baker’s eyes because, very likely, she doesn’t want to provoke him into describing what having Dr. Anna Schaffer as a co-parent was like. It was like…having no co-parent at all! But Baker decides he won’t tell Louisa this; he’ll let her find out on her own. Two busy surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic, one baby—what could go wrong?

“Well,” Baker says. “Congratulations.” He picks up his fork. Suddenly, the whole situation seems amusing—and maybe even fortunate? Anna and Louisa are leaving town. Floyd will see them for vacations and holidays, which on the surface appears sad and pathetic. He’s a four-year-old boy; he needs his mother. But Baker is in a position to know that Floyd doesn’t need Anna. He’s been fine this long without her. Maybe Anna will be more engaged as a parent when the job is taken in small bites.

Anna smiles at him; her glow returns. “Thank you for being so understanding,” she says. “And please know that whatever financial resources you want, we’ll provide. You can keep the house; there will be support for Floyd and support for you as well.”

He’s being paid off, but he doesn’t care. He cuts into his venison sausage. He can’t wait to get home and call his friends.

  

He starts with Ellen because, really, theirs is the closest relationship, and Ellen is a single mother by choice, so she is savvy and resourceful by nature.

He tells her everything—including the esoteric menu items at dinner—and with each new revelation, she gasps.

Louisa offered job at Cleveland Clinic.

Anna offered job at Cleveland Clinic.

Louisa and Anna moving to Cleveland.

Louisa and Anna offering to move Baker and Floyd to Cleveland.

Louisa and Anna offering to take on the role of Disneyland parents while Baker keeps Floyd in Houston.

Louisa having a baby with sperm donor, Anna agreeing to co-parent. Anna and Louisa promising to support Baker and Floyd financially.

At the end, Ellen says, “On the surface, this sounds…great for you. Really great. Anna and Louisa are out of your hair, you get to keep Floyd and the house, and they’re going to pay you…”

“But?” Baker says.

“Doesn’t it seem too good to be true?” Ellen says. “Like something doesn’t add up? I know Anna isn’t the most hands-on mother, but is she really going to move twelve hundred miles away from her son and see him only at Christmas?”

“And summers,” Baker says weakly. He, too, feels uneasy now, but he can’t tell if it’s because he thinks Anna is going to renege and possibly sue him for custody—which is what it would take for her to get Floyd—or if he’s just embarrassed about marrying a woman who really just isn’t maternal. At all. “Listen, I know it sounds unconventional, but think about Anna. This scenario is perfect for her. She doesn’t have time to parent. I’m concerned about Floyd spending the entire summer with her because you and I both know that means he’ll have a full-time nanny. He’s better off with me.”

“Agreed,” Ellen says. She takes a sip of what he can only assume is 8th Wonder IPA (she’s a craft-beer fanatic) and says, “So my brilliant-best-friend mind now wonders why you would even stay in Houston. With Anna leaving, you’re free to go wherever you want.”

Ellen’s tone is heavy with innuendo. She’s the only one in the group that he’s told about his father dying in the Caribbean, the fifteen-million-dollar villa, and…Ayers. She’s the only one he’s told about Ayers.

  

That night, the carnivore tasting menu churns in Baker’s stomach as he scrolls through every reason why he shouldn’t leave Houston for good and move down to St. John. He starts with the reasons he gave Anna.

They have a house here.

Well, the house is a house. He can sell it or rent it or leave it be until he sees how things work out down in the islands. He and Anna bought it outright when they moved from Chicago, so there’s no mortgage, only taxes, insurance, and maintenance.

Floyd has school. They have friends, a community, a life.

Floyd is four. He goes to Montessori. He’s not a sophomore in high school; he’s not even in middle school. If they leave Houston now, it’s possible Floyd won’t have any memories of the place, much less feel resentful about moving. Floyd can already read and count to a hundred. Baker should investigate the schools in St. John, make sure there’s somewhere suitable.

Friends. Community. Baker is chairperson of the Children’s Cottage annual benefit auction, which is in two weeks. Baker’s work on the auction is basically done; all of the items have been solicited. He bought a table for three thousand dollars and invited all his school wives. He should really attend.

But it’s not necessarily a reason to stay. The auction will happen, the school will make money, the auction will be over.

Would Anna object to Floyd living in the Virgin Islands? She’s seen the villa; she knows it’s comfortable. She’d be concerned about the schools. Baker will look into it first thing in the morning. Maia goes to school. Maia is…Floyd’s aunt. Okay, that’s a little weird. But maybe not. It’s late, Baker is tired, everything seems weird.

Louisa wants to have a baby, essentially a half brother or half sister for Floyd.

Baker would love to have more kids.

Ayers. Baker knew the instant he saw her that he wanted to marry her. They’d ended on bad terms—really bad—and she said she was back with Mick. That means she’s having sex with Mick, Baker thinks, maybe even this very second, which is enough to make him sick. But he needs to think realistically about sex. Sex is ephemeral. Once it’s over, it’s over. Sex is not a lasting connection; it’s only real while it’s happening. It’s not love.

Besides, Mick cheated on Ayers, and once a cheater, always a cheater. If Baker is confident of anything, it’s that Mick will blow it and Baker will be there to show Ayers how she deserves to be treated.

Ayers hadn’t wanted to get serious about Baker because he was a tourist.

If Baker moves into his father’s villa, he will be a tourist no longer.

  

Bright and early the next morning, Baker books two tickets to St. Thomas with a return flight in two weeks so that he and Floyd will arrive back the day before the auction. Then, assuming all goes well on St. John, after the auction they will move back permanently. This trip will be an exploratory mission, a toe dipped in to test the waters.

He calls Paulette Vickers to let her know that he and Floyd will be down on Saturday to stay at the villa for a couple of weeks, and might she be able to meet him at the dock with the keys?

“Certainly, Mr. Steele,” she says. “I’m happy to know you’re using it. A beautiful villa like that shouldn’t sit empty. I asked your mother if she wanted me to rent it and she said to hold off for the time being.”

“My mother is overwhelmed,” Baker says. “She doesn’t need more to worry about. I’ll handle all things relating to the villa from now on.” He wonders if he’s overstepping, but all of the goodwill he’s put in with Paulette is paying off because she doesn’t question it.

“Very good,” she says. “I’ll meet you at the ferry dock on Saturday with the keys.”

Baker hangs up and feels an elation so strong he could levitate. The only string tying him to earth is…Irene. Baker should call her and tell her his plans.

But…what he just told Paulette is true—Irene is overwhelmed. She doesn’t need one more thing to worry about. She doesn’t need to fret about Baker and Floyd on St. John or about Anna relocating.

Then again, Irene had been perfectly clear that she would not tolerate any more secrets. Secrets are lies, Irene said.

Baker’s trip to St. John isn’t a secret. Of course it’s not a secret. Paulette knows he’s coming, and before he and Floyd leave, Baker will have to tell Anna.

Once Baker is down there and settled in, he’ll call Irene. This will give her a few more days of relative peace. That’s the kind thing to do.

Rosie

February 21, 2006

My life is a house that has been ransacked. My heart, which I had so recently reclaimed as my own, has been stolen again. Some might say I’m being careless with it.

Friday afternoon was the start of Presidents’ Day weekend, which brings nearly as many tourists as Christmas and Easter now because schools in the Northeast—Massachusetts, New York, and a few of those other densely packed states—give their students a winter break. The problem with the visitors who can afford to come when the weather is the most inhospitable at home is that they tend to be demanding. They want their Caribbean experience to be just so—the sky must be clear, the mangos ripe, the cocktails strong and delivered right away.

Caneel Bay was at maximum capacity. Every room was booked at high-season rates, and along the front row on Honeymoon Bay, it was all return guests, the ones Estella calls “the patronage”: Mr. and Mrs. Very Important of Park Avenue, the Big Deal Family from Lake Forest, Illinois, the New Moneys from La Jolla. I recognized them (and yes, I called them by their real names: Mr. and Mrs. Vikram, the Caruso family, the Burlingames). Their eyes lit up when they saw me but I always reintroduce myself, just in case.

“Oh, yes, Rosie, how are you! Wonderful to see you again! How has your year been?”

I said my year had been good, though nothing was further from the truth. But there was no way I could tell the New Moneys about my excruciating breakup with Oscar and how disappointing that had been because he’d promised me that once he got out of jail he would work in a legitimate business, maybe even get a job alongside me at Caneel, but instead he was back to selling drugs to people on the cruise ships. I didn’t complain that I was still living at home with my mother and Huck. The returning guests, the patronage, loved coming back and seeing a familiar face because it made Caneel feel like home; it made it feel like a private club where they were members. For me, it was primarily a business relationship. The tips were double what they would have been with complete strangers.

In most cases, anyway.

The guests at Caneel are 95 percent white. There are a few Japanese here and there, a couple of rich South American businessmen (rum, casinos), and the occasional black American couple or Indian family, so when Oscar came in for drinks with Borneo and Little Jay, they stuck out. They wore baseball hats on backward, heavy gold chains, those ridiculous jeans that drooped in the ass.

Estella saw Oscar first. She came over while I was at the bar getting cocktails for a trio of pasty-white gentlemen who had just anchored their enormous yacht out in front of the resort, and she said, “Oscar here, Rosie-girl, with his clownish friends.”

“Send him away,” I said.

“I wish I could, Rosie-girl, but they’re paying customers just like the rest.”

“Keep them out of my section.”

“Oscar asked for you.”

“All the more reason.”

“Okay, I’ll give them to Tessie.”

I loathed Tessie, so this was killing two birds.

I dropped the drinks off with the yacht gentlemen. Yacht Gentleman One was tall and bald with a posh English accent and what I knew to be a forty-thousand-dollar Patek Philippe (I’d picked up some useless knowledge on this job). Yacht Gentleman Two had dark, slicked-back hair and such distracting good looks that I nicknamed him “James Bond” in my mind. Yacht Gentleman Three was a doughy midwesterner with silvering hair. I knew he was midwestern because he stood up and introduced himself.

“Russell Steele,” he said. “Iowa City.”

His manners caught me off guard. Normally, men like the ones he was with either ignored me, made a pass at me, or snapped their fingers so I would move faster. They did not stand up and offer their names like they were crashing a party and I was the hostess. And thank goodness they didn’t—on an average holiday-weekend night, I had over a hundred customers. How could I possibly remember them all?

“Rosie Small,” I said. “Pleasure.” I had already forgotten his last name, but I did retain his first name, Russell, and Iowa City, because the place sounded so…American, or what I always thought of as American. Iowa City evoked cows in pastures, silos, corner drugstores where kids bought malted milkshakes, church socials, marching bands, and grown men wearing overalls. “Enjoy your drinks. Let me know if you’re interested in ordering food. The conch fritters are very good.”

“Conch fritters, then,” Russell from Iowa City said. “I’m not sure what they are but if you say they’re good, I’m up for trying them. In fact, bring two orders. That okay with you guys?”

The other two gentlemen were poring over a sheaf of papers printed with columns of figures. James Bond looked up. “Yeah, yeah, Russ, get whatever you want. Bring some sushi too, you pick. Enough for three, please.” James Bond handed me his AmEx Centurion Card and said, “Start us a tab, doll.”

I wanted to tell James Bond that I was not a doll, I was a person, but I figured I’d get back at him by ordering the most expensive sushi on the menu—sashimi, tuna tataki, hamachi, unagi. I could see poor Russell looking very uncomfortable, like he wanted to stick up for me but didn’t know how. He was, quite clearly, low man on the totem pole of this particular triumvirate as he had neither the flashy watch nor the movie-star good looks (nor the Centurion Card). He might have been the brother-in-law of one or the other, a sister’s husband whom they had brought along to the Caribbean as a favor or because they lost a bet.

He didn’t know what conch fritters were!

I went to the register to put in an order for the fritters and two hundred dollars’ worth of sushi—I could have doubled that; James Bond wasn’t the kind of man to complain about his bill or even check it—and studied the name on the Centurion Card.

Todd Croft. It was a solid, whitewashed name, symmetrical and masculine, like the real name of a secret superhero—Clark Kent, Peter Parker. I wondered if it was made up. I didn’t care as long as the card worked, which it did.

I kept tabs on Oscar out of my peripheral vision. He ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon, which Tessie made a big production of carrying out in front of her, label displayed, like she was one of those chicks on a game show giving away the grand prize. The pop of the cork cut through all the chatter and the restaurant quieted so that I could clearly hear Harry Belafonte singing, “Yes, we have no bananas.” People whispered and sneaked glances at Oscar and I yearned to tell them to stop. Couldn’t they see that was what he was after?

I then watched the Big Deal Family’s daughter, Lucinda Caruso, who has made sure to tell me every year for the past three years that she “recently graduated from Harvard” (which I take to mean that she has yet to find a job, a theory reinforced by the fact that she signed every charge to her father’s room), approach Oscar’s table and proceed to take the fourth seat. Lucinda was wearing a very short, sequined cocktail dress that would have been better at an event where she remained standing. I overheard her say, “Are you guys rap stars?” I rolled my eyes, not only because Lucinda was feeding the beast but also because she probably couldn’t imagine a black man having the money to order Dom unless he was a rap star or a professional athlete. I could have shut her up by telling her the truth. He sells drugs, Lucinda! But it was none of my business.

The yacht gentlemen’s food was up. I set one order of conch fritters—piping hot, golden brown, and fragrant, served with a papaya-cayenne aioli—in front of Russell from Iowa City. This is my favorite part of the job, other than the money, introducing the Caribbean to people who have never experienced it. I plunked the tower of sushi—the way Chef had arranged it was quite impressive, and the fish was so plump and fresh, it looked like art—in front of Todd Croft.

“There you go, doll,” I said. “Enjoy.”

Russell from Iowa City barked out a laugh so surprised and genuine that I gave him a wink.

  

The night progressed. It was busy. I kept one eye on the yacht men—after all that, they barely touched the sushi—and one eye on Oscar and his friends. Lucinda stayed at the table; they ordered another bottle of Dom. Mr. and Mrs. Big Deal stopped by the table and tried to entice Lucinda to go with them to the Chateau Bordeaux, but she refused to leave, and the second her parents were out the door, she rose from her chair and sat on Oscar’s lap.

At that point, I turned away. I knew Oscar was showboating just to goad me into reconsidering my decision, but I hadn’t done all my soul-searching only to cave because I couldn’t stand to see him with a silly rich girl on his lap.

I tended to my other tables. I was even nice to Tessie. When I saw her heading out with a third bottle of Dom, I said, “Tonight is your lucky night. Oscar is an excellent tipper.”

Around ten, things started to quiet down. Two of the yacht men—Todd Croft and the tall, bald Brit—left, and Russell from Iowa City moved to the bar and planted himself in front of the television to watch a basketball game. When I checked the screen, I saw Iowa was playing Northwestern. I went up to him because I had a minute and also because Todd Croft had left an even five hundred dollars for a three-hundred-and-twenty-dollar check.

“You’re rooting for Iowa?” I asked.

“Northwestern, actually,” he said. “My alma mater.”

“Ah.” I knew more about football than basketball, and nearly all my basketball knowledge was limited to the San Antonio Spurs in general and Tim Duncan in particular because he hailed from St. Croix and some of my Small cousins had actually played a pickup game with him once on the courts in Contant. But it was best I change the subject. “So, your friends left you behind?”

“They went into Cruz Bay,” Russell said. “Looking for women.” He held up his left hand. “I’m married, with two boys.”

“Well, your wife is a very lucky woman,” I said, and I patted his shoulder. “Your next drink is on me. How did you like the conch fritters?”

“I loved them!” he said. “I was meaning to ask if you knew a place I could get some real Caribbean food. I have the day to myself tomorrow and I want to explore.”

“Well,” I said, “if you want local flavor, go to the East End. There’s a place called Vie’s on Hansen Bay.”

He took a pen out of his shirt pocket and pulled a cocktail napkin off the stack. “Vie’s?”

“She makes some mean garlic chicken and the best johnnycakes,” I said. “For a few dollars, you can rent a chaise on her beach.”

“Is there shade?” Russell from Iowa City asked. He held out a pale, freckled arm and I thought, This poor guy. God bless him.

“There’s shade,” I said. “Here, I’ll draw you a map.”

  

I clocked out at eleven, sorted my tips, marveling at my windfall from Todd Croft, and decided that I would stop by the Ocean Grill at Mongoose for a drink on my way home. I headed past the Sugar Mill on my way to the parking lot and stopped to say hello to my wild donkeys, Stop, Drop, and Roll. They always looked a little eerie at night, more like ghost horses than white donkeys, and the backdrop of the stone ruins of the sugar mill only heightened the otherworldly effect. But I thought of these three like pets—they rarely wandered off the grounds of Caneel—and I couldn’t ignore them.

In retrospect, I should have realized that Oscar knew this. He jumped out of the shadows and grabbed my arm.

“Baby.”

I gasped, though I wasn’t exactly surprised. A part of me knew there was no way he’d left. I had already planned to turn on the flashlight of my phone and sweep the back of my car before I climbed in. “Let me go, Oscar.”

He held tight. I checked behind him for Borneo or Little Jay or even Lucinda Caruso, but there was no one on the path in either direction. If I screamed, Woodrow or one of the other security guards would hear me and escort Oscar off the property but the last thing I wanted was everyone all up in my business. As soon as it got out that Oscar had shown up at the restaurant and made trouble, my mother would hear about it and somehow twist it into being my fault. She would say that I had led Oscar on or had acted recklessly by walking to my car by myself.

Oscar didn’t let go. He pulled me to him so close that I could smell the champagne on his breath. “I need you to come back, baby.”

I said, “We’ve been over this, Oscar. I’m not changing my mind.”

“You got another man, then? That brother from Christiansted?”

He was talking about Bryson, a guy I’d gone out with a few times in college. Bryson lived on St. Croix.

“It’s none of your business, Oscar.” I succeeded in reclaiming my arm. “I’m tired, I’m going home, good night.” I turned around. “And you know that if you come anywhere near the house, LeeAnn will call the police and you’ll go right back to jail.”

Oscar said, “I’m going to Christiansted tomorrow to kill that brother.”

I stopped in my tracks. Had anyone else said something like that, I would have scoffed, but what had landed Oscar in jail was stabbing his friend Leon for borrowing his Ducati without permission.

“You’ll do no such thing,” I said.

“Try me,” Oscar said. Then he suddenly dropped the tough-guy act and sounded like himself. “Rosie. Try me.”

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” I said. “Why do you come here when you know I’m working? There are ten other places you and your friends can hang out. Why come to Caneel? Because you want me to know you have the money to order Dom Pérignon? I don’t care! You want me to see that girls throw themselves at you? I care even less! I loved you when I was a girl—fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. But I’m a woman now, Oscar, and I’m moving on.”

“Baby,” Oscar said, and he grabbed the strap of my purse.

“Get off me!” I said. I put a hand against the unyielding muscles of his chest.

“Stop bothering the lady!”

Both Oscar and I turned to see who jogging toward us? Russell from Iowa City, that’s who.

Oscar laughed and I thought, Oh, dear Lord, no. It was probably a midwestern thing to defend a woman’s honor but it would end in disaster for Russell from Iowa City. I would have to call out for Woodrow after all.

“What you gonna do about it?” Oscar said. He kissed his teeth. “You gonna stop me?”

To his credit, Russell from Iowa City did not appear even a little afraid. He looked serious and disappointed, as though he were an assistant principal who had found his favorite student misbehaving and a suspension was coming.

“Yes,” Russell said coolly. “I’m going to stop you. Rosie, are you heading home? Can I escort you to your car?”

I tried to give him a look that said he didn’t have to defend me and he shouldn’t defend me because the consequences would be dire. Oscar would beat him to a pulp, or maybe just hit him once, or maybe just humiliate him, but whatever course of action Oscar took, it wouldn’t be worth it. I could handle Oscar; Russell from Iowa City most certainly could not.

Russell held out his arm like an old-fashioned gentleman caller. I sighed and hoped that maybe, just maybe, Oscar would be more afraid of violating his parole than of being shown up. I linked my arm through Russell’s.

From there, things happened fast. Oscar pushed Russell from behind and Russell let go of my arm and grabbed the front of Oscar’s shirt and they tussled while I searched the shadows for Woodrow on his golf cart—where was he?—and then, the next thing I knew, Russell from Iowa City had Oscar in a death grip and Oscar was gasping for air. It looked like Russell was about to snap his neck and I found myself fearing that Russell was going to kill Oscar instead of vice versa.

“Now,” Russell said in a calm-but-disappointed-assistant-principal voice, “I’m going to let you go. But you are to leave Rosie alone. Do you understand me?”

Oscar choked out an affirmative and Russell tightened his grip so that Oscar squeaked like a chew toy.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

Russell let Oscar go. Oscar buckled at the knees, stumbled a few yards away, and bent over in the grass, turning his neck to be sure it still worked.

Russell offered me his arm again.

“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked him once we were safely at my car.

“My father was a navy man,” Russell said.

I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “My hero,” I said.

  

The next day, almost without thinking, I drove to the East End to Miss Vie’s at Hansen Bay. I was like a woman possessed because there was no good reason to go all the way out to that side of the island; normally, if I wanted to go to the beach, I parked at the National Park Service sign and hiked down to Salomon Bay. But I somehow convinced myself that, on the Saturday of the holiday weekend, even Salomon would be overrun and that the only way to escape the crowds would be to go to Hansen Bay. Besides which, now that it was in my head, I couldn’t shake my craving for Miss Vie’s garlic chicken and johnnycakes.

I told myself it had nothing to do with Russell from Iowa City. I wasn’t attracted to him, or I hadn’t been until the incident with Oscar—but having one’s honor defended is a mighty aphrodisiac. Still, Russell was old enough to be my father (I now know he’s forty-five, double my age), but that, in a way, was also attractive because what I was looking for was someone older, someone responsible and stable, someone adult. Oscar was older than me by seven years but emotionally he was a little boy who had a bone to pick with everyone.

I wore my white bikini and a white T-shirt knotted at the midriff and a pair of white denim shorts. White is my color.

There was a line of cars, all rentals, parked along the road near Vie’s. There was no telling if one of them was Russell’s or if he’d taken a taxi or if he was even there at all. The East End was a hike from everywhere and he might have decided to go fishing with his buddies or cruise over to the BVIs for lunch at Foxy’s. The second I stepped onto the beach and scanned the chaises in the shade, I saw him, settled back with a rum punch in hand.

When he spotted me, he smiled, and by smiled, I mean he beamed like I was the only person in the world he wanted to see.

“Rosie!” he said.

We hugged and he kissed my cheek and it was like seeing a friend, even though I barely knew him. He called over Flora, whom he already knew by name, and said he would pay for a second chaise and Flora waved a hand and said, “Rosie don’t need to pay, she’s family.” Which was actually true; Flora and Vie were second cousins of my father, Levi Small, and for that reason, they didn’t speak to my mother, so I didn’t need to worry about news of me visiting a white gentleman out at Hansen Bay getting back to her.

I ordered a Coke because I had to work at five and Russ ordered another rum punch and then together we ordered garlic chicken with rice and beans and johnnycakes. We stuffed our faces and we talked. I told Russ the long story of my relationship with Oscar and then he told me that he was down in the Virgin Islands because he had been offered a job with a hedge fund that was owned and operated by Todd Croft, whom he had known during his college years.

“At Northwestern?” I said, proud of myself for remembering.

“Todd flunked out freshman year but he hung around Winnetka and we had some business dealings.”

I laughed. “Business dealings? At eighteen?”

Russ sighed. “I haven’t even told my wife this story…”

“What?”

“Todd had a contact who wanted to sell alcohol to underclassmen in the dorm. My sophomore year, I was an RA—resident adviser—and in exchange for me looking the other way, Todd gave me a cut of his profits.”

“Russ!” I said. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a criminal.”

“We never got caught,” Russ said. “I have a trustworthy face, I guess.”

“So I take it Todd has moved on from the smuggling business?” I said.

“High finance,” Russ said. “And I mean high. Todd is an impressive guy, though. He got a job working in one of those boiler rooms, calling people cold and encouraging them to invest money…and now his hedge fund is worth nearly three billion dollars.”

“No wonder you’re going to work for him,” I said. “What an opportunity.”

“For the past seventeen years, I’ve worked for the Corn Refiners Association,” Russ said. “But the pay is peanuts and my wife, Irene, is unhappy. She keeps a stiff upper lip. She’s from some pretty hardy Scandinavian stock, but I can tell she thinks I’m a failure. And most days I’m pretty sure she thinks about leaving me.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “She would have to be crazy to think about leaving you.”

He stared at me a second with a look of utter amazement and something changed between us then. I felt equal parts terrible and triumphant about it, but terrible won out and I didn’t even stay for a swim. I plunked down ten bucks for the food, offered Russ my hand, and said, “I wish all visitors to our fair island were like you, Russ. Thank you for your help with Oscar. I will forever be grateful.”

Russ held my hand and said, “Stay a little longer, can you?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I have some things to take care of before work.” My words were rushed and I tripped over a tree root as I hurried off the beach but I had to get out of there before I crossed a line. Though I knew a line had already been crossed. I had sought him out, worn my sexiest outfit, and said the words that I knew he needed to hear. I would like to say this was unwitting, but working in the service industry has given me keen people skills. I could tell that Russell from Iowa City was a people-pleaser and that his wife, Irene, made him feel like a disappointment and that hearing me say he was the opposite would all but make him fall in love.

He was married. Irene was waiting for him back home in Iowa. There were women on St. John—Tessie among them—who thought nothing of sleeping with men who were here on vacation. Tessie routinely had one-night stands with gentlemen who were staying at Caneel by themselves; that was one of the reasons I disliked her.

I was not going to sleep with Russell from Iowa City.

  

And yet, when I got to work at five o’clock and noticed the yacht was gone, I felt something like sorrow. My hero had left, and I couldn’t remember his last name. I would never see him again.

So imagine my surprise when, at seven o’clock, as the hibiscus-pink ball of the sun was sinking into the water and Lucinda Caruso was shooting me a smug glance from the table where her Harvard-educated ass was sitting with her Big Deal parents—a look that I could only assume meant that she had slept with Oscar after all, poor girl—Russ walked across the beach and into the restaurant. I blinked, wondering if it was a trick of the blinding light of the sun just before it set, but then he waved at me and I hurried over. “I thought you left,” I said. “The yacht—”

“Todd and Stephen headed over to Virgin Gorda,” Russ said. “They have business. I told them I wanted to stay here and mull over their offer. They’re coming back Monday to pick me up.”

“Stay here on St. John?” I said. I was so happy that he wasn’t gone forever that I wasn’t quite following.

“At Caneel,” Russ said. He pulled a key out of his pocket. “Honeymoon 718.”

“How did you manage that?” I asked. “I thought we were full.”

“I put the general manager in a headlock,” he said.

We laughed. I said, “I’d put you in my section but you’ll probably be more comfortable at the bar.”

He said, “Bar is fine but I’ll miss you bringing me my conch fritters.”

I said, “If you think I’m going to let someone else bring you your conch fritters, you’re crazy.”

He gave me a look then that was so long and deep, my legs grew weak and my face grew hot and never in my life had I been more aware that I was a human being—powerful and fallible.