Shortly after Marlow finished eating, Walker texted her to say that the National Hurricane Center, which posted a bulletin every six hours, had upgraded the tropical cyclone to a Category 1 hurricane with wind speeds between seventy-four and ninety-five miles per hour. A storm of that strength could cause some damage, but the real fear was that it could get stronger before it hit the island.
He gave her a few locations where they could pick up sandbags to help protect the guesthouse and garage—the main house was up on stilts and less likely to flood. So Marlow asked Claire and Aida to go to the library, which was the closest of those locations, and get as many bags as they could fit in the Jeep and Tesla while she stayed at Seaclusion with her mother.
Earlier, when she’d carried out the dishes they’d used for breakfast, she’d noticed that Eileen had torn up quite a few of Tiller’s pictures, and as angry as Marlow was with her father, she found that almost as upsetting as everything else they were dealing with. She didn’t want to do anything, or let her mother do anything, they might later regret.
“I want those burned,” her mother announced when she saw that Marlow was picking up the memorabilia. “Let’s build a bonfire. We’ll take it all out and burn it while Aida and Claire are gone. We’ll get rid of his shoes, clothes, everything.”
Marlow remembered standing in her parents’ closet just a few days ago when her mother couldn’t bear to part with anything that had belonged to her father. “We shouldn’t burn his clothes and shoes. There are people who could make use of those things.”
“Then donate it. Get rid of it. That’s all I care about. I don’t want to see any of it ever again.”
“I’ll box these up and as many of his things as I can before Claire and Aida get back. But we need to worry about the storm first—and that might be a good thing. Maybe after more time has passed, you’ll change your mind, at least about destroying his pictures.”
She hobbled closer. “I won’t,” she insisted. “I’ll never forgive him. How could he do what he did? An affair would be bad enough. But he cheated with Rosemary!”
One of the pictures Eileen had ruined had been taken the day Marlow was born and showed her father cradling her in his arms. That it had been destroyed made Marlow angry with her mother instead of her father. “You ripped this up?” she said, holding several of the pieces so Eileen could see what she was talking about.
“Why would you care?” her mother responded. “You should be as mad as I am.”
Marlow sat on the floor, where she tried to put the picture together again. “I’m sorry you’ve been hurt, Mom. I’m sorry for what Dad did, but—”
“But what?” she interrupted, her voice like velvet over steel. “He didn’t even have the decency to cheat with someone I could understand him getting involved with. He slept with our housekeeper!”
The way she was talking, as if Rosemary was so far beneath them she shouldn’t have been appealing, bothered Marlow. Rosemary had been an integral part of their lives. She’d been good to them, despite this. And she was Walker’s mother. “Please don’t talk about her like that.”
Her mother gripped the back of a chair to hold herself steady. “Now you’re going to defend her?”
“I’m just trying to be fair.”
“To her or to me?” she cried.
Marlow rubbed her temples. She could feel a headache coming on. “Mom, you loved Rosemary, too. I can’t count the number of times you’ve said you couldn’t have gotten by without her. She did so much for this family for so long.”
“She took care of everything, all right—including my husband.”
Struggling with an onslaught of conflicting emotions, Marlow drew a deep breath. “That’s true,” she said evenly. “But think of this. She could’ve gone public with the affair—either when it happened or once she realized Reese belonged to Dad. Think how humiliating that would’ve been. It would’ve caused a media frenzy, torn your marriage apart, broken up our family and ruined Dad’s career.”
“You expect me to give her credit for not making matters even worse?” Eileen shouted. “She had sex with my husband!”
Marlow knew it was probably premature to try to get her mother to look at the situation from a more understanding perspective, but she couldn’t help it. Maybe it was the lawyer in her. Or maybe it was all the crap she’d seen spouses do to each other over the years. “Dad could’ve left you for her, but he didn’t. He didn’t even put her in his will. What do you make of that?”
“I make nothing of it,” she snapped. “He put Reese in his will. Reese is going to walk away with three million dollars. That’s bad enough.”
“It’s only twenty percent of the estate.”
“What’s wrong with you? Why are you defending them?”
“I just... I’m having a hard time suddenly hating people we’ve always loved. I mean...if you were Dad, wouldn’t you want to leave your son something? Reese didn’t do anything wrong. He’s completely innocent.”
Her mother’s lips formed a colorless line. “You don’t mind that he’s getting part of your inheritance?”
“I don’t want to value money over people. It’s not like we’re going to be destitute.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying all this!”
“I know it’s hard for you. But I want you to understand that, while Dad and Rosemary’s actions aren’t anything to be proud of, when you look at the situation a little more closely, you find evidence that they both did what they could to protect you. They loved you.”
She shook her head. “I no longer believe that.”
“I do,” Marlow said. “It seems to me they both sincerely regretted what they did. They acted to minimize any impact it would have on you—or me, for that matter—even though having Tiller for a father would’ve been better for Reese. Rosemary didn’t have any real hope of saving her marriage, so she didn’t keep the affair a secret for her own benefit. She could’ve created so much more damage than she did. She could even have tried to take Dad from you.”
“She never would’ve gotten away with that!” her mother broke in vehemently.
“Maybe not,” Marlow conceded. “But as I’ve said, she acted to protect Dad’s career as well as our family.”
“Whose side are you on?” her mother asked, drawing back in horror.
Marlow dropped her head in her hands. “Yours, of course. I’m always on your side. Part of me doesn’t even know why I’m pointing out these nuances to you. I’m as hurt and angry as you are. But I want to be fair. I don’t want to destroy Dad’s memory and Rosemary’s life when she could’ve destroyed ours but chose not to.”
“Believe me, she did as much as she felt she could get away with.”
“That’s not true! She moved into this house after Dad died just so you wouldn’t be alone. Would she do that if she didn’t care about you?”
“I paid her well, especially when you consider everything we covered over the years.”
“You did. But she gave this family more than most people give a job. I can’t justify her involvement with Dad, but maybe it’ll help if you know more about how it happened. Reese told me the affair lasted for only three weeks, Mom. They realized very quickly that they’d made a terrible mistake and put a stop to it. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant during that brief time, no one would even know it happened.”
“How can you believe anything she says after what we’ve learned? They could’ve been sleeping together all along.”
“I don’t think that’s the case,” Marlow argued. “You know Dad. He was a good man. And Rosemary’s always been a sincere person. She has no reason to make up a story about how the affair happened—you’ve already fired her.”
Her mother didn’t seem to know what to say. Bursting into tears, she pointed at the door. “Get out. I can’t have you here right now.”
Claire and Aida had filled twenty sandbags apiece and delivered them to Seaclusion. They’d also helped Marlow position them around the doors of the guesthouse and the garage. But despite using both vehicles, they hadn’t been able to get as many as they needed. The bags weighed thirty pounds each. Without a truck that could handle a bigger payload, they could transport only ten at a time. So Marlow was driving the Tesla back to the library, hoping they’d still have some bags and sand, and Claire and Aida were taking shovels over to city hall, another one of the locations Walker had given them, in case the library was out of supplies.
It’d been such a busy afternoon that Claire had all but forgotten about Dutton—until she saw a lone figure who looked extremely familiar walking along the road as they drove back to Seaclusion.
“Aida,” she said, holding the steering wheel with one hand while reaching over to grab her friend’s arm.
Aida looked where she pointed and gasped. “That’s him!”
Dutton was wearing a ball cap, sunglasses, a windbreaker—the wind was getting stronger and stronger as the day wore on—and he had his head down, staring at the pavement in front of him. But there was no mistaking his identity.
Claire slammed on the brakes. She wanted to see why he was on this side of the island—and how confrontational he might be. That could tell her whether they had anything to worry about...
But when she pulled over in front of him, and he looked up, he didn’t show any surprise. He knew exactly where he was and how close he was to where they were staying.
“What’s he up to?” she murmured.
“He’s trying to scare us,” Aida replied.
He was doing a good job of it. His lips curved into a mocking smile, almost as if he was saying, “I don’t care if you see me. I want you to see me. I’m right here, only a stone’s throw away from where you sleep at night, and you can’t make me leave.”
“What are you doing?” Aida cried when Claire opened the door.
“I’m going to talk to him.”
Dutton came to a stop as soon as he saw her get out. He had his hands in his pockets, but he still made Claire uneasy.
“I...I thought maybe you’d gone home,” she said.
“Why would I leave the island?” he asked. “I have a whole week’s vacation, remember? There’s no way I’m going to let you ruin that.”
“I wasn’t trying to ruin your vacation, Dutton. I admit I should’ve done more to stop you from coming. I’m sorry I didn’t. But I...I thought we still had a chance. So I hope you’re not going to—I don’t know—try to punish me for not getting back with you.”
“I’m not mad that you didn’t get back with me,” he said. “I was stupid to want you to begin with. I’m mad that you led me on. You acted as if you had fun yesterday morning. You said you were coming over for dinner.”
“I did have fun yesterday,” she said. “That’s not leading you on. I made it clear that I wasn’t sure about us. The fact that I wouldn’t have sex with you should’ve told you something. It wasn’t until you got to Teach that I realized...I realized that no matter how much I love you, I can’t be with you.”
He laughed without mirth. “There you go again—teasing me, Claire. You don’t love me.” His eyes cut to Aida, who was still in the car but had lowered her window. “You and Aida did this on purpose. You probably think it’s funny that you got me to take a whole week off and squander thousands of dollars on a vacation I’d have to spend alone.”
“That’s not true,” Claire insisted. He had everything so twisted in his mind. “It was your idea! I tried to tell you not to come, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”
“All I have to say is that you’re going to live to regret what you’ve done.”
She stepped back. “Are you threatening me?”
“He’s dangerous, Claire,” Aida said, raising her voice so they could hear her. “Get back in the car.”
He pointed at Aida. “You stay out of it!”
Afraid of where this would lead, Claire tried one last time to talk some sense into him. “Dutton, please. There’s a hurricane coming. Go home. I...I’ll send you some money to cover the trip, if that’s what you want. I can’t do it now, but when I get back on my feet.”
“I don’t want your money,” he said. “I just want you to be as miserable as I am.”
She wished she could read his eyes, find some semblance of the man she thought she knew. But all she could see was herself in his mirrored sunglasses. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t answer. He gave her that weird smile again, held up his hand in the shape of a gun and pretended to fire.
She caught her breath. “That’s not funny.”
“You might not think so, but I do,” he said.
She could hear him laughing as she hurried back to the car and got behind the wheel. Wanting to put as much distance between them as possible, she drove off immediately.
But Seaclusion was only a quarter of a mile away.
Rosemary knew she should probably be out preparing their part of the island for the coming storm. Walker had slept only a few hours before leaving again. And Reese had called to say he was bagging sand for the club. She should be helping as well, but she was too caught up in her personal crisis to care about the hurricane.
She went into the bathroom and locked the door in case either of her boys came back. Then she sat on the toilet lid and opened the bag of letters she’d retrieved from under the house at Seaclusion this morning. To get them, she’d had to park down the street and sneak onto the property before anyone was awake. She’d also had to stash them under a rock along the side of the road not far away when she found out Rudy was going to meet her here the moment she returned. But she had them safely in her possession now.
Taking out the first one, her fingers encountered a folded piece of plain paper, and she began to read.
Dear Rosemary,
I’m sorry about last night. I know what we did was wrong. But there’s just something about you. It’s that simple. You are steady and calm and levelheaded and loyal. I know none of those things probably sound very sexy. Would you rather hear that you’re gorgeous, irresistible? You are both of those things. But it’s the beauty of your heart that draws me to you. You are such a fine person. Please don’t quit and go elsewhere. I won’t press you for...you know...again. Just stay near me.
Love,
John
She put that letter on the vanity and pulled out another. None of them were dated, so she didn’t even try to read them in order.
This one had obviously been written several months after the first one.
Dear Rosemary,
Your response breaks my heart. But I know you’re right and that we would only be sad about the people we hurt. I love Eileen, want what’s best for her in spite of how I’ve behaved. And you know how much I adore my little girl. But giving you up isn’t easy. Just know that if your baby is mine, or even if it’s not, I’ll be there for you. He or she will never want for anything.
Love,
John
As she read the other letters he’d written over a span of six or seven months, the memories they conjured up in her mind were so vivid. When she’d first started working for the Madsens, she’d had limited contact with Tiller—had dealt mostly with Eileen—but slowly, over the years, they’d not only grown to know each other, they’d developed a mutual trust and admiration. At some point, that trust and admiration had led to a hormone-fueled three weeks, during which the relationship had flared out of control, and after that they’d struggled through several long years of trying to maintain the proper boundaries. In the end, however, mostly during the last decade, their relationship had evolved into a deeper and more abiding love than ever before—one born more out of mutual respect than lust or anything else.
She hadn’t expected him to include Reese in his will. But he’d kept his word about looking out for her child—both of her children, actually. She’d kept her word, too. She’d stayed by his side, even though he had a family himself. The love she’d felt for him was never the same kind of love she’d felt for Rudy. The two men were so different. What she’d felt for Tiller, at least most of the time, was based more on what her head was telling her. She respected him. She admired him. She appreciated who he was and what he did. Her love for Rudy was almost inexplicable—a raw attraction that didn’t always make sense. Still, if Tiller’s work hadn’t required so much of his focus and attention, they might not have been able to move past the affair while remaining part of each other’s lives.
After she’d finished reading his letters, she put them in the bag that had protected them for so long and leaned back. She had proof to support everything she’d said about Tiller. But that wasn’t why she’d saved them. As long as she hung on to them, it felt as though she held a part of him, too. Her part. A part no one else had.
She wondered if turning these letters over to Eileen, Marlow or Rudy—any of the people who’d been hurt—would help them understand what’d happened. How hard they’d tried to be honorable and do the right thing for everyone involved. But it would be almost impossible to understand what their relationship had been like without more context, which meant the letters would probably just cause greater harm.
It was time, she realized—time to save Tiller’s words only in her heart.
Taking the bag, she went down to the beach and lit a fire in the firepit before taking the letters out, one by one, and tossing them in.
The edges of each curled and glowed orange before turning black. Then small pieces began to flutter into the sky. It was so hard to watch his handwriting disappear, knowing he could never write her again. But, like Eileen, she had to let him go. He’d never been hers to begin with.
After there was nothing left except ash, she tilted her head back and gazed up at the wide blue sky and the tiny fragments of paper blowing in the wind. “Goodbye,” she whispered.
As she trudged back to the house, she hated knowing that the letters she’d saved and treasured for so long were gone. But there was a strange peace that came with doing the right thing.
Once she went inside, she slid her phone off the counter and navigated to Eileen’s contact record. Her employer’s last text message stared her in the face: I hope you rot in hell.
I’m sorry to hear that, she wrote back. I wish you—and have always wished you—nothing but the best.