It didn’t take long to find it. Some simple googling. Of course, the Times article came up right away, followed by more articles in other papers: the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe. (“Carbon Copy.” “Hometown Boy Humbled.”) And more besides that, in industry publications. Publishers Weekly. Shelf Awareness. Writer’s Digest. All Joy needed, of course, was the first one; no mistaking Anthony in the photo.
She tracked down Anthony’s wife via her Facebook page, a public page that linked her art to a studio in the South End of Boston. Willing herself to close the browser, and unable to do so, Joy stared for a long, long time at Cassie’s photo. Both her hair and her shirt were silky. She looked like a model for an expensive skin care regimen, an advertisement for not eating. She looked like someone who would run fast in the other direction if she saw a whoopie pie.
Joy had never felt so short, so brown, so curly and curvy, so well fed—so wrong about everything.
On the publisher’s website there was an author bio that nobody had had the sense to pull: Anthony Puckett lives outside of Boston with his wife and their young son.
Son? thought Joy.
Joy’s phone rang a lot the next morning. The seventh time that day and she didn’t pick up, but the eighth time, she did. She was on her bike by then; she’d ridden as fast as she could, as far as she could.
“What?” she said aggressively. Anthony Puckett lives outside of Boston with his wife . . .
“Listen, Joy. It’s me.”
With his wife and their young son.
“I know.”
“Can we talk? Can I come over?”
Anthony Puckett had never told Joy Sousa about his young son.
“I’m not home.”
Anthony Puckett had stood with Joy and looked at a poster of his own father and pretended not to know him.
“Where are you?”
“I’m out.”
“Out where?”
She sighed. “Not that it’s any of your business, Anthony Puckett, but I’m on a bike ride.”
“Where? I’ll meet you.”
“I’m halfway around the island. You’ll never catch me.”
“So wait for me.”
She huffed and sighed again. “I don’t know if I want to see you. I’m pretty sure I don’t.”
“But I want to explain things to you. Where are you really? You can’t avoid me forever.”
“I bet I can.”
“You can’t.”
“I’m at the end of Corn Neck Road,” she said finally.
“At the lighthouse? At Settlers’ Rock? Where?”
“Fine,” she said. “We may as well do this now.” This was the Portuguese side of her talking, a lifetime of brawling brothers who poured their emotions out like milk from a pitcher. “I’m at the parking lot before the lighthouse.” She had leaned her bike against the sign that said Welcome to the Block Island National Wildlife Refuge and was standing with her arms folded, looking out at the Sound.
The parking lot was almost full, but nobody was around. Everybody must be walking out along the rocks to the lighthouse.
When she saw the Le Baron coming down the road she walked closer to the water. Let him come to her.
“Hey,” Anthony said as he approached her, wobbling over the stones that covered the beach. His gray T-shirt had a stain on the front of it, and his hair was blowing in the breeze off the Sound. Joy tried to fixate on the T-shirt and not on the hair; she used to love seeing Anthony’s hair messy like that. Used to: it was already in the past. She wished her heart could hurry up and be finished breaking so it could start to repair.
She pointed toward the lighthouse and said, “Did you know that in 1831 a schooner wrecked on Sandy Point here?”
“No.” If Anthony was taken aback by the unexpected history lesson, he didn’t show it. “I didn’t. Joy—”
“The ship was called Warrior. Can you imagine it? Twenty-one people died. Not too far from where we’re standing now.”
“No . . .”
“Do you even know how Block Island got its name?”
“I guess I don’t.” He didn’t seem to be getting the extent of her anger.
“Typical,” she spat. “Most people who come here don’t bother to find out. This island was charted by the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block. Did you know that the Narragansett tribe first called it ‘Manisses’?”
“I didn’t.”
“That name translates to ‘Island of the Little God.’”
“Okay. That’s very interesting, Joy—” He put a hand out as though to touch her, or calm her, but she backed away.
“And, yeah, the sunsets are amazing and the beaches are fun and the cocktails are really good, but you people, you people who come and then leave again, you don’t realize that there’s a whole history here. You don’t realize that you leave your messes behind for the rest of us to clean up. You come from outside, and you change what’s here, and then you leave again, like it’s nothing.”
This time Anthony didn’t respond. After a beat, Joy continued. “So let me get this straight. According to the New York Times, and many other publications, which I found with the help of my favorite search engine, you have a son.”
Anthony nodded. “He’s four. His name is Max.”
“And your father is the guy with the gigantic display in the window of Island Bound Books, am I correct about that? Leonard Puckett?” When they’d stood in front of the poster he’d asked her if she’d read anything by that guy.
“Correct,” said Anthony.
“And. Furthermore. You yourself are an author, not some freelance journalist. Only, your second book, for which you got paid, like, a bazillion dollars, got yanked before publication because you plagiarized part of it. And you got caught.”
He nodded. “Such a tiny part, though,” he said. “It wasn’t even a—it was such a—I mean, most of the book was . . .”
“Uh-huh.” Joy crossed her arms over her chest. Her heart was beating so hard she could feel it slamming into her hand. “I should have known,” she said. “That it was all too good to be true. That you were too good to be true.”
“But I’m not too good to be true,” he said. He sounded desperate now. He raked his hands through his hair. “I’m here, I’m me, I’m the guy you’ve spent the better part of the summer with. It’s still me, Joy. If I could just explain to you, if I could just tell you, it was all such a mistake, one stupid move that got blown way out of propor—”
She cut him off. “You are the biggest bullshitter I have ever met in my life, Anthony Jones.” He winced. “Puckett, I mean!” she corrected. “Anthony Puckett. Basically everything you ever told me was a lie. One big fat stupid lie.”
“No! Not everything. Some of it. Well, not so much a lie as a—as a withholding of some of the truth.”
“What a pretty way to put it,” she snapped. “I can tell you’re a writer!” She picked up a stone and hurled it toward the water.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I don’t know what else I can say, Joy. I came here at the beginning of the summer and I was broken. Completely broken. My ex-wife wouldn’t—” He was trying to persuade her now, but she wasn’t going to let herself be persuaded.
“Not ex. You’re not divorced, remember?”
“You’re right. Not yet. I will be, but not yet. Anyway, I came here just to hide, to lick my wounds, and to figure out what was next, and I didn’t want to meet anyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was hiding. That’s why I chose this place, I thought I could be invisible for a while, until I got enough strength to return to the real world.”
This made Joy even angrier. How dare he consider her world, her island, not the real world? She hurled another stone. “This is the real world, for some people. This is my real world. This is Maggie’s real world. You can’t just step into it and . . .” She put her fist to her mouth and bit down hard on her knuckles. She wanted so badly to stop herself from crying, but she was just so, well . . . so disappointed. “You can’t step into it and play with it, and step right out like it’s nothing.”
When Anthony spoke again his voice was gentler, conciliatory. The desperation was gone, and he was speaking tenderly. “I know I can’t,” he said. “I mean, I know I did, but I shouldn’t have. I know it’s bullshit. If I could just make you see, Joy, how broken I was at the time. How heartbroken.”
“Well, bully for you. Everybody is heartbroken.” She couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. She turned her face away and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
Anthony stepped closer to her. “Not you, Joy. You’re not heartbroken.”
“Says who?”
“You’re the strongest person I know. That day my car broke down and you drove up and you were this beautiful vibrant person, so alive and strong, zooming around in your Jeep, with your delicious little whoopie pies . . .”
No. She wasn’t going to let him bring the pies into this. That made it all seem too easy. There were still moments that Joy’s heart felt like an open, weeping wound. Dustin had found another wife, had produced another child, and in those momentous gestures plus plenty of smaller ones that came before and after, he was saying, I tried you, Joy, and you weren’t good enough. She knew heartbreak as well as anyone. She said, “You don’t own heartbreak, you know.”
“I never said I did!”
“You’re acting like you do.”
He bristled at that. The tenderness was dissolving. Good. Let it. Joy wanted Anthony to feel bad, just as she felt bad. “I am not,” he said.
“You are too, Anthony not-Jones. You walk around here with your head low, like the world has dealt you a bad hand, all hangdog, like we’re all supposed to feel sorry for you.”
Something in his face changed, got harder. “I’m not acting like anything. Maybe I actually am sad. Maybe I’ve had a pretty shitty year and when I got here the only person who wanted to talk to me from my old life was Shelly Salazar, of all people . . .”
Joy snorted.
“And I’ve destroyed my relationship with my father, my wife, and my son, and probably also my mother, who called me every day until she gave up on me too . . . All I did was make one stupid mistake. I have to lose everything over it? Everything?”
“I’m sorry,” Joy said, “if I didn’t RSVP to your pity party, but I’m having a very, very hard time with all of this.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That’s a great line,” he said. Then, more softly, like he was whispering a secret, he repeated, “I’m sorry if I didn’t RSVP to your pity party.” He patted his pockets—was he searching for a notebook?
“Don’t,” she said. “You can’t use it, you don’t have permission. That’s my line.” Joy inhaled deeply. It was a lot to take in, all at once. “Let me see if I have this straight,” she said. “Your wife left you when you got caught for plagiarism?”
“No.” Anthony rubbed his eyes: he suddenly looked very tired. “My wife started sleeping with someone else long before I got caught. Probably even before I plagiarized. But she officially kicked me out after I was caught, yes. And the money dried up, and everything dried up. I’m in a deep, deep hole. Yes.” He shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, I knew you wouldn’t understand. I knew you wouldn’t get it.”
“And why not?” She breathed in deeply. She felt her anger crystallize. “Why wouldn’t I get it?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head again. “It’s just . . .”
“What?”
“Your divorce was amicable. The relationship you have with Dustin, the way you handle Maggie together—it’s different. It’s smooth. You wouldn’t get what it’s like for me, not really. You have it easier.”
This made Joy seethe on both the inside and the outside. “Are you kidding me? The nerve you have!” She thought about all the lonely nights when Maggie was asleep and the winter wind was howling. “You think it’s been smooth sailing the whole way, that it was just no problem to have a two-year-old and no money and be on my own, starting over in a new place? It’s taken me a decade to get where I am, Anthony. A decade. And almost none of it has been easy.”
“Well, but . . .” His face twisted; she could tell that he was struggling to say what he wanted to say the right way. “What I mean is, you’re tough. You know what you want, and you just . . . go after it. In that way I think it’s been easier for you. Because of who you are, the kind of person you are. Which is what I admire about you, Joy.”
He might be trying to flatter her, but every word was just making Joy more angry. “Then you don’t understand anything,” she said. Growing up wealthy with a famous father, having his own path mapped out for him, then willfully throwing it away—no, he didn’t deserve Joy’s sympathy, and she wouldn’t give it. “Maybe instead of acting like such a victim, you should figure your own shit out. That’s what I had to do. And it hurt plenty along the way. You don’t own pain, Anthony Puckett. You don’t own the whole world of pain.”
He was silent for a minute. She could see her words settling in.
“You’re right,” he said finally. His voice was more conciliatory and he stepped toward her. “I’m sorry. Joy, I really am. I’m sorry I disappointed you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the whole story. I’m sorry I didn’t have everything figured out when I bumped into you. I never meant to get attached to this place, or anyone here. It never seemed . . . real to me.”
Couldn’t he see that with every sentence Anthony was only getting himself deeper in the hole? “Excuse me all over the place,” said Joy. “But like I said before. This is my real world. This is mine and Maggie’s real world every day, year-round. And you cannot come into it and make me fall in love with you under false pretenses.”
His mouth twitched; she’d almost made him laugh. But Joy had no more patience for this. Why had she opened her soul, her home, her bed to this man, who wasn’t who he said he was? She should have known it was too good to be true. Everything was. Joy walked back to the wildlife refuge sign and un-leaned her bike.
Dangerous Riptides! said the sign. No kidding, thought Joy.
Anthony followed and opened the door of his car.
“Joy—” he said.
“No,” said Joy. Her heart was breaking into a thousand little pieces. “No, Anthony. No more. We’re all done here. Forever.” She turned her back while he got in the car, and when the Le Baron pulled out of its parking spot she gave no indication that she knew the car was there at all.
If Anthony said anything out the window, she didn’t let herself hear.
She did hear one sound, though. The sound of her foot crunching on something—what? A phone. Anthony’s phone, which must have fallen out of his pocket. Well, served him right. She picked it up and put it in her own pocket. She buckled the strap of her helmet under her chin. And then she pedaled away, with the Sound on one side of her and the Atlantic on the other, and the long, sometimes hilly Corn Neck Road ahead of her.