The Castaways (21 page)

“Ed!” she cried. “Eddie!”

He smiled and came striding over. Phoebe adored the Chief. He had gone to Ground Zero to help in the search effort. He had seen it firsthand, he had spent a week inhaling the toxic fumes, he had dealt with one one-trillionth of the debris. He felt one one-trillionth of Phoebe’s pain, but that was more than anyone else.

“Where are you going?” he said. “Where’s Addison?”

“He’s at home,” she said. “I’m going to the party on Hulbert.”

“President Clinton is going to that party,” the Chief said. “Which explains why this mess is even bigger than the usual mess. I’ll have one of my guys wave you through.”

“Thanks, Eddie,” she said.

“Anything for you, babe,” he said. He winked and made a clicking noise. She loved him. She feared that one day he would be gravely disappointed in her, but she wasn’t going to let that ruin her good mood right now.

She drove past with a wave.

At the party, there was champagne served from a tray and yummy things to eat: crab cakes, corn fritters, oysters, tenderloin on French bread, phyllo filled with spinach and feta, stuffed mushrooms. Phoebe was eating more at this party than she’d eaten since her sophomore year in high school. A band played Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Boz Scaggs. Phoebe saw people she knew but had not seen in centuries.

You’re back! Where have you been?

Oh, I’ve been around,
she said. She would have to come up with a better answer. She would tell people she had taken eight years in silence at a Buddhist monastery. She had been in the South of France, or Santa Fe; she had been on Martha’s Vineyard! When Caroline Masters saw Phoebe, she took her by the arm and escorted her around. Reintroduced her.

This gorgeous creature is Phoebe Wheeler, the best cochair I ever had.

Phoebe met President Clinton! He asked her where she was from and she said, “I live on the island year-round. My husband owns a real estate agency here. But I was born and raised in Whitefish Bay, outside Milwaukee.”

Milwaukee!
President Clinton loved Wisconsin, loved White-fish Bay, loved this certain kind of cheddar they made at the university, loved the Green Bay Packers. Brett Favre had been to the White House twice during his administration.

After the president moved on, Phoebe was swamped. People seemed to be standing in line to talk to her. Swede and Jennifer monopolized her. They had missed her so much! Remember all those Sunday sails on Hank’s boat? Jennifer asked Phoebe if she would cochair a cocktail party for Island Conservation, to be held out on the savannah in August.
I know you’ve dialed back, but…

Phoebe panicked. She felt like she was falling.
Reed!
Her feet were numb with frostbite. She was stuck in the snow and could not move her arms or legs; she could not reach her cell phone. Phoebe’s excellent mental health this evening had been an illusion; it was some kind of spell that was now wearing off.

Phoebe opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. She felt like a fish.

The Chief had been at Ground Zero. He got it. He had seen it and smelled it. Addison had never understood, but he had stuck with her. He had stood by her until Tess. Okay, see, Phoebe needed to get hold of herself. She should not be thinking of Reed and she should not be thinking of Tess. She was at a lovely, upbeat social function on a beautiful evening and she was being asked a simple question. Cochair a cocktail party on the savannah for Island Conservation? In her previous life, this would have been a layup.

But what about now? Was she a normal person? Could she do it?

“I’d love to help,” Phoebe said. “Call me.”

Jennifer was happy. Her husband, Swede, was happy. Their friend Hank who had a billion dollars and that beautiful sailboat was happy. Hank was there with his new French girlfriend, Legris, who complimented Phoebe on her dress.

Jack, who had given Addison the keys to his house in Stowe last Christmas, approached Phoebe and asked her to dance. Again Phoebe felt like she was being pushed right to the edge of what she was capable of. She was going to fall…

Dance?

“They’re playing ‘Mack the Knife,’” Jack said.

She loved “Mack the Knife.” She would dance. She would watch the fireworks. She did not have to think about Reed or about Tess and Greg, or even about Addison. She was a person having fun.

She was getting better.

E
very night when Delilah tucked Barney into bed, he asked about Greg’s guitar.

“Can I have it, Mom? Please?”

“I’m working on it,” Delilah said, though this was not exactly true. Delilah hadn’t spoken to Andrea in over a week. She avoided her at drop-off and pick-up from camp, though more than half the time Kacy biked in with the kids.

“I want it really bad,” Barney said.

“I know, honey,” Delilah said, kissing his forehead. Barney was six and a half, with the sensibilities of an evolved forty-year-old man. He did not ask for things gratuitously. He only became emotionally invested in things that were meaningful. Delilah had offered Barney a brand-new guitar, but that wasn’t what he was after. He wanted Greg’s guitar, the well-worn, honey-toned instrument they all loved and recognized. It was the only guitar he had ever heard played.

An idea formed in Delilah’s mind. She would steal Greg’s guitar out of the Kapenash house and give it to Barney. Steal Greg’s guitar out of the police chief’s house! This was, she realized, the only way she was going to get her hands on it.

When?

Anytime! It would be easy! Ed and Andrea left their house unlocked, and in the summertime wide open! Delilah would slip in in the middle of the night, take the guitar, and slip out. The last time Delilah had been to the house, the guitar had been collecting dust in the mudroom. It would be so easy and yet so subversive! One naughty step that Delilah could take to make Barney, and herself, feel better.

And so, on the fifth of July, Delilah set her alarm for 2 A.M. She slid out of bed, tiptoed out of her house, got in the car, and drove to the Kapenash house. She parked down the street and strolled through the balmy night. The sky was clear and there were a million stars, and the stars made Delilah think of heaven. Was there a heaven, and were Greg and Tess in it?

Delilah crunched up the Chief’s shell driveway. She had thought she might feel afraid. What if the Chief mistook her for a burglar and appeared with his gun? But she was as calm as a nun. If the Chief or Andrea woke up, Delilah would declare herself, and as odd as it would seem, she would tell them she was there for Greg’s guitar.

As predicted, the door to the mudroom was wide open. Delilah pulled back the screen door and stepped inside. The house hummed with sleeping people. Delilah had picked the fifth of July because the Fourth was the Chief’s most arduous day of the year—thirty thousand people descended on Jetties Beach, the traffic alone was a migraine—and he would be exhausted.

For the first time since moving to Nantucket, Delilah had skipped the Fourth of July celebration; she was too downtrodden to deal with the frivolity or the crowds. And so she’d taken the boys to Addison and Phoebe’s house. Phoebe was out at some big, splashy party, but Addison was home. He escorted Delilah and the boys to the widow’s walk, where he drunkenly belted out “The Star-Spangled Banner” once the fireworks started. Delilah found the occasion depressing, and the boys seemed antsy and unimpressed. Andrea was supposed to come with the twins, but she didn’t show up, and when Delilah called, Kacy answered and said that Andrea was “under the weather.”

Right, Delilah thought as she shifted feet, praying for the fire-works to end so she could get home to bed. They were all under the weather.

There in the corner of the Kapenashes’ mudroom was the guitar case. Delilah reached for it, giddy. The whole operation would take less than thirty seconds. But when Delilah grabbed the case, it swung open and banged against the trunk that held the Kapenash family’s winter boots. Delilah looked: the guitar case was empty. It was a casket without a body.

No! Arrgh! It would have been too easy. Delilah propped the guitar case back in the corner and waited a few seconds to see if the banging noise had woken anyone. The house was silent. Where was the guitar? Delilah tiptoed into the living room, through the kitchen, down the hall. She opened the door to the coat closet. Was the guitar in here? No. Just the Christmas decorations and the hideous fur that Andrea had inherited from her mother. (Okay, they all knew each other too well.) Delilah stood for a second outside the Chief and Andrea’s bedroom. She could hear the Chief snoring. She realized that if the guitar were anywhere it was probably in Eric’s room, but even Delilah had no intention of entering the bedroom of a fifteen-year-old boy. Ha! If Andrea caught Delilah in there, she would have her arrested.

As Delilah turned to leave, she heard a feathery noise. The Kapenashes had a cat named Arthur who was breaking all kinds of feline longevity records. Was it Arthur?

Delilah peeked up the stairs and caught her breath.

Jesus!

Chloe was floating down the stairs in a white nightie. A ghost, an angel. Her eyes were open, her face placid, even as she saw Delilah.

“Oh, honey,” Delilah whispered.

Chloe held out her arms and Delilah reached for her. Chloe was petite, like Tess; she was a featherweight compared to Delilah’s boys.

Chloe said, “Where’s my mom?”

Delilah’s heart was a berry, crushed underfoot. She hugged Chloe. This poor child. No mother, no father, no Fourth of July fireworks. Delilah carried her back upstairs to the guest room, where Finn lay, growling like a Tonka truck in his sleep. Delilah laid Chloe down in bed and smoothed her dark hair and stroked her cheek, the perfect pink little girl cheek, dotted with light freckles. She kissed Chloe’s temple. Delilah had never wanted a little girl; she had been too afraid that the girl would turn out to be like her. But Delilah wanted this little girl, and her brother, too.

She cast her eyes around the room for the guitar—the twins’ room was another place it would likely be—but she didn’t see it. She stood up and gazed at the twins. Tonight she had come for the guitar. But the next time she would come for them.

H
e needed a book.
Executoring for Dummies.

The Chief had been into Tess and Greg’s house twice to get the kids’ belongings, the first time for shorts, shirts, bathing suits, pajamas, underwear, toothbrushes, and the second time for toys: the Nintendo DS, the
DVD
collection, the bikes, the boogie boards, the stuffed animals. Both times the Chief went, he called Addison to clear it.

I’m only going upstairs,
the Chief said.
To the kids’ rooms. For the kids’ things. Okay?

Okay,
said Addison.

Implicit in the Chief’s asking was the fact that Addison had yet to do anything about the rest of the house. He was the executor, it was his job, he’d better get on it.

Executoring for Dummies
did not exist. He checked.

So, then, maybe he would write it.

He listed his duties in a notebook.

• Give away or dispose of (sell?) furnishings (china, silver, etc., to Chloe)
  

• Give away or dispose of personal effects
  

• Clean house (call Nicole at Swept Away)
  

• Sell cars (call Don Allen Ford)
  

• Put house on market/sell house
  

• Pay debts (credit card, mortgage, etc.)
  

• Set up college/trust funds
  

Figuring out exactly what had happened out on the water was
not
on this list. Naming Greg MacAvoy as Tess’s murderer was
not
on this list.

Addison had a hard time getting past Tess’s iPhone. He looked through the calls: all those calls from him, in addition to calls from Andrea, Delilah, Phoebe, Lisa Shumacher. And the text messages troubled him. The night before the sail, a Sunday night, a night when Addison knew Tess had been with the kids because Greg was singing at the Begonia, Phoebe had sent Tess a text message that said,
I’ll be over in five minutes.

Addison did not remember Phoebe going over to Tess’s house or leaving home at all for any other reason. But Addison was having a hard time remembering that Sunday night in any detail. What had happened? Where had he been? Then he recalled the deal, the big deal, $9.2 million on Polpis Harbor, and he realized that he and Phoebe had eaten takeout Greek salads and then Addison had gone back into town to his office to write up the purchase-and-sale agreement. Furthermore, he remembered seeing both Greg’s car and Delilah’s car outside the Begonia, and he considered stopping in for a presigning, anticipatory celebratory drink, but he’d decided against it because he didn’t want to jinx himself. So Phoebe must have gone to Tess’s house while Addison was at the office.

He couldn’t keep himself from asking Phoebe about it. But he had to be casual. He did not want to raise any red flags. (Though really, he thought, it was impossible to raise any red flags with Phoebe. It was impossible to make her curious or suspicious. She simply did not care.)

He said, “Did you see Tess the night before she died?”

Phoebe was lying by the pool with a wet washcloth over her eyes. She kept half a dozen washcloths in a bucket of ice water by the side of her chaise.

She said, “I did.”

“Did you go to her house?”

“I did.”

He did not think she was being coy. She simply could not, in her drug-muddled state, bring herself to wonder why he was asking.

“What for?”

She sighed. “I needed to drop something off.”

“Oh, really?” Addison said. “What?”

“An anniversary present.” She removed the washcloth and squinted at him. “Do you think we should get a dog?”

“A dog?”

Washcloth discarded. There was a pile of warm, soggy wash-cloths by the side of the pool, which unsettled Addison in the way that used tissues or soiled sanitary napkins would. Phoebe wrung out a new icy cold washcloth and secured it over her eyes, just so.