The Castaways (37 page)

The Chief fell back in his chair. “Jesus.”

“I dealt with her. She said she got it somewhere online, couldn’t remember the name of the site. I fined her three hundred bucks, took the ID, threatened to suspend her real driver’s license. She said she wanted to talk to you.”

“To me?”

“To you.”

“Jesus,” the Chief said.

“Normally I would have told her no. Normally I would have slapped her with a ninety-day suspension for trying to go over my head. But then I wondered if maybe you wanted to question her.”

Question her. Dickson understood more than the Chief wanted him to. The Chief’s stomach squelched. He’d eaten all that food and he hadn’t moved a muscle. And he was nervous.

“Send her in.”

Dickson opened the door and poked his head out into the hallway. “Hey, Dancing Queen,” he said, “the Chief has agreed to see you.”

April entered, resplendent in some kind of sparkly black-and-silver disco dress and silver stiletto heels. Her hair was up. She wore reddish black lipstick. She looked twenty-five, not eighteen.

“Miss Peck,” the Chief said.

“You can call me April,” she said. She offered her hand. “I feel like I know you.”

“Do you?” the Chief said.

“Yes,” April said. She sat demurely, thank God, with her legs angled to the side. “Greg used to talk about you all the time.”

The Chief quietly burped up Roquefort and onions. “Greg?” he said.

“Greg MacAvoy.”

The name reverberated against the concrete walls of the Chief’s office. April’s face was open; her eyes were wide and innocent. She did not look like a kid who had just been booked for identity fraud. Was she drunk? She had been steady on the stilettos. Was she a good actress? Or maybe the three-hundred-dollar fine and the fact that she might not be able to drive for the rest of the summer didn’t bother her. Who was he kidding? If they took her license, she would drive anyway.

“Mr. MacAvoy was your singing teacher?” the Chief said.

“He was.”

The Chief looked at April’s shining blond hair and thought of how lost Greg must have been to let her lasso him. Had Greg been in that place men found themselves in when they needed bolstering? His sweet and pretty wife wasn’t enough? His two healthy kids weren’t enough? He needed more, he needed someone to worship him, someone to think he was a hero?

“And…?”

“And he was my friend.”

“Your friend?” the Chief said. Nerves jitterbugged across his chest and arms. April Peck should have been just another pretty girl in high school, not so different from the Chief’s own daughter, but instead she was a repository of information, answers, the truth. Had Greg and April Peck been having a thing—one time, three times, every week, every day? Would Greg have a reason to want to drug Tess? The Chief understood that knowing the answers wouldn’t bring Tess or Greg back, it wouldn’t help the kids, but the Chief, as an enforcer of the law, wanted the truth.

He had to be careful. April Peck had been brought in for trying to pass off a fake ID. She was not here to answer questions about Greg. He could not make her answer. For all the Chief knew, April Peck would leave the office saying that the
Chief
had been inappropriate with her. Thinking this, the Chief felt the first true wash of sympathy for Greg. April Peck was a suicide bomber. The Chief should send her out right now with a ninety-day suspension. If Andrea knew April Peck was here, what would she say?

April said, “I know what people think.”

“What do people think?”

“They think Greg and I were lovers.”

The Chief burped again, and whispered, “Excuse me.” He had to tread so carefully here. “Why would they think that?”

She shrugged.

The Chief said, “I’m a little confused, Miss Peck, about why you wanted to see me.”

Her face transformed from a placid surface to a stormy one. She was going to cry, and immediately the Chief’s guard went up.

She said, “This has been so hard.”

The Chief nodded, though barely.

“I wanted to talk to you about Greg.”

“What about him?”

“He was my friend. I miss him. I loved him. I mean, I
really
loved him. He listened to me. I have all this stuff going on—Derek, my ex-boyfriend, stalks me, my mother is dying of freaking breast cancer, and my dad and brother are in New York hell-bent on pretending my mother and I don’t exist…” She snatched a tissue off the Chief’s desk and noisily blew her nose. “And really, the only person I could talk to was Greg. He was so nice to me. He was kind. He was the kindest, because he could have gotten into so much trouble…”

“You accused him of sexual misconduct,” the Chief said. “He was nearly fired.”

“I know! I was confused. It was so completely fucked. I was jealous because it was clear he loved his wife and kids. I was never going to get the best part of him. They were.”

“So did you lie to the administration?” the Chief asked.

April narrowed her eyes at him as if he were crazy. Crazy to think she lied or crazy to think she would now tell him the truth? She blotted her eyes. “The amazing thing was that Greg forgave me. After all that, I mean. He forgave me, he listened, he was kind, and then…”

“And then what?” the Chief said.

“And then he died!” April said. She stood up and paced the back half of the Chief’s office.

“You were in love with him?” the Chief said.

April threw up her hands.

“Was he… did he say he was in love with you?”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” April said. In the back corner of his office was a filing cabinet topped with a philodendron and some framed snapshots of Kacy and Eric when they were young. April picked up the pictures and studied them. The Chief did not like her touching pictures of his family.

“What am I trying to do?” he asked.

“You’re trying to get me to admit to something,” she said.

“Admit to what?”

“See? You’re doing it again.”

Were you lovers? Was he in love with you? Would Greg have a reason to drug his wife?
The Chief could ask April these questions and she could lie or tell him the truth and he wouldn’t know the difference. He cleared his throat. “Okay, Miss Peck, it’s time for you to go. We are going to issue a sixty-day suspension of your driver’s license.”

April whipped around.

“That’s a reduction of the maximum penalty, which is a ninety-day suspension,” he said. He could have lowered the penalty to thirty days, but he would not do it. And if she gave him lip, he would up it to ninety.

“You’re throwing me out?” she said.

“I’m not a therapist,” the Chief said. “I am the chief of police. Since you don’t have any new or pertinent information about Greg MacAvoy or your involvement with him, we have no further business. Should you ever decide there is something else I need to know, you are free to come in anytime and talk to me. Understood?”

April chewed her bottom lip. “Do you know what Greg said about you? Do you know what he told me?”

“Honestly, Miss Peck, I don’t care.”

She took a deep, resigned breath. “He said you were the greatest guy in all the world.”

S
he didn’t know what stage she was in anymore. She was in stage limbo. She missed Tess, she missed Greg, she missed Jeffrey, she missed Eddie and her kids, but mostly she missed herself.

She wondered, was she ever coming back?

There were certain things she could handle and certain things she could not. She could handle the fact that Tess had had a lover. Andrea was forty-four years old, old enough to realize that the heart wanted what the heart wanted whether it made sense, whether it was right or wrong. What Andrea could not handle was not knowing who Tess’s lover was. She had to find out. She wanted to know him; she wanted to make sure that he had loved Tess enough. Had it been someone at the funeral? Who exactly had attended the funeral? Should Andrea pore over the guest book? Andrea couldn’t recall anyone except their immediate group, the children, horrid April Peck and her mother, and Father Dominic.
Finished with the Lord.
Tess had stopped going to church altogether. Was Tess having an affair with Father Dominic? He was a young man, in his late thirties, and he was handsome as far as priests went. She could handle Tess having a lover, but not if it was Father Dominic. She struck his name off her mental list for her own sanity. She thought of other teachers at school, the principal, the superintendent. Flanders? Andrea stopped. Not Flanders. For a brief second, she smiled.

Andrea could handle small outings, but not big ones. Ed came home with two tickets to the Island Conservation benefit, a cocktail party on the savannah, that Phoebe was chairing.

“It’s on Friday night,” he said. “Kacy agreed to watch the kids. We’re going.”

“No,” Andrea said.

“I bought the tickets,” he said. “I told Phoebe we’d be there.”

“No.”

“She wants our support. The poor woman hasn’t done anything since before—”

“I’m not going, Ed.”

“She said she has a surprise for us.”

“Now I’m really not going.”

He put his hands on her shoulders. This was a gesture that nearly always worked. His face was inches from her face, his hazel eyes, his five o’clock shadow. She loved his face despite the fact that it only ever held one expression, one that conveyed steadfast dedication to the forces of righteousness. It was the proximity of his face that was meant to convey meaning, and the weight of his hands pressing down on her shoulders, telling her that he was present, he would not let her float away, but that he had needs and desires, too, and this was one of them. Going to this event for Phoebe was important to him. But she couldn’t do it.

“You go,” she said. “I just can’t. I’ll stay home.”

He lifted his hands. “We’ll talk about it later.”

She could not handle a cocktail party, but she could handle a trip to the post office to mail a box to Esmeralda, Tess’s adopted Brazilian orphan, who was, all of a sudden, sixteen years old. Andrea woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, realizing that she had forgotten all about Esmeralda. Tess still sent her care packages every three months. Andrea wrote a letter explaining that Tess had passed away, but that she had cared for Esmeralda very much; she had displayed Esmeralda’s photo on her desk at school. Andrea wrote that she, Andrea, would be sending packages now. Along with the letter, Andrea packed brown rice, steel-cut oats, graham crackers, a copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
, a new pair of flip-flops, a journal, and a framed picture of Tess.

Andrea struggled a bit with Tony at the post office about how to send the box and how to insure it, but they worked it out; all it took was paperwork and money. Tony flipped the box casually into the airmail bin and Andrea winced, thinking of the graham crackers, but she felt a sense of accomplishment nonetheless.

As she turned to leave, she saw a man in line and her knees buckled. She stopped and stared, and the woman coming up to the counter nudged her out of the way. Andrea stutter-stepped aside, still staring at the man unabashedly. He looked at her and smiled. It was the man from her dream, the Russian, Pyotr, who had made love to her in her old black Jeep, who had said,
It’s your car, you can do what you want in it.
Who had been drowning until she saved him. It was him, not merely someone who resembled him.

Part of Andrea wanted to hurry out and not look back. But she had to know.

She said, “Do I know you from somewhere?”

The blue eyes narrowed. “Don’t think so,” he said. He had a broad accent. Australian? He stuck out his hand. “I’m Ian Bing. Teach Pilates at the health club. Do you belong to the health club, then?”

Andrea blinked. “No,” she said. “I don’t.” Inside, she was fizzing and popping. He taught Pilates at the health club! This was the sign. This was the guy. Tess’s lover. Andrea said, “But my cousin belonged to the health club. Tess MacAvoy? Did you know Tess?”

Ian’s face was blank. He shook his head, the salt-and-pepper curls. “No. ‘Fraid I don’t.”

Andrea scrutinized him. He looked sincere, but Andrea didn’t believe a soul anymore. She checked his ear—no earring. Still, it was him. He had done all those things to her in her dreams. She blushed, she couldn’t help it, and then she said, “So you didn’t know Tess?”

“No,” he said. “Did she take Pilates?”

“No,” Andrea said.

Ian smiled at her as if to say… well, as if to say nothing. He did not know Andrea, he did not know Tess. Andrea was making a complete ass of herself, but it was
him,
Pyotr, the Russian.

Andrea hurried out to the parking lot.

Andrea could handle Kacy taking care of the twins, but she could not handle Delilah taking care of them. Twice Delilah had called to see if she could take the twins to the carnival with Drew and Barney, and twice Andrea had said no on the basis that the carnival was a ripoff and the rides were operated by heroin junkies. Kacy then took them to the godforsaken thing and they ate junk and rode the unsafe rides and came home with dirty feet, a stuffed giraffe whose eye fell out during the car ride home, and a pump-action toy gun for Finn, which Tess never would have tolerated, but how could Kacy protest when the Chief carried a gun? Andrea huffed about the carnival, and Kacy said, as only a righteous sixteen-year-old can, “If you don’t like the way I’m taking care of them, do it yourself.”

Delilah had called Kacy about the movie. The movie was more than a movie; it was a phenomenon.
Vunderkids 3
was premiering on Friday. Delilah had flown all four kids off-island to see
Vunderkids
and
Vunderkids 2
for the big movie-house premiere experience the two previous summers, and she wanted to take them again this year. It was now a tradition.

“So they’re going with Delilah,” Kacy said on Friday morning.

“What?” Andrea said. She tried to keep her voice level, because the twins were right there at the breakfast table eating Cheerios, wiggling with excitement about going to see
Vunderkids 3,
off-island, with Auntie Dee and Drew and Barney. In a real theater with Dolby surround sound and real popcorn with real butter --