The Castaways (44 page)

“I was so worried!” she said. “Thank God you’re safe!” Thank God, thank God. She realized that this angst, this panic, this frantic hair-raising fucking
worry
was, of course, what Jeffrey, Andrea, the Chief, Phoebe, and Addison would be feeling once they realized Delilah was gone with the kids. Delilah couldn’t stand to think of anyone else feeling this way. Somewhere inside her guilty and broken self, there was a beating heart.

Delilah waited until the merry-go-round slowed, then she sat down between Finn and Barney. She gathered Drew and Chloe into her lap, and although they were way too old for this, they allowed her to hold them anyway.

“Are we going home now?” Barney asked.

She kissed the top of his head.

“Yep,” she said, like the unflappable mom she was. “We’re going home now.”

H
e was tired in the morning and suffering from something of a hangover. He’d considered taking a sick day from work, which he did once a year, but a call had come to the house from Dickson, asking the Chief to get down there as soon as possible.

The Chief did not like the sound of Dickson’s voice. “Why?” he said.

“April Peck is here to see you,” Dickson said.

“Oh, Jesus,” the Chief said. He was glad Andrea was still asleep. He hung up the phone. Kacy was buttering an English muffin at the counter. “What time are the twins due home?”

“Um,” she said. “I’m not sure.” She sounded funny. Or maybe that was because of the ringing in the Chief’s ears. He and Phoebe had danced awfully close to the band’s brass section.

“Okay, I have to go in to work. Please don’t wake your mother. Will you be around when the twins get home?”

“Um,” Kacy said. “I guess?”

April Peck, the Chief thought. Sweet Jesus. “I have to go,” he said.

He was unwashed, unshaven, in his street clothes, and he had to make do with the truly atrocious coffee that Molly made for the station. These were all bad omens. And somehow he had to make room in his mind for Phoebe’s confession of the night before. Greg had not drugged Tess. Phoebe had given her a black market pill. Addison and Tess had been having an affair. So now he knew where the opiates in Tess’s blood had come from, and the phone calls to and from Addison could be explained, but was the picture any clearer?

Dickson was standing at the threshold of the Chief’s office.

“She’s in there?” the Chief said.

Dickson nodded once. “Wants to talk to you and you only.”

“It’s okay.” The Chief opened the door to his office, and Dickson reluctantly returned to work.

She was wearing a gray T-shirt and running shorts. She wore no makeup, and her blond hair was in a ponytail. She was staring into her lap. The Chief set his coffee down and collapsed in his chair. He felt like crap.

“What can I do for you, Miss Peck?”

She raised her face. It was red and splotchy from crying. The Chief tried not to react. He couldn’t do this. Did the girl understand? He was not a therapist. He could not just sit here and “listen” while she talked about Greg.

“Miss Peck—”

“I was with him the night before he died,” she said.

The Chief did not move. Jeffrey had told him this, but was there more?

“What happened?” the Chief asked. “You say you were ‘with him,’ but what does that mean? What happened between the two of you?”

“It’s not what we did or didn’t do that’s important,” April said.

And the Chief thought,
The girl is so misguided.

“It’s what he
said
. It’s what he
told
me.”

The Chief allowed himself to breathe; then he took a sip of the mouth-puckering coffee. “Okay,” he said. “What did Greg tell you?”

“He told me he loved his wife. He told me he would never in a million years leave her or his kids. He made me repeat it.
You love your wife.
He said he did not love me. He said he couldn’t be my friend anymore.” She sniffled. “He said he loved his wife.”

The Chief nodded. “Anything else?”

“He said he’d written her a song, for their anniversary. It had a really strange name.”

“What was it?” the Chief asked. His voice was husky.

“Beyond Beyond.”

“Beyond Beyond?”

“Yeah, as in beyond… beyond.”

The Chief wrote the word twice on his desk blotter. “Okay,” he said. “Is there anything else?”

“No,” she said, and stood up. “Does that help?”

“Yes,” he said. “It helps.”

When she got to the door, the Chief said, “Miss Peck? What made you decide to come in?”

April chewed her lower lip. She said, “My mother died yesterday afternoon. At the hospital.”

He was momentarily speechless. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”

April said, “I have to straighten out my act if I’m ever going to amount to anything.”

And with that, she left.

I
n a matter of hours, the world was different. He had confessed to Andrea about his affair, he had made love to his wife for the first time in months. And yet life beckoned. Phoebe rose early to get back out to the savannah to help clean up, and Addison went into the office.

It was very early, but Florabel was there, at her desk, drinking the devil’s coffee—black, strong, steaming hot.

“How was the party?” she asked.

The party? It took Addison a minute to figure out what party Florabel was talking about. “It was great!” he said. “The food was delicious!”

“You met my clients? Hank and Legris?”

Addison scratched his nose. Did those names ring a bell? Addison was a professional bullshitter; he was very good at feeling his way through the dark until someone turned on the lights.

“Hank,” he said.

“And his girlfriend, Legris. They’re friends of Phoebe’s? They have that huge sailboat?”

“Oh, right, right, right,” Addison said. The guy with the sailboat, Hank. Friend of Swede and Jennifer’s. Addison had actually been on that boat twice, ten or so years earlier. There had been no Legris then that Addison knew of. Back then, Hank had been newly divorced and had a quartet of young women hanging off him. “Which clients?” he asked.

Florabel gave him a look. “I only have two clients, Dealer. Hank and Legris are buying the Quaise cottage.”

Addison smiled and nodded to mask his sinking heart. Hank the sailboat guy was buying the Quaise cottage. Hank and Legris, friends of Phoebe’s?

“I’m a little confused,” Addison admitted.

“Phoebe is friends with my clients, Hank and Legris, who are buying the Quaise cottage. Phoebe was the one who told them about the cottage in the first place, actually.”

“She was?” Addison’s whole face was itching now. This was not right. Phoebe didn’t know anything about any of his listings, much less his most confidential listing, which was the Quaise cottage.

“Yeah! The reason they bought such a small place is because they have that enormous boat.”

Well, that made sense. But not the other part.

“Phoebe wasn’t the one who told them about the Quaise cottage,” Addison said.

“Yes, she was.”

“She didn’t know about it. She doesn’t know a thing about any of the properties.”

“Well, she knew about the Quaise cottage. I told her about it. She came in here looking for you one day this past spring and I told her you were probably out at the cottage. Remember how much time you spent over the winter fixing it up?”

Fixing it up
. Addison scanned his desk for something to grab. Was Florabel making this up to torture him? He was afraid to look at her. He stared at the phone, willing it to ring so that Florabel would answer it and he would have a chance to breathe.

“Phoebe’s never seen the cottage,” he said.

“Sure she has,” Florabel said. “I told her exactly where it was and she went up there. And later she called to thank me. She said she found you, no problem.”

“Found me?” he said.

Florabel nodded, her lips a smug line.

“When was this?”

“This past spring. March, April.”

Addison narrowed his eyes at Florabel. She was such an unpleasant bitch. Was she trying to blackmail him? Was she thinking he would increase her commission, or give her a chunk of cash from the company’s operating budget?”

“What are you after, Florabel?” he asked.

“I’m not after anything, Dealer. I wanted to know if you met Hank and Legris. If Phoebe introduced you. If you made a connection with them, our clients, the buyers of the Quaise cottage.”

“I did not speak to them at the party,” Addison said. “Phoebe did not introduce us.”

“What is wrong with you?” Florabel said. “I was only
asking!
”

He immediately wanted a drink. What time did they start serving at the Begonia? Could he go over there and get one? He decided he could not. If he got all muddled and messy right now, he would not be able to sort through this and make everything come out okay. Florabel was wrong. Phoebe did not know about the Quaise cottage. The phone rang and Florabel answered it. This gave Addison a chance to think, slowly and calmly, about what Florabel had said. Florabel said the buyers of the Quaise cottage, Hank (last name?) and his girlfriend Legris (What kind of name was this? It sounded like a name from the bayou), were friends of Phoebe’s. This was true. Although who knew what kind of friends they were. Phoebe had known Hank a long time ago, back when she was actively chairing events and attending events that other people chaired, back when she was hanging out with Jennifer and Swede. Phoebe had reconnected with Jennifer and Swede this summer at Caroline Nieve Masters’s Fourth of July party, and she had, to Addison’s knowledge, been out on Hank’s sailboat twice since then. Okay, let’s say that made them friends. Did Phoebe mention the Quaise cottage to Hank and Legris? No, because Phoebe did not know about the Quaise cottage. Here Addison took a moment to reflect. He did not like the way Florabel called him Dealer to his face. He knew this was his nickname around town, but to call him Dealer to his face was blatantly disrespectful. Addison had never asked Florabel to stop, because he knew she wouldn’t. She was that disobedient, that awful. Why had he not fired her years ago? Whywhywhy? Well, she was one hell of an administrator, more organized than Martha Stewart; she kept the office in order, she overlooked no detail, and… she was honest. She would not cheat him and she would not lie.

And since Florabel did not lie, then what she said was true: Phoebe had showed up at the office one random afternoon in the spring, looking for Addison. Addison was at the Quaise cottage, “fixing it up.” Florabel, because she did not lie, told Phoebe that Addison was at the Quaise cottage. She gave Phoebe directions; she may even have drawn a map to the cottage on a piece of Wheeler Realty notepaper. Phoebe drove out to the Quaise cottage. Then, this summer, she mentioned the cottage to Hank and Legris when they said they were in the market for “a little place.”

All this was fine. But Addison still had questions.

One: Did Florabel know Addison had been meeting someone out at the Quaise cottage? (Another reason that Addison had never fired Florabel was that she was the smartest person Addison knew. She was clinically smart; she belonged to Mensa.) So yes, safe to say she knew exactly what was going on. She sent Phoebe out to the Quaise cottage on purpose, she probably
insisted
that Phoebe journey out to Quaise to find Addison, because… that was the kind of evil bitch that Florabel was.

The bigger, more crucial question was… when Phoebe drove out to the Quaise cottage, what did she find?

Should he call Phoebe?

What was the point? Phoebe knew.

Florabel was trying to get his attention. “Dealer!” she said. She was in front of her desk, snapping her fingers in his face. “God, what is
wrong
with you today? Your wife is on the phone.”

Phoebe? Now Addison was scared. “Take a message,” he told Florabel. “I’m busy.”

“Busy?” Florabel said. “Jesus, Dealer, if you were my employee, I’d fire you.” She got back on the phone and hung up seconds later. “She wants help out on the savannah. She said there are hundreds of cocktail napkins scattered across the grass.”

“Okay,” Addison said absently.

Phoebe knew about Tess. She found out at some point in the spring when she went looking for Addison, but she found Florabel instead, and Florabel directed Phoebe to the Quaise cottage. Phoebe saw Addison’s car and Tess’s car. She either figured it out from just that, or she peeked in the window (which was too awful to imagine, so scratch that part). She didn’t tell anyone. She didn’t tell Delilah, she didn’t confront Tess or Addison. She had spent the spring under a blanket of heavy medication; possibly the reality hadn’t registered.

Or she didn’t care.

Or she saw things for what they were. She, Phoebe, had become a pharmaceutical wasteland. She had been incapable of any real emotional connection with Addison for eight years. After Reed died on 9/11, she had disappeared. And for those eight years Addison had stood by her. He supported her and worried about her; he flushed pills and went with her to see Dr. Field. He kept her comfortable; he relieved her of all responsibility. He paid the house cleaners double, he learned to like takeout food, he took her on vacations where they stayed at the finest hotels, he kept their social life alive, he made excuses for her when she passed out in her soup or when she blanked out in the middle of a conversation. He kept her safe; he carried her up mountains and across rivers. He gave a hundred thousand dollars to Reed’s scholarship fund and put another hundred thousand into trust for Domino. He went to hours and hours of grief counseling, where Phoebe either cried uncontrollably or sat in a stupor. He gave up all dreams of having a baby. The miscarriage, which also occurred on 9/11, was an accident, caused by extreme stress. Phoebe could get pregnant again, with ease. But no, she wouldn’t, she didn’t want to. She wouldn’t let Addison touch her.

And he had lived with that, for years and years.

And then Tess came to him, or he went to Tess, it was a mutual discovery, they were in love.