Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(25)

Come to think of it, I wasn’t feeling so hot. “I just need to sit down,” I told her. On top of my most recent brush with death, I hadn’t had a proper meal since . . . yesterday? I couldn’t actually remember the last time I ate, which may have been the first time in thirty-four years that I was able to make that claim.

“Here,” Milagros said, guiding me to the sofa on the back porch. “Sit. I’ll be right back.”

I sank into the sofa and surveyed my surroundings. The place was sheer Caribbean kitsch: old wicker furniture topped with weathered floral cushions, candy-colored walls decorated with cheesy prints of seashells and boats and sunsets. Tom would have an aneurysm if he had to sleep here for a single night. I loved it.

Milagros returned with a frosty glass, which she pressed into my hand and instructed me to drink. Coconut water! Was anything ever so delicious?

“Now eat these,” she said when I finished, handing me a plate full of crackers spread with a thin reddish-orange paste.

“Is this guava?” I said, my mouth jammed full of food.

She nodded. “I put fresh fruit and milk in the fridge, and coffee and granola in the cupboard. When you need groceries, there’s a place about a mile from here, but there’s a better one closer to Esperanza. I can tell you about any restaurant on the island, too, so if you’re not sure, just ask me. You feeling better, mija?”

“Much better,” I assured her. “Thank you. Now, I hate to ask, but do you have a T-shirt I can borrow?”



I got in the shower as soon as Milagros left. Although the water made my incision sting and my lone toiletry was the bar of soap I snatched from the bathroom sink, I soaked myself until the shaft of sunlight shining through the roofless shower had almost disappeared. What a day. What a week. While I was profoundly grateful to still be alive, I didn’t know what to make of contradicting emotions racing through me. I was proud of myself for getting out of Chicago and excited at the prospect of my month in paradise, even if I had barely made it there.

But the more I thought about it, the more Maxine’s comment—I always wondered about Tom—gutted me. She may as well have said, “Stupid Libby, I’ve known he was gay since high school! How could you not?” It was a valid question. I’d slept next to the man almost every night for the past decade and had called him my own for nearly twice as long. I truly believed he loved me in every way that a husband should love his wife.

And I had been wrong.

No amount of improved communication or couples’ counseling was going to fix us. Tom and I were over. Absolutely, irrevocably done. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that what I’d said to Jeanette in the coffee shop was true. Tom wasn’t dead, but this felt an awful lot like death.

I got out of the shower, wrapped myself in one of the stiff towels I’d found in the closet, and walked back into the house. I was halfway across the kitchen when something skittered across the far edge of my peripheral vision.

On instinct, I ducked behind the cupboard island that divided the kitchen from the small dining space.

“You can get up,” a wary voice called. “It’s just me.”

Me? This suggested I knew my attacker. Which, if memory served, was statistically most often the case.

“Shiloh,” he said.

I groaned.

“Yeah, I sense that you’re happy to see me,” he said. “The good news is, I have your suitcase. So you can put some clothes on.”

I stood up slowly, intending to peek over the edge of the counter to see if I could run to the bedroom without being seen—then shrieked when I realized Shiloh had walked over and was peering down at me. “Whatcha doin’?” he asked.

I pulled my towel tighter around my chest. “First you try to crash our plane, now you’re trying to give me a coronary. You just let yourself in? What if I was naked?” I said indignantly, even as I mentally chided myself for failing to lock the screen porch just minutes after Milagros told me to be careful.

“I’m confused,” he said, grinning. “Is that supposed to sound like an adverse outcome?”

“Creep,” I retorted, although I wasn’t really feeling threatened by him. (Paul would say this was on account of my faulty people reader. “You’d find something to like about Charles Manson,” he groused after I mentioned I didn’t think his ex-boyfriend—who, admittedly, exhibited bunny-boiling tendencies—was as awful as Paul made him out to be.)

“Guilty as charged,” Shiloh said, borrowing the phrase I’d used on him earlier that day. “But I happen to be the creep who brought you your stuff. Otherwise you’d be sitting in your own stink for another forty-eight hours. No one else was available to bring your bag by.”

“As you so rudely discovered, I’ve showered, and now I smell perfectly fine, thank you very much.” I eyed him suspiciously. “I hope you’re not doing this because you feel sorry for me. Because you know about . . . well, you know.”

He leaned in to sniff me—the nerve of this guy! “You do smell better, and no, I didn’t bring your luggage just because of the ‘you know.’ I happen to be a fairly decent person.” He glanced around. “So what are your plans for your time on the island? Are you meeting people here? Is this Tom character making an appearance in the near future?”