What Happens in Paradise(71)

“We’re going to make it,” he said.

“Are we?” I said. I knew it was the right time for me to find a home of my own. I had plenty of money in the bank to rent a nice place, maybe even buy, but I knew that if I moved out, my heart would break and so would Huck’s. My mother was gone. We needed to stick together.

I found Ayers and Mick sitting on the beach together and I joined them and Mick’s dog, Gordon. We were such good friends that we didn’t have to speak; we could just be.

Mick whistled, snapping me out of my daydream. “Would you look at that,” he said. “Bluebeard.”

I made a sound, words trying to escape that I caught at the last second. Bluebeard? I stood up and, sure enough, there was the yacht, cruising across the horizon in front of us. Headed away from Tortola, it looked like, and toward…well, toward Caneel. Where else?

I stayed on Oppenheimer until the very end, helping to clean up until every trace of the celebration was swept away. Ayers and Mick offered to take Huck and Maia home. I wanted to stay there and hang out by myself for a while. They hugged me. They said they understood.

They did not understand. Ayers was my confidante but I hadn’t even told her the truth. I feared she would tell Mick, and Mick would tell someone who worked at the Beach Bar, and the next day, the whole island would know. Ayers thought Maia’s father, someone I called the Pirate, had come in on a yacht one weekend and then left, never to return.

Ayers hadn’t given a second thought to a yacht called Bluebeard.

By the time I got to Caneel, it was very late. I still knew people who worked there—Estella, Woodrow, and Chauncey, the night desk manager. I knew that Chauncey had grown complacent at his job. Absolutely nothing happened at Caneel between the hours of midnight and five a.m. Chauncey slept in the back on a cot.

I parked in the lot and sneaked across the property in the shadows, going past the Sugar Mill, the swimming pool, and tennis courts, across the expanse of manicured grass, to a string of palm trees that lined the beach.

Bluebeard was anchored offshore.

Honeymoon 718. I stood in front of the room trying to summon my courage. If I knocked and it wasn’t Russ’s room, whoever was in there might call security—and what would they think, seeing me there? They’d escort me off the property or they’d call the police or…Huck. Maybe someone would know me and realize I’d just lost my mother. They would chalk it up to grief.

The worst outcome would be if Russ did answer the door and he had a woman in there.

Irene.

Someone other than Irene.

I knew it was naive, but for some reason, I didn’t think Russ would take Irene or another woman to our room.

I stepped up and knocked.

Nothing. No rustle, no voices, no footsteps.

I knocked again, louder—and then I turned to look at the boat. Bluebeard. I could swim out to the boat, climb up the ladder at the back, ask for Todd Croft. I laughed. I was losing my mind.

The door to 718 opened.

It was Russ standing before me, blinking, befuddled.

“Rosie?” he said.

“Hi.”

“You’re real? I’m not dreaming?”

“My mother died,” I said. “Today was her service.”

“Oh, Rosie,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry.” His voice was thick with sleep.

I peeked behind him. The room was dark, the bed empty. “Can I come in?”

“Yes,” Russ said. His eyes filled and I could see my own emotions reflected back at me. For eight years I’d told myself that staying away was for the best, that denying what we’d shared was for the best, that sacrificing this man was for the best.

I had lived with agony, with sadness, with longing.

I had been such a fool.

I stepped inside.





Part Four





Christmas Cove





Irene




Lydia sends Irene a text asking how things are going.

Irene replies: As well as can be expected.

This is a flat-out lie.

Things are going far better than could have been expected. It’s unsettling, almost, how well Irene is adjusting to life in the islands.

To start with, she loves her job on the Mississippi. She loves being out on the water; she loves the clients; she gets a rush every single time someone gets a bite. She has mastered stringing the outrigger and using the gaff. Huck has promised to teach her how to read the GPS and drive the boat. Irene bragged about her ability to fillet a fish, though Huck isn’t ready to relinquish that duty yet. Still, Irene tried to buy a proper fillet knife on Amazon but her credit card was declined and a call to Ed Sorley confirmed that now that Russ was “officially dead,” her account at Federal Republic would be frozen until they sorted out his estate. Her account at First Iowa S & L in her own name is still active, but it has less than three thousand dollars in it. Just as Irene was about to fret, she received an e-mail from Mavis Key asking where Irene would like her final check and year-end bonus sent.

Year-end bonus? Irene thought. They never received bonuses at the magazine.

“It’s a gift from Joseph Feeney,” Mavis said. “As a thank-you for all your years of hard work. You built Heartland Home and Style from the ground up.”

Irene asked Mavis to send the check to St. John. It was twelve thousand dollars! Irene still had seventy-two hundred of the eight thousand in cash she’d brought from Iowa City, plus a check from Huck on her dresser. She decided to open an account at FirstBank next to Starfish Market—with the Lovers Lane address printed on her checks.