Winter in Paradise (Paradise #1)(13)

“Hey, babe,” he says. “I’m in here.”

He hears Anna in the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge, opening the cabinets. He hears a cork being pulled from wine. A few seconds later, Anna comes into the den. She lets her hair free of her elastic, takes a sip of wine, and regards him with an expression he can’t read. Interest? Curiosity? What does she see when she looks at him? he wonders. Well, he’s slouched on the sofa with an open beer and half a bowl of melted ice cream on the table next to him, so she can hardly view him as a sexy world conqueror.

He sits up straight, moves over, pats the sofa next to him. He is soft with forgiveness. It’s as easy for him to fall into his chubby-hubby stoner-dad role as it is for Anna to default to her super-busy achieving spouse. He’s guilty of smoking a joint and falling asleep on the sofa most nights. He’s as much to blame for their disconnect as she is.

She reaches for the remote and shuts off the TV. In the six years of their marriage, eight years together, Baker has never known Anna to watch a single minute of television.

“How was work?” Baker asks.

“I’m leaving you,” Anna says.

“What?”

“I’m in love with someone else,” Anna says. “And it’s beyond my control so I’m not going to bother apologizing for it.”

“Oh,” Baker says. “Okay.” He looks at his wife. With her hair down and loose, she is at her most beautiful, which he feels is unfair, given the circumstances. But then, too, Baker experiences a strange sense of inevitability. He knew this was coming, didn’t he? Earlier today, when he had thought about divorce, when he had all but decided on it, in fact, it was because he knew this was coming. Anna doesn’t love him. She loves someone else. But who? Who is it?

“Who?” Baker says. “Who is it?”

“Louisa,” Anna says. “I’m in love with Louisa.”

She’s in love with Louisa.

Anna doesn’t bother giving him time to process, to react, to emote. No. She takes her wine and leaves the room.

Baker sinks back into the Baker-shaped and -sized divot on the couch. His phone rings. It’s his mother.

His mother? No. He can’t possibly speak to his mother right now. Briefly, he wonders if Anna called his parents to inform them she was leaving him, then decides the answer is no. Anna and his mother don’t have a relationship. And Russ once naively referred to Anna as a “smart cookie,” and Anna hasn’t spoken to him since.

The house phone rings and Baker wonders who on earth would be calling the house phone at ten o’clock on New Year’s night. The ringing stops. Anna calls down the hall. “Bake? It’s your mom.”

This is not happening, Baker thinks. Now he has to get on the phone and make at least sixty seconds of pleasant conversation without letting his mother know that his life is dissolving like an aspirin in acid. His wife is in love with her esteemed colleague, Louisa!

“Hey, Mom,” Baker says, picking up the phone in the kitchen. He hears Anna hang up. “Happy New Year.”

“Baker,” Irene says. She’s crying. So obviously Anna did tell her.

“Mom, listen…” Baker scrambles for a way to talk Irene off the ledge. She was born and raised in Iowa. She’s the editor of Heartland Home & Style. Do they even have lesbians in the heartland? Baker doesn’t mean to be a wise guy—he obviously knows the answer is yes, and Irene and Russ live in Iowa City, which is pretty much the People’s Republic of Iowa, but even so, he worries this is really going to upset her. Confuse her. She’s going to ask why Anna turned into a lesbian. She’s going to ask if it’s Baker’s fault.

“Baker,” Irene says. “There was an accident. Your father is dead.”





PART TWO



Little Cinnamon





IRENE



She wrote down everything Marilyn Monroe told her. There was a helicopter crash. Russ and a local woman and the pilot left from a private helipad at seven o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, January first. There had been a thunderstorm; the helicopter was struck and it went down somewhere between Virgin Gorda and Anegada. Anegada had been the apparent destination, Marilyn said. The helicopter wreckage had been recovered, as well as the three bodies.

“Mr. Steele’s property manager traveled to the British Virgin Islands to identify the body,” Marilyn said. “And Mr. Croft has arranged for cremation.”

“Wait,” Irene said. “What?” She knew that Russ wanted to be cremated, it’s what they both want, but does this mean…? “Am I not going to see him again, then, before…?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Steele,” Marilyn said. “You’re going to have to trust Mr. Croft’s judgment on this. The body needed to be identified as soon as possible, so Mr. Croft requested that Mr. Steele’s property manager do it. Time was of the essence, and a decision had to be made.”

“I don’t understand!” Irene said. “Shouldn’t I have been the one to make the decision? I’m his wife. Who is this so-called property manager? What does that even mean? I don’t understand!”

“I know this is coming as a shock,” Marilyn said. “Beyond a shock. Again, you’ll just have to trust that Mr. Croft took the appropriate measures.”