Heartbroken (10 page)

“He doesn’t like the island, never has,” said Joe.

“It’s not for everyone.”

She’d said that many times about a lot of different people. Not everyone had the constitution for this place, this lifestyle. It took some real grit to get by on Heart Island. Birdie had the fortitude for it, naturally. It was in her blood.

As if reading her mind, Joe said, “I think I’ll go back to the city for a few days.”

She drained her cup and put it in the sink. “Fine.”

There was no point in arguing. She could say that Kate and her family were coming, that she needed his help with the cleaning, the shopping. Didn’t he want to see his princess and her perfect progeny? It didn’t seem to bother anyone but Birdie that each child had a different father. One of whom was a scandalous drunk, an adulterer, and a lousy writer. And Sean? What to say about him? He was not the type of man she’d have expected Kate to end up with. Once, Kate (Katherine Elizabeth Burke, a beautiful name, a regal one) might have had
anyone
, could have been
anything
. She’d had every privilege, a first-rate education. She’d thrown it away.

If Birdie made a fuss, Joe would stay out of obligation. But then there’d be some kind of fight, and he’d leave in anger. Joe Burke always got his way. You either gave it to him or he took it.

“I’ll be back midweek to see Katie and the kids.”

“And Sean.”

“Well, yes, of course.” There was that famous Joe Burke squint. “Him, too.”

She thought about telling her husband what she had seen—a figure, a man on their island. But now she wasn’t sure of it herself. What
had
she seen? Was there really someone there? Or was it some tricky combination of deteriorating eyesight and the wind? It would be silly to tell him, a play to any latent desire he might have to protect her. He might even mock her. He’d always thought she was an alarmist, too quickly frightened or overwrought. She didn’t bother.

“I’ll shower and bring you to the marina,” she said. “I’ll do the shopping for the rest of the week while I’m there.”
See
, she thought.
I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone
.

“No rush,” he said. He was staring at the new iPhone again, checking his e-mail. He was so proud of that thing, showing off photos of the kids, the amusing
apps
he had bought. She hated it for no reason she could name, often imagined the look of horror on his face if she were to snatch it from him and throw it out the window of their apartment, or a moving car, or into the drink. He didn’t look up as she walked off to the bedroom. If he had, he might have seen that she was fighting back tears.

chapter seven

E
mily was getting that feeling. It was a kind of swelling anxiety, a low-grade panic that made her say stupid things, that caused objects to slip from her hands.

The yield from the prescriptions she had lifted was low. The bottle of Adderall, a cocktail of amphetamines prescribed for ADD, and the bottle of Ativan, an anti-anxiety med, brought fifty dollars each, about five dollars a pill. The rest of the bottles contained only old antibiotics, which were worthless. What they really needed was OxyContin at twenty dollars or more a pill. In a perfect world, they would have hit the jackpot with the morphine ampoules prescribed to cancer patients. In the burbs, people would pay fifty or more for one of those. She’d seen the morphine only once. It was very rare.

She’d waited in the car while Dean and Brad took the meds up to the small split-level ranch where Dean’s dealer lived. It looked like any of the other houses on the block, in a working-class neighborhood just like hers.

There were some untended shrubs along the walk, a welcome mat at the door, and a sticker in a window so the fire department knew where the kids were. There was a frog-shaped sandbox on the lawn, a tricycle tipped over in the driveway. If she didn’t know who lived there, she wouldn’t have guessed. There was a minivan in the driveway, two car seats in the back. But she noticed, on the street, a black slick of various oil and fluid stains from a parade of old beater
cars. People parking to pick up or drop off drugs had left an indelible stain on the road.

Dean had forgotten to leave the car running, and she hadn’t wanted to call after him to bring back the keys, so she could at least listen to the radio. She didn’t want Brad to have an excuse to turn around. Every time her eyes fell on him, he was looking at her with an ugly grin.

It seemed like they were in there forever. She must have drifted off, because the sound of the closing door startled her. She saw them walking down the drive. She could tell by the look on Dean’s face, the way his shoulders were hiked up and stiff, that he was not happy. Things had not gone well. None of them had said a word on the way home.

Now they were back at her place. Brad was sitting on her couch, feet up on her coffee table, a beer between his legs. He was watching one of those home-improvement shows, and he seemed very involved in it. Or maybe he was just high. She’d seen him pop one of the pills in his mouth when Dean wasn’t looking. Who knew what else he’d taken. He had those bad teeth that meth heads had, yellowed, decaying. Meth mouth, they called it.

“Look, Em,” Dean said. He had his hands on her shoulders, his voice a whisper. They were standing in the kitchen. He’d ordered a pizza and a liter bottle of Pepsi because Brad had said he was hungry. Why was Dean spending money when he seemed to need it so desperately? “The only way we’re going to get rid of this guy is to give him some cash.”

“How much did you get from the meds?” she asked.

“Two hundred.” He’d had more medication to sell than the pills she’d lifted. She guessed he’d gotten them from the earlier open house, the one she’d refused to attend in order to go to work at the Blue Hen. “I gave him everything.”

“Okay,” she said. “You’re going to have to tell me how much you owe him.”

Dean looked up at the ceiling and then back at Emily, did this little shuffle from foot to foot that he did when he was stressed. “Two thousand.”

She blew out a breath. “I don’t have that. You know I don’t.”

“Who does?”

That was when it started, the feeling—as if she were standing on shore, watching a tidal wave wash in. As the crushing wall of water pushed toward her, she was not fast enough to run, not strong enough to hold it back.

“No one,” she said.

He rolled his eyes at her. “Come on.”

Did he mean her mother?

“She’ll never give that to us,” she said. “She won’t even help me with my rent since you moved in. We’re not even
speaking
right now.”

“I’m not talking about your mother.” He had these icy blue eyes, a powerful gaze that went right through her. When she met him, she thought he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. She also thought he was the sweetest, the most romantic. He was that still, somewhere inside. Wasn’t he?

“Then who?” she said.

He ran his hand through her hair, then pushed back a strand that had fallen in front of her eyes. He’d be tender for a few minutes.

“They make that in a day at the Blue Hen,” he said. “You said so yourself.”

Oh, God
, she thought.
Why
had she told him that?

“No,” she said. “No, I can’t ask her for that kind of money. Be serious.”

“I wasn’t talking about
asking
.”

She’d done things at his behest before. Things she hadn’t wanted to do and violently regretted. She’d hurt people who trusted her, let others down in ways big and small. Since she’d met him a year and a half ago, she’d lost three jobs, dropped out of school, fallen out
with her mother. All because she couldn’t seem to say no to him. Why couldn’t she? She wasn’t afraid to be alone; in fact, she often preferred it. Was it love? Was this what love did to you? Did it cause you to betray yourself? She didn’t think it should.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dean.”

She tried to move away from him, but he tightened his grip on her hair.

“Listen.” It was more like a hiss through his teeth than a whisper. “You know what Brad served time for? After the armed robbery?”

She didn’t answer; she wasn’t expected to answer.

“Manslaughter,” he said. “He beat someone so bad in a fight over money that the guy died three days later.”

Emily could imagine Brad doing that.

“Emily, I’m scared,” said Dean. “Doesn’t he scare you? The way he’s looking at you? Let’s just give him what he wants so he’ll go.”

Emily didn’t say anything. The words were all bottled up in her chest.

“She goes to the bank tonight after closing, right?” How did he know that? Emily hadn’t told him that, had she? “They close at nine; it takes her an hour to finish up.”

She looked at the clock on the microwave. It was just after eight. She didn’t say anything; she couldn’t.

“She’ll have the whole week’s worth of cash. It’s one of those bank envelopes. The husband goes home; he doesn’t stay with her.”

Then she knew he’d been casing the Blue Hen, which she couldn’t believe. Because he knew how much she liked it there, how much she liked Carol. And she wondered but couldn’t bring herself to ask whether Dean owed Brad money after all. How long had he been thinking about this? Was Brad’s showing up an opportunity for him to do something awful? Maybe he’d been planning already.

Her mind started racing, and through the hum of her anxiety, she examined her options. She could pretend she needed something
from the car and then go to her mother’s. Her mother would take her in; she’d call the police. Or maybe Emily could warn Carol. If she got the car away from them, they couldn’t do much damage. But what would Brad do to Dean?

No, she couldn’t face her mother. She couldn’t admit it about Dean, about the kind of life she was living. She’d told her mother that Dean was on a job interview today. She’d been lying about him for months. Leaving messages about his job interviews, how she thought he might propose, how he’d brought her flowers. She had something else to tell her mother, too, but she was saving that for when all the lies she’d told about Dean turned out to be true.

“Don’t hold your breath, sweetie,” her mother had said during their big falling-out. “A guy like that will never do what you hope he’ll do. And you’ll keep on hoping until he drains you of that, too.”

“You don’t know him.”

“Don’t I?” she’d said. She’d given Emily a sad look of warning. That was when Emily had started screaming. She could still feel that shaky rage exploding from her.

Now Emily folded her arms across her belly. “Don’t do this, Dean,” she said. She hated herself for crying. But she couldn’t stop the tears. “Please.”

He bared his teeth at her. “I don’t have any choice. And neither do you—unless you want him to kill me because I can’t pay him back.”

She felt the dry suck of fear in her throat. “I have eight hundred dollars in my checking account,” she said. In her panic, her voice came out too loud. She lowered it. “That’s it. It was for the rent, but you can have it.”

Dean rubbed his eyes hard, something he did when he was stressed, getting himself worked up. “It’s not
enough
.”

“You said you gave him two hundred. That’s a thousand.”

“Half is not going to cut it.”

She knew in her heart that he’d already decided; he’d worked out
some deal with Brad. Dean was going to get a cut of the haul. Emily could see it all on his face. Still, she had to try.

“He can have my car,” she said. “Between that and the cash, it’s more than you owe him. It’s fair.”

Dean shook his head and backed away from her. “You’re not
getting
it.”

“I don’t want your car,” said Brad.

He was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Emily looked into his eyes. They were blank, unreadable. That was the worst kind of person, the scariest—the one who’d learned to keep his feelings out of his eyes. Or who didn’t feel anything at all. Emily had known people like that; they were the destroyers. They took things—everything you worked for, all your silly dreams—and smashed them beneath their boots for no reason at all.

“I’ll get cash in the morning. You can take the car and the money and go,” she said. “It’s easy.”

He gave her a smile, a laugh that sounded like a cough. “No. She’ll have ten grand in that envelope.”

“You’re wrong,” Emily said. She couldn’t keep her voice from wobbling, but she wiped away her tears. “Not that much. Dean’s exaggerating.”

“Bullshit,” said Dean. He tapped her hard on the arm, but she backed away from him.

Brad looked to Dean, then back at Emily, and apparently decided that she was a better source of information. “How much, then?” he said.

“I have no idea,” she said. She offered an easy shrug. “People don’t use cash that much anymore. It’s all plastic these days. A couple hundred at most.”

“She’s lying,” said Dean. He had that frantic little-boy tone he got when he was losing his temper. “She’s
lying
. I’ve seen that envelope. It’s
this
thick.” He made a big U out of his thumb and forefinger, thrust it at Emily.

Brad rolled his head from side to side, and Emily heard a loud cracking in his neck. He glanced at the clock. It was eight-forty. “Let’s go,” he said.

Emily looked over at Dean, who was looking at the floor again. Once upon a time, she felt so safe with him, like nothing would ever go wrong in her life again. Those first few months when he was working hard, and she was, too, as well as going to school, it felt perfect. And she didn’t even know he had a problem with pills. She would lie in bed with him, nestled in the crook of his arm, and she practically wanted to weep with relief that all men weren’t monsters, like her mother had warned, and that her life was not a mess at all.

“I love you, Em,” he’d whisper. “I’m going to take such good care of you.”

She should have known better. She really should have known.

chapter eight

T
he girls were suspiciously quiet in Chelsea’s room, and Brendan was lounging on the couch, watching television. When he was younger, Brendan would spend the whole evening torturing Chelsea and Lulu, trying to hang out with them, begging them to play games they refused to play, telling on them when they broke the rules. At some point, he’d given up and taken to ignoring them, though Kate had noticed him surreptitiously staring at Lulu all through dinner. He was playing it cool. But the girls didn’t notice that, either. There were too many years between them; Brendan at ten barely ranked as a human being in the eyes of a sixteen-year-old, though Brendan and Chelsea were close enough when left to their own devices. Chelsea was very tender with him when her friends weren’t around; Brendan looked at her with something akin to worship. They were good company for each other on the island. It was something they had in common, their love for that place, their endless desire to explore it.