The Castaways (45 page)

Maybe Phoebe understood this. Maybe—God, was it possible?—she approved.

Addison remembered back to when he met Phoebe. She was lying on a towel in Bryant Park. She had been wearing a short, flowered sundress, eating salad out of a plastic container. Addison felt like he had found a diamond bracelet lying in the grass. He remembered his astonishment. You mean something this beautiful doesn’t belong to anyone?

He’d snapped her up. All these years later, he’d held on.

Oh, Phoebe
.

He unlocked his top desk drawer, where he had stashed Tess’s iPhone. It was time to stop hiding things; he would give the phone to the Chief. And there, in his top drawer, was an envelope with his name on it. In Tess’s handwriting. Holy hell! Tess’s handwriting? It sure looked like it. Addison looked around. Florabel was on the phone again, whispering with one of her girlfriends.

Addison opened the envelope, and there was a note inside. It said:
I am going back to Greg and my kids. I will explain my reasons when I get home. Please know you will always have a piece of my heart. Tess.

He folded the note back up, slid it into the envelope, and put it in the drawer.

He sat in a bubble for… well, he wasn’t sure how long.

Florabel was snapping at him again. “Dealer! What about helping Phoebe pick up the cocktail napkins? Are you going?”

He looked at Florabel, who was the only person with a key to his desk drawer. He opened the drawer and pulled out the envelope. “Did you put this here?”

She sighed in a way that seemed almost sympathetic. “I did.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I found it weeks ago,” Florabel said. Now her voice contained an uncharacteristic element: guilt. “I found it in the Quaise cottage, back when you first gave me the listing. And then, swear to God, Addison, I
completely
forgot about it. I just found it again last night when I was cleaning my desk. Is it important?”

Addison shrugged. The phone rang, and Florabel seemed eager to answer it. Well, either she was lying, which she never did, or she was telling the truth and had “forgotten” it, which she would never do, and had “found” it when she was “cleaning her desk,” which she never did because her desk was always immaculate. Florabel had been holding on to the letter until she sensed Addison could handle it. She must have guessed who it was from and what it said. Possibly she’d even opened it and sealed it back up without a sign of tampering. Possibly Florabel had been not only a cheerleader but a
CIA
operative.

I’m afraid you won’t get it.
The note. She had left it there for him to find on Sunday, when he normally went to the Quaise cottage to change the sheets and straighten up. But he hadn’t gone on that Sunday because the $9.2 million Polpis Harbor deal had come through, and then the next day Tess died. So Florabel had found the note instead.

Was it important?
Please know you will always have a piece of my heart
. He pulled out the three pieces of frayed red felt and laid them on his desk blotter. Which piece?

He gathered the pieces up, stuffed them deep in his pocket, and headed out to the savannah to help his wife.

A
s he stood on the wharf waiting for the ferry to dock, he could have had any number of thoughts, but for whatever reason, he found himself remembering the afternoon he had been shot.

It had been seventeen years earlier, in the frantic but emotionally dry period of his life after Andrea left him but before he met Delilah. He was a one-man show at the farm at that point; he did everything himself.

In the late fall he was turning over the land where he had harvested pumpkins. The furrows were scattered with busted-open pumpkins like split skulls, spilling out seeds and pulp. The pumpkin patch was in the southwestern corner of the farm, bordering the thick pines along Hummock Pond Road. Jeffrey was on the plow, watching as the pumpkin remains were turned over, back into the soil to nurture it. He heard a noise and thought the plow had encountered a rock—and the next thing he knew, he was falling off the plow into the dirt. He groaned. There was an incredible searing pain in his side; he felt as though his shirt had caught fire. What the hell? He felt like his mind was being sucked through a tunnel at warp speed. He touched his side where the pain was and lifted his hand. Blood. His shirt was soaked with it. What the hell? He had no idea. He blacked out.

A passerby called 911 and Jeffrey woke up to a couple of female EMTs lifting him onto a stretcher and sliding him, like a loaf of bread into an oven, into the back of an ambulance.

“You’ve been shot,” one of the EMTs said. She had cut away his flannel work shirt and was inspecting his wound. “Someone was after a deer.”

He tried to lift his head but found he could not.

He stayed at the hospital for three days. Three days that he couldn’t afford to lose, but what could he do? He’d been shot, as surely as if he’d served in the Gulf War or been caught in the crossfire in Morningside Heights.

The day after he’d been shot, a policeman walked into his hospital room. This seemed unremarkable at first; someone had mentioned that the police wanted to talk to him. What ended up being remarkable was that the policeman was Edward Kapenash, the new chief. They were short-staffed at the station, so the Chief was handling this himself.

“Besides,” the Chief said to Jeffrey, “it’s not every day that someone on Nantucket gets shot.”

Jeffrey took an instant dislike to the guy, not only because of that comment but because he realized that this guy, Ed Kapenash, was Andrea’s boyfriend.

Jeffrey said, “You’re Andrea’s boyfriend?”

“Fiance,” he said. “I asked her to marry me two weeks ago.” He took a small notebook out of his breast pocket, eager to get down to business. “Do you know Andrea?”

“I’m Jeffrey Drake,” Jeffrey said, though he would have figured the Chief already knew his name.

The Chief lowered his notebook and said in a tone of voice that could only be described as warily interested, “Oh, I see.”

The two men took stock of each other in the deadly silent moment that followed. Jeffrey lamented how unfair it was that he was lying prostrate in bed with a gunshot wound while the Chief stood by the bed in his starched uniform with his gleaming badge.

“Well, anyway, congratulations. Andrea is a wonderful girl.”

“Yes,” the Chief said. “She sure is.”

Another moment of silence followed, during which Jeffrey thought,
You’d better take good care of her.

The Chief said, “So! Tell me what happened.”

The ferry sluiced through the green water of Nantucket Harbor. It was a beautiful, bright, still afternoon and Jeffrey had to squint, but he picked out Delilah and the kids on the foredeck. His heart settled. Thank God.

When Delilah had called from her cell phone at eight-thirty that morning, Jeffrey had barely been able to contain his rage. “Where
are
you?” he said.

“Cobleskill, New York.”

He ground his back molars together to keep from shouting. He said, “What are you doing in Cobleskill, New York?”

She said, “We took a little detour. But don’t worry, we’re coming home.”

This does not mean I don’t love you, I do, that’s forever.

He said, “When?”

She said, “We’ll be on the three o’clock ferry.”

“The ferry?” he said. “Why don’t you just fly home?”

She proceeded to tell him about the time she ran away in high school. It was a story he’d heard numerous times before—she realized this, right?—and he was about to interrupt her when she said, “The one thing I think about, even now, is how I wished back then that someone were standing on the dock waiting for me.”

Delilah and the kids waved from the bow of the boat. Jeffrey waved back. Delilah always said that people were predictable, that they could be counted on to act exactly like themselves. She wanted someone standing on the dock waiting for her.

And here he was.

H
e waited a few weeks to let the dust settle, and then he called a meeting.

Everyone agreed: they had things to talk through. Strange, difficult, secret things.

Where to meet? The Chief wanted them all to meet in the conference room at the station, but Andrea said, “Good God, Ed, no.”

Addison suggested the opposite end of the spectrum—the Begonia—but that was shot down immediately.

Delilah offered to have everyone over to her house after the kids were asleep. They agreed on ten o’clock. Delilah lit candles and set out hummus and olives and Marcona almonds and fresh figs and soft cheese. All of them sat around the table as they would have to play Scrabble. The house was silent except for the sound of their breathing.

The Chief said, “Okay, then.”

And it all came out, like stuffing from a pillow.

Addison in love with Tess.
Are you going to tell him? Are you going to tell him you love me?

Greg’s continuing relationship with April Peck.
I was with him the night before he died.

Delilah seeing Greg parked at Cisco Beach with April Peck but not telling Tess.

Phoebe giving Tess a black market opiate.

Andrea and Jeffrey meeting in the farm attic.

Tess leaving a letter for Addison.
I’m going back to Greg and the kids.

The Chief meeting with April Peck.
He said he loved his wife. He wrote her a song.

“Beyond Beyond.” The song’s title was taken from a poem, apparently.

And then, seemingly apropos of nothing, Andrea said, “And I didn’t become a nun.”

The Chief covered her hand with his own. “Thank God,” he said.

“We all blame ourselves,” the Chief said. Even he, the chief of police, held himself accountable; he could have confronted the Greg and April Peck situation back in February but had chosen to turn a blind eye. “If you look at what we know, it went like this. Greg was going back to Tess, Tess was going back to Greg. Greg had written her a song, Tess had agreed to a sail. They drank champagne, they ate their picnic lunch, and Tess took the pill—because it was windy on the water that afternoon, the seas were rough, and she was scared. The Coast Guard report, corroborated by evidence from the medical examiner, is calling this an accident. Tess and Greg were drinking, Tess was loopy from the pill, Greg was not a good enough sailor to be out on the water under those conditions, the boat capsized, and they drowned. From the injuries sustained, it looks like they were trying to save each other.”

The candlelight flickered. Delilah placed her index fingers along the sides of her nose. “They were trying to save each other,” she said.

“They were trying to save each other,” Addison said.

“It was an accident,” the Chief said. “It was nobody’s fault.”

“It was
nobody’s
fault,” Andrea said.

“Forgiveness is a powerful thing,” the Chief said. “I forgive myself, and I forgive each of you. I forgive Tess and Greg. But we have a job ahead of us. We have two kids to raise. Chloe and Finn are going to live with Andrea and me, but it’s going to take all of us to help turn them into healthy, productive adults. It’s going to take all of us to love them the way their parents would have. Okay?”

“Okay,” the table echoed.

Jeffrey said, “I think we should have a moment of silence.”

“Agreed,” the Chief said. And for a long time they were quiet. Andrea and Phoebe had their heads bowed; Delilah stared out the dark window. Addison took off his glasses and pressed his eyes.

Then Jeffrey cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said.

The Chief nodded, and reached for a chip. Delilah turned on music: Stevie Wonder singing “I Believe.” Andrea said, “Can I please have a glass of chardonnay?”

And then Phoebe stood up. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Wait a
minute!
”

They all stopped.

Phoebe said, “Addison and I have something to tell you.”

S
he paid the money, she okayed the landscape architect and the signage, she monitored the progress, tramping out to the savannah even on brutally cold winter days, and she picked the day of the ribbon-cutting. June 20: the one-year anniversary of Greg and Tess’s death, the anniversary of their anniversary.

Chloe and Finn were going to cut the ribbon, and all of them—the Chief, Andrea, Kacy and Eric, Jeffrey, Delilah, Drew and Barney, Addison, Phoebe, and their baby, Reed Gregory Wheeler, age four weeks, two days, confined to a Baby Bjorn—were going to walk the trail for a ceremonial first time.

It happened exactly as Phoebe had imagined it. Chloe and Finn cut a yellow satin ribbon at the head of the trail (which meant that Chloe cut and Finn stretched out his hand to make it look like he was cutting), and the forty-seven Nantucket citizens present clapped politely (and yes, some cried).

Phoebe stood with baby Reed asleep against her chest and watched as Andrea, the Chief, Addison, Jeffrey, and Delilah read the sign.

The Gregory MacAvoy and

Tess DiRosa MacAvoy Memorial Trail

Donated with love by the Castaways

The Chief turned and smiled. Drew and Barney and Finn raced ahead on the trail, yelping like Indians. Chloe asked if she could pick wildflowers, and Phoebe said, “This is conservation land. Do you know what that means?”

Chloe said, “Does it mean no flowers?”

“Well, maybe just one,” Phoebe said. “Since it is your mom and dad’s trail.”

Chloe smiled and bounded ahead to catch the boys.

Just as Phoebe had imagined it, it was a beautiful day.

Y
ou didn’t expect her to let Phoebe have the last word, did you?

There was one last story to tell. And really, it wasn’t the
last
story, at least not chronologically. But it might have been the most important story, in some elusive way.

In one of the middle years, they took a trip to Sayulita, Mexico. Sayulita was on the west coast, north of Puerto Vallarta. It was unspoiled paradise—sugar-sand beaches, great rolling waves, lush green cliffs towering above. The town was a cross between Spanish colonial architecture and a funky expat enclave. There were coffeeshops and taco stands and chickens in the street. They had rented a four-bedroom house built into the side of one of the lush green cliffs. There was a stone path that led from town to their house; it was a steep walk that left them all winded, but then astounded by the view from their upper deck. The house was a study in simplicity; it had arched doorways and outdoor showers and was kept cool by lazy ceiling fans and thick walls of stucco. There was a brick patio and an oval saltwater pool. There was a hibiscus bush in the yard, which delighted Tess no end; she had a peachy-pink blossom tucked in her hair all week, and as a joke, the rest of them walked around with hibiscus blossoms protruding from one of their nostrils or their cleavage or their fly.