Troubles in Paradise

by Elin Hilderbrand

“Ladies,” Cash says. “I need a favor.”

  He tells them what the favor is and they fall all over themselves assuring him that they’ve got his back. He’s so cute, he’s so hot, they say, and all they want in return are some pictures with him for their Instagrams and a promise that he’ll hold Donna’s hand as she jumps off the Willy T. (Michelle read on Tripadvisor that jumping off the Willy T is a bucket-list item, which is news to Cash.)

  “Yes, I will, I got you,” Cash says. “Thank you, ladies.”

  Cash gets ready to announce the change of itinerary over the microphone; it’s his first time wearing the headset, and he has to admit, he kind of likes the authority. “The captain is allowing us a rare and exciting opportunity today, ladies and gentlemen,” Cash says. “We’re heading over to Smuggler’s Cove on Tortola, where we will snorkel in the crystal-clear water and then you’ll have ample time to enjoy the secluded white sand beach. If you’d like lunch and cocktails, you can visit Nigel’s Boom Boom for a taste of the authentic Caribbean. When we leave Smuggler’s Cove, we’ll swing by Sandy Spit for a terrific photo op. We’ll end our day at the world-famous Willy T’s, a decommissioned freighter that has been reimagined as a beach-bar mecca. How does that sound to everyone?”

  From the top deck comes the sound of ecstatic screaming and everyone looks up to see Donna, Christine, and company jumping up and down as though they’ve just been picked as contestants on The Price Is Right. The other passengers do high fives and cheer like they can’t believe their good fortune.

  Cash relaxes. He’s good at this.

  James is right; this itinerary is extremely easy for Cash to manage, even alone. They arrive in Smuggler’s Cove in just half an hour. The beach is a crescent of white sand fringed by palms, and it’s deserted, as though it has been ordered up and is waiting just for them. James asks Cash to drop the anchor and then he runs through the snorkel spiel. Defog your mask with this simple solution of dish soap and water; stay away from fire coral and the spiny black sea urchins, nothing else in these waters will hurt you.

  “And after you finish your snorkel,” Cash says, “we’ll open the bar.”

  Cheers. Zac Brown sings “Chicken Fried.” There’s no dollar sign on a peace of mind, this I’ve come to know.

  The day unfolds without a hitch. Cash joins his new lady friends from Wichita at Nigel’s Boom Boom, where Nigel himself makes the best hot dog with griddled onions Cash has ever tasted. The ladies ask him questions that he avoids answering in detail, but they’re into Nigel’s rum punch, so they don’t really notice. My first winter in St. John, I came down here to be with my mother after my father died (the ladies love this; he’s so sensitive, such a devoted son). I used to be a ski instructor in Breckenridge, then I lived in Denver for a while, but I’ve traded in my ski boots for flip-flops, my poles and goggles for a mask and snorkel, and I’m staying here. Yes, I have a girlfriend, Tilda, the relationship is pretty much brand-new.

  “Well,” Amy says, “I hope she knows how lucky she is!”

  They leave Smuggler’s Cove and head to Sandy Spit, which is half an acre of pure white sand with light foliage, including a couple of palms, making it look like a Corona ad. Everyone jumps off the boat to swim ashore, and Cash takes pictures with his ladies for their Instagrams.

  Then it’s off to the Willy T, properly the William Thornton, the floating bar named for an infamous nineteenth-century pirate. They tie up, and the nine ladies head directly upstairs to the bar and order the shot ski, something Cash is only too familiar with from the bars in Breckenridge. The “ski” has four holes for four shot glasses and on the count of three, four of the ladies lift the ski to their mouths and do the shots in unison. Because there are only four shots per ski, this has to be repeated a number of times so the other passengers from the Treasure Island—including the inconvenienced Mr. and Mrs. Bellhorn—can take turns as well.

  The ladies want Cash to do the shot ski—it’s a bar trick that never gets old—but no, sorry, he says, he’s on the clock. He can, however, fulfill his promise to step out onto the jumping platform, twelve feet above the water’s surface, and jump off while holding Donna’s hand. Cash won’t lie; he’s a little nervous, even though he’d think nothing of a ski jump this steep.

  He checks in with the birthday girl when they’re standing on the platform. “Donna, do you wanna?” he asks, thinking he’s the epitome of wit, but she doesn’t answer, just flings herself forward, and Cash has no choice but to follow.

  Shot skis, jumping from high ledges—what could go wrong? Nothing, as it turns out. It’s exhilarating. Everyone loves it, everyone’s happy. The day is a resounding success.

  It’s only after Cash has mixed up the last batch of painkillers and the charter is on the way home that he thinks to text Ayers.

  Missed you today, he says. This is true. Today went well but it would have been easier and more fun with Ayers. You okay?

  A couple of seconds later, she sends the thumbs-up emoji, which tells him nothing but the bare minimum: she’s alive. Cash is debating whether or not to ask a follow-up question—emoji answers sort of discourage longer text exchanges—when she texts again.

  I’m taking a leave of absence from the boat.

  What? he writes. Why?

  I heard about your mom, she says. How’re you doing?

  Cash feels like sending back a thumbs-up emoji as a little Screw you, because what does she mean, she’s taking a leave of absence from the boat? But what he says is I’m living up at Tilda’s but today her parents said Winnie has to go so I’m scrambling.

  There’s a pause. Then three dots. Then: I’ll take Winnie if you want?

  Cash quickly checks on everyone. They’re happy, the sun has mellowed, Jimmy Buffett is singing “Nautical Wheelers.”

  If you wouldn’t mind for a few weeks? I would be so grateful.

  Happy to, Ayers says. I’ll pick you up at the boat and we can go get her.

  Ahh! Cash feels an overwhelming sense of relief. Ayers will take Winnie; Winnie is crazy about Ayers, she’s going to think she’s died and gone to heaven. This is a good solution, much better than asking the housekeeper, Virgie, to take the dog home, which was Cash’s only other idea.

  Cash texts Tilda: I don’t need a ride, Ayers will bring me to Peter Bay, she’s going to take Winnie.

  Tilda texts back: Kk. There is no heart-eyes emoji, her signature signoff, which is odd.

  Cash texts, Are you okay? He thinks about what Tilda said about Ayers that morning: She’s newly single. But come on, Tilda can’t be that sensitive. And the bald fact remains that Cash needs someone to take Winnie.

  Tilda texts, I’m fine. I have a meeting anyway. I was going to tell you to hitch.

  Okay…should Cash be offended? Because he’s feeling a little offended. A meeting with whom?

  No time to wonder because the boat is pulling in. And yes indeedy, the tip jar is filling up.

  Cash is standing in front of Mongoose Junction three hundred and ten dollars richer when Ayers arrives in her little green pickup.

  “Hop in,” she says. She really does look sick—pale, washed out, heavy-lidded. She’s wearing cotton sleep shorts and a St. John Concrete T-shirt (STAY LEFT, POUR RIGHT), and her curly blond hair is a mess. Not a sexy mess, just a mess.

  “I hope whatever you have isn’t contagious,” Cash says, getting in.

  She hits the gas.

  “So…you broke things off with Mick?” Ayers nods but doesn’t offer anything else. Fine, she doesn’t owe him an explanation. “How did you know about my mom?”

  “Maia told me.”

  “Oh, right,” Cash says. He hates to be a talker but he feels like there’s something going on. “Have you seen Baker?”

  “He called once but I didn’t pick up,” Ayers says. “I’m not feeling great and I need some time.”

  “Right, right,” Cash says. He will stop talking even though he wants to brag about how smoothly the charter went.

  They
swoop and dive around and over the hills—past Caneel, past Oppenheimer and Jumbie, past everyone packing up from a day spent at Trunk Bay—and then begin the climb up to Peter Bay. Cash speaks only to direct Ayers to the correct house. They careen down Tilda’s driveway, and when Ayers stops, Cash hops out. “I’ll go get Winnie, her food, her bowl, her leashes. Be right back.”

  He returns with Winnie in tow and there’s a bit of a long goodbye because although Winnie is going to the best possible home, Cash is still going to miss her like crazy. “I’ll come see her tomorrow after work,” he says. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You don’t have to thank me,” Ayers says. She sighs, and if Cash isn’t mistaken, her eyes glaze over like she might cry. “The more the merrier.”

  The more the merrier? Cash thinks. He wonders if maybe Mick has left Ayers with his dog—that would be weird—and then he wonders if maybe Ayers plans on letting Baker and Floyd move in with her.

  “Are you…do you have company?” Cash asks.

  “Kind of,” Ayers says. “I’m pregnant.”

  Maia

  Her grounding lasts six days instead of two weeks, but even so, Maia misses the first meeting at the new clubhouse. She arrives at the second meeting early, by herself; everyone else is getting a ride but because Huck and Irene have tripled up on their charters, Maia has to take the bus and then hike. The new clubhouse is very inconveniently located in the middle of nowhere—but that’s the point. It’s Par Force, the great house of the Reef Bay plantation, and it can be accessed only by a spur of the Reef Bay Trail. Maia hikes down the trail, and when the three tourists ahead of her veer to the right to see the petroglyphs, Maia goes left up a steep hill that switchbacks up an even steeper hill. Par Force is engulfed in vines and coral creeper; the brick walls and stone columns are barely visible. There’s a low hum surrounding the house that sounds like some kind of electrical force field. It’s bees, Maia realizes, feasting on the pretty pink flowers of the creeper. Maia heads up the staircase to the main entryway. Unlike most of the ruins of houses on the island, this one still looks like a house. It has arches and columns and window openings, and the walls and roof are still mostly there.

  But—Maia’s not gonna lie—it’s spooky, even during the daytime, and she wishes someone else were here. They all agreed they would meet at two thirty on Saturday; earlier today, Bright had basketball practice, Colton guitar lessons, and Shane an orthodontist appointment over on St. Thomas. Joanie is getting a ride from her mom, who’s happy Joanie and her friends are “finally taking an interest in hiking.”

  Maia tries to text Joanie to ask if she’s OTW, but she has no signal. In her backpack, she has three bottles of water, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a banana, so she won’t die, but the idea of hanging out here alone much longer doesn’t appeal. Maia’s mother, Rosie, had brought her to Par Force only the year before. I can’t believe I’ve never shown you this place, she said. Then, once they were inside: I probably avoided it because it’s haunted.

  Now that Rosie is dead, ghosts aren’t as scary as they used to be. Maia would welcome a visit from Rosie right now, in any form. Because where is everyone? She worries that this is some kind of prank, that while she was grounded, the rest of the group decided to trick her into going alone. Or maybe at the first meeting, they picked a different clubhouse location—Annaberg or Catherineberg, somewhere easier to get to—and forgot to tell Maia. Maia scrolls back through her texts with Joanie. Meet you at the place. Leaving for the place now.

  Snap, Maia thinks. What if the place Joanie is talking about isn’t this place?

  But then Maia hears voices. She pokes her head through one of the crumbling stone window openings to see Joanie, Colton, and some girl Maia doesn’t recognize all climbing up the hill together.

  “Hey,” Maia says. She’s relieved to see her friends but she wishes it were Shane. Shane is a year older than Maia and he goes to the Antilles School; he’s her crush, and recently he’s become more than just a crush. They have held hands on three separate occasions. Joanie has a crush on Colton, but Colton likes Joanie only as a friend. For now. Both Maia and Joanie are hoping the clubhouse—where they’re going to hang out without any adults watching them—will change this.

  “Maia!” Joanie cries out. She runs up the stairs and gives Maia a hug, which seems a little strange since they just saw each other at school the day before, then gives Maia’s hand an extra-hard squeeze. It’s a message of some sort about this unknown girl. Friend or foe?

  Colton and the girl follow.

  Maia says, “Hey, I’m Maia.” The girl has milky-white skin, long red hair, and a pointy nose. She’s wearing white shorts and a regular pair of beach flip-flops that show off her green-polished toenails and silver toe rings. How did she hike all the way here in flip-flops?

  “I’m Lillibet,” she says, shrugging. She peers around the dank inside of Par Force. “I’m in seventh; I go to Antilles. Is Shane here?”

  “Not yet,” Maia says. “He had the ortho—”

  “Yeah, I know, but he said he’d be here waiting.”

  “You know who Lillibet’s sister is, right, Maia?” Colton says. “Dusty. Dusty Beck.”

  Maia tries to hide her surprise. Dusty Beck is a bona fide St. Thomas celebrity. Maia—along with twelve million other people—follows Dusty on Instagram. Dusty was on the cover of last year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and Shane has a copy that she signed; he’d said he got it from “a kid in my class.” Which must have been the sister, Lillibet. What is she doing here?

  “Cool,” Maia says. Joanie, behind Lillibet, has her arms locked across her chest and is rolling her eyes. Not cool with Joanie. Okay, then, not cool with Maia either. “Shane invited you?” Maia asks.

  “Hey!”

  They all turn to see Shane and Bright Whittaker racing up the hill. Maia tries to harden her facial expression, form it into some kind of shell. They created this club the night they met on the beach in Frank Bay because Colton was upset about his parents’ divorce. Colton is staying on St. John with his mom, but his dad is moving back to the States—to North Carolina, the Outer Banks—and Colton will see him only half the summer and at Christmas. As they were talking to Colton that night, trying to make him feel better, it came out that they all had stuff to deal with at home and no one to talk to about it. (That was really true for Maia—her mother had died and a new family had appeared out of nowhere!) So they’d decided to form a club and have meetings in person, not online, which felt old-fashioned in a cool way. They weren’t allowed to discuss club business on their phones. They weren’t allowed to take any pictures or post about the club. It would be a secret society, like the kind they had at Harvard and Yale.

  Maia didn’t realize they were allowed to invite outsiders to join. She’d thought it was supposed to be just them—Maia, Shane, Joanie, Colton, and Bright. But five is an odd number, so Maia supposes adding another girl makes sense. She had sort of figured they would discuss it first and vote. But this isn’t Congress or Parliament; it’s a bunch of middle-school kids in the Virgin Islands.

  Maia decides to give Lillibet the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Shane invited her for a reason—maybe her sister the model is addicted to drugs, or maybe Lillibet is being bullied at school, or maybe Lillibet’s parents ignore her because Dusty is so pretty and famous.

  “Shane!” Lillibet screams. She goes flying down the steps in her stupid flip-flops, and forget the benefit of the doubt—Maia wishes for her to fall flat on her face. But she doesn’t. She goes up to Shane and says, “Let me see.”

  Shane smiles. His braces are off.

  Whaaaa? Maia thinks. She knew Shane had the orthodontist but she didn’t know he was getting his braces off. Unfair! He looks hotter now than he did before by, like, a lot.

  Lillibet squeals and gives Shane a side hug and Shane leans into her.

  They all head deeper into Par Force and wander through different rooms until they come to what must ha
ve been the kitchen—there’s a giant fireplace opening. There are a bunch of piles of bricks that they can sit on.

  Shane turns to Maia. “Are you surprised the braces are off? What do you think?”

  She shrugs. She isn’t going to fawn all over him like Lillibet.

  Lillibet is touching the columns, poking her head through the window openings. “This place is sublime,” she says. “What’s it doing here?”

  “This was the main living quarters of the family who owned the sugarcane plantation,” Maia says. She gives an ironic laugh. “So two hundred years ago, someone who looked like me would have been working in this kitchen as a slave.”

  Everyone is quiet. Maia has made her friends uncomfortable, but oh, well—the history of the Virgin Islands is uncomfortable.

  Lillibet says, “Maybe we should meet somewhere else? Do you want to pick a different place, Maia?” Her voice is concerned without being patronizing, and the benefit of the doubt resurfaces. Is Lillibet nice?

  “It doesn’t bother me,” Maia says. “My mom brought me here.” She hopes that mentioning Rosie will lead them into the kind of soulful conversation that they had on Frank Bay, but nobody is paying attention to Maia except Lillibet.

  “Shane told me that your mother was killed in that helicopter crash on New Year’s,” Lillibet says. “I felt so bad for you. And honestly, you’re kind of famous at Antilles now. I knew Shane was your friend, so I asked to meet you.”

  Lillibet is here because of Maia? This sounds like a compliment, but it also makes Maia feel like a circus sideshow. Famous at Antilles? Because she tragically lost her mother?

  “It’s too bad we can’t meet at the villa in Little Cinnamon,” Shane says. He turns to Lillibet. “Maia’s dad…it was your dad, right? Your real dad that nobody knew about? Yeah, he was really rich and owned this huge villa with a two-story pool. Maia gets to hang out there whenever she wants.”