“Hello, Maia,” she says.
“Hello?” Maia says. Who is this woman? “Am I in trouble?”
“Oh,” the woman says. “Not with me, but I’m sure you kids realize you’re not supposed to be here.”
“We’re leaving,” Maia says. “We were just…I left some personal things behind that I wanted back.” She wishes she’d thought to bring the Angie Thomas book out. “I mean, it’s okay to take personal items? That have no value?”
“I’m not going to report you,” the woman says, but it sounds like there’s something else coming. “I just have one question. Something I need help with.”
“Okay…” Maia says.
“I’m a friend of Irene Steele’s,” the woman says. “An acquaintance. And I know she was living with you and your grandpa, correct? Up on Jacob’s Ladder? Has she moved? Left island, maybe?”
“Irene?” Maia says. “She lives in Fish Bay now with my brother Baker.” Maia absolutely loves using the phrase my brother. “And my nephew, Floyd. They live in a house called the Happy Hibiscus.”
Irene’s friend nods and brings her hands palm to palm up to her heart like a yoga person. “Thank you. That’s all I needed to know.”
“Do you…want her phone number?” Maia says. She wonders if it’s okay to give out Irene’s number, but this woman does not look threatening. She looks like someone from Iowa.
“No, thank you,” the woman says. “I’d like to speak to her in person.” She moves toward the stairs. “You kids should probably skedaddle. And don’t forget to lock up.”
Maia goes into the kitchen, where everyone is huddled in the far corner by the trash.
“Let’s go,” Maia says. “She wasn’t the FBI.”
The boys and Joanie shoot out the door and Maia does a check—lights out, stove off, everything put away. She locks the sliding glass door and turns off the water on the slide.
Goodbye, villa, she thinks. Site of my first kiss.
Together, they run down Lovers Lane shrieking with heady joy. Maia can’t believe they got away with it.
Baker
He feels like he’s starring in a sitcom about a single dad who moves from the big city to a tropical island to woo the girl he fell in love with on vacation. In episode 2, he finds out this girl is pregnant. Twist: It’s his child. Twist: She is just out of a long-term relationship and needs time alone. Twist: He moves in across the street.
In episode 3, his mother moves in. There’s no room for her but she’s adamant and says she has nowhere else to go.
“What about Huck’s?” Baker said when Irene showed up on his doorstep with her suitcase. “That was working out. You had your own bedroom. You drove to work together.”
“I quit the boat,” Irene said. “I need to be with family. Huck isn’t family.”
“You quit the boat?” Baker said. “You like the boat.”
Irene stared at him. She was impossible to read but he couldn’t just let her stand outside so he held the door open. She set her suitcase behind one of the sofas in the living room.
“So you’re here for a while?” Baker said. “Why don’t you take the second bedroom. Floyd can sleep with me.”
“I’ll be fine on the sofa,” Irene said. “I’ll use Floyd’s bathroom. I hope he won’t mind.”
“Mom,” Baker said. “I insist. Floyd will sleep with me. Are you kidding? He’ll be thrilled.”
“I’m not putting either one of you out,” Irene said. “I feel horrible about this as it is. The sofa is fine.”
He decided that after she spent a few nights on the sofa, he would offer again. “What are you going to do for work now? Do you have a plan?”
“I’m going to get my captain’s license,” Irene said. “I have that money coming from your grandmother. I’m going to buy my own boat and start my own charter.”
“Your own charter?” Baker said. “Here?”
Irene nodded. Wow, she did not look happy.
“You’re going into direct competition with Huck?” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
Something had happened, but what? She would tell him when she was ready. Or she wouldn’t. It would be nice to have his mother around, but he needed to catch her up. “That house across the street is where Ayers lives,” he said. He considered asking Irene to sit down—but if anyone could handle the news standing up, it was his mother. “She’s pregnant.”
“You’re kidding.”
“With my baby.”
“Your baby?”
“Yes.” Baker paused. “We aren’t together. I mean, we were together, I suppose that’s obvious, but then she got engaged to Mick, then she broke the engagement with Mick because he was unfaithful, then she found out she was pregnant.”
“But the baby’s not Mick’s?” Irene looked dubious. Baker’s private fears were written all over his mother’s face. “You’re sure? She might just be telling you that because…well, because you’re you, by which I mean a wonderful father.”
“She insists the baby is mine,” Baker said. “Don’t women have a sixth sense about things like that?”
Irene frowned. “I’m not sure. I never had any doubts about the paternity of my children.”
The last thing Baker wanted was for Irene to take issue with Ayers. “Here’s the thing. I want to be with Ayers eventually. The cart came a little before the horse—”
“You think?”
“And she needs space right now and I’m giving it to her.”
“She’s across the street.”
“Emotional space. We’re building a friendship first.” What Baker didn’t tell Irene was that Ayers resisted every attempt at friendship that Baker made. On Saturday morning, he and Floyd had gone to Provisions for coffee and scones. When they knocked on Ayers’s door with the offerings, she hadn’t answered, even though her green truck was in the driveway.
Baker had said, “She’s probably still asleep, bud.”
“But we waited until ten,” Floyd said. He was eager to open the door because he wanted to play with Winnie.
They wandered back across the street and although Baker told Floyd they’d try again later, he ate Ayers’s scone and drank her coffee. The second coffee made him feel so unhinged that he became convinced she hadn’t answered the door because she had Mick over. Or maybe she wasn’t home. Maybe she was with Mick at his new villa, Pure Joy. (Baker had scoped out the villa once—okay, twice—on his way to work at the Westin. It wasn’t as big as the Happy Hibiscus but it had an unbeatable view and an outdoor shower.)
Speaking of the Westin, Baker had asked Ayers if she wanted to join him and Floyd at Greengos after Baker’s first day of work and she said no, thank you, she had the night off from La Tapa and was looking forward to getting takeout from Dé Coal Pot and streaming The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
She had waved to Baker from her driveway once. They passed each other at the steep, tight curve by Ditleff Point and the hoods of their cars almost kissed, but that was as close to physical contact as Baker had gotten.
So now he’s at episode 4: His brother moves in. Baker has to go pick Cash up at Tilda’s villa in Peter Bay. The place is like something plucked off the cover of Architectural Digest. During his downtime in the Westin time-share office, Baker has been researching the St. John real estate market. Peter Bay fetches top dollar. It’s a private community on the north shore with a prime location between Trunk Bay and Cinnamon Bay. While Tilda’s villa doesn’t have as many bedrooms as their villa in Little Cinnamon did, it has nearly exactly the same amount of square footage. Cash gives Baker a tour of the place. The three wings are connected by covered walkways bordered on either side by lush landscaping—hibiscus, frangipani, birds-of-paradise. The T-shaped pool is unique. The kitchen has a curved island topped with white marble and three light blue suede bar stools that look like egg cups. Baker sits in one and swivels. Cash will be getting a serious downgrade at the Happy Hibiscus.
“Explain to me again why you�
�re leaving,” Baker says as they pull out of the extremely steep driveway. The views are ridiculous! From the top of the driveway, Baker can see the entirety of Tortola and beyond. Beyond!
“Tilda went on a work trip with someone else,” Cash says. “Her parents are building an eco-resort over on Lovango Cay so they sent her on a three-stop tour of the fanciest, most expensive resorts in the Caribbean.” He stares out the window. “Today, for example, she’s on an island resort called Eden where management decides what guests are allowed to stay there.”
“Who’d she go with?” Baker asks. “A guy?”
“This dude named Duncan Huntley,” Cash says. “He bought Lovango Cay. Bought the entire island. And this guy is, like, our age.”
Duncan Huntley? Baker opens his mouth to say, I know that guy. He gave Floyd and me a ride on his boat from the airport. But for some reason, Baker stops himself. “So he and Tilda are a thing, then? Or they just went on this trip as business partners?”
“They went as business partners,” Cash says. “But Tilda didn’t call me at all for the first four days, which I found fishy because she cried when she left and promised to be true, blah-blah-blah. When I asked her what she thought about Dunk, she said, ‘He’s too intense.’”
Intense is a good choice of word, Baker thinks.
“He fasts,” Cash says. “Which is apparently a lifestyle we’ve been missing out on. Starving yourself brings better focus and productivity.”
“I’ll never know,” Baker says, thinking about the scones from Provisions and the container of Red Velvet Cake ice cream he has hidden in the freezer.
“So, anyway, after four full days away, she hits me up at two thirty in the morning and all she can talk about is Dunk this and Dunk that. Dunk adjusted her chaise by the pool, she and Dunk took a picnic to a waterfall, Dunk arranged for a private seaplane, and—get this—she and Dunk had a couples massage at the spa.”
“Couples massage?” Baker says. “I’m sorry, bro. You were right to leave.”
Episode 5: Baker, his brother, his mother, and Floyd all cohabitate in Baker’s villa, which, although blessed with cathedral ceilings, a spacious laundry room, and a picturesque backyard with sapphire pool, has only two bedrooms. Irene and Cash each take a sofa; every morning, Irene folds up their bedding and hides it away in the closet. Irene shares a bathroom with Floyd, and reluctantly, oh so reluctantly, Baker lets Cash share his bathroom, which makes them both feel like they’re teenagers again. Cash spends sixteen thousand dollars of his inheritance from Milly on a silver Dodge pickup with only eight thousand island miles on it. Irene borrows Cash’s truck or Baker’s Jeep, alternating between the two, which would be annoying, except she occasionally drives Floyd to school and picks him up, and she takes over all the grocery shopping. Baker does the cooking; he finally has an appreciative audience—or sort of. Cash gets home from Treasure Island each night so spent and hungry that he ravenously shovels in whatever Baker puts in front of him without even seeming to taste it, and Irene helps herself to doll-size portions, then eats half. She’s losing weight again, just like she did when they first got here, right after they’d received the news of Russ’s death.
Baker shows Irene his secret stash of Red Velvet Cake ice cream—he was hiding it from himself, and now he’s hiding it from Cash—but Irene just shakes her head. “I’m not hungry.”
Something happened between Irene and Huck—but what?
One afternoon while Baker is in the Gifft Hill School parking lot waiting for Floyd, he sees Maia and her little friend Joanie emerge. Maia zips right over and offers Baker a fist bump. “Hey, bro.”
“Hey, sis,” Baker says. Joanie is now hanging back, talking to a boy, so Baker seizes the moment. “Do you know what happened between Huck and my mom? Did they have a fight?”
Maia shrugs. “He told me she just wanted to live with you guys. She thought she was imposing.”
“Fair enough,” Baker says. “But why did she quit the boat?”
“Gramps won’t talk about it,” Maia says. “But he refuses to hire another mate. So he’s doing two jobs by himself and he’s never home.” A beat-up RAV4 pulls up. “That’s Joanie’s mom. I have to go, bro.”
That night over dinner, Baker says, “I saw Maia at school. She said Huck refuses to hire another mate.”
Irene freezes with her fork suspended over her plate. They’re having pineapple fried rice with grilled shrimp, and Irene has helped herself to one spoonful of rice and one shrimp. “Well,” she says finally. “That’s his prerogative, I guess.”
“Why don’t you go back, Mom?” Cash says.
“I want to do my own thing,” Irene says. “I bought the study materials for the captain’s license, and I’ve been working my way through. I’ll go to St. Thomas to take my test, and while I’m over there, I’m looking at a boat. I just need a marketing plan, advertising, some way to get my new venture out there.”
“What’s the name going to be?” Cash asks. “Of the boat?”
“Angler Cupcake,” Irene says. Her lips hint at a smile. “That was what your grandfather used to call me.”
Why shouldn’t Irene have her own fishing boat? Baker wonders. Why shouldn’t Angler Cupcake be every bit as successful as the Mississippi? Well, he suspects his mother will have a challenging time attracting male clients with a boat called Angler Cupcake. Which means she’ll be going after a female clientele. Are there enough women who fish for her to sustain a fishing-charter business?
Baker decides to ask his Gifft Hill School–mom friends. They’re not school wives, not yet, but Baker, Swan, Bonny, and Paula are bonding. Whenever Baker drops Floyd off or picks him up, those three are reliably waiting for him.
He broaches the fishing-boat question one afternoon while Floyd plays for a few extra minutes on the jungle gym with Swan’s son Ryder.
“I think she could be very successful,” Paula says. Baker has learned that Paula is a bit of a Suzie Sunshine; she says whatever she thinks will make someone happy, regardless of whether or not she believes it’s true.
“I don’t,” Bonny says. Bonny balances Paula out; she’s a naysayer. “Women don’t fish.”
“Some women fish,” Swan says. “Your mother could start a trend, Baker. Lots of women with money are planning girls’ trips, and your mom’s fishing boat would be perfect. Plus, she could market to families with young children. And…bachelorettes?”
“Families, maybe, but bachelorettes do not want to fish,” Bonny says. “Do you even watch the show? The girls on The Bachelor will fish or bungee jump or go to the machine-gun range, but only to seem cool and beat out the other girls. It’s never their choice.”
“I majored in marketing at Florida State,” Swan says. “Have your mom reach out. I’m happy to help her, free of charge.”
“You are such a kiss-ass,” Bonny says.
“Maybe we could all help?” Paula says, and Swan gives her a withering look. These women make Baker miss Ellen, Debbie, Becky, and Wendy because they were relaxed, stable…and not after him.
“I’ll run it past my mom,” Baker says. He needs to get out of there before they come to blows. “Thanks, ladies.”
Episode 6: Baker is killing it at work! He feels like the host of a new HGTV show called Do You Want to Buy a Time-Share? He’s aware that most people take the tour only because they want the free breakfast (with bottomless mimosas) or the free appetizers (with free-flowing rum punch), plus the hundred-dollar resort credit. But Baker finds that the clients he interacts with at least consider the possibility of buying.
One day, he puts two units under contract, a one-bedroom and a three-bedroom! He experiences a surge of pure, unadulterated confidence that feels like mainlining a drug. Nothing is going to happen with Ayers until he makes it happen. It’s ludicrous that she’s right across the street and they almost never see each other. Cash sees Ayers more than Baker does because he goes over every day to visit Winnie. Floyd sees more of Ayers than Baker does because he t
ags along with Cash. Baker told Cash that the property manager of the Happy Hibiscus explicitly stated there were no pets allowed—but this was a lie. Pets are fine. Baker just wants Ayers to keep Cash’s dog so there is still one filament connecting Ayers to Baker. And anyway, the household is crowded enough as it is. (Sorry, Winnie.)
Baker swings by Our Market to get Ayers a pineapple-mango smoothie, then he stops at Sam and Jack’s for a bag of their homemade potato chips. This is the perfect afternoon snack. He still has an hour and a half before school pickup. He can bring Ayers these goodies and stay for a visit—catch up, see how she’s feeling, ask if she wants him to go with her to her prenatal appointment at Schneider Hospital. This will show he’s thinking of her. He’s never not thinking of her, but it won’t be overbearing.
Her green truck is in the driveway—wonderful. He strides up to the door and knocks. The pineapple-mango smoothie is sweating in his hand, and while he waits, he worries that her favorite type is pineapple-banana, not pineapple-mango. He should have written it down the second she mentioned it. This is the kind of thing that Mick knows by heart and Baker doesn’t.
He hears voices. A man’s voice. Is Mick there? The voice is very deep. Not Mick’s. Mick has a reedy voice that reminds Baker of some pimply adolescent playing the oboe. So someone else is here. Another man. Someone who took advantage of the broken engagement to make a move?
Baker turns to leave. He doesn’t want to know who it is. Naturally, as Baker is retreating, the door swings open.
“Hello there, young man, can we help you?” The deep male voice is attached to a very tall, very thin older gentleman with a high forehead and curly silver hair sticking out in tufts on either side, like an aging Bozo the Clown, although Bozo might be an ungenerous comparison. Baker immediately knows that it’s Ayers’s father.
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