At first, Ayers thought Baker was a tourist. Learning he was the Invisible Man’s son had been shocking, but on later reflection, she’d known there was something about him. She sensed that meeting him wasn’t random luck. Rosie, in a way, had sent him to her.
Then he went back to Houston.
Then he returned. They’d slept together. It had felt…right. They clicked. There was light, heat, chemistry.
Then he left again. For only a few days—but a few days was a few days too many. Mick proposed.
Then Baker came back. He’s here now. He has a job, a Jeep, a villa. Floyd is in school. Baker is a tourist no longer.
Swan takes hold of Baker’s arms and stands on her tiptoes.
No, Ayers thinks. She gets out of the truck, slams the door. Both Baker and Swan turn toward the noise. Swan’s heels hit the ground.
“Hey,” Ayers calls out. She crosses the street and strides up the driveway to the two of them. They’re standing farther apart now.
Swan looks…miffed. “Ayers?”
Baker says, “Ayers, hey!” He takes a step away from Swan.
“Sorry I didn’t text or anything,” Ayers says to Baker. “But I just got out of work and I was wondering if you wanted to come see my new place?”
Swan emits an audible breath and Ayers thinks, I know. This is brazen. You will rewind and replay this moment for your school-mom friends dozens of times until they’re all sick of hearing it, and maybe none of you will ever speak to me again. Maybe you’ll boycott La Tapa and post anonymous nasty comments on the Treasure Island Tripadvisor page, but I don’t care. Baker is the father of my baby and although I’ve treated him carelessly, I’m not giving him up without a fight.
Then she thinks, The good news is, Skip is still available.
“Yeah,” Baker says. “My mom can watch Floyd, and Swan was just leaving.” He takes Ayers’s hand and squeezes it. “I’d love to come with you.”
Irene
Baker sees Maia at school while he’s picking up Floyd and invites her over for dinner.
“I hope that’s okay?” he says when he tells Irene. “I’ll go get her and drive her home.”
“Of course,” Irene says. She still isn’t ready for a détente with Huck—nope, not at all. Rosie’s relationship with Russ happened while Rosie was living under Huck’s roof. He said he’d never met Russ—Irene believes this—but could he not guess the man Rosie was involved with was married? Obviously, the Invisible Man was married. That was why he was invisible!
Huck should have asked more questions. He should have followed Rosie to the villa. He should have put an end to it.
Are these unreasonable expectations? Maybe. But the bald fact remains: Huck stood by and did nothing. For years.
He’s the only one left for Irene to blame. She can’t summon the same ire or resentment toward Maia. Maia is a child. Russ’s daughter. The boys’ sister.
“Maia is always welcome,” Irene says, and she sees relief cross Baker’s face.
Maia arrives bearing two large square packages—one light, which she carries, and one heavy, which Baker carries.
“These came for you,” Maia explains. “To Gramps’s post box.”
While Maia and Floyd take a predinner swim in the pool, Irene slices the packages open. One of them holds her Christmas ornaments, still carefully wrapped up in tissue. Irene sighs, recalling her industriousness on New Year’s Day before her dinner with Lydia at the Pullman Diner, before the phone call when she learned Russ was dead.
On New Year’s Day, she had been a different person—irritated and hurt that her husband was traveling for work over the holiday but determined to make the best of it and be productive. She’d wanted to wake up on January 2 and have all traces of Christmas gone. Back then, nothing had annoyed Irene more than lazy neighbors who left their outside lights up until Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, their wreaths up until Valentine’s Day. She had carefully removed and wrapped all the ornaments because she was a methodical person who believed God was in the details. She would be grateful for the effort the following Christmas when she opened the box and everything was just so.
She’d never imagined she’d be opening the box that spring in the Virgin Islands.
The most precious ornaments aren’t her collection of intricate and clever Christopher Radkos or the vintage ornaments she picked up at estate sales across the country but rather the ornaments the boys made in elementary school. A cardboard disk covered in green foil decorated with beads and dried macaroni, CASH written in glitter on one side. A puffy painted Santa face with cotton glued on for a beard. Irene is happy to have these back, even though they belonged to that other lifetime.
The other box holds photo albums and the framed family photographs that Irene had had on display around the house on Church Street. The photo that greets Irene is the last picture taken of her and Russ together. They’re side by side on the front porch swing at her aunt’s house in Door County, Wisconsin. They’re smiling at Cash, who took the picture. Russ’s arm runs along the back of the swing behind Irene, and Irene’s hand rests on Russ’s thigh, lightly but proprietarily. Why wouldn’t it? He was her husband of thirty-five years. She would characterize Russ’s expression as content. Irene then flashes back to the photograph she found of him and Rosie lying in the hammock. He had looked ecstatic, as though he had no idea how he’d gotten so lucky. A girlfriend whose beauty was as rarefied as the Mona Lisa’s.
Irene had wanted to smash the photograph of Russ and Rosie but she feels an even greater violence toward this picture of her and Russ. The audacity of him to smile at the camera as though nothing is amiss. As though he doesn’t have a mistress and a child waiting for him down in the Caribbean!
Irene steadies her breathing and checks out the window. Baker is drinking a beer, his legs dangling in the water. Maia is carrying Floyd around the pool on her shoulders. He’s shrieking with joy. He adores her.
Irene digs a little deeper in the box and finds the navy leather photo album and the red vinyl photo album. These hold pictures of the boys growing up. She can see the snapshots without looking at them: Baker on the pitcher’s mound in his green and yellow uniform, all spindly arms and legs; Cash on the ski slopes, goggles resting on top of his helmet, braces glinting in the glare off the snow; both boys in khakis and navy blazers escorting Milly out of church on Easter.
Beneath these is a photograph of Baker and Anna on their wedding day. Anna is stunning in her sleek ivory silk, but she’s not smiling.
Irene closes up the box and puts it in the closet. When she’s had a chance to properly go through it, she’ll show some of the pictures of Baker and Cash to Maia. But for now, it’s important that Maia not see any of the photos. What would she think if she saw the picture of Russ and Irene on the swing? Irene shudders. She would never put a child through what she has just experienced—being starkly confronted with evidence that she was being lied to.
At dinner, Maia says, “So what was in the boxes?”
“Christmas ornaments,” Irene says. “And other knickknacks from my house in Iowa.”
Maia takes a knife to her fried chicken. “I had to give up being a vegan,” she says. “It was too hard.”
“How’s the bath-bomb business?” Irene asks.
“I kind of gave that up too,” Maia says. “I’m busy with other things.”
“What kinds of things?” Baker asks. “Not sports? I was supposed to coach the upper-school baseball team but only four kids signed up—three girls and a boy.”
“Not sports,” Maia says. “I hang out with my friends mostly. Joanie, Colton, Bright, and…Shane. Shane is sort of a special friend.” Maia’s face shines and for a moment, her beauty takes Irene’s breath away. She’s Milly, she’s Russ, and she’s someone else—Rosie, Irene supposes.
Maia makes it through the entire meal talking about her life without mentioning Huck even once. This must be on purpose; maybe Maia thinks Huck is a forbidden topic.
Irene clears her throat. “How’s your grandfather?” As soon as the words are out, she feels like she’s lost a test of wills.
“Oh,” Maia says, shrugging. “He’s good.” This seems to be all Irene is going to get. He’s good. He’s good? Then Maia locks eyes with Irene and says, “He misses you.”
Irene is startled by the simple frankness of this statement. I miss him too, she thinks—and it’s the first time she’s allowed herself to admit it.
“He gave me this to deliver,” Maia says. She pulls an envelope that has been folded in half out of the back pocket of her shorts.
“Oh,” Irene says. Her name is on the front in Huck’s handwriting. Maybe it’s an accounting of what she owes him for rent and utilities—but she knows Huck wouldn’t ask for money even if he were angry. “Thank you.” She takes the envelope. “Who wants dessert?”
She would like to throw the envelope away unopened, but she isn’t strong enough. She waits until Baker returns from running Maia home and starts giving Floyd a bath, then she takes the envelope to the back deck and opens it.
It’s a letter.
Dear AC,
Maybe you’ll read this, maybe you won’t. In the event you are reading this, I want to start by saying that this is not an apology because I didn’t do anything wrong.
When LeeAnn died and Rosie got back together with Russ, she was nearly thirty years old. She described Russ as “this man I’m seeing, Russell Steele”—she said his name to me only that once—and I had no idea that this was the same man as “the Pirate,” the one who had gotten her pregnant. She very deliberately led me to believe it was someone new.
I asked the usual questions: Where was he from, what did he do, when could I meet him? Rosie provided no answers. She wanted to keep the relationship private; she was concerned that the island would poke its nose into her business. After the way that LeeAnn rallied every single one of her friends and relations against Oscar Cobb, I couldn’t blame Rosie for feeling this way. Rosie told me that, just like certain plants, some relationships do best with a lot of sunlight, and some thrive hidden in the shade, and her new relationship was the latter. It concerned me, I made that clear, but I also want to explain that I was lonely without LeeAnn and my greatest fear was that Rosie would take Maia and move out. I wanted to avoid that at all costs.
If you read the diaries closely then you know that Rosie didn’t start taking Maia with her to see Russ until 2016. Once this happened, my questions grew more insistent. I didn’t like the idea of Maia spending time with any adult I hadn’t met.
Again, I was shut down.
There were whispers around town about the “Invisible Man,” and some of it reached my ears. I learned he was white, he was wealthy, he had a villa somewhere on the north shore. Did I think he was married? It crossed my mind, but again, Rosie was in her thirties, old enough to know what she was doing.
To be honest, AC, I was worried about Rosie—and Maia—getting hurt. I didn’t give a thought to any woman Russell Steele might have been betraying. When I think of it this way, I understand what you mean about us being on “opposite sides” of this thing.
Although this isn’t a letter of apology, I do want to say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry you were betrayed and I’m sorry you were hurt. I also want to tell you something about my past that you might not know.
Before I moved to St. John and met LeeAnn Small, I was married to someone else, a woman named Kimberly Cassel, whom I met when I lived in Key West. Kimberly was a hot ticket—a star bartender and one hell of a fisherwoman. She was also a serial philanderer and an alcoholic. Before our marriage ended, Kimberly revealed that she had fooled around with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of the men who came into the bar where she worked. Kimberly got pregnant and miscarried at fourteen weeks, which was devastating to me at the time and felt even worse when I discovered the child might not even have been mine.
I put Kimberly in rehab and divorced her, which might sound like a door that shut clean and firm, but I assure you, the hurt lasted for a very long time after.
I tell you this only because I want you to feel less alone and to know that I do have some idea of what you’re battling.
If you made it this far in the letter, AC, then I’m grateful—and not only grateful but hopeful that, at some point in the future, we can have a conversation and mend things between us. I miss you for many reasons, but mostly I miss our friendship. As unlikely as it might be, the friendship is genuine.
With love,
Huck
Irene clears the emotion from her throat and reads the letter again. Then she folds it up and returns it to the envelope. She heads back into the kitchen to unload the dishes from the drying rack and she holds the letter over the kitchen trash. It feels like Huck is, once again, rushing her. If he’d learned anything from watching and listening to her the past couple of months, he would have known that what she needs is time.
She can’t bring herself to throw the letter away. She tucks it into the front pocket of her suitcase.
As she’s falling asleep, she thinks, Huck wrote me a letter. And she smiles.
The next day, Irene e-mails Natalie Key to thank her for the boxes. She doesn’t call because she knows Natalie is handling a new, highly sensitive, high-profile embezzlement case and is very busy. She’s surprised when the phone rings.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get you more,” Natalie says. “Your books and clothes will be returned eventually, once they’ve been documented and it’s been determined that they have minimal resale value. Certain other personal items as well—your teakettle, kitchen utensils. But no antiques, and not the rugs. Not your cars. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Irene says—and the strange thing is, she means it. She owned a house filled with things, some of them very expensive. But none of it matters. She’s doing just fine without things. Why had she put so much time and energy into them in the first place?
“Also…” Natalie says. Her voice takes on a sober tone and Irene assumes she’s about to say that Irene’s retainer has run out. “I heard from the Feds. There were personal journals of Rosie Small’s that were discovered—but unfortunately, these didn’t contain enough hard facts to incriminate Todd Croft.”
Irene closes her eyes. All of that pain…for nothing? Huck should have buried the diaries in a drawer and given them to Maia ten or fifteen years from now. In ten or fifteen years, the love affair between Russell Steele and his Mona Lisa wouldn’t hurt Irene the way it does now.
“That guy Croft,” Natalie says. “He’s the mastermind. There’s no other way.”
“He’s such a mastermind, he managed to walk away unscathed,” Irene says.
“Fined,” Natalie says. “Heavily fined. But make no mistake, that guy has money hidden.”
“He killed Russ,” Irene says. “And Rosie. And Stephen Thompson. And he’s getting off scot-free.”
“I thought for sure we were going to help send him to jail,” Natalie says. “I’m sorry, Irene.”
She received the study materials for her captain’s test, but when she starts reading the introduction, she sees that, in addition to passing the test, she has to have at least three hundred and sixty days logged on the water as a mate or crew member.
Three hundred and sixty days!
She has, maybe, thirty.
Irene sags at this news. She chastises herself for not realizing this would be the case. If it were just a little studying and a test, then every clown out there would have a captain’s license. She feels so naive. Here she announced her grandiose plan—her own charter, Angler Cupcake, direct competition for Huck. She had cinematic fantasies of standing proud at the helm of her own boat with a full charter, puttering past the empty Mississippi. In some versions, she waves to Huck. In others, she ignores him.
He must have known she didn’t have enough hours on the water when she mentioned her plans to Jack and Diane. How embarrassing.
How will s
he get three hundred and thirty more days on the water? Who would hire a fifty-seven-year-old woman as a mate?
Treasure Island? she wonders. Maybe. Cash and Ayers could definitely use a third crew member to cover their respective days off, and once the baby is born…Cash says all they’re looking for is a warm body, and Irene is much more than that. She’s good with the clients. It’s a little babysitting, a little psychology. Irene has the touch.
How would Cash feel about working all day with his mother? Not great, she predicts. Living together is taxing enough.
She could approach a different fishing boat, like What a Catch! But those guys are young, single, wild. They don’t want Irene on their boat.
Could she work on Pizza Pi as a delivery person, zipping the pizzas to yachts on a little Zodiac? Would that count? What about asking at Palm Tree Charters or the Singing Dog? There’s a new charter Irene heard about, a Midnight Express called New Moon owned by a very cool couple named Brian and Michelle Zehring—that boat might be too sexy for Irene, but she could always ask.
Even if she can cobble something together, it’s still going to take an entire year for Irene to realize her dream. She has an appointment to see a 2006 forty-five-foot Hatteras on St. Thomas next week. The asking price is fifty thousand, but on the phone the guy said he’s willing to work with her and she can hopefully take out a loan at FirstBank.
Baker’s new friend Swan Seeley is scheduled to come over tomorrow after dinner to talk to her about a marketing strategy. Irene considers canceling but this woman Swan might be well connected and could have leads on where Irene might look for work. Irene confirms with Swan, then texts Lydia to see if Brandon the barista is willing to part with his recipe for lemongrass sugar cookies. Irene needs to have something to offer the woman. Other than wine, of course.
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