“Relatively?” Eddie asked.
“Eddie, stop. You’re a lucky man.” Caroline advised. “James, tell me what you can.”
“Philippe de Montaigne was apparently a pawn for some drug dealers from France. Philippe knew Thierry, and roped him in, pretty much without him knowing is the thing. But as far as we can tell, Eddie was aware. The fancy polo guys are behind the big machinery, though. Now, for sure, Eddie could have said ‘No thanks,’ but instead, Eddie got involved, making millions for himself, some for his assistant . . .”
“Maryanne?” Caroline asked. Then she remembered the fifty-thousand-dollar payments. “Eddie, I thought you had partners, real partners,” Caroline said, not able to stop herself.
“Well, he had partners of sorts. Your husband’s cash is in a warehouse. Or was in a warehouse,” James said. “The cash has been seized, and the real bad guys are going to be put away. If Eddie and Thierry cooperate, they’ll be fine and free to go. They may have to move somewhere else for a while, a few months at most, just to let the dust settle here.”
“The kids? What do I tell them?” Caroline asked.
“Look, I’m going to let you two talk for five minutes, one of my guys over there needs some assistance with that French drama queen in the white pants,” James said, as he walked away.
Eddie took a few steps. He guided Caroline to a nearby horse fence, leaned his back against a thick post, and slinked his sturdy build down to the ground. He looked up at the woman he loved, knowing she wouldn’t be his wife much longer. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I got excited. I had so much cash. And they practically forced me to.”
“Who forced you to help transport drugs?”
“I mean, anyone would have . . .”
“Eddie, not anyone. I will ask you one thing: take accountability for once. There’s no one to blame but yourself. Not your drunk dad, not anyone else.” She pointed to the vast equine complex around them. “Look at all this. It’s a massive web you got yourself into. How did this even start? Was it all Philippe?”
“There’s so much you don’t know.”
“I know everything, I know about the trunks, the packages in the manure shavings, even Rosie.” She paused. “And I’ll help take care of her as one of my own. The child didn’t ask for any of this. But I only ask you to come forward with one bit of information, if you want me not to hate you forever.”
Eddie was dumbstruck she knew it all. After several moments, he said, “Anything, baby.”
“Please don’t call me baby, just tell me, Eddie, my one missing link: tell me about Rosie’s mother, your girlfriend when I was pregnant, and how she died?”
Eddie placed his head between his legs, shaking it back and forth.
“You owe me this, Eddie Clarkson. Now.” Caroline didn’t feel bad or guilty about anything that had happened these past few months.
It had been a summer of salvation. Period.
“Tell me, now.”
“I just can’t.”
“Then I officially hate you forever.”
He coughed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Rosie’s mom is, was, named Hélène Moinot.”
“Makes sense, that’s her brother’s last name and her daughter’s. Go on, Eddie.”
“How did she die?”
“In my Hummer jeep.”
“NO!”
“It was so slippery, so dark under the trees, and a deer, it just came out of nowhere and I spun. Well, we spun. Into a tree, on the passenger’s side. But Rosie lived.”
Epilogue
Back at the rock
The following day
A gentle breeze caused ripples across the surface of Fort Pond Bay, consistent as corduroy. Strands of clouds reached across the orange sky, glowing with the setting sun. At the edge of the beach, Caroline took her shoes off and walked in the cool sand by the bay, which always struck her as harder than the sifted flour of Atlantic sand. Kids were down by the water, but, thankfully, the tables weren’t crowded yet. Still, seeing people mingle, drink, kids frolic and splash, started to restore Caroline’s spirit. East Hampton was better when people enjoyed it, together. It had been eerie on this very sand yesterday, but it was low tide now, and Joey had already laid out a blanket. His legs were stretched on it. It was a warm, humid evening, the scorching heat of the day started to fade.
She was ten minutes earlier than they’d planned and she startled him. He shielded his eyes from the sun’s rays behind her and patted the blanket, hidden from view behind the rock for their privacy. “Sit, I owe you too much now.”
Caroline kneeled next to him. She looked into his eyes, tears flowing yet again. It was different being with Joey now, with so many years of her own history he had missed. He looked exactly thirteen years more advanced in his life, his cheeks a little less plump and baby-faced, the crevices in his face a little deeper. His older face made his square jaw more prominent, more distinguished. She swallowed hard, and realized that Joey didn’t even know Theo’s and Gigi’s names.
He put his hand on her knee, “You tell the kids?”
His ability to perceive her thoughts before she’d said them was uncanny, as it always was. It made her smile. “I didn’t even know if you knew I had kids.”
He sat up and faced her, sitting on his own knees, touching hers with his. Feeling even a small part of her body against his sent so many sparks up his spine he had to rub the back of his neck. “C’mon. My dad knew everything. He kept me up to date, even sent me pictures of Theo and Gigi. What did you tell them?”
It made her so terribly sad to think of her children without Eddie for months, and the impossibility of hiding his actions from them. Caroline felt her face looked distorted and ugly when she tried not to cry too much. She pushed her lips together hard to try to keep it in, but she could feel her cheeks and chin moving into strange positions.
“You know your eyes are even clearer blue with the tears in them,” Joey said. “And the reflections of the water behind you. I don’t know . . . you’re more beautiful than ever.”
She shook her head and looked down to compose herself. “Telling them last night that Daddy was going away for a few months for work was the most difficult conversation I’ve ever had,” she said. “I explained that staying in East Hampton would make it easier, that they could play outside more, and that Rosie would move in during the time because her uncle Thierry had to go too. I just said they had business problems.” She paused for a moment. “You know Rosie is . . .”
“I know. Marcus McCree told me everything a few years back, when I first reached out to him.”
“Why him?”
“Because friends out here, some cops, were starting to quietly watch Eddie, sniffing him out. They told my dad, and he called me. They figured out the guy who owned the company where Eddie orders drivers and cars had been in the force. They reached out to him, cop-to-cop thing. And then I called Marcus myself and told him I was worried about the family. He jumped into the whole story after that.”
Caroline slid her back against the boulder, holding her knees with her arms. She turned to him. “Tell me, why did you pretend to die?”
“To protect you, and your family, and, yeah . . . even Eddie, your kids’ dad.” Joey gritted his teeth a little. “But then I kept hearing Eddie was getting deeper in. We all had to work together to protect him from his own greed because it could have put you in danger. And from some dangerous people he got involved with . . . or, well, who we all got involved with.”
“Who is we? How did you know them?” Caroline asked.
“Come here,” Joey said, putting his arms around her. She hugged him as tightly as she could, and nestled her face in his neck. He brushed her hair, whispering in her ear, “There’s so much to tell you.”
She pushed Joey away: “Don’t touch me now. It’s too much at once. Just talk, slowly, please. Not about us, or me, just it, whatever it is, and whatever happened.”
“I’m going to try hard not
to hold you,” he said. He paused to gather his thoughts. His straggly hair was lighter now, and Caroline noticed some spindly gray strands. There were a few wrinkles above and below his mouth, gravity pulling his skin toward the sand as he looked down. He dusted off his jeans as if to prepare for his lecture. He looked up at her with his deep brown eyes: “You have to understand that guys like this were always lingering around here, even in high school.”
“Jesus, Joey. Who in high school?”
“Remember Eddie’s Rice Krispies treats?”
“Jesus Christ,” Caroline said. Could she know so little about the man she’d married—and so little about Joey too, the only man she’d ever loved? She tried to remain cool. It took everything in her not to kiss him so hard she’d knock him over. “Of course I remember those, even the little red ribbons he put on. I helped him a few times in his kitchen because his parents were too wasted to cope. Tell me everything.”
Joey nodded and said, staring hard at every nook and curve of her impossibly beautiful face. “Of course. Sorry, your eyes, it’s just, okay. Back to the story.” Joey sat cross-legged and placed both hands on her knees. She looked down at them and considered telling him not to touch her, that the feel of his hands was too distracting. Instead, she lifted them playfully off her again, and shook her head no.
“Okay, sorry.” He sat on his palms facedown. “It’ll help me not to touch you. It’s not easy,” he looked inside her eyes and knew she was trying her hardest not to give up the fight. “So Eddie Clarkson was selling weed with those guys who delivered those Rice Krispies treats to kids all over the island. Nothing big, like now, but he did slip joints inside, wrapped in plastic, where they were smell proof. Maybe that’s how he came up with the idea to put the packages in the manure and shavings. Again, I don’t know every step, but I do know he was dealing some drugs way back.”
“You’re sure?” she asked. Caroline rolled up her sleeves as if that would help her concentrate on the story and not the fact that Joey Whitten was breathing the same air that she was, the breeze blowing off the bay, their bay.
“So, I used to deliver the Rice Krispies weed treats for Eddie. I got a little involved back in high school, and the job went on when you and I were together and during college. One reason he hated me so much was that I worked for him in a small-time weed business, and then, well, his girl fell for me, his underling.”
Caroline leaned against the rock and crossed her arms over her face. Closing her eyes, her forearms shielding the sun, created nothing but blackness in her mind. It allowed her to try to imagine Eddie and Joey working together, and then hating each other because of her. “Go on, so it started in high school.”
“And then,” Joey said, “in our early twenties, his guys wanted more. Eddie was making bigger and bigger deals. And I started to balk and wanted out. I knew I could go to jail with the amounts we started to work with. They told me they’d hurt my family if I didn’t continue.”
She lifted her arms and faced him, “Hurt your family? Like beat up your dad?”
“Yeah, beat up, hurt, or worse,” Joey responded. “And they said they might hurt my girlfriend, you, but I never really believed that.”
Caroline swallowed and nodded, relieved the men had been caught.
“You know, I was the one who was familiar with their faces because Eddie wanted me handling deliveries. He was smart. He didn’t meet anyone or touch anything. I was the mule, and I knew all the guys in charge because I made the pickups. Eddie was too smart to do that.” Joey shook his head. Like all mules, he was used and in danger while the other guys were safe and hoarded the cash. “So, these were my options: keep handling bigger packages or skip town. I didn’t know what to do.”
“So, what did you do?”
“My dad knew. No one else, no need with Mom in heaven. I packed some clothes in a bag, some cash, and my credit cards and passport, and literally swam five miles down with the currents. I mean, I didn’t even swim, it was one of those days where the ocean is literally moving sideways. It just pulled me down the beach, and my dad got me at this spot where no one ever sat on the beach, and gave me a car to drive south. That’s it. I thought I’d leave and come back in a few years, but they would have followed me. So I literally had to drown, disappear. Leaving you, and Lucky.” He coughed and wiped his eyes.
“Lucky must have been the hardest,” she said. “You both were inseparable.”
He half smiled. “Not exactly the hardest, but yeah, kind of.”
“Your dad took good care of him, you know.” She would never tell him about Lucky howling at the moon all night by the shoreline where Joey went in forever. Or kind of forever.
Okay,” she said, stretching out on her side, her elbow propping her up. “Go on.”
He lay beside her, about a foot away, with his head resting the same way, on his palm. The outline of her profile formed a silhouette with the western sun setting against it. He remembered her finger on his profile at the beach shack, the way she always used to touch him, and wondered if his own face was dark like this with the candle behind it. He would take her to the beach shack later. His dad promised he’d always save it for them. She would go, he felt it.
“You look even more like Snow White. Especially now.”
She didn’t say anything; she just nodded coldly. She was right: he shouldn’t be romantic now, and he figured it could take months to win her back. Maybe he’d have to wait for a divorce, which could take a year, but there was no way he could wait that long.
Then Caroline asked, “Can I just ask where the hell you were? I’m going to lie here and just try my hardest to comprehend the fact that you’re here, lying in our spot. Where did you go?”
“I was a boat captain off South America, near Colombia, on this island called San Andrés. It’s the most magical place in the world,” Joey said. “I helped build a sustainable hotel down there, and a restaurant. And remember my murals?”
“Of course, your one on the shack is still there.”
“Well, I painted them all over the place down there, schools, my restaurants, commissions all over the place. My Spanish is good, and I have a lot of friends. But, you know, I never had a family.”
Caroline breathed out hard. No family. No wife. She could only say, “Your Spanish was always good, even back in sixth grade.”
“Yeah, well, seems like more than half the world speaks it. Anyway, I figured out, in the past thirteen years, that the earth is a big place. I built up a good little business. I just had to stay dead. My house is gorgeous, actually. Not big, but just perfect for me. They call me Enrique Marquez. That’s the stupid name I came up with day one, and it stuck.”
“People call you Enrique?” Caroline laughed.
“Yep. I answer to it. And most of the people I hang out with have no idea I lived in the United States for so long. I have a totally new identity now. It wasn’t hard because I wasn’t hiding from any legal authorities. I was just hiding from . . .”
“From Eddie’s guys?”
“Yeah.”
Caroline now covered her face in her hands, gave into her emotions, and started weeping again. “So, it’s because of Eddie that we were kept apart, and then he married me? And I fell for him? And the whole time I’m thinking you’re gone, and I’m figuring Eddie, as a husband, he’ll be . . . I don’t even know, exciting?” She coughed a few times through her tears, and lay back. Joey wiped the tears away from under her eyes with his fingers. She shook her head a little, and he pulled his hand back quickly. She had a family now—or what was a family—and he shouldn’t touch her like they were still together.
Finally, Caroline looked up at Joey. “It’s just a big game for him, isn’t it?”
“Well, he loved you. And he didn’t know I didn’t drown. No one did, except Dad. I mean, I’m sure Eddie still loves you,” Joey said. “I mean, who wouldn’t with that smile.”
“I’m not smiling!”
“You are,” Joey said. “And it’s
even more beautiful than the twenty photos that I’ve handled like twenty million times. I saw you from my boat that day before Memorial Day, you know. Eating those fried clams you love. I could tell you saw me.”
“That freaked me out,” Caroline said, allowing herself the faintest smile. She lay on her side again, with her head resting on her palm.
The two of them played with the wrinkles of the blanket with their fingers. He lay looking at her a safe foot away, his head also resting on his palm. It was quiet for a moment. The seagulls squawked at each other in the distance. The air was heavy, hovering around them now, though a degree or so cooler than even twenty minutes ago. Finally, Joey added, “Eddie always loved you. He always told me he loved you more than I did, more than any man could. I sent him a Frisbee with a note just to fuck with him. Maybe he told you?”
“That definitely got his attention. But why that message, ‘She’s still mine’?”
“That message?” He knew she was asking as a ploy to make him fight for it. “Why did I write that message? Because, Caroline, one can only hope.”
She nodded, trying to pretend that he didn’t have her that way anymore, that it wouldn’t be that easy for him. The air was still, and she had trouble breathing. She loved him just the same, maybe more, and she smiled a little. She couldn’t help herself.
“And I left the conch shell, just to say I’m always here, and that nothing’s changed.”
She nodded. “The story. Go on.”
Joey took note and got back on track. “Sorry, I know he’s the man you married and the father of your kids, but Eddie Clarkson didn’t deserve you,” Joey continued. “Everyone, all the local cops at the barn yesterday, was psyched to help with the sting and show him who’s really boss in this town. But, yes, back then, I had to leave. I didn’t want to. I had to. Leaving you was the hardest thing. But the one person I wanted to know the truth was the one person I could never tell. It would have put your life in danger. Drug dealers are no joke. You take their threats seriously. I thought it would be easier for you to start a new life if you really believed I was gone. I’m so sorry, baby.” He put his hand on her stomach, and she picked it up and removed it.
It's Hot in the Hamptons Page 31