The House on Mermaid Point

by Wendy Wax

  She contemplated Deirdre, who had belatedly donned the mantle of motherhood and refused to relinquish it, and admitted what she had never thought she would: Deirdre Morgan was an important part of their whole. A piece she wouldn’t want to be without.

  “If I had a glass of anything in my hand, I’d be toasting all of you.” Avery raised her empty hand as if it were cupping a wineglass stem. “And especially all of the wonderful companies that sent subs our way and who Nicole and Deirdre have convinced to work for so little.”

  “Here, here.” Nicole opened her eyes to chime in.

  “I move we go to Islamorada for a celebratory dinner ASAP so that we can toast this up right.” Deirdre raised an imaginary glass and leaned forward to “clink” it against Avery’s.

  “I second that motion.” Maddie raised her imaginary glass to theirs.

  “What happens next, O fearless leader?” Nicole asked Avery as they settled back into optimal soaking positions.

  “For the next weeks, or at least until it’s time to paint, refinish the floors, and add final decorative touches under Deirdre’s supervision, we’re going to assist our subcontractors in every way possible. I’m going to pair each of us with a sponsoring company as a runner/facilitator/interpreter—whatever it takes. Everybody needs to learn as much as they can with an eye toward future renovations and lend a hand wherever it’s needed. It’ll be up to all of us to keep everybody moving forward as seamlessly and quickly as possible.

  “If we keep our heads down for the next two weeks, take off the Fourth to recharge, and then settle in to finish, I feel pretty sure we can be up and running by Labor Day.”

  “That’s good. Because Labor Day is a biggie here. That’s when the 1935 hurricane hit and more than four hundred people died.” Maddie swallowed. “I’m not sure I could face the memorial service they do every year. I can still remember Hurricane Charlene and cowering in that motel bathroom when she was barreling past Pass-a-Grille.”

  “Hey, from what I hear it’s been an abnormally dry, calm summer. But I’m all for being done ahead of schedule,” Avery said. “And if we’re going to make it we’re going to need a designated ‘Hightower Handler.’”

  “I hope you weren’t looking at me when you said that.” Maddie folded her arms across her chest.

  “Of course I was looking at you. We need someone to keep him . . . well, maybe not happy but at least cooperative.”

  “That’s not as easy as you seem to think,” Maddie said. “The last time you gave me ‘Hightower detail’ he caught me with his underwear in my hands.”

  “I’m sorry I missed that.” Nicole’s voice rang with suppressed laughter.

  “We’re all sorry we missed that,” Deirdre added.

  “I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d missed that,” Maddie said drily.

  “But you got him to agree to donate some things,” Avery pointed out.

  “Hell, it sounds like we could have auctioned off some of his underwear, too.” Nicole looked wide awake now. Even in the fading light Avery could see her eyes glinting with humor.

  “Oh, no.” Maddie’s voice took on a teasing tone. “He specifically exempted them.”

  Nicole snorted and then there was no holding back the laughter.

  “You should have seen his face when the underwear went flying in the air and landed all around us.” Maddie joined in the laughter.

  Soon all of them were howling, clutching their sides. Deirdre didn’t seem to care if she got her head wet anymore. Roberto and Fred had stopped looking at the sky and were watching them in surprise. Avery wiped tears of laughter from her face. Nicole was still laughing so hard she looked at risk of going under.

  “Fine. It was completely ridiculous.” Maddie wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. “But the man was royally pissed off.”

  “But he does listen to you.” Deirdre was the first to get herself under control. “Whether you want the title or not I think you’re the perfect pick for William the Wild Whisperer.”

  This had them cracking up all over again. The sky grew dark and the stars began to come out. It was Deirdre who finally cleared her throat and changed the subject. “Where do we stand with the zoning issues?”

  “I really can’t think about it,” Avery replied honestly. “I’m thrilled with the subs we have lined up. We now have a first-rate carpenter and electrician in residence. I saw online that there’s talk about lifting the ban on B and Bs.” She shrugged. “I’ve got too many other things that I can control to worry about the ones I can’t. We’re not tied to land, we’re not changing the footprint of any of the structures, and so far no one has tried to prevent us from pulling permits. As far as I’m concerned this is the network’s legal department’s problem.”

  “Except that Lisa Hogan is already trying to make it ours,” Nicole said quietly.

  Avery shrugged again. “She just said we had to be done by Labor Day, and we’re going to do everything humanly possible to meet that deadline. But I can’t force William Hightower to be standing at the front door greeting guests with a smile on his face. And I can’t be expected to go out and book those guests, either. As my father used to say, all we can do is the best we can do.”

  They left the hot tub extremely shriveled but oddly hopeful. Avery said her good nights to everyone and watched them head back to the houseboat. Alone, she stepped out onto the moonlit sliver of beach and pulled out her cell phone, eager to call Chase and fill him in.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Over the last weeks of June one day bled into the next. Maddie felt the sun beat down harder, gaining strength each day. Even when the clouds scuttled in, the breeze remained heavy with humidity; a warm wet towel that wrapped itself around you and refused to be shrugged off.

  Despite the heat the once-sleepy island appeared wide awake and pulsing with life. The subs arrived early each morning and stayed late each afternoon. Boats and barges came and went bearing workmen, supplies, and materials; an invasion so complete that even William Hightower seemed at a loss as to which incursions loomed largest.

  Mermaid Point thrummed with the sounds of power tools and reverberated with shouts. Wherever Roberto worked, rock and roll and especially classic southern rock blared from portable speakers; something that William had at first blanched at and then pretended not to notice but that made Maddie’s blood quicken each time the strains of remembered favorites reached her. She lingered outside the garage late one afternoon where Roberto was framing in a new upstairs bath and stair just so that she could listen to a younger, edgier William Hightower’s pain-roughened vocals that lamented the mermaid who’d left him to return to the sea.

  She was blinking away tears, wondering how someone who could evoke such strong emotion with his voice could stop using it, when she looked up and saw Troy and Anthony recording her reaction. The crew somehow seemed to be everywhere capturing everything. Kyra blocked whatever shots of Dustin she could and occasionally she shot back, though what she intended to do with the video of the video and audio men seemed unclear.

  The days passed in constant motion and forced interaction so that by the time the subs left for the day even Maddie, who had always been keenly aware of the importance of communication, had little to say and virtually no energy with which to say it. She’d become far less stringent about maintaining their “one good thing” tradition, but because sunsets were off-limits to the network camera, they took to the upper deck almost nightly, carrying their snacks and cans of soft drinks, which they’d begun to spike with rum from a liter bottle that Nicole had brought back from Miami. Sometimes they toasted and reflected on the day; sometimes they sat silently, their eyes on the sun and the sky.

  Avery’s fingers were Cheez Doodle orange and the rum she’d poured into her Diet Coke can was starting to kick in when a boatload of paparazzi slowed out in the channel, one of two daily “drive-by shooting
s” that had grown as regular and inevitable as the tides. So far Nigel and his friends had kept their distance, sticking to the deep water and relying on telephoto lenses so long they could magnify a blemish that hadn’t fully formed yet from two miles away.

  From the deck of his sunset boat, Roberto waved a tie-dyed bandana at the photographers while Fred Strahlendorf aimed the tip of a screwdriver at them before holstering it in his tool belt. Avery gave the paparazzi an orange-coated finger, but with Dustin already tucked into his berth and their energy level at such a low ebb, there wasn’t a lot of heat in the exchange.

  “Permission to come aboard?” Hudson Power stood on the retaining wall, his head tilted back to address them. In the swimming pool William Hightower swam lap after lap, something he now did at sunrise before the workmen arrived and near sunset after they left.

  Waved aboard, Hudson slid onto a vacant seat cushion. Deirdre slid a plate of crackers slathered in pâté onto a wooden crab trap that Maddie had requisitioned for their cocktail table. Nicole handed him a can of Coke from the cooler, though Maddie noticed that no one mentioned or offered a pour of rum to go in it.

  “I feel like we should lure them closer. You know, maybe put Will and Dustin out in a boat just on the edge of the shallow water and wait for them to bite.” Kyra’s eyes were on Nigel. “Then we could snap pictures of them stuck on a flat.”

  “It’s tempting.” Nicole took a long sip of her drink.

  “Aren’t the fines for running aground really steep?” Maddie asked. “I remember one of my guidebooks talking about the damage propellers can do to the sea grass and coral rock.”

  “That’s right, fines can run in the thousands,” Hudson said, his eyes on the paparazzi. “So far these guys have been smart enough to keep a local at the helm.” Hudson gave a friendly wave to the driver of the paparazzi’s boat. “That’s Captain Eli Fine out there.”

  Eli waved back, gave an amiable toot of his boat horn.

  “It happens all the time, though,” Hudson said. “Even native Conchs run aground on occasion.” He took a sip of his Coke. “The saying is there are only three kinds of skippers: those who have run aground, those who will run aground, and those who have but won’t admit it.”

  “You haven’t run aground, have you?” Maddie asked, surprised. Hudson’s lessons on running the Jon Boat had been clear and concise. She knew he’d been guiding for decades and operating boats since he was a child.

  “Of course.” Hudson popped a pâté-covered cracker in his mouth and chewed companionably. His green eyes crinkled at the corners. “And so has Will. In fact, I heard that one of the reasons he was so upset when he got back and found someone in his, um, closet was because he almost got stuck on a flat he knows like the back of his hand that day. All it takes is a moment of inattention.”

  Maddie wasn’t sure which was worse: getting stranded on a flat with no way off or going through what she’d come to think of as the “underwear fiasco.” “But if you stay in the marked channel, then you’re safe, right?” She wished briefly that there were obvious channel markers in real life, too.

  “I wish I could tell you it’s just a matter of being careful, but down here, well, it’s just part of the experience.” Hudson smiled. “That link I gave you to BoatSafe.com has a whole section on running aground with a list of steps to take.”

  The boatload of paparazzi disappeared beneath the Tea Table Relief Bridge as Maddie’s cell phone rang. Seeing the photo on her screen Maddie excused herself and walked over to the beach to talk to her son, Andrew. They’d spoken only sporadically over the last month, which she’d taken as a good sign. In her experience nineteen-year-old males called their parents for specific reasons, the most specific being money.

  “Hi, sweetie.” She settled into the turquoise Adirondack and stared out over the water. “How’s the internship going?”

  “It’s good.” They’d all been thrilled when he’d gotten the paid internship at Coca-Cola, something that would not only look good on his résumé but keep him busy all day and with spending money in his pocket. “Did you know that if you put a penny in a Coke it will turn it all shiny?”

  “Um, no.” She looked down at the Diet Coke can she’d set on the chair’s broad arm, then moved it to a spot in the sand. “That’s very interesting.” For a couple of minutes she peppered him with questions about Coke headquarters, the friends who’d come home for the summer, whether he’d taken care of housing for the fall. But although she could tell there was something on his mind, she found out when she stopped quizzing and allowed a silence to fall that it wasn’t money or a loan of any kind that he wanted to talk about.

  “There’s been a lot of people coming through to look at the house,” he said unhappily.

  “That’s actually a good thing, honey. We do want it to sell.”

  “Kelly staged the whole place.” Kelly Wittes, Steve’s girlfriend, had a company that de-cluttered and staged houses that were being put on the market. “It doesn’t even look like our house anymore.”

  Maddie decided not to mention that no matter what happened next, their house would never again be the truly safe haven it had once been. Hearing the sadness in Andrew’s voice made her realize that maybe she and Kyra had been the lucky ones—coming down to Mermaid Point instead of dealing with dismantling and selling their beloved home.

  “And she’s here all the time,” Andrew added clearly aggrieved.

  “Oh, honey.” Maddie didn’t want to picture the woman, ten years her junior, curled up on the sofa she and Steve had selected. Eating at their kitchen table. Sleeping on Maddie’s side of the Tempur-Pedic. “I know it must be hard. Do you want to come down to Mermaid Point for the Fourth?”

  Maddie realized that the sound of swimming had stopped. She caught herself staring at the ocean while picturing William Hightower reaching for a towel, water sluicing down his impressive torso. “It’s beautiful here. And we could do a day of offshore fishing or go with a guide into the backcountry.” She’d been thinking it might be fun to try, and Andrew loved the outdoors. “All the restaurants around here will cook whatever we catch for dinner. And there’s . . .” She could feel her enthusiasm growing. She hadn’t wanted to dwell on the fact that everyone but her had plans for the holiday weekend. If Andrew came down they could do all kinds of things she’d been hoping to see and try.

  “Thanks, Mom.” Andrew cut her off before she could fully describe just how eager she was to swim with the dolphins at the nearby Theater of the Sea. “But I was planning to go to Hilton Head with a couple of the guys. Todd’s girlfriend is going to be there with some of her sorority sisters.”

  “Oh. That sounds great.”

  “Yeah. Dad and Kelly are planning a cookout here at the house.” He emphasized her name in a childish singsong. “And there’s an open house on Sunday. So I thought I’d leave a couple of days ahead.”

  “Hilton Head sounds like fun.” Her stomach hurt a bit at the images of Steve and his girlfriend hosting a party in her kitchen; all those strangers congregating on the deck and around the kitchen counter. God, she hoped the guest list was made up of strangers and not her and Steve’s old friends. Would it count as a complete betrayal if she weren’t there to see it? “Do you need some money?”

  “Naw, I’m good. I cashed my last paycheck for spending money and Dad gave me enough for my share of the hotel room.”

  “That’s great.” Maddie kept the smile in her voice as they said good-bye, willing away the thoughts of her former husband and the woman who had made herself so at home in their soon-to-be-former house. She kept her eyes pinned on the ocean, watching it carefully as it began to disappear into the darkening sky.

  So focused was she that the first droplets of water that fell on her bare arm took her by surprise. The male voice that accompanied it sent a small shiver up her spine as she stood.

  “Sorry.” William High
tower stood beside her, his towel slung across his shoulders, his bare chest glimmering with water. “You’re not going to skitter out of my way, are you?”

  “Me? Skitter?” She shook her head. “I think not.” She moved carefully so as not to give even the impression of skittering. “I’m just not interested in getting wet.”

  He smiled; she could see the flash of white teeth though it had gotten too dark to read his eyes. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want to think that our unfortunate encounter in my closet was causing you to avoid me.”

  She was already opening her mouth to insist she hadn’t been avoiding him when she thought better of it. She had been intimidated and flustered by him at times, but she had nonetheless tried to be honest. “I’m not used to being yelled at. And I don’t like it.” She barely hesitated before she added, “No one does.”

  “I know.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving parts of it standing on end. “And I really am sorry. I’d had a kind of rough . . . well . . . it doesn’t matter. There’s no good excuse. I really didn’t mean to take everything out on you.”

  “Thanks. Apology accepted.”

  He looked pleased at her response. Before she could turn or skitter or anything else that would end the conversation he said, “I’ve pulled some of the things you asked for and autographed them. If you want to come with me I can give them to you now.”

  Saying no seemed churlish and she was pretty sure Avery would eject her from the island if she ever heard that Maddie had turned down the very things they’d asked William for. She followed him to the back deck and through an open slider into the house. The kitchen table had been pulled back in line with the pool table and she saw the vise and tackle box with the fuzzy and shiny bright-colored bits that she now knew were fishing flies, or lures, that he tied himself. A pile of T-shirts and posters teetered on the other end. The telescope had been moved closer to the pool table and was currently aimed north toward Bud N’ Mary’s.