The Islanders

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  Unless that teenager was someday Maggie, in which case Joy would want to know about any bad behavior immediately.

  “You don’t need to bring me on the ferry,” said Maggie, after Joy had bought her ticket. “I can find a seat on my own.”

  “I know,” said Joy. “But I want to know where you’re sitting. I want to be able to picture you.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes.

  Joy got Maggie settled into a seat, and then she hugged her goodbye, and then Maggie hugged Pickles, and then Pickles licked the side of Maggie’s face. Maggie was a tremendous hugger, always had been: enthusiastic without being needy, confident while still being warm. Now the hugs, if they came, came intermittently, no rhyme or reason to them, like shooting stars or thunder.

  Joy didn’t like leaving Maggie like this. She knew that Dustin and Sandy and Tiki would be meeting Maggie on the other end, at Perrotti Park in Newport, to take her home for the next forty-eight hours. To their home, she corrected in her head. Because Maggie’s home was with Joy, in the little cottage with the crooked kitchen. But what if Sandy caused some delay that made them late for the ferry? What if Tiki had a dirty diaper or a temper tantrum or did that thing that two-year-olds sometimes did where they went boneless when somebody tried to pick them up? It could be really difficult to get a boneless child into a car.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” said Maggie. “I’ve been on this ferry a million times.”

  “But not as much as the Point Judith one.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “It isn’t. It’s a whole different dock! What if you get lost?”

  Eye roll from Maggie, the second of the day. (Joy thought with trepidation of Madison Blevins.) “I’m not going to get lost,” Maggie said. “There’s only one way down from the boat.”

  Joy put her hand on the purple streak in Maggie’s hair. “I thought you said this washed out, by the way. It sort of seems permanent.”

  “I did? I said it washed out?”

  “You definitely did.”

  “Hmmm. That’s really weird. I don’t remember saying that.”

  By now many of the ferry seats were claimed. There were families and young day-trippers and people with large suitcases who were either leaving for or returning from longer vacations, and Joy realized that she’d better get off the boat before it departed with her on it, because wouldn’t that be a hoot, for her to come off the ferry in Newport with Maggie, Pickles prancing between them. Wouldn’t Dustin and Sandy love that.

  “Make sure your dad calls me,” she said. “The minute he has you in his possession.” While she understood on an intellectual level that Dustin had grown up and matured in the years since their marriage had ended, and while she understood too that with an upgraded wife (skinnier, and definitely taller than Joy) and a toddler in his life he was probably a responsible person who wasn’t likely to lose Maggie, and while she further understood that part of the reason Dustin had moved to Rhode Island was to nourish and water the dormant relationship with his eldest daughter, she still felt the finger of worry leaving a bruise on the tender underside of her arm. “The second he has you,” she said. “I mean, before you even get in the car, you have him call me.”

  “Okay,” said Maggie. Then, “What are you going to do while I’m gone?”

  “I have a meeting with Bridezilla,” said Joy. Bridezilla, whose real name was Kimberly, was a cranky bride-to-be from Boston who was due to be married at the Narragansett Inn at the end of August. Joy had met her a few times and she’d never seen the young woman smile. Her mother, Linda, a nonconfrontational woman with a prodigious J.Jill collection who’d been a regular at the shop for years, was as lovely as Kimberly was unlovely. Linda had put in an order for a thousand whoopie pies to be served at the two-hundred-guest wedding and also to be boxed up as wedding favors, three per guest. It was a significant order, especially since the pies for the wedding would have specific, island-themed decorations—sailboats and seashells—which raised the price by almost a dollar per pie. For these reasons, Joy was trying to overlook Kimberly’s unpleasantness. “After that,” Joy told Maggie, “I’m not sure. Pickles and I might go out and paint the town.”

  “Oh, please, Mom.”

  “What? We might. Pickles likes to get out as much as the next dog.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes a third time. “Just don’t do anything embarrassing. Seriously, okay?”

  The hours before Joy had to meet with Bridezilla stretched out endlessly. The shop was in the capable hands of Olivia Rossi, Joy Bombs’ summer assistant manager. Early in the season Joy could manage well enough alone, but as tourist traffic picked up she always needed someone to help at the counter while Joy baked or to oversee the ovens or fill the pies. This was Olivia’s first day on her own, and as tempted as she was, Joy knew it would be too Type A of her to stop by and see how Olivia was doing. Olivia was capable and mature, with a level head that belied her sixteen years.

  The day was enchanting, and Joy knew the beaches would be wall-to-wall. She could wander down to Fred Benson on foot or hop on her bike and cross the island to Stevens Cove.

  “I don’t feel like doing any of those fun things,” she told Pickles when she was back home from the ferry, sitting on her couch, resting her feet on the coffee table. “I just feel like sulking.” What she wanted to do was indulge the insidious worry she felt every time Maggie was with Dustin. What if, now that she’d been visiting regularly for almost two years, Maggie decided she liked it better at Dustin’s house? What if Sandy was more patient than Joy, and kinder? Dustin had somehow secured a job that allowed Sandy to stay home with Tiki; what if Maggie realized that what she was missing in her life was a mother figure who didn’t have to go to work at dawn every day?

  What if the most important person in Joy’s life fell in love with Dustin’s second family?

  After she’d had a very brief conversation with Dustin confirming that he had Maggie in hand, Joy wandered around the cottage. She dialed Joy Bombs and hung up before Olivia Rossi could answer. She spent more time than she should have in Maggie’s room. First she lay down on Maggie’s bed, on top of the black (black!) comforter Maggie had asked for on her twelfth birthday. She sniffed the pillow to see if she could locate the scent of Maggie’s shampoo. She couldn’t. Had she forgotten to remind Maggie to wash her hair? She dialed Maggie’s number, then hung up before she could answer. She was becoming a stalker.

  She opened Maggie’s closet and studied the neatly hung jeans, the collection of Converse sneakers in multiple colors, the tidy piles of T-shirts: I’m Not a Monday Person and I’m Not Short I’m Just Concentrated Awesome and the one that Joy would only let Maggie wear inside the house: Cute but Psycho. Joy’s personal favorite featured a hedgehog and the existential question Why Don’t They Just Share the Hedge? It made her laugh every time.

  On Maggie’s nightstand was her iPad, which she used in the olden days, before she got a phone. The messages on the iPad were synced with those on Maggie’s phone, and Joy picked it up, punching in the passcode, which she knew to be the month and day they’d adopted Pickles, and studied the messages. Pickles eyed her reproachfully.

  “Don’t judge me, Pickles,” Joy said. “You know the rules as well as I do.” The rules were that as long as Joy paid the cell phone bill she was allowed to look at anything on the devices.

  Do u rly think i should go 4 it

  Riley’s reply: Yes

  Maggie: Hes so much older

  Riley: Not rly

  Then the next text from Riley: T:)T

  (What did that mean?)

  Joy checked the time on the messages. Maggie and Riley had been texting when Maggie was on the ferry. Joy’s stomach turned over. What did it mean to “go 4 it” when you were thirteen years old? What did “so much older” mean when you were thirteen? Did it mean fourteen, or forty-five?

  Chapter 6

  Lu

  Chase and Sebastian were in rare form at the grocery store. That sounde
d like it might be something good—rare form, like a rare painting or a rare coin—but it definitely was not. Because Jeremy was staying at the hospital after all, Lu had let the boys stay up too late watching Lego Batman, hoping they’d sleep a little later and allow her to get some work done. But the late bedtime had thrown off their rhythms and they’d woken up earlier than usual. In fact, they’d woken Lu up by jumping on her bed at seven minutes past six, so she’d lost on both ends.

  Also she’d taken down half a bottle of her favorite inexpensive white wine—Josh Sauvignon Blanc—and had woken with the beginnings of a headache. Now Chase was hanging off the edge of the cart, and Sebastian, who was really too old for such things, was riding inside. Lu hadn’t wanted to come shopping at all, but her attempt to borrow sugar from the neighbor had been unsuccessful and she needed a few other items too.

  She was getting behind, and soon people would start to notice. She had to knock it out of the park with the essence-of-summer cobbler.

  She examined a package of strawberries. Her grocery costs were going to triple this summer, and that was no small consideration. Jeremy would notice. He’d want her and the boys to eat meals with his parents more often. People thought that doctors were rich, but it took years and years and years to start making real money. Jeremy had only completed his fellowship two years before. Rich was a long way in the future. Even out of debt was a long way in the future. Lu took a deep breath, thought about the money in her secret account, and felt immediately better.

  Just then she heard someone say, “Lu Trusdale?” She whipped her head around to see a woman with a strong, square chin, indented with a perfectly round dimple. “You’re Lu, aren’t you?”

  Lu looked at her warily. Her insides felt jumpy. She nodded.

  “I’m Jessica!” The woman leaned toward Lu, like she expected to be congratulated. “My mom is super-best-friends with your mother-in-law, and we’re here for the summer too. You probably don’t remember this, but I was at your baby shower!”

  “Of course,” said Lu. “Jessica, of course.” Lu didn’t remember a single thing about her baby shower except for a feeling of near panic that came over her in waves. Jeremy’s mother had planned the whole thing, and there were so many people there that it took two full hours to open the gifts. The day had made Lu feel unnecessarily extravagant and spoiled. Also, she hated to be the center of attention, unless there was a judge and a jury involved, so by the end of the event her face hurt from smiling so hard and so insincerely.

  Jessica wasn’t shy about looking in Lu’s shopping cart. “Oooooh!” she said. “Artichokes! How brave of you. What are you making?”

  Lu didn’t say, Broken artichoke heart salad to go on the side of pasta puttanesca. She said, “I don’t know. Something very simple. Truth be told, I’m not much of a cook.”

  “Yes, you are!” said Chase. He was kicking at the wheel of the shopping cart. “You cook all the time!”

  “Oh,” said Lu, growing flustered. “His definition of cooking and mine are a little different.” She could have stopped there, but something made her go on. “You know kids! You throw some chicken nuggets on a sheet pan and they think you’ve cooked for them!”

  Jessica nodded appraisingly. “Well,” she said finally. “We should definitely hang out. I’ll get your number from your MIL.” She actually said the letters, not the words: M. I. L.

  OMG, thought Lu.

  “Great!” said Lu. “Definitely do that.” She waited until Jessica had turned in to the frozen food section and then she allowed herself to exhale in relief. She hated not being anonymous while she shopped or cooked. She didn’t like surprises in any form: she liked to be the one who doled out the surprises, controlled them. She told Chase to hold on to the cart so he wouldn’t get lost and she hightailed it toward the register and paid as quickly as she could.

  There was a man in a gray T-shirt perusing the display of mass-market paperbacks near the register. From the back, she didn’t recognize him, but when he turned slightly to reach for a book she saw that he was her neighbor, the grumpy one who didn’t have any sugar and didn’t invite her inside and hardly said two words to her. Lu watched as he picked up a book and flipped through it. As it turned out, Lu, who read everything, had read that book. Because she believed in second chances, she said, “That one was good. You should get it.”

  The man looked up at her, startled. “Oh!” he said. “Hey, it’s you. The sugar lady.”

  “It’s me,” she said. She gestured toward her cart. “But don’t worry, I bought sugar.”

  “Leonard Puckett,” said the man thoughtfully, massaging the cover. He chewed on the side of his lip and finally said, “I’ve heard he’s overrated.” He looked for a long time at the book and then he turned it over in his hands and studied the author’s photo, which took up much of the back cover. The photo was of an older man with a head of white hair and eyebrows that were full and stern and foreboding.

  “I mean, I guess you could say that,” Lu conceded. “Those kinds of books do start to blend together after a while. But they’re pretty reliable entertainment if you just want to sit on the beach and read.”

  “You’re probably right,” said the man. He smiled; he had a very nice smile, which almost disguised the fact that his eyes drooped down at the corners in a way that made him look either sad or tired. He put the book back, then picked it up again. “I apologize for being rude the other day. I—I wasn’t myself. I should have been friendlier. I usually am friendlier. I didn’t even introduce myself. I’m Anthony.”

  “Lu Trusdale. And this is Chase, and this is Sebastian.” Chase and Sebastian were engaged in a thumb war, so she said, “Boys!” until they looked up and smiled. “Do you have a last name, Anthony?” Lu asked. She always liked to get the full story.

  He looked down at the book again and then back up at Lu. “Anthony Jones. I’m Anthony Jones.” He slipped the book back inside the rack. “I’m not going to get this. I don’t really even like to read!”

  “Oh, too bad,” said Lu. “I love to read. I’m pretty undiscriminating—mysteries, literary, biography. Cookbooks!” Her new neighbor seemed nice enough, but she’d never understood people who didn’t like to read. When Lu was in college she thought she might go to graduate school for English literature, until her favorite disgruntled professor told her there was neither money nor glory in that path. The law, if pursued correctly, promised both.

  Sebastian was starting to move around impatiently inside the shopping cart, making it rock dangerously.

  “Hey, buddy,” said Lu’s new acquaintance. “Careful in there. I wouldn’t want to have to send the PAW Patrol out.” Sebastian grinned and stopped moving around.

  “You know your way around four-year-old boys,” said Lu. This guy didn’t present like a dad. Maybe he was an uncle.

  “Lucky guess,” he said. “See you around the hood.” And he was gone as quickly as he’d appeared.

  In the grocery’s small parking lot, Lu watched Anthony as he hesitated, then crossed the street and entered a place called Poor People’s Pub. A surprising feeling of envy washed over her. When she worked at the law firm, every Friday she and the other young attorneys would step across the street after a long day to sip martinis and unwind. She had loved the camaraderie of those evenings, the fatigue that came after a day worked to its fullest. If the boys weren’t with her she might have called to her neighbor to see if he wanted company. It would be nice to have a new friend.

  But new friends—new male, childless friends who were heading into bars—weren’t practical in her current circumstances, under her current agreement with Jeremy, the way they would have been in her former life, so there was nothing to do but pack the boys and the groceries in the car and head back to Corn Neck Road.

  Where she saw her mother-in-law’s car in the driveway. “Fuuuuuck,” she said, under her breath.

  But not under her breath enough. “Mommy!” said Chase.

  “What?” She glanced
in the rearview mirror. His face was screwed up in appraisal and, well, for lack of a better description, disapproval.

  “You’re not supposed to say that word.”

  “What word?”

  “I’m not allowed to say it,” Chase said staunchly. “I won’t.”

  “Fuck,” said Sebastian pleasantly. He was tracing a shape on the car’s window and lounging in his booster seat. “You’re not allowed to say fuck.”

  Lu massaged her temples with two fingers of each hand. “I was about to say funny, boys. I’m not supposed to say something is funny?”

  Chase squinted at her and shook his head strictly.

  “Look!” said Sebastian, pointing. “It’s Grandma.” Lu’s MIL’s face appeared in the front window, and she began to wave in a friendly (or frantic) manner. Had Lu not locked the door? Or did Nancy have her own key? Perhaps, as the person paying the rent, she felt entitled. Maybe she’d marched herself down to the Island True Value the minute she’d signed the lease for Jeremy and Lu and made herself a set. Or maybe Jeremy had made Nancy a copy and not told Lu. Either scenario was very possible.

  “Fantastic,” said Lu, trying to work some false cheer into her voice. “A visitor!”

  She was really, absolutely, definitely, no question going to need to find somewhere else to go to work.

  Chapter 7

  Joy

  Joy was on her way to the meeting with Bridezilla and Bridezilla’s mother when she got a call from Harlan Nichols, the landlord who owned the building on Dodge Street that housed Joy Bombs. Joy was ever so slightly peeved that Bridezilla had insisted that they meet at the venue—the storied Narragansett Inn—instead of at Joy Bombs. It seemed like one of those small and irritating ways that an unhappy person with money tried to keep control over others with less. And Kimberly, Joy was certain, was not a happy person. How she could find anything to be unhappy about was anybody’s guess: she was a gorgeous, well-pedigreed, successful digital marketing manager for a restaurant group based in Boston, and she and her fiancé, who happened to be swimming in family money and worked in the front office of the Red Sox in some capacity, lived in a brownstone on Commonwealth Avenue. Had Joy known about Kimberly’s Bridezilla tendencies beforehand, she might have turned the job down, but she liked her mother so much.