The Islanders

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “Which?” Joy was distracted: Olivia Rossi had texted about a message Bridezilla’s mother had left at the shop.

  “That one. In the window. The Thrill of the Chase.”

  “Oh, that?” She glanced up at the poster quickly, then back at her phone. She muttered something about a dairy in Vermont. “Not my kind of book, mysteries.” Really, most books weren’t Joy’s kind of book. She wasn’t a reader, just as she’d said! It was actually very refreshing. In the evenings when they were home together she went over accounts from the shop or suggested that they watch something on cable or Netflix or Hulu. Ray Donovan was supposed to be good, or how about The Handmaid’s Tale?

  “Thrillers,” he corrected her, about Leonard’s genre. “I believe they call those thrillers.”

  But she was already talking into the phone, turning away from him.

  “I love you,” he said experimentally one night, when Joy was putting together a simple caprese salad with grilled tuna. She looked so startled that he quickly revised: “I mean, I think I’m falling in love with you.” And a second revision: “I think I might be.”

  The sentence hung there, an uninvited guest.

  “I’m low on olive oil,” she said, her eyes wide, almost feral. He’d gone too far, too fast. “And I’m due to pick up Maggie in twenty minutes. Do you think you could run to the grocery?”

  He went to the grocery, his pulse racing. When he returned they spoke no more about it.

  They went to Mohegan Bluffs. One hundred and forty-one steps down, the same back up! Anthony noticed he wasn’t out of breath when he got to the top, the way the people in front of them were. Day after day with no alcohol, the biking, the sunshine and sea air: he was losing the Depressed Man softness around his midsection. He had a tan!

  They hiked out to Rodman’s Hollow. Anthony read the sign out loud. Please respect it so that all—human, creature, and plant alike—may share in its peace and beauty. Now he was also smitten with Rodman, whoever he may have been.

  They went to the 1661 farm and petted the alpacas and met the star-horned sheep. They ate calamari at Poor People’s Pub and ice cream at the Scoop Shack.

  They ate at Eli’s: tomato and burrata salad, ginger-rubbed swordfish. After, they sat on a bench near the ferry terminal, watching the drunk people. A young woman in stilettos and a bright blue sundress wobbled into her companion.

  Joy leaned over and kissed him. She’d had two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc at Eli’s.

  Now, he thought.

  “I have something to tell you,” he said in a small voice.

  Joy pulled back and looked at him. “Are you a murderer?”

  “What? No. Of course not. Why would you think that?”

  “You look so serious all of a sudden.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Okay, then,” she said. She resumed kissing him.

  “It’s just that I—I’m not . . .”

  She stopped again. She whispered, “Let me guess. You’re not who you say you are.”

  His palms started to sweat; his ears started to sweat.

  “Oh, boy,” she said. “I got you, huh? You look terrified. I’m kidding, of course.”

  “You know what?” he said after a beat. “Never mind. It’s nothing we can’t talk about another time.”

  “You sure?”

  He couldn’t tell her.

  “I’m sure,” he said. He put his hands on the sides of her face and pulled her gently toward him.

  Chapter 27

  Lu

  Jeremy was home for dinner. It was a real treat! Lu had made a Thai mango salad with peanut dressing. It was very simple, but the mangoes made it feel exotic. In fact, that’s what she’d be writing in her post.

  You know how passionate I am about eating foods that are fresh and local. The butter lettuce I used in this recipe, for example, came from my local farmers’ market. So you might be surprised to see that this dish also features succulent, ripe mango, which is not exactly indigenous where I live. I admit it, these mangoes caught my eye in my local grocery store and I couldn’t help myself. Did you know that almost half the mangoes in the world are grown in India?

  Both boys were devouring the salad—a win! Also, it was versatile. She’d made hers with chicken, but her vegetarian readers could easily substitute grilled or stir-fried tofu, and the pescatarians could use shrimp or even salmon. Provided the salmon was wild. Leo was very into sustainable seafoods, and he’d done a post about the dangers of farm-raised salmon that had generated a slew of reader mail. Though of course Leo’s preferred seafood was always the lake trout that he caught himself.

  In between bites the boys were tripping over each other trying to tell Jeremy about their past few days. It was adorable, how happy they were to see him. And he seemed to be in a good mood, relaxed, smiling. Now they were telling him about the salmon pink bird-eating tarantula, native to Brazil, that had come to the library on exotic animal day.

  “But you’re terrified of spiders, Lu.”

  Lu only half heard him. She was wondering if it was worth creating a peanut-free version of the salad too, with a different kind of dressing. Maybe soy nuts to retain the crunch. She was also dreaming about a trip to India she’d create for Leo and Jacqui, something that would inspire a new twist on a chickpea curry. Maybe they’d gone before they were parents. Maybe they’d gone on their honeymoon! Yes. They also went to Thailand and visited an elephant sanctuary. Phuket Elephant Sanctuary. She’d do all of this tomorrow, plus the charcoal drawings to go with it. She also had to go to the bank and get cash for Maggie. For the first time since she’d been accumulating it, Lu had started to dip into the money in her private account, to pay Maggie. Once every few days she walked to the ATM at the Washington Trust Bank on Ocean Avenue. It wasn’t much—Maggie had quoted her a rate of eight dollars an hour, a steal—but still Lu cherished the feeling of withdrawing the cash that was her very own, and using it to pay her very own mother’s helper that she’d hired so she could run her very own business. Her own burgeoning empire.

  “Spiders,” said Jeremy now. “You must have hated that.”

  She had made the boys promise not to mention Maggie to either Jeremy or Nancy. Neither one would see it the right way. Nancy would wonder why Lu hadn’t just asked her to help if she needed some free time “to shop or exercise” (there were a hundred answers to that question), and Jeremy would see Maggie’s presence as Lu shirking her duties to the boys, Lu being dishonest, Lu spending money they didn’t, technically, have. For some reason Jeremy had no problem accepting a free summer home from his parents as well as a huge loan for a house down payment but would never dream of taking their money for small, day-to-day expenses. It didn’t make any sense to Lu, but then she hadn’t grown up with family money, so she supposed there were invisible rules she’d never understand.

  Jeremy couldn’t know about Maggie: it simply wasn’t an option. “Maggie is our special little secret,” she’d told the boys. “She’s like a magical fairy; if we tell anyone about her she might fly away!”

  They nodded solemnly. They promised. They adored Maggie. She was young enough that she was still mostly a kid herself, so she’d get down on the floor with them and pretend to be an elephant, or she’d arm-wrestle Sebastian, always letting him win, or she’d watch The Lego Movie with them and enjoy it every bit as much as they did. “Come with me if you want to not die!” she’d say, and the boys would roll around, laughing, saying with her things like, “We are from Planet Duplo, and we’re here to destroy you.” (Lu didn’t understand any of these references; the first time the boys had seen the movie she’d been answering reader mail on her laptop.) They’d do anything to keep Maggie from flying away.

  “They didn’t bother me,” said Lu. “Maybe I’ve grown out of it.” She shot warning looks to both boys.

  Jacqui went crazy over this salad, she’d write. Should she come up with a fictional case for Jacqui to be working on? Some of her stay-at-home mom readers
relished the details of Jacqui’s professional life; big-time jobs were like porn to them. Office porn.

  She didn’t notice that the whole table had gone silent until suddenly they were all staring at her.

  “Who’s Maggie?” Jeremy asked.

  Instantly, Lu flushed. She glanced at Chase and Sebastian and said innocently, “What?”

  Chase hit Sebastian and said, “You weren’t supposed to say. Mommy told us not to tell, you’re an idiot.”

  Sebastian began to cry. Jeremy paid no attention to the boys and fixed a cold, clinical gaze on Lu. Was this the gaze he fixed on his patients right before they were put under? How terrifying. “They said that Maggie has been showing them how to bodysurf.”

  Lu cleared her throat. “No, no,” she said. “They’re not really bodysurfing, of course. They’re just in the very shallowest water. More like skimboarding, without the boards. It’s not even ankle-deep!” This was the wrong answer, of course. She knew that. It wasn’t about the dangers of the ocean.

  “That’s not my question,” said Jeremy slowly. He put down his fork. There was still a piece of chicken on it. She’d cooked the chicken on the grill on the back deck, which was an old Weber, not as good as the Napoleon they had at home. Nevertheless, Lu was happy with how the chicken had come out. She’d done it on skewers, and she’d taken a decent photo. She’d use the photo in tomorrow’s post too.

  “She’s our babysitter!” said Sebastian, through his tears. Chase hit him with an elbow. “She has lots of freckles,” Sebastian added.

  “She’s a good dancer,” Chase said, reluctantly joining in.

  Jeremy said, “I see.” He smiled at Chase and ruffled Sebastian’s hair. “Isn’t that nice.” He took a second helping of salad and chewed the chicken. He didn’t meet Lu’s eye.

  The boys had scarcely finished their food when Jeremy said, “Boys. Go upstairs and build that Lego kit.”

  “What Lego kit?” Sebastian asked.

  “Any one. The Batman one.”

  “We already built that one,” said Chase.

  “We did,” Sebastian concurred. “We already built all the ones we brought.”

  “Go rebuild one, then.”

  “Well,” began Sebastian reasonably, “once you build one you really can’t rebuild it because of the way the—”

  “Just go,” said Jeremy. “Just go.” They went. “I’ll make sure the grill is off,” said Jeremy.

  “It’s off,” said Lu. “I always turn it off.”

  “I’ll just make sure,” said Jeremy quietly. He stood and made what Lu thought was a great show of walking onto the deck and checking all of the burners. Upstairs, she could hear Sebastian doing his politically incorrect imitation of a cop about to arrest Chase.

  When Jeremy returned he regained his seat and said, “You never said anything about needing a babysitter. Are things too much for you around here, Lu?” The words were almost kind but the sentiment behind them was not.

  Lu said, “Sometimes.” It was true.

  “In that case,” Jeremy said, “you can ask my mother for help.”

  “I don’t want to ask your mother for help.” Lu was suddenly, violently enraged at the situation she’d put herself in. It looked to Jeremy like she couldn’t handle the children without help when really what she couldn’t handle was children plus a burgeoning career without help. (And who, realistically, could?) But she couldn’t balance the scales without telling him everything.

  “My mother loves to help, Lu.”

  “She doesn’t love to help! She just loves to see me need help.”

  “That’s not fair.” Now Jeremy sounded peevish. “She wanted us here because she enjoys spending time with the boys, you know that.”

  Grudgingly, Lu had to admit that might be true.

  “Besides, once we have another baby we’ll be outnumbered. We’ll need her help then.”

  Lu gritted her teeth. She couldn’t make this argument be about another baby. She had to keep dodging the baby question; if she dodged it long enough, maybe it would go away.

  “I want you to fire her,” Jeremy said. “I don’t want a stranger here with the boys. Isn’t that why you left your job, so we wouldn’t have a stranger here with the boys?”

  He’s tired, Lu reminded herself. He’s always tired when he comes back after a few long shifts in a row. The commute to and from the hospital was wearing on him. Jeremy didn’t get enough sleep, that was a big part of the problem. It was a scientifically proven fact that lack of sleep impeded your memory retention, your overall health, your sense of well-being and happiness. She’d heard a podcast about it. His circadian rhythms called to him, but he couldn’t answer.

  Lu understood that she had to speak carefully. “She’s not a stranger,” she said. “The boys love her. She’s young, and she plays with them. She’s funny. She can cook! One time she—”

  “She’s a stranger to me,” Jeremy interrupted. His mouth was set in a line that said he’d brook no arguments.

  Even so, Lu tried again. “You should get to know her. Then she won’t be a stranger anymore. She’s delightful.”

  “That’s enough, Lu.” Jeremy put his hands to his temples and rubbed hard. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I don’t want to get to know her. We don’t need to be spending money we don’t have when my mother is right here, and when you’re home all day. I want you to fire her.”

  The words were right there on the tip of her tongue. I have money. Sort of a lot of money, actually. More sponsor money had come in recently, and her affiliate sales for the Instant Pot had really picked up after that macaroni-and-cheese post from May. If things kept going at this rate, by next year she’d be earning almost as much as Jeremy did, especially if the cookbook worked out. If she really focused, if she really worked hard, if she could squeeze more working hours into every day, she could earn legitimate money.

  Tell him, Lu. ’Fess up now, tell him. Maybe he won’t be mad. Maybe he’ll be proud, just the way you want him to be. Maybe he’ll be relieved.

  But she knew he wouldn’t be any of those things. She knew if she brought up Dinner by Dad now, they’d have a fight not only about that but also about a third baby. She wouldn’t be able to hide how she felt about that.

  Readers, wrote Dinner by Dad the next day, do you ever just feel like giving up on everything? Do you ever feel like it’s just not worth it, any of it?

  Three hundred and seventy-six readers posted follow-up comments. Leo needed to keep his chin up. Leo was doing important work. Leo had only to look at Sammy and Charlie to see how much what he was doing mattered. Leo couldn’t give up on them, not now, not anytime!

  Chapter 28

  Joy

  Olivia Rossi had the day off, one of the college kids was sick (read: hungover), and the other was mixing a batch of filling in the back. That meant Joy was in the shop all day. Off-season she would have ducked out to meet Maggie at the ferry after her visit to Dustin’s, but in the height of summer when the ferry was due in, Joy Bombs had a good-sized line. Instead of walking down to greet Maggie, Joy was working the cappuccino machine like it was a cello and she was Yo-Yo Ma. She was cutting up sample whoopie pies to put in the case. She was making change and running credit cards.

  Joy and Anthony had a seven-thirty reservation at Winfield’s. Joy was beyond excited; she was going to have the seared scallops to start and then the grilled swordfish. Or maybe the halibut.

  When the bell on the door tinkled she glanced up, prepared to give her signature I’m-the-owner-and-I-want-to-make-you-feel-welcome hello, and her eyes fell on . . . Dustin.

  Dustin? Joy hadn’t seen Dustin in more than a year. They’d communicated about Maggie’s visits, of course—they’d texted, they’d emailed, occasionally they’d talked on the phone. Joy followed Sandy’s Instagram account, where Sandy posted (too many, in Joy’s opinion, one per day would have been quite enough) photos of Tiki at the beach, Tiki wearing a Santa hat, Tiki and Sandy together on
the back of a horse. Joy refrained from liking or commenting but she couldn’t help but notice that Maggie did both. Maggie was profligate with her smiley faces and her hearts. Dustin never appeared in the photos. He must have been holding the phone.

  “Hey!” said Dustin. “Joy. I decided to take a ferry ride back with Maggie. You said there was something you wanted to talk to me about, so I figured—why not in person?” He looked around the shop—was he angling for free food? Maybe Sandy didn’t feed him. Maggie said Tiki was more of an all-day snacker and that neither Sandy nor Dustin ever seemed to prepare or eat a regular meal. When Maggie offered to make them Dinner by Dad’s black bean tostadas they looked at her like she’d offered to sing an aria from The Marriage of Figaro—and then they’d declined.

  “What a nice surprise, Dustin,” said Joy dishonestly. The truth was that even after all these years she didn’t like to see Dustin, because seeing Dustin forced her to remember a time when she’d been very unhappy. But she did need to talk to him about the money. “Where’s Maggie?”

  “She took right off,” said Dustin. “She said she had to babysit?”

  This was news to Joy, but she let it pass. When the line had dissolved, Joy put together a plate of whoopie pies and brought it over to a table, motioning with her free hand for Dustin to take a seat.

  “Awesome!” he said. “Food!” Joy noted that Dustin’s admiration of free stuff hadn’t changed any.

  “Listen,” said Joy. “I hate to bring up money.”

  Dustin’s hand paused over the plate.

  “But,” said Joy.

  Dustin returned his hand, empty, to his lap.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she continued, “about setting up a college account for Maggie. You know, one of those five-twenty-nines? And I thought if we both contributed, then in five years, when she’s ready to apply, we might at least be able to look at some decent state schools.” Her cheeks were flaming. She hated talking about money, hated being anything less than one hundred percent free of Dustin.