The Islanders

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  It was true, long ago she’d said that. “That was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before the whole burden of child care fell on my shoulders. I’m only willing to give up so much anymore, Jeremy.”

  His eyes were pleading; his whole body was pleading. “If I could have the baby for us, I would.”

  “And I would say, be my guest.” Lu believed that Jeremy thought he meant that, but she also believed that if it came right down to the uncomfortable reality of it he probably didn’t want to perform surgery pregnant, with swollen ankles and distended veins, and then stay home from the hospital for twelve weeks while he milked—sorry, nursed—the new arrival.

  He took her hands in his. His long-fingered, sexy surgeon hands, hands that knew how to bring people back to life. “I just want us to want the same thing, that’s all.”

  She shook her head. “No, you don’t. You don’t want us to want the same thing; you want me to want what you want. That’s different.” He let her hands drop. She could feel the moment growing beyond its own size—pushing out of its casing, ripping the seams. “Does that mean we can’t be married anymore?”

  “I don’t think it means that,” Jeremy said. Jeremy, who never looked scared, looked scared. “Does it?”

  What if it did? The flood of hot tears came on so quickly then, and she put her hands to her face.

  “Shhhh,” said Jeremy. His arms found her; he wrapped her up the way he used to. Lu couldn’t stop crying. “Shhh,” said Jeremy again. Lu closed her eyes and for just a minute allowed herself to believe they were themselves more than a decade ago. She was sitting on Main Street in Hyannis with a bleeding knee. Their futures were bright. It was all far enough ahead of them that they couldn’t yet get to it. But it was there. They were trying, pulling, reaching for it, arms out, wanting everything.

  Chapter 60

  Maggie

  There is an eerie quiet to the downtown. Maggie is pushing her bike along Water Street with her good arm. Water Street is nearly deserted, and the people who are out are moving with a purpose, looking at the sky or out in the water every now and then. Though there are people on the long white porch of the National Hotel, under the American flags, gathered as if for a movie that will be shown on the surface of the harbor. People love a weather event until it becomes an inconvenience or a catastrophe.

  Maggie is close to the end of Water Street, near the post office, the bookstore, and the statue of Rebecca that stands at the intersection of the four Old Harbor roads. Like all the island kids, Maggie knows that Rebecca was erected in the late 1800s by a women’s Christian temperance group to remind people to limit their alcohol consumption. Like all the island kids, Maggie also knows that it’s really hard for Rebecca to do her job in the summertime. Whenever the Patriots win a Super Bowl (which is often) Rebecca wears a Pats jersey.

  On her wrist (Maggie’s, not Rebecca’s) is a neon-green cast applied at the Block Island Medical Center by Olivia Rossi’s mother. It makes it difficult for Maggie to ride her bike. But not impossible. And it’s waterproof, at least.

  Maggie checks her cell phone. She has three texts. One is from Riley, the first in several days. When she’d gotten her phone back, she’d given Maggie a good dose of the electronic silent treatment, but this text, even though it just says Hey, is a sign that the friendship is on the mend. There is another text from Olivia Rossi, confirming that Maggie will pick up one of Olivia’s shifts next week, and a third from her father, asking if they can switch her planned weekend visit to the weekend after.

  Hey, she texts back to Riley. To Olivia she texts the thumbs-up emoji, and to her father she texts NP. In the summer she doesn’t like to leave the island any more than she has to, so the change in plans is fine with her, but she wonders what’s behind it. Most likely her stepmother, Sandy.

  On Maggie’s last visit she overheard her father and Sandy talking about a potential move to Laguna Beach, California, where Sandy is from. Sandy has hated New England from the moment she married Maggie’s father and isn’t afraid to talk about it. Maggie hasn’t told her mother about the move—she isn’t sure if this is a legit plan or just one of those things that Sandy says when she gets mad. (Sandy has a temper, and gets mad a lot; Maggie’s father, whose temperament Maggie’s mother has always labeled artistic, adding theatrical air quotes, seems relaxed and even-keeled by comparison.)

  If her father moves to California, Maggie will miss him, some, and she’ll miss her little sister, Tiki, a lot. Tiki is unbearably cute, even more so now that she has learned how to say Maggie’s name. When she says it, and puts her chubby little arms up to Maggie, Maggie feels a definite melting sensation. It’s lucky Maggie’s name doesn’t contain the letter s because Tiki has a lisp and she says s like th. Sandy has already contacted a speech therapist, who told her that Tiki is too young to begin receiving services.

  Maggie won’t miss Sandy (Thandy) if her father moves to California. Sandy often looks at Maggie the way someone looks at an exotic but possibly dangerous zoo animal—you know it can’t hurt you, because it’s behind glass, but you’re going to keep a close eye on it anyway. Sandy doesn’t like it when Maggie cooks in her kitchen. She won’t let her use the sharp knives (Maggie is thirteen! And knows how to fillet a fish!) and she won’t let Tiki try anything spicy because she thinks it might offend her young palate. Tiki eats mostly carrot sticks and chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs. Dinner by Mom, Sandy is not.

  While Maggie is answering the first three texts, a fourth one comes in. Her mother, asking her again to please report to the store. This text Maggie ignores again because she is still angry with her mother: for the grounding, for probing the sore spot that Maggie’s humiliation in front of Olivia and Hugo has left on her soul. Possibly her mother wants to make sure Maggie is safe, but it’s more likely that she wants to put Maggie to work, like some sort of child laborer.

  Maggie wonders if Pickles, who is terrified of storms, has taken up her spot in the center of the bathtub—she’s better than a barometer at responding to changes in weather. She almost feels bad enough for Pickles to go home, but an angry part of her wants her mother to sweat it out a little longer. She wonders, if she went home, if her mother would be there making her coconut-oil stovetop popcorn, which is miles better than the microwaved crap that Riley’s mother makes. By then Maggie realizes that she’s actually missed hanging out with her mother this summer.

  Lately Maggie has been considering packing up all of her T-shirts and replacing them with some plainer but stylish tops from American Eagle and Hollister. Once she has decided to forgive her mother all the way, maybe they can take a trip to the mainland for some shopping before the beginning of the school year, which, hard to believe, is now just less than three weeks away. This summer has been the fastest of Maggie’s life.

  “Excuse me!”

  Maggie looks up. A very pretty blond woman is heading toward her at a trot, waving her arms frantically. “Excuse me!” she calls. “Excuse me! Have you seen a little boy with a red shirt? Four years old, dark hair?”

  “No,” says Maggie, looking around. “No, I haven’t.”

  “I was on the phone for just a minute,” the woman says. “Not even a minute, for a second. And he was gone . . .”

  The woman’s phone rings. She answers it. “Not now, Glen,” she says sharply. She listens for half a second and barks, “Now you want to talk about it? I can’t. I’m in the middle of an emergency. I can’t find Max. What? Well, yes, again, but the first time wasn’t my . . . Oh, never mind! I have to go.” She ends the call and emits a little puff of anger or frustration. She scans the horizon frantically.

  Maggie says, “I can help you look for him.” When she was little, her mother taught her never to help a strange man who told you he’d lost his dog, because he might actually be trying to kidnap you. This woman, besides being female, is clearly legitimately distressed—most likely not a kidnapper. Also, she is even skinnier than Maggie, and Magg
ie figures she can take her physically if necessary.

  The woman says, “I wonder if he wandered off down the road . . . though I don’t think he would do that . . .”

  “You never know,” says Maggie. Before she started working for Lu, Sebastian had walked himself right down to the beach; if Anthony hadn’t rescued him, who knows what might have happened? “Here,” she says suddenly. “Why don’t you take my bike and do a loop? I can stay here and look around for him. You should call the police too.” Two summers ago a seven-year-old girl had drowned in the ocean. Bad things happen, even here. You could lose someone in the blink of an eye.

  “Okay,” says the woman slowly. “Yes, okay.” She looks at Maggie’s bike like it might bite her. She is wearing a spaghetti-strap sundress and her hair is beautifully curled just at the ends—the kind of hair Maggie and Riley used to call princess hair—and for a second Maggie thinks she is going to turn down the offer. But then she says, “Thank you,” and reaches out for the bike. She mounts it steadily enough and off she goes, cycling up Water Street, calling out, “Max! Max! Max!”

  The wind picks up. The gray clouds that were on the horizon are now scudding across the sky. The scene reminds Maggie of The Wizard of Oz, with Miss Gulch riding her bike in the cyclone. And what happens in that movie? Miss Gulch, of course, turns into a witch.

  Chapter 61

  Anthony

  “You’re not proud of what, Dad?”

  “Earlier this year,” Leonard whispered. “When was it—February?”

  February was when—was when—was when. Anthony knew that because the days were so short, and it got dark so early. There was no reason to get out of bed when his waking time amounted to only three hours of daylight. The publication was set for September, so the galleys would have been bound and circulating.

  Suddenly it made sense. It all made sense. The final puzzle piece fell into place; the key slid into the lock.

  “You did it,” he said slowly. “Anonymous source,” the in-house attorney had said. “We didn’t think anything would come of it, of course, but we’re obligated to check out everything that comes our way.” “It wasn’t anonymous at all, was it?” He kept his eyes on his father’s face the whole time he spoke. “It wasn’t anonymous! It was you.”

  Leonard looked so like Dorothy had, just the tipping forward of the chin. The acquiescence, the concession.

  “I made myself believe it was a well-read editorial assistant,” Anthony said. “Or maybe even some long-lost O’Dwyer relative, out to get some money for the estate.” He waited for Leonard to tell him it had been one of those. He didn’t. “But you didn’t know O’Dwyer, Dad. He was Mom’s guy, mine and Mom’s.”

  Leonard shrugged. “You did something dishonorable.” His expression was implacable. “It deserved to be discovered, son. Righted.”

  “Mom put you up to it?” His mother had been trying to tell him in the cottage earlier. Something else, she’d said, something really important: one more thing. His own mother?

  “No. Of course not. She pointed it out to me, when she was reading through the galley. That’s all. She was . . . concerned. She was going to talk to you about it, son.”

  “Don’t call me son,” said Anthony through clenched teeth.

  “But before she talked to you, I took matters into my own hands.”

  A red rage filled Anthony’s field of vision. “You’re supposed to wish me well. But you didn’t. You didn’t wish me well because you couldn’t stand to think that I was going to publish something better than what you could write. So you exposed me. You ruined me. When all along, you weren’t even writing your own books.” Anthony got up, banging his hand on the table.

  Bridget’s voice came sailing in from the other side of the shop: “Everything okay in there?”

  “Fine,” said Anthony in a strangled voice. “Just knocked over some books, sorry, I’ll pick them up.”

  “No worries! Just wanted to make sure!”

  “You took the credit for all of Mom’s work,” Anthony accused his father, biting off each word, “all of this time. And you’re calling me dishonorable?”

  “It wasn’t her work. It was shared work. And we’ve already talked about this. It wasn’t about the credit. Your mother doesn’t care about that. She didn’t mind.”

  “How do you know she didn’t? Because I think she minded. I think she fucking minded. She told me she minded.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “She did!”

  “I don’t believe you. We were a team. Are. We are a team. The level of success we’ve reached together was possible because we both had our roles.”

  Anthony snorted, and Leonard held his hand up in a gesture of instruction that forced Anthony to stop and listen. “I didn’t make your mother do anything she didn’t want to do, Anthony. She wanted to be a part of it, and she was good at it, and I needed the help. So we worked together. We work together.”

  “Then why is it your face on the book jacket, and not hers? Why is it you who gets up in front of the crowds of people? You on television?”

  “Because we both have things we excel at. She’s a master of plot, a true master. She never wanted to be on CBS This Morning! Anyway, it was better this way. Women thriller writers don’t sell the way men do. Maybe now it’s changing, but back then—no, even now. Look at the list, Anthony. Patterson. Le Carré. Stephen King.”

  “Sue Grafton!” cried Anthony.

  “Maybe,” conceded Leonard. “But no doubt she was an exception, not the rule. So, your mother’s brain, my face, together we won. We built a life together. We traveled. We raised you! We have enough money to do anything we want, for the rest of our lives.”

  “I think that’s a bullshit argument.”

  “Think what you want, son.”

  “Stop it. Stop calling me that.” Anthony sat for a moment. His rage was a monster, a Demogorgon, growing before his eyes. It became clear to him what he had to do: “If you thought it was okay to out me for what I did, maybe I think it’s okay to out you. I can see the article now: ‘Leonard Puckett Has Sold Millions of Books. But Who Really Wrote Them?’ Or, this would be a good one: ‘Is Honesty the Best Policy? Top Thriller Writer Says No!’”

  Anthony had seen his father in many guises: angry, confident, arrogant, pleased, displeased, impatient, kind, tired, energized. But until this moment he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him afraid.

  Leonard refilled their glasses. “You might do that to me,” he said quietly. “But I don’t think you’d do it to your mother.”

  Anthony knew on the deepest level that his father was right. This wouldn’t be what his mother wanted. She wouldn’t feel grateful. She’d feel ashamed and exposed. He hesitated. “I might,” he said.

  “You won’t.”

  There was a pause. Then Leonard said, “Don’t question things you don’t understand, Anthony. That’s my advice to you. Father to son.”

  “Stop saying that. That father-and-son crap. Think about Mom.”

  “I am thinking about her. Long marriages are complicated. You wouldn’t know, because yours wasn’t long. Yours didn’t have what it takes to make it.”

  Anthony thought of all of the things he’d lost after Anonymous Source had contacted the publisher. The money, of course. So much money. His marriage. Time with his son. His future. Even if he wrote another book one day, there would be a stain forever covering his name, an asterisk attached to it. He had committed the crime, and he was finally able to own that in a way he hadn’t been. But his father’s exposure of it had compounded it by a hundred. He couldn’t in a million years imagine hurting Max in the way his father had hurt him. He turned to his father and he was ready to . . .

  But something didn’t look right. “Dad?” he said. “Dad. Are you okay?”

  “I’m—” said Leonard. “My heart is beating quite fast.”

  “Dad?” said Anthony. “Dad? Daddy?”

  “I can’t—” said Leonard. Outside, the wind pick
ed up, screaming and whirling around the building. “I never could—” he said. “Not like you.”

  And the great man fell.

  “Oh, dear!” sang Bridget. “That sounded like quite a pile of books this time! We do stack those galleys up pretty high. Do you need some help back there?”

  The world shrieked and howled. Three boats that weren’t properly secured in New Harbor swirled out to sea. Other boats, those that were tied up, pulled against their moorings, straining like recalcitrant dogs at their leashes.

  All across the island, the lights went out.

  Chapter 62

  Maggie

  The Inn at Old Harbor, like many of the buildings on Block Island, is from the Victorian era and looks like an old-fashioned gingerbread house. One side of it faces Water Street and the other side faces the Old Harbor, where the ferries come in. A set of steps leads from the ground level to the second level of the hotel, and it is behind those steps that Maggie thinks she sees a flash of red. She draws closer to investigate. The red is part of a shirt, and inside the shirt is a little dark-haired boy with his knees drawn up to his chest and his chin tucked into his knees. He seems to be employing the principle (of which Pickles is also fond) that if he can’t see anybody, nobody can see him. He’s very close to where Maggie and the woman had been standing; he must have heard his name being called. Therefore, Maggie surmises, the little boy is not lost. He is hiding.

  “Are you hiding?” she asks. The boy looks up at her. He nods slowly.

  Before this summer Maggie hadn’t known anything about little boys. Now, after so much time with Chase and Sebastian, they are familiar to her: their little-boy smells, their quirks, their morning bedhead. She’s pretty sure she could tell this boy a fart joke that would land. She crouches down. “What are you hiding from?” she asks.