No, you don’t, thought Heddy. Beyond her fancy clothes and high-brow taste, Jean-Rose was nothing but a tight ball of unfinished business. She was threatened by other people’s happiness like some people are threatened by other people’s money—it made her feel inadequate, a reminder of how unhappy she was. Having money couldn’t fix that. Nothing could. Maybe that’s why she’d hired Heddy in the first place. She liked seeing herself through the eyes of someone so young and inexperienced—it made her feel better to know someone, anyone, thought her sophisticated, gorgeous, a harbinger of fashion and elegance. Heddy had given her exactly what she needed, and now that she dared step out, get a little attention, Jean-Rose was done with her.
Ted leaned forward to turn up the radio.
“Are you even listening?” She folded her arms, and he nodded. “Well, then why don’t you say something?”
He glanced at the back seat. “I wanted to hear what they were saying about the Yankees.”
“You could at least listen to me after embarrassing me today,” Jean-Rose snapped.
Ted and Jean-Rose: the couple she once thought the most perfect on the planet were potentially the most imperfect. They didn’t even seem to like each other. They may even despise each other, and yet there they were, together, at social functions, faking their way through a life they’d decided was their own. She was done with all of them.
That little tart. She had to get to Ash’s house. But she couldn’t take the children. How could she talk to him if the children were there? Ruth. Maybe Ruth could help.
They ran onto the porch, shielding their faces from the rain, and Ruth came out to meet them with towels. The rain was coming sideways now, and they piled into the kitchen, kicking off heels and sandals, leaving muddy footprints and puddles on the floor. “Ruth, can you watch them?”
“Sure. Why?”
But Heddy already grabbed a bright yellow raincoat from the hooks by the back door, pulling the hood over her head. She ran through the yard, the rain splashing mud up onto the backs of her legs, until she was on the beach path.
“Heddy! Wait!” It was Teddy. He’d pulled on his galoshes and raincoat. “I want to go, too.”
She stopped. “Ruth is going to play with you.” The sound of rain pitter-pattered against her hood.
The child airplaned his arms out, flying them from side to side. He didn’t seem to hear her, or care about his soaking-wet legs, so Heddy kept running, letting him follow. She couldn’t move fast enough, and she felt the weight of every step, like that dream she’d had where her feet felt leaden by quicksand.
Ash’s screen door was unlocked, and she bounded inside. Teddy tugged on her hand. “I don’t think we’re supposed to go in someone’s house when they’re not home.”
Heddy leaned down on one knee, water sliding off her nose and dripping down to the wood floors. She dried her face. “Ash told me to come over.”
“Can I play chess?” Teddy dropped his raincoat on a chair and sat in front of the chessboard, always set up on the rickety kitchen table.
She scanned the room for something damning, a glass with an imprint of lipstick on the rim, a compact left on the coffee table. In the bathroom, she checked the shower for women’s shampoos. His bedroom. She hated to go in and yet she was driven by a love sickness she’d never experienced before. She had to know. The bed was unmade, a mess of sheets kicked to the bottom. A glass of water on one side of the nightstand. It smelled of him everywhere.
She slumped onto the couch, only then noticing a small wooden chest resting on a side table in the living room. It was the size of a large cigar box with the ornate carvings of an eagle with outstretched wings. She ambled toward it, thinking it the perfect hiding place, and opened the lid. It was empty.
“I hear Ash’s truck.” Teddy ran to the front door.
Resting on the tabletop, next to the wooden chest, was a large yellow envelope stuffed thick with papers. She peered inside, dumping the contents out on the table, all of it tumbling into a pile in front of her. Neat bundles of money, each one held together with a skinny rubber band. Thick wads stuffed with twenty-dollar bills, Andrew Jackson’s face staring up at her again and again. She counted how many rolls; at least fifteen. She slipped a ticket out of a Pan Am Airlines brochure dated for August 14, New York International to São Paulo, Brazil. A week away.
Quick footsteps of someone running into the house—Ash ducking in from the rain. She opened a leather wallet that had also fallen out. Inside, a driver’s license listed a man by the name of John Green, a man who looked like Ash. Who clearly was Ash.
She wondered if all men had a dark side, then—Ted hit Jean-Rose, but when did it start, and how did Jean-Rose come back from the disappointment of knowing what he was truly made of? Heddy remembered her own father, how his wife knew nothing of Heddy, that his children would grow up without any idea that they had a half sister. She thought marriage was open and honest, but marriage, courtship, being in love… How long did it take a person to reveal their true nature?
“What a happy surprise.” Ash opened his arms to hug her, dropping his eyes to the money piled on the table. “What are you doing?” He began to stuff the cash back into the envelope.
She felt scared then by what she’d found. It seemed worse than what she’d been looking for. “I came to find out if what they’re saying about you is true.” She squeezed her lips together, looked up at the ceiling, her eyes burning.
Ash rubbed at the back of his neck. He did it whenever he didn’t know how to answer her—how had she not noticed that before?
“What who is saying? Why are you rifling through my things?” He moved closer, his jaw tight.
“They said that there are others.” She sunk down to the floor then, her face scrunching up. Teddy was there, and she didn’t want him to see her, so she hid her face behind her forearm. “Why is Jean-Rose saying there are other women?”
Ash picked Teddy up in his arms “C’mon, Ace, let’s bring this outside.”
“But it’s raining.”
“You won’t get wet on the deck with the awning up.” By the time he came back in, she’d had time to compose herself.
Ash looked pained. “I’ve never done anything with Jean-Rose or anyone else. She’s a lonely housewife who likes to flirt, but I never took the bait. Can you imagine the row that would cause?”
Heddy couldn’t stop the tears. “Why did you pretend you liked me? To steal from Jean-Rose, to get them to buy some stupid house?”
He reached out his hand to her, then dropped it back to his side. “I do like you.”
“Then who are these women?” She clenched her fists.
“I don’t know. Nothing but the gossip of bored women. Do tell me that’s where you heard it? There was someone else early in the summer, but that ended. I never lied to you.”
Maybe that was the woman she’d seen in his car.
She pointed to the money on the table. “Well, don’t lie to me now.” She slipped the license out of the wallet, held it up for him to see. “Who is John Green?”
His head turtled inward, like it was being swallowed by his shoulders, and her skin prickled with fear.
His voice came out in a whisper. “I can’t tell you.”
She threw the license at him, pinging him in the stomach. “Then I’m going to walk out this door, and you’ll never see me again.”
Ash reached for her. “I tried to tell you the other night.” He looked her square in the eye then, his face ashen. “Losing a parent that young changes you, Heddy. It makes you do things you don’t think yourself capable of.”
Heddy watched his fingers thrum on his thigh, his eyes searching for a place to land. “That money you found—” he went on.
“Is for the Coconut Coast. It’s the deposit for the houses.” She wanted to be right.
Ash’s head was in his hands now, making his voice warbled. “There is no development. I cashed their checks; I was going to take their money.”
&nb
sp; She looked for one of the Coconut Coast brochures. There was a stack on the coffee table. She grabbed it, held it in front of him. “What are you talking about? Then what is this?”
He kicked the table leg, moved into his salesman voice. “These people have so much. Seven thousand is a drop in the bucket for them. I didn’t think they’d miss it. Ted’s investments, everything you see… he takes people’s money, Heddy. He takes it, and he ruins people’s lives, all to make buckets more so he can be—what word would he use—‘comfortable.’ ”
“Well, everyone on this island seems to think his business is peachy keen. Maybe you’re just jealous. Maybe he’s a better businessman.”
He rubbed his face with his hands, leaving it splotchy and ugly. “People pretend they don’t see, sure, but they know. Sky Top Steel and Financial is built on the backs of other people’s financial ruin. He tells companies he’s going to save them, bolster their profits, but at the last minute, with creditors breathing down their necks, he changes the terms of the deal—and pays some watered-down price. It’s what he did to my father, and I lost him because of it.” Ash wiped his nose; it was running now that his eyes were pooling.
“I don’t care about Ted and his dumb company or some dumb deal. I care that you’re a liar.” Teddy must have heard her frantic yell because he looked up at them from outside. When she was certain he’d looked away, Heddy lifted her hand. She’d never hit anyone, but it had boiled up and out of her, and she couldn’t have stopped herself if she’d tried.
“I lied to everyone, but never to you. Not about us,” Ash grabbed her arm, gripping her elbow. “Look, I was a teenager—my mom lost the house. My childhood home, for Chrissakes. I wanted it back, and when it came up for sale, I thought of Ted. Of how I could get the money quickly. He’s unethical, Heddy, and he’s a crook, and I wanted revenge.”
Heddy remembered the article clippings she’d seen in Ash’s living room. What had it said? Montclair Home of Suicide Financier on the Market. How the company lost funding at the eleventh hour.
“You had me drop hints to push Jean-Rose to put down a deposit. And what about the others—the others who signed a contract for a house? You’re stealing from them, too. What kind of person could do such a thing?”
He was staring at his wet flip-flops. “A despicable one. But Ted’s the bad guy here. He’s the monster. Not me.”
She thought of the bruise on Jean-Rose’s temple, what she heard at night. If anyone knew Ted was a monster, it was Heddy, but that didn’t change what Ash had done. “And you were going to leave and go to some city in Brazil? I’m not sure what’s worse: finding out you’re a crook, or seeing how easily you could throw me away.”
He gathered up the money, putting the bundles back into the envelope. “You’re wrong about that.”
She was afraid to look at him. “Correct me.”
“It’s money. Paper bills. Stop letting money mean goddamn everything.”
“It is everything. And it ruins everything.”
“Maybe it does, but…” He shook his head again, like she kept getting it all wrong. “I just needed it sooner rather than later. By the time anyone got wind of it, I’d mail them a check.”
“How? By stealing from someone else? And here I was thinking I’d met someone who wouldn’t disappoint me.”
He took one step closer to her, cautious, like she was a bomb that would detonate if he came too close. “You were the surprise—I didn’t expect to find you in all of this.”
She threw the airline ticket at his feet. “Well, it wasn’t going to stop you from stealing off and leaving me to wonder what I did wrong.”
“Maybe I wanted you to go with me.”
She laughed with exasperation. “And live the life of a thief? Leave my mother? I liked you, Ash Porter, or whoever you are, but I didn’t like you that much. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve got a bright future.” She picked up a pack of the money, hurling it across the room. She picked up another and threw that one, too.
“Stop it, kitty kit.” He left the bundles there. “This could pay for everything. For your senior year.”
She’d let his alleged pedigree cloud her judgment. She’d trusted him. But she knew now: her mother had been right about the men on this island.
She ran out of the house, grabbing Teddy’s hand on the porch and dragging him away with her out into the rain. The boy started to cry—“Heddy, stop!” and tears came out of her eyes, too. Ash’s footsteps were behind them. The rain made it hard to hear him, the wind blowing wet clumps of hair onto her face.
“Listen. I’ll give it all back if you want. Every last cent, but this could be good for you, too.”
“Don’t do it on my account. We’re over.” The wind blew a sheet of rain sideways, stinging her cheeks.
He ran after them. “After Gigi’s party, I knew I had to tell you. I tried, but I was falling hard, and then…”
She thought of all the questions Ash had asked her about Jean-Rose and Ted, how he was always scooping the kids up in his arms, passing Heddy a brochure. It had all been part of an elaborate ploy. Ash had used her to perpetuate his lie, and now, ultimately, she had been an accomplice. Heddy stopped short, turned around and ran back to him, feeling like a child. The rain pelted Heddy’s hood.
“I spent the summer feeling lucky that you picked me,” she said. “Of all the other girls, it was me. But now I know why: I was just some dumb girl you thought would help you steal other people’s money.”
Ash reached for her fingertips, but she pulled away. “It wasn’t like that. It seems like it was, but it wasn’t.”
She took off again. Her feet no longer leaden. Her heart was, and she felt it pulling her open, like a bowling ball exploding from her chest.
At the house, Heddy went straight to her room, slamming the door and locking it, refusing to emerge for the rest of the day, even to Ruth’s quiet knocks and pleas. She packed everything she owned in Beryl’s suitcase, folding all of it into neat rows and tucking her envelope of savings into the silken underwear pocket. She’d catch the first ferry out, meeting Ruth in the kitchen at dawn to explain. To say their goodbyes.
* * *
The next morning, Heddy dropped her suitcase at the bottom of the stairs, wearing her busted sandals—she hadn’t been able to mend them, after all—dreading her goodbye with Ruth. Smoke wafted from the kitchen, and inside, Jean-Rose stood at the stove, burning French toast.
“Where’s Ruth?” Heddy coughed, opening the back door to let the smell out; the children were still asleep.
“She called in sick. I couldn’t fall back asleep.” Jean-Rose fanned the smoke away from her face. “You’re going to have to be two people today. Don’t pull that nonsense you did yesterday locking yourself in your room. You’re lucky I didn’t—”
“Jean-Rose, I’m…” The first ferry left in thirty minutes. She planned to surprise her mother, launch into a speech about how she wanted to spend more time with her. How good it would feel to be back in New York, away from this dreadful island and the vile people she’d met here.
Jean-Rose handed her the spatula. “Can you please make something edible?”
Heddy hesitated. “But that’s the thing…” She wondered if Ruth was sick, or if something happened with one of her parents. What if Heddy left on the morning that Ruth’s mother passed away? She wasn’t the kind of person to steal off without checking on a friend, to forgo a proper goodbye. It wouldn’t be right; she’d come to care for Ruth like a sister. She couldn’t just abandon her here on this dreadful island. She’d stay one more day, make sure Ruth was okay and get on the ferry the following morning.
“Give me a second,” Heddy told her, dragging her suitcase up to her attic bedroom.
Back in the kitchen, Heddy turned the flame down on the stove and tied on an apron. “I’ll take over from here.” Jean-Rose disappeared with a mug of coffee while Heddy used the telephone by the front door to call Ruth.
“Is everything okay
?” she whispered into the line.
Ruth didn’t miss a beat. “I should be asking you the same thing. Why wouldn’t you open the door?”
Heddy twirled the telephone cord, stalling. “Why aren’t you coming to work? There’s so much smoke in the house from Jean-Rose’s attempt at breakfast.”
“It’s Mom. The doctor just left.” Ruth got quiet.
“Is she okay?”
“We’ll know more in the next day or two. Can you fill in for me?”
“Of course. Whatever you need.” Heddy considered the rest of the week, how she could avoid Ash and Jean-Rose. She would stay busy with the children and stay out of town. Oh god, the children. She was about to leave them, too.
“Thank you, Heddy.” Ruth’s voice wavered, just once, right as she’d said her name.
She wanted to tell Ruth: I’ll come over right now. It’s going to be okay.
“Can I bring over a casserole?” Heddy said.
“You can cook?” They both laughed, said their goodbyes, and the line went dead.
TWENTY-FIVE
The skies were bright blue, the air thick and warm, and Heddy busied the children indoors with a board game. They were making crafts out of Popsicle sticks, while she tidied up the toys they’d scattered about their bedrooms.
She heard the pad of Jean-Rose’s footsteps before she saw her deep purple caftan flowing around her. Jean-Rose leaned against the doorframe, ice cubes floating in ginger ale. “I just got a call from Ash.”
Heddy didn’t look up: “Oh.”
“Why won’t you return his calls anymore?” In the last two days, Jean-Rose had left a stack of notes by the phone, Ash’s name and number, an identical message: Please call me.
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