Page 26 of Stuck in Paradise with You

Now Mom sighs. ‘I don’t know, Carrie. Maybe he left them both. Is that the kind of man you want to be with?’

She means a man like my dad. Though ironically, he did stick around until I went to college. He stayed for too long and I was brought up around arguments and slamming doors for the whole of my teenage years. These days, Mom pretty much resents that men exist as a species.

‘But he seems so good with kids.’

With Noah and Toby, even Char and Sanza. I truly thought he was a father.

I also thought I was internalizing that nugget, but Mom responds as if I said it aloud.

‘Honey, has it occurred to you that maybe there never was a child? That he had his fun with you and wanted the excuse to go back to his wife or just end things with you?’

‘Ah… I… It hadn’t, no. Not until you just said it.’

Make up a baby? He wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have.

Could he?He was always so honest. ‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know, Carrie; all you have to do is ask,’ he once said to me as we lay propped on pillows, facing each other in bed. I remember wanting to ask him, Do you still love her, your wife? But the words never left my mouth.

If I had a time machine, would I go back and ask the question? Would I want to know the answer? Or would I want those six weeks we spent together to be as they were: blissfully ignorant of what was on the horizon?

‘You can’t trust a man like that and I should know.’ She’s referring to Dad, again – her own Achilles’ heel. Dad strayed in the later years they were married and though only small amounts of detail have been drip-fed through heart-to-hearts and generally when Mom needs to find a bad example of a man, I know that he met someone else – at work, as it happens – and after months of adultery, Mom considers that the catalyst for the end of their marriage.

Me?I think it was cowardly and wrong, but I’d witnessed everything else that had led up to that point over the years preceding, coming like a heavy-laden freight train, agonizingly slowly down the tracks. Still, Dad’s affair shocked me because that part I hadn’t seen coming. That part, I would never have guessed from the man I loved so much.

‘I know. I know, Mom. I do. I don’t think Luke would have had a lie as big as a fake pregnancy in him, but he certainly pulled the wool over my eyes, so… maybe.’

Maybe all the romantic nights, the pillow talks, the stolen touches, the hip grazes and shoulder skims in meeting roomsand communal office spaces, all the glances that held heat and promise, were part of a big, ugly hoax.

I wish I had my shades with me because my eyes are stinging as I search the expanse of Caribbean Sea to find some strength. I can’t be back here, in this dark place.

‘Let’s talk about this in person,’ Mom says, as if she’s a voice inside my head. ‘I’m coming into the city tomorrow. Can we do lunch?’

‘Erm, actually, no because I’m not in New York, I’m in the Caribbean, on Joe Hettich’s private island.’

‘Joe Hettich!TheJoe Hettich?’

Remarkably, I chuckle at her reaction.

‘The very same. Luke is his CFO.’

‘Would it be terribly unprofessional to get a signed copy of his biography for— Wait, honey, do you know there’s a superstorm coming to the Caribbean? Haven’t you been watching the news?’ Her pitch rises to the extent that I have to flick the volume down on the side of my phone.

‘I do know but I’ve been assured it won’t hit the island. Apparently, this is a regular spoof in hurricane season out here.’ As I’m talking, I see Joe – no longer clad in bright sweat bands but now wrapped in an equally offensive sarong, hairy pecs everywhere – bounding up the steps toward the main house. ‘Mom, I’ve got to go. You’ve been a huge help. I’m very clear on what I need to do. Thank you and I love you.’

‘Joe!’ I call before I’ve even hung up the phone. I wave to grab his attention, as if my shout into the serenity of paradise wasn’t startling enough. ‘Do you have a second?’

‘Ahoy, matey!’ Joe calls in a pirate voice. He slows his run and takes a few steps in my direction, though still far enough away from where I’m standing on the terrace that I need to speak loudly.

‘Things are going really well with, ah, Luke.’ His name feels like dirt in my mouth after my call with my mom. More so even than it has for the last two days, if that’s possible.

‘Glad to ’ear it, matey.’ Gosh, this man is a lot. ‘It’ll make for more fun tomorrow. The seas will be calm and we’ll set sail at two bells forenoon.’

What the actual fuck?

‘Pardon?’

‘I think it means 9a.m. but me pirate speak is rusty. Nothing a drop of rum in me tum won’t fix. Arghhhh.’

‘Right, ha.’ I genuinely try to laugh, to be civil, but this guy is so nuts, I don’t know if I manage. ‘Actually, about tomorrow. Or tonight, even?—’

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