Page 6 of My Wife

Why would he bring me back to Halo Island?

I swore I’d never go back. After they sent a Coast Guard boat out to ferry my mother home in a body bag, I promised myself I’d never return to Halo Island. It would’ve been easy to keepthat promise, too. Besides the fact that I ended up in New Jersey, Halo Island itself was shut down after my mom drowned.

Halo Island has always been privately owned. So much smaller than any of the other islands off the coast of California, the guy who rented out the cabins and campgrounds decided it wasn’t worth the risk after my mom died during a high school trip she was chaperoning. Last I heard, he was tearing down the old structures to dissuade locals from visiting, and the ferry from Cottonwood Harbor stopped heading there.

But that was years ago. After that, I stopped paying attention. On the rare occasion anyone mentioned the island around me, Tommy usually ended the conversation before it inevitably touched on my mom’s suicide. Because, in Gullhaven, something exciting so rarely happens around here that the locals need to gossip about awful fucking things that took place a damn decade before.

I didn’t know it was reopened. I had no idea that it was a glamping getaway for people who could afford to buy peace and solitude, a week at a time.

Until now.

Tommy explains it to me, eager to get me to agree. It’s a group excursion, but we’d have our own cabin, complete with electricity, a fridge, and running water; the ‘glamping’ part, I guess. Only those in the group get to be on the island, though, and we’d have to bring everything we need for the week we’re there. The ferry drops us off on an assigned date, picks us up on an assigned date, and since the whole idea behind this getaway is to unplug, unwind, and get back to nature, there’s no cell service on the island. No internet. No television. No stores, either, just the bonfire pit, the renovated cabins, and the lake.

More importantly, it’ll just be us, and I’d have to be a heartless bitch to refuse when Tommy obviously put so much time, effort, and money into planning this for me as a surprise.

Only… he couldn’t have picked a worse week for this trip.

I’m still quiet,and his mood shifts.

“We don’t have to go, Cyn,” he says softly. “If you don’t want to… if youcan’t… I’ll call the whole thing off. Yeah, I’ll lose the deposit, but I don’t give a fuck. I still have the week off of work. We can spend it here together, just you and me.”

And then I’ll feel guiltyandsad the entire time.

No.

No.

I swallow roughly. “Do we need to stay the whole week? Or is the weekend good enough?”

No matter what,I can’t be away from home on the 28th. That’s the day my world split in two: Clay and No Clay. The cops showed up at my door on October 28th, and whatever happened to my husband, that’s the day I mourn him the most.

Halloween is on a Thursday this year. The 28th is Monday. I can give Tommy Friday through Sunday. Monday morning at the latest if I have to.

Relationships are about compromise, right? I’ll go. I can’t promise I won’t have a fucking meltdown, returning to Halo Island for the first time since my mother died, but I’ll go… so long as I don’t have to turn my grief into a performance for Tommy and his friends on the 28th.

I know that’s not what he intended. Tommy would never do that to me, and I think he realizes that his attempt to distract might’ve been done in good faith, but I’m not ready to pretend October 28th doesn’t have meaning to me.

“We got a deal for the whole week, but if you want to leave Monday morning, I can arrange for the ferry to take us back assoon as the sun’s up. Everyone else can stay without us. What do you think?”

When I nod, Tommy visibly relaxes. I don’t think I realized how sure he was that I would react poorly to his ‘good news’ until I agreed to at least return to Halo Island for a couple of days.

In as pleasant a mood as he was when he first walked into the kitchen, he sidesteps around me, moving toward the counter where I was prepping the rest of dinner.

It hits me a second later what he said:everyone else. Right. He mentioned it’s a group getaway.

“So who else is coming? Who did you invite?”

He pops a piece of the mozzarella I chopped into his mouth. “Everyone.”

Everyone, huh?

Yeah. I need a little more information than that.

THREE

DISTRACTION

Gullhaven is such a small town, we know everyone—and everyone’s business, too. Our graduating class had less than a hundred-and-fifty students; one reason why we were able to have our seniors’ weekend on the island. Since I moved back, I’ve noticed that Tommy’s friend group isn’t that much different than the one we all had as kids. The stereotypical ‘popular’ clique made up of three football players, the high school newspaper editor, a pair of cheerleaders, the class clown, and, well, Chase.

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