Page 46 of Winter in Paradise
“Yes,” Cash says. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Nearly ten,” she says. She can feel Mick at her back, watching her, and probably sizing up Cash. When they were a couple, Mick had been fiendishly jealous of every single one of Ayers’s male customers—single or married, in the restaurant or on the boat—and yet, in the end, it was he who had put his head up someone else’s skirt. “Are you calling it a night?”
“I wish,” Cash says. “I can’t go home for another hour. My mother has a guest for dinner and she wants privacy.”
“Your mother,” Ayers says. “Did she meet someone here? Or… do you know people?”
“Met someone,” Cash says. “Apparently.”
“So your parents are divorced?” Ayers asks.
“Divorced?” Cash says. He takes what seems like a long time to consider the question. “No. No.” Another pause, during which Ayers hears Mick and Skip talking about a supposed surfable swell in Reef Bay. It was Ayers’s least favorite thing about Mick: he professed to be a “surfer,” and he used all the lingo, but the one time Ayers had watched him “surf,” he’d fallen off the board and broken his collarbone. He’d blamed his accident on the waves. “My father is dead.”
Because she’s distracted thinking about the five hours she and Mick had spent in the waiting room at Myrah Keating, with Mick moaning and groaning while she smoothed his hair and brought water to his lips like a dutiful girlfriend, it takes her a moment to process this statement.
“Dead?” she says. “I’m sorry. Recently?”
Cash nods. “Really recently. That’s kind of why we’re down here.”
Down here. Family reunion, maybe the first vacation since the father died, which is why the mother came along.
“You’re still here?” a voice says.
Ayers turns around to see Baker standing behind her and also, of course, behind Mick. Baker is as big, tall, and broad as a tree. He’s staring down his brother.
“Mom said stay out until eleven,” Cash says. “Where else was I supposed to go?”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Baker says. “But Ayers and I are going out and you’re not invited.” His tone is strong, nearly bullying, and Ayers feels bad for Cash. She understands now that both Cash and Baker are interested in her, and she wished they’d sorted this out at home to save her from being stuck in the middle, although a small part of her is gloating, because what better situation for Mick to witness than two men fighting over her?
“Where are you guys going?” Cash asks.
“None of your business,” Baker says, so harshly that Ayers winces, but then he softens and says, “Listen, just give us an hour, okay, man? I’ll be back to pick you up at eleven. I promise.”
“But where are you going?” Cash asks.
“De’ Coal Pot,” Ayers says. “It’s Caribbean food. You’re welcome to…”
Cash holds up a hand. “You guys go. I ate.”
“De’ Coal Pot?” Mick says. “I could go for some oxtail stew myself.”
Not happening, Ayers thinks. This is not happening. She is smacked by a wave of devastating sorrow. The person she needs by her side right now isn’t Mick or Baker or Cash. It’s Rosie.
Can you see this? Ayers asks Rosie in her mind. Please tell me you are somewhere you can see this.
Baker swings around. “Who are you?” he asks Mick.
Mick, wisely, holds up his hands. “No one,” he says. “I’m no one.”
Baker and Ayers walk down the street toward De’ Coal Pot, although Ayers finds she no longer has any appetite. She needs air, she needs space.
“I’m not hungry anymore,” she says. “Let’s go down to the beach.”
“You lead,” Baker says. “I’ll follow.”
Ayers takes him down past the Beach Bar to the far edge of Frank Bay, where it’s dark and quiet. Out on the water, she sees the ferry making its way toward St. Thomas. On the far horizon, she spies a cruise ship, all lit up like a floating city. Ayers sits in the cool sand and Baker eases down next to her.
“Your brother is pretty drunk,” Ayers says.
