Page 52 of Winter in Paradise
“Did Rosie go to college?” Irene asks.
“She did, at UVI in St. Thomas. It’s funny, some kids who grow up here can’t wait to get away, and some can’t bear to leave. Rosie was the latter. She loved it here. She and her momma used to fight like half-starved hens over a handful of feed, but there was a deep emotional attachment. So she stayed. For a long time, she waited tables at Caneel Bay. That’s where she met the Pirate.”
“The pirate?” Irene says.
“It was… let’s see… thirteen years ago, Valentine’s weekend. Some guy, rich, white, showed up on a yacht for the weekend and swept Rosie off her feet.”
“What was his name?” Irene asks.
“Never learned it. He came and went. It was just a weekend fling. Rosie called him the Pirate, though, because he stole her heart.”
“So she had a history of this?” Irene says.
“If by ‘this’ you mean poor choices in men, then yes,” Huck says. “I actually suspected the Pirate was a made-up story. I thought Rosie was back with Oscar—this would have been after he was released from jail. But when the baby was born, she was very light-skinned. No doubt the father was white.”
Irene backs away a fraction of an inch. “Baby?”
“Maia,” Huck says. “Rosie’s daughter. My granddaughter. She’s twelve.”
“Oh,” Irene says. “I didn’t put… I didn’t realize…” She tears up, then starts to soundlessly cry. Huck pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket, which is actually just one of the bandanas he likes to tie around his neck when he’s fishing, and hands it to Irene. She shakes it out over the railing like a woman bidding her loved ones good-bye on an ocean liner, then dabs at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize Rosie left behind a child.”
“That’s the real tragedy here,” Huck says. “Me, I’m old. I’ve known loss. But Maia…”
“She’s twelve, you say? And never knew her father? So Rosie was all she had?”
“Rosie and me,” Huck says. “Now there’s just me. But people will step up. Maia won’t get lost. I won’t let her get lost. I don’t care if I have to keep myself alive until I’m a hundred years old.”
“When did Russ come into the picture?” Irene asks.
“I couldn’t be sure…”
“But if you had to guess,” Irene says. “The deed says he bought this house three years ago. Had their relationship… been going on for three years?”
Here is where things get thorny, Huck thinks. Here is where he profoundly regrets his decision to let this woman ever set foot on his boat. They have been acting like they’re on the same side. In some sense, they are. They’re the bereaved. The survivors.
But Huck is Rosie’s family and Irene is Russ’s family. Irene wants this whole mess to be Rosie’s fault and Huck wants it to be Russ’s fault. Irene is making it sound like three years would be nearly inconceivable—but Huck knows that their relationship went on longer than three years. Rosie met the Invisible Man right after Rosie died—five years ago.
“I’m really not sure, Irene,” Huck says. “What I know about their relationship I could write on my thumbnail and still have room for the U.S. Constitution. Rosie told me next to nothing. And like I said, I never had the pleasure of meeting…”
“My husband.”
“Mr. Steele.” Huck clears his throat. “Your husband.”
Irene steps back to the table, fills her glass with more wine, and regards Huck over the rim, as if trying to gauge whether or not he’s telling the truth.
He is. He knows it sounds unusual. It was unusual. And part of what’s at work in Huck is guilt. He should have nipped the relationship—or at least the secrecy about it—in the bud. But like he said, Rosie met the guy right after LeeAnn died, when Huck was in bad shape. LeeAnn had been sick, sure—her death hadn’t come as a total shock. And yet Huck had been left feeling like his entire right side had been amputated.
He’d been glad that Rosie had found someone to distract her from her grief. By the time he realized how pathological the relationship was, it was too late. Rosie was in love. All the way.
“I should have done more,” he says. “I should have tried to stop it. I should have hired a private investigator.”
Irene sets her wineglass gently down and lets her hands drop to her sides. “You showed up here,” she says. “That’s more than a lot of men would do.”
True, he thinks. But he says nothing.
Irene reaches out… and takes his hand. “Will you come upstairs with me?”
He’s speechless.
