Page 84 of Winter in Paradise
“Women always pick Baker over me,” Cash says.
Irene shakes her head. “Baker isn’t a free man yet, and you are. You are every bit as handsome and charming as your brother.” Irene brightens. “If I remember correctly, Ayers seemed quite fond of Winnie. I think you should pursue her.” Irene doesn’t offer any thoughts about how Cash might go about this when Ayers is on St. John and Cash is in the American Midwest.
It just so happens that both Cash and Irene are sitting at Milly’s bedside on Monday morning. It has been an arduous overnight vigil and now the eerie breathing known as the death rattle has set in. It won’t be long now.
Irene is relieved that she has been spared telling Milly the truth about her son.
Because there are no cell phones allowed in the medical unit and certainly none allowed in a room where a ninety-seven-year-old woman is trying to seamlessly transition to the next life, neither Irene nor Cash sees the calls come in from an unknown number with a 787 area code: San Juan, Puerto Rico. The call to Irene’s phone comes in at 8:24 a.m. The call to Cash’s phone comes at 8:26 a.m.
Missed.
Milly passes away at two minutes past ten in the morning. Dot comes in to record the time of death.
“Life well-lived,” she says.
Irene and Cash make the necessary arrangements. Milly’s body will be cremated. Her ashes, along with what remains of Russ’s ashes, will be buried together in the cemetery at the First Presbyterian church once the ground thaws in the spring.
“What do you want to do now?” Irene asks Cash.
“Honestly?” Cash says. “I want to go back.”
Irene nods. She doesn’t have to ask what he means by “back.” She knows.
“Me too,” she says.
At 8:27 on Monday morning, Baker is having breakfast at Snooze in Houston with his school wives: Wendy, Becky, Debbie, and Ellen. They had been very worried about him. Baker had been gone for over a week without warning and they had seen Dr. Anna Schaffer herself delivering Floyd to school and picking him up.
“I knew something was wrong,” Debbie says. “I didn’t want to pry, and Anna isn’t approachable even if I had wanted to pry.”
Baker told his friends that his father died and he’d taken a week with his mother and brother. That’s why they’re all at breakfast. They want to comfort him.
“Your mother lives in Iowa, doesn’t she?” Becky asks. Becky is in HR and remembers every personal detail Baker has ever told her. “How’d you come back with a suntan?” She is also, like any good HR executive, naturally suspicious.
Baker can’t begin to explain that his father was killed in a helicopter crash in the Caribbean, where he happened to own a fifteen-million-dollar villa, keep a mistress, and have a love child. Baker also can’t say a word about the beautiful woman—body and soul—that he fell in love with during his week away.
He can, however, tell them the truth about Anna. They’re going to find out sooner or later.
“I have more bad news,” Baker says. “Anna announced that she’s leaving me.”
“Whaaaa?” Debbie says. “Just as you found out your father was dead?”
“She found someone else,” Baker says. “Another doctor at the hospital.” He waits a beat. “Louisa Rodriguez.”
There is a collective gasp, then some shrieking, then a declaration from Ellen that this is, hands down, the best gossip of the entire school year. Baker gets so caught up talking with his friends that he misses the call that comes in to his phone from an unknown number, area code 787, San Juan, Puerto Rico, at 8:32 a.m.
At 8:34 a.m. on Monday, Huck is dropping Maia off at school. They’re four minutes late, but better late than not at all, which was what Maia was lobbying for. She was tired, they both were, because they’d accompanied Ayers over to Red Hook in St. Thomas the evening before so that she could get her petroglyph tattoo.
The tattoo had taken longer than they’d anticipated, but it was a beauty—an exact replica of the petroglyphs of Reef Bay, left there by the Taino three thousand years ago.
“It’s so cool,” Maia said.
“Don’t even think about it,” Huck said. After the tattoo adventure, he’d treated both of them to dinner at Fish Tails, next to the ferry dock. Ayers had been a little subdued at dinner, as had Huck. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause of his malaise. If it wasn’t such a cockamamie notion, he would say he missed Irene. But how could he miss someone he’d only known a week? He wondered if Ayers was suffering from a similar affliction, if she missed either or both of Irene’s sons. She said she was getting back together with Mick. However, she didn’t sound too excited about it.
Noting their glum faces, Maia had reached out for each of them and said, “I want you guys to know I’m here for you if you ever need to talk.”
She had sounded so earnest that both Huck and Ayers had been helpless to do anything but smile.
“What?” Maia said. “What?”
