Page 53 of Winter in Paradise
“There’s something I need your help with,” she says.
Huck follows Irene up the stairs, his mind racing. Is she making advances? Is the “something” that she wants help with getting out of that black dress? This is all moving a little fast for Huck. But he won’t say no. She’s a grieving widow and he has lost his daughter. Now that he has allowed himself to travel back in time, he realizes that Rosie became his daughter the second he yanked her out of the regatta. Or maybe it was when he paid twenty bucks for a regatta t-shirt to put on over the hankie she was wearing. Or maybe it was when she told him she hated him.
Irene needs physical contact and Huck needs it too, doesn’t he? And she’s a good-looking woman.
They walk down a long white hallway with a vaulted ceiling ribbed with exposed beams. There are rooms off to both sides, bedrooms. Huck peers into each one. They’re similar; it feels like a fancy hotel. At the very end of the hall is a closed door. Irene turns the knob. Locked.
“When we got here on Thursday, the house had been cleaned out,” Irene says. “Every personal item removed. Russ’s clothes, gone. All the papers from his office, gone. Someone came and took it all away, probably his business partner, Todd Croft. Ever heard that name?”
Huck shakes his head. “No.”
“This door is locked. And I was hoping you could force it open for me.”
“Okay.” Huck says. The door is solid wood, the handle is heavy. Nothing about this house is cheap. “Have you asked your sons?”
“I didn’t ask them,” Irene says. “And they obviously haven’t been blessed with any natural curiosity, because neither of them has noticed. I’m afraid of what we’re going to find inside.”
Huck presses against the door. He’s a big guy, but breaking down this door is beyond him; he’ll have to pick the lock. The nice thing about owning a boat for forty years is that he can tinker with the best of ’em. He is a world champion tinkerer.
“Do you have a hairpin?” he asks. “Or bobby pin?”
“I do,” Irene says. “Hold on.”
She’s back in a few seconds with an ancient, sturdy steel bobby pin that looks like it came straight from the head of Eleanor Roosevelt. It takes Huck a few moments of poking and twisting—he doesn’t have his reading glasses, and the wine has gone to his head somewhat—but then, click, he gets it. Lock popped. He hesitates before turning the knob, because he’s also afraid of what they’re going to find inside. More dead bodies? Assault rifles and refrigerators full of money? Who was this guy Russell Steele, and what was he into? Irene clearly doesn’t have the first idea.
Huck opens the door and the first words that come to him are those from “Sugar Magnolia,” Sunshine, daydream. It’s a bedroom with a huge white canopy bed decorated with turquoise and purple pillows. The wallpaper is a swirl of purple, green, and turquoise tie-dye. There’s a white powderpuff beanbag chair, a desk, and a dressing table. Maia would love this room, Huck thinks. Then he sees the letters painted on the length of one wall. M-A-I-A.
“Oh,” he says. “This is Maia’s room.”
Irene slips past Huck into the room and starts poking around. Hairbrush and pick on the dressing table, a bottle of shea butter lotion. A book on the nightstands entitled The Hate U Give. Huck thinks to speak up on behalf of Maia’s privacy; she’s only twelve, but she still deserves respect. Huck understands why the door was locked—it would have been impossible to “undo” this room on short notice.
How must Irene feel, knowing her husband decorated a room like this for his lover’s daughter? Is it salt on the wound? Huck supposes so, although he, for one, is happy to see that Maia had a safe space of her own in this house. He will be Maia’s champion to the end.
“There can’t be anything too important in here,” he says. “She hasn’t mentioned it.”
Irene spins around. “Do you have a picture of her?”
“Of Maia? Yes, of course.” Huck takes his phone out of his pocket. There she is, a close-up of her face, his screen saver.
Irene takes the phone from Huck and studies the photograph. He expects her to comment on how pretty Maia is, exquisite really, and elegant in a way that belies her years.
But when Irene looks up, her steel-blue eyes are spooked.
Like she has seen a ghost.
No, Huck thinks. Please, no.
BAKER
He can’t have Ayers pick him up at the villa—he’s savvy enough to realize at least this much—and so he plans to have her pick him up at the Trunk Bay overlook.
“I don’t get it,” Ayers says. “Why don’t I just come to the house?”
For all he knows, Ayers has been to his father’s villa with Rosie. He isn’t willing to risk it. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Baker says. “But my brother, Cash, also has a crush on you, and I think you coming to the house to pick me up for our romantic beach date would be… uncool and probably also unkind. I’ll be at the Trunk Bay overlook at ten.”
Baker isn’t completely lying: Cash does have a thing for Ayers. When Baker comes down dressed in swim trunks and a polo shirt, holding a couple of towels he lifted from the pool house, Cash shakes his head.
“I can’t believe you.”
