Page 10 of What Happens in Paradise
“Mom,” he says. “I’m not going back to Colorado.”
“You’re not?” she says, relaxing her death grip on the orange in her hand and then tossing the rind in the sink.
“With your permission…” he says. His voice sticks. Asking her this is harder than he thought it would be. “I’d like to go back down.”
“Down?” she says, though he can tell she understands.
“To St. John,” Cash says. He clears his throat. “I have a lead on a job there. And I was hoping I could just stay in the villa.”
Irene abandons the juice project altogether in order to stare at him. He can’t tell what she’s thinking, but then, his mother’s expressions have always been inscrutable. Against all odds, they had both sort of fallen in love with St. John—at least, Cash did. He knows Irene had warmed to it as well; she went out fishing with Huck once in an attempt to get information, but she also took a second boat trip with him before she and Cash left. He supposes it’s possible that her feelings have changed since they’ve been back home and now the whole Caribbean represents an enormous, ugly deception that she doesn’t want to revisit. And maybe she’d prefer that Cash not revisit it either.
It’s the idea that Irene might say no, might ask him nicely not to go or forbid him to stay in the villa, that makes Cash realize how badly he wants to return and give life down there a shot. He won’t stay forever. Maybe just until summer.
“Is this about the girl?” Irene asks.
“What?” Cash says. He can feel his face turning red. “No, of course not.”
“Oh,” Irene says. “That’s too bad. I like her for you, you know.”
“So…is it okay?” Cash asks.
“Yes, honey,” Irene says. “It’s fine. The villa is just sitting there empty. Someone should use it. Let me buy your plane ticket and give you some money to get started.”
Cash wants to tell her she doesn’t have to—he’s too old to be taking handouts from his mother—but the fact is, he’s flat broke. Broker than broke.
“Thank you, Mom,” he says. “Thank you so much.”
Irene gives him a sad smile. “I’m jealous,” she says.
Huck
One hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars; this is how much cash Huck and Ayers discover in the bottom drawer of Rosie’s dresser. It’s all banded up in neat bricks, just like in the movies. After they count the bricks, they count them again, announcing the amounts out loud as they go so they don’t lose track. Then Huck says, “Come into the kitchen.”
“I don’t think I can eat,” Ayers says.
“I’m not talking about barbecue,” Huck says. “I’m talking about rum.”
Ayers shuts the drawer, and the blue Benjamins disappear; Huck ushers her down the hall. In the kitchen, he takes two shot glasses out of the cabinet and brings his trusty bottle of eighteen-year-old Flor de Caña—useful in most emergencies—down from the shelf.
He pours two shots and gives one to Ayers. “I don’t know what to say,” he admits, raising his own glass.
“Me either.”
They clink glasses and drink. He notices Ayers eyeing the barbecue spread out across the counter. She grabs a drumstick dripping with comeback sauce. Huck follows suit. No matter what the circumstances, Candi’s is too tempting to resist.
After Ayers leaves, taking one yellow dress and three pairs of white jeans with her—the rest of the clothes they should let Maia go through, Ayers said, as soon as she’s old enough—Huck picks up the money, armful by armful, and stashes it under his bed. He’s aware that it has remained undetected in Rosie’s room, but he figures it’s only a matter of time before Maia goes snooping. Maia will never voluntarily enter Huck’s room. He’s messy, and Maia has declared on numerous occasions that, despite Huck’s valiant effort with the laundry, his room smells like fish guts, rotten fish guts.
After the money is beneath the bed, he stacks all the issues of Field and Stream and National Geographic that he’s collected over the past twenty years around the bed so that if Maia does come poking around, she will see only that Huck is a packrat.
Money hidden, he feels a little better. He drives to Gifft Hill to pick up Maia from school.
A hundred and twenty-five grand. In cash. In a dresser drawer.
It’s a lot of money, but it’s not enough to kill two people over; that’s Huck’s thought as he pulls into the school parking lot.
Maia is lingering by the gate with her friend Joanie and two boys Huck recognizes but can’t put names to. All four kids have their phones out and they’re laughing at something on the screen. Huck knows Maia sees him and he also knows enough to be patient and not tap the horn or, God forbid, call out to her. That would be so embarrassing.
Maia runs over to his window and he cranks it down.
