Page 67 of The Castaways
“Hey, Eddie.”
“What’s up?”
She told him: cocktail party for Island Conservation, her first flight in eight years, it was important to her that he and Andrea come.
“Okay, then, we’ll come.”
“You will?”
“Of course. I’ve been wanting to get out of the house. It will be good for Andrea, too. Real good.”
Phoebe agreed with this. But wait—she felt funny. This was too easy; Phoebe had questions. Had they gotten the invitation when she sent it? If they had gotten it, why had they not responded? Phoebe had the strange feeling that Andrea had opened the invitation and had thrown it away, or, in her current state of mind, soaked it in gasoline, stuck it in a bottle, and turned it into a Molotov cocktail. Ed normally ran everything past Andrea first; he was the police chief, but everyone knew who the real chief was. It wasn’t like him to make plans for both of them like this, without even asking.
“And I have a surprise,” Phoebe said. “At the party.”
“Is it legal?”
Phoebe laughed. “Yes.”
“Well, okay, then. We’ll see you next Friday, if not before.”
Phoebe hung up. Mission accomplished. She should be happy.
But…?
Something felt weird, not quite right on either front. Or maybe what felt wrong was that there had been only two phone calls instead of three. No call to Greg and Tess. She couldn’t let herself follow this train of thought, it would do her in, she would become just like the rest of them, singing a song out of tune. She would not think about it. She went out to the pool.
ADDISON
Florabel approached his desk with astonishing news. A couple named Legris Pouffet and Hank Drenmiller had made a full-price offer on the cottage in Quaise. Florabel looked like she was about to burst open like a pinata. Penny candy for everyone! Safe to say that Addison had never seen her this animated. Florabel was a lipstick lesbian, a stunning woman who despised everyone. She had managed the Wheeler Realty office for over a decade, but the first listing Addison had given Florabel to handle, with full commission, was the Quaise cottage, and this only recently, since Tess’s death, since Addison could not bear to think about the cottage at all, much less deal with the business of selling it. The cottage was owned by an elderly couple from Princeton, New Jersey; the husband sat on the board of trustees at Lawrenceville, and this was how Addison had met him. The elderly couple had three cowboy children—they lived in places like Cody, Wyoming, and San Antonio, Texas—who had no interest in Nantucket and wanted their parents to sell the place. Sell it, yes, but the couple wanted three million dollars, not a penny less, for a four-hundred-square-foot summer cottage, and because of a three-hundred-year-old Wampanoag cemetery that abutted the property, a covenant was in place stating that the cottage could not be expanded. The cottage was essentially unsellable at that price with those restrictions; it had languished on the market for years.
Addison eyed Florabel suspiciously. “These Puffy Drenmillers know they can’t add on, right? They can’t tear it down and build something else. They can’t touch it. They know this?”
“Yes!” Florabel said. She had told him once that she had been a cheerleader in high school, and as improbable as this had seemed at the time (she was an utter bitch, prone to sniffing at people, granting only her favorites a malicious smile), he now caught a glimpse of her game-day enthusiasm.
“And they still offered three million dollars?”
“Yes!” Florabel said. Her wide blue eyes were about to pop into bouquets of violets. She was genuinely happy. All it had taken was money, a 6 percent commission on three million dollars.
“Okay,” Addison said. “Great. Good for you. Write it up.” His voice was maudlin. He could not summon even a trace of perfunctory congratulation. He, Addison Wheeler, Wheeler Dealer, who loved nothing more than fresh ink on a purchase-and-sale agreement, who had been known to throw his hat in the air when a financing contingency was waived, who had been known to treat the entire office to a five-course lunch at the Wauwinet when a major property closed, could not even fake a smile in response to the news that an unsellable property had sold.
Florabel, thank God, could not have cared less about Addison’s underwhelming response. She just wanted to be smug about her news with everyone in the office, and Addison was her first stop. He had given her the listing, but it had been something of a gag, a white elephant. Florabel had had beginner’s luck—well, either that or she had true Realtor’s skill, the ability to interface the right buyer with the right property.
She moved on to Arthur Dimmity’s desk; Arthur could be counted on to scowl with undisguised envy, which Florabel would find gratifying. Addison should have given the listing to Arthur, he realized now; Arthur would have a hard time with a lemonade stand in the desert. He handled only rentals.
Addison wanted to run out of the office—but wait, he couldn’t be too obvious. He counted to ten. The phone rang and no one answered it; it was Florabel’s job, but she was too busy gloating. Addison should answer the phone, he knew, to show that answering the phone was not beneath him, and as a tiny concession to Florabel’s good news. For all he knew, too, it could be the Puffy Drenmillers, calling to renege. But Addison was too upset to talk to anyone on the phone; he let the call go, so it would be picked up by the general voicemail box.
Behind him, he heard Arthur’s strained congratulations. Arthur said, “How did you meet these people, the Drenmillers?”
And Florabel said, “Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
“Okay,” Arthur said amiably (and this was why he wasn’t a great salesman; he never pressed the issue). But this time Addison agreed—okay, who cared, nobody, not Arthur, not him, he was having a hard time holding steady. He had to get out of there! He surreptitiously unlocked his top drawer. Tess’s iPhone was still there, hidden in the back of the drawer. He checked it every day, and every day it was cold and silent, though to him it hummed and glowed with radioactivity. Today, however, he was looking for keys, but the keys he wanted were not in his drawer—of course not, Florabel had them—but then he found a different set of keys and a thought came to him. Whoa. So many weeks since Tess had died, and he had not thought about the can of bug spray in her garage.
Addison found he could speak to Tess when he was driving because he was alone and moving forward, and the combination of these two things put him in a psychic state where he could communicate with the dead.
They’re selling our cottage,he said.It sold. It will belong to someone else at the end of August.
His heart was dust. His spirit was the frilled brown edge of a badly fried egg. He was desiccated and dry; his body was filled with crumbly sand. He and Tess had loved that cottage. Addison had told her that he would buy it, he would pay the three million, she could leave Greg and he would leave Phoebe and they could live together in the cottage. Tess had laughed nervously. He was delusional, this wasn’t real, it was a fantasy. No one could actually live in that cottage; she couldn’t live there. What would she do with her kids?
