Page 86 of The Castaways
Tess had not needed to ask. Phoebe anticipated her. She knew Tess was nervous about the sail (all that open water, the wind, the waves), and there was additional anxiety on top of it, something else, something Tess was going to do or say, something she was either going to confess or suppress.
Phoebe said, “I’d like to give you something.”
Tess looked like she might protest. No gifts! Delilah went to Phoebe for drugs, as did Andrea and Greg when they had a pulled shoulder muscle or a headache. But never Tess.
“That would be great,” Tess said.
Phoebe could have taken it easy on her. Ativan, Xanax, even a valium or two would have been enough to take the edge off. But in the back of her mind, Phoebe held the vision she had seen through the cottage window. Addison in bed, holding Tess in his arms, Tess’s eyes closed, Addison gazing at the ceiling.
Phoebe gave her one of the precious Number Nines, the contraband pills that came from Reed’s college roommate Brandon, off the big drug company black market. She would send Tess straight to the heroin stratosphere.
“Be sure to take it with food,” Phoebe directed. She put the pill in Tess’s palm and folded her fingers over it.
“She took it,” the Chief said.
Phoebe nodded. Tess had taken the pill, and she had drunk the champagne that Andrea had packed. Then the boat caught a gust and Tess had lurched or been thrown overboard. She was not a great swimmer under the best of circumstances, and with the drug coursing through her, she hadn’t stood a chance.
Greg most likely had died trying to save her.
Finally Phoebe cried. Not the breathless, hysterical sobs that she had released in the shock of first finding out, but rather, she cried deeply. She was a bottomless well of sorrow, guilt, and regret. She cried like a woman who had done the unthinkable. She had killed her best friend, leaving two children motherless.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” Phoebe said. “I just wanted to… I don’t know… give her a shove. But what else can I think now, but that I…”
Even with ten savannah sidecars in him, the Chief was a man of reason. He touched her back and said, “You didn’t kill her. You gave her the pill to calm her nerves. You were trying to help her.”
Phoebe wanted to be tried for murder. She wanted death row.
“I could have given her Ativan,” Phoebe said. “But I gave her the Number Nine.”
“The pill wasn’t what killed her. She drowned. She fell off the boat, which would make it an accident. Or…”
“Or she was pushed,” Phoebe said.
“Or she was pushed.” The Chief sighed. “But here’s the thing—I’m glad you told me. The drug showed up on the tox report, and that tox report has been eating at me since… I didn’t know what to think. Well, what I thought was that Greg shot her full of smack, then dumped her overboard so he could be with April Peck.”
Phoebe said, “What I did was no better. I gave her a pill I knew she couldn’t handle. I wanted to ruin her anniversary. Tess was having an affair with my husband and I wanted to turn her into a zombie. And then shedied,Eddie. She is dead and Greg is dead, and it ismy fault.”
“All you did was give her the pill,” the Chief said. “You didn’t make her take it.”
Phoebe would not be comforted. “It’s the strongest opiate out there. It’s not even legal, Ed. I would take one, you know, in the darkest days, and I would be in outer space. I couldn’t drive or make a sandwich. I couldn’t wash my hair. I was so out of it.” She looked at him. “I’m a monster.”
The Chief took her hand. The tent blazed before them like a big white birthday cake. Phoebe felt exhausted, weak, full of heartache. The fact of the matter was, she missed Tess. The absolute truth was that Tess and Addison could have gotten married and left Phoebe homeless and destitute, and it still would have been better than this, because Tess and Greg would be alive. They would all be together. Still.
JEFFREY
Where, where, where?
He was the woman’s husband. He should know the inner workings of Delilah’s mind. And he did, didn’t he? It was Delilah’s belief that people were predictable. They always acted like themselves; no one was truly capable of change. Presumably she applied this theory to herself. In their first, torrid week of dating, she had described herself as a bird that was unable to be captured or caged. She told him the story of how she’d run away in high school. Every time he and Delilah argued, she threatened to leave. Her presence in his life, she’d always maintained, was temporary. This had felt like an empty threat, because Delilah had a deep dedication to house and home. Their house was a finely feathered nest; it was a haven for their children and their friends and their friends’ children. Would Delilah have expended so much energy building and nurturing a home only to abandon it? She assured him she would. And look, she had.
Jeffrey had called Addison and Phoebe at home, but no one answered; he didn’t want to bother them on their cell phones if they were still at the party and ruin their good time. He didn’t call the Chief or Andrea because he didn’t want either of them to panic—to put out anAPBor call Delilah a kidnapper.
He told himself he was overreacting. Delilah had gotten stuck off-island and for some reason had not been able to find a way to contact him.
But he was a smart man and he knew his wife. This had to do with Tess and Greg. It had, Jeffrey believed, to do with Delilah and Greg. Delilah and Greg had worked at the Begonia together for years; they had spent God knows how many late nights together drinking, smoking dope, singing, and keeping each other’s secrets. Delilah always took Greg’s side; she was his champion. She was his closest friend in a circle where they were all close friends. Jeffrey was too proud to admit it, but their friendship had always gotten under his skin. He blamed it for certain deficiencies in his own relationship with Delilah. Greg got to be her boyfriend, leaving Jeffrey to be her… what? Her father. Here was Jeffrey now, another version of Nico Ashby, chasing down his daughter who was on the lam.
He took another beer out of the fridge and sat down in a chair, to wait until morning.
ADDISON
