Page 93 of The Castaways
“I did not speak to them at the party,” Addison said. “Phoebe did not introduce us.”
“What is wrong with you?” Florabel said. “I was onlyasking!”
He immediately wanted a drink. What time did they start serving at the Begonia? Could he go over there and get one? He decided he could not. If he got all muddled and messy right now, he would not be able to sort through this and make everything come out okay. Florabel was wrong. Phoebe did not know about the Quaise cottage. The phone rang and Florabel answered it. This gave Addison a chance to think, slowly and calmly, about what Florabel had said. Florabel said the buyers of the Quaise cottage, Hank (last name?) and his girlfriend Legris (What kind of name was this? It sounded like a name from the bayou), were friends of Phoebe’s. This was true. Although who knew what kind of friends they were. Phoebe had known Hank a long time ago, back when she was actively chairing events and attending events that other people chaired, back when she was hanging out with Jennifer and Swede. Phoebe had reconnected with Jennifer and Swede this summer at Caroline Nieve Masters’s Fourth of July party, and she had, to Addison’s knowledge, been out on Hank’s sailboat twice since then. Okay, let’s say that made them friends. Did Phoebe mention the Quaise cottage to Hank and Legris? No, because Phoebe did not know about the Quaise cottage. Here Addison took a moment to reflect. He did not like the way Florabel called him Dealer to his face. He knew this was his nickname around town, but to call him Dealer to his face was blatantly disrespectful. Addison had never asked Florabel to stop, because he knew she wouldn’t. She was that disobedient, that awful. Why had he not fired her years ago? Whywhywhy? Well, she was one hell of an administrator, more organized than Martha Stewart; she kept the office in order, she overlooked no detail, and… she was honest. She would not cheat him and she would not lie.
And since Florabel did not lie, then what she said was true: Phoebe had showed up at the office one random afternoon in the spring, looking for Addison. Addison was at the Quaise cottage, “fixing it up.” Florabel, because she did not lie, told Phoebe that Addison was at the Quaise cottage. She gave Phoebe directions; she may even have drawn a map to the cottage on a piece of Wheeler Realty notepaper. Phoebe drove out to the Quaise cottage. Then, this summer, she mentioned the cottage to Hank and Legris when they said they were in the market for “a little place.”
All this was fine. But Addison still had questions.
One: Did Florabel know Addison had been meeting someone out at the Quaise cottage? (Another reason that Addison had never fired Florabel was that she was the smartest person Addison knew. She was clinically smart; she belonged to Mensa.) So yes, safe to say she knew exactly what was going on. She sent Phoebe out to the Quaise cottage on purpose, she probablyinsistedthat Phoebe journey out to Quaise to find Addison, because… that was the kind of evil bitch that Florabel was.
The bigger, more crucial question was… when Phoebe drove out to the Quaise cottage, what did she find?
Should he call Phoebe?
What was the point? Phoebe knew.
Florabel was trying to get his attention. “Dealer!” she said. She was in front of her desk, snapping her fingers in his face. “God, what iswrongwith you today? Your wife is on the phone.”
Phoebe? Now Addison was scared. “Take a message,” he told Florabel. “I’m busy.”
“Busy?” Florabel said. “Jesus, Dealer, if you were my employee, I’d fire you.” She got back on the phone and hung up seconds later. “She wants help out on the savannah. She said there are hundreds of cocktail napkins scattered across the grass.”
“Okay,” Addison said absently.
Phoebe knew about Tess. She found out at some point in the spring when she went looking for Addison, but she found Florabel instead, and Florabel directed Phoebe to the Quaise cottage. Phoebe saw Addison’s car and Tess’s car. She either figured it out from just that, or she peeked in the window (which was too awful to imagine, so scratch that part). She didn’t tell anyone. She didn’t tell Delilah, she didn’t confront Tess or Addison. She had spent the spring under a blanket of heavy medication; possibly the reality hadn’t registered.
Or she didn’t care.
Or she saw things for what they were. She, Phoebe, had become a pharmaceutical wasteland. She had been incapable of any real emotional connection with Addison for eight years. After Reed died on 9/11, she had disappeared. And for those eight years Addison had stood by her. He supported her and worried about her; he flushed pills and went with her to see Dr. Field. He kept her comfortable; he relieved her of all responsibility. He paid the house cleaners double, he learned to like takeout food, he took her on vacations where they stayed at the finest hotels, he kept their social life alive, he made excuses for her when she passed out in her soup or when she blanked out in the middle of a conversation. He kept her safe; he carried her up mountains and across rivers. He gave a hundred thousand dollars to Reed’s scholarship fund and put another hundred thousand into trust for Domino. He went to hours and hours of grief counseling, where Phoebe either cried uncontrollably or sat in a stupor. He gave up all dreams of having a baby. The miscarriage, which also occurred on 9/11, was an accident, caused by extreme stress. Phoebe could get pregnant again, with ease. But no, she wouldn’t, she didn’t want to. She wouldn’t let Addison touch her.
And he had lived with that, for years and years.
And then Tess came to him, or he went to Tess, it was a mutual discovery, they were in love.
Maybe Phoebe understood this. Maybe—God, was it possible?—she approved.
Addison remembered back to when he met Phoebe. She was lying on a towel in Bryant Park. She had been wearing a short, flowered sundress, eating salad out of a plastic container. Addison felt like he had found a diamond bracelet lying in the grass. He remembered his astonishment. You mean something this beautiful doesn’t belong to anyone?
He’d snapped her up. All these years later, he’d held on.
Oh, Phoebe.
He unlocked his top desk drawer, where he had stashed Tess’s iPhone. It was time to stop hiding things; he would give the phone to the Chief. And there, in his top drawer, was an envelope with his name on it. In Tess’s handwriting. Holy hell! Tess’s handwriting? It sure looked like it. Addison looked around. Florabel was on the phone again, whispering with one of her girlfriends.
Addison opened the envelope, and there was a note inside. It said:I am going back to Greg and my kids. I will explain my reasons when I get home. Please know you will always have a piece of my heart. Tess.
He folded the note back up, slid it into the envelope, and put it in the drawer.
He sat in a bubble for… well, he wasn’t sure how long.
Florabel was snapping at him again. “Dealer! What about helping Phoebe pick up the cocktail napkins? Are you going?”
He looked at Florabel, who was the only person with a key to his desk drawer. He opened the drawer and pulled out the envelope. “Did you put this here?”
She sighed in a way that seemed almost sympathetic. “I did.”
“Where did you get it?”
