Anita smiled manically, and then she laughed once, like a gunshot. “Ha!”
Oh, dear,
Tate thought.
Anita said, “Would you like to come in and sit down?”
Tate took a breath. “No, thank you. I’m just looking for Barrett.”
Anita Fullin placed her index finger under her nose and inhaled. She said, “Well, you won’t find him here.”
“I won’t?”
“He left this morning.”
“Left… for where?”
“For where, indeed!” Anita Fullin said. “For his little business, for other clients, people who
need
him, he says. For his pathetic, lonely life, where he will never have the money to do anything interesting and never have the opportunity to grow into a real man. He left because he thinks I’m behaving inappropriately. I’m married, he says, and I’d better start acting like it or he’s going to call Roman and
tattle
on me like a six-year-old.” She let loose a trill of laughter, which fluttered like a flock of birds. “He thinks
he
can blackmail
me.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
Tate took a step back. Anita snatched her arm. “Please come in. We’ll have a drink.”
“I can’t,” Tate said.
“Please?” Anita said. “I’m not the monster he makes me out to be.” She stepped back and opened the door a little wider, and Tate stepped over the threshold. Immediately she thought of Chess, doing what was expected of her instead of following her basic instincts. Tate knew better than to step into Anita’s home territory—but what did she do? She walked right in.
Anita seemed energized by Tate’s presence. She shut the door firmly behind her and said, “Come, come, sit right here and I’ll get you a glass of wine. Is chardonnay okay?”
“Um,” Tate said. It was not yet ten o’clock. “Do you have any iced tea?”
“Iced tea?” Anita said. She disappeared into the kitchen and came back a few seconds later with two glasses of wine. “Here you go,” she said brightly. “Please sit.”
Tate was perched tentatively on the arm of a chair, which she realized was quite rude, but that was all the commitment she was willing to give. She didn’t want to sit. Anita set the glasses of wine on the glass coffee table and plopped down ever so casually on the sofa, and what could Tate do? She had been raised by Birdie. She sat in the chair and smiled at Anita and said, “Your house is lovely.”
Anita picked up her wineglass. “Cheers!” she said. She reached out to clink Tate’s glass, forcing
cheers
upon her. That was fine, but Anita couldn’t make her drink. Tate brought the glass to her mouth. Anita was watching her. She took the tiniest sip, just enough to dampen her lips.
“You like it?” Anita said.
“Delicious,” Tate said.
Anita said, “You look nervous. Are you nervous?”
“Kind of,” Tate said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“Oh!” Anita said. “You aren’t interrupting a thing. I was just relaxing in the sun. I’m really very lazy.” She smiled as she said this and Tate thought she was joking, so Tate laughed what she thought was the appropriate amount. But Anita set her wineglass down harshly on the glass table, and there was a noise like a dissonant bell. And Tate thought her laughing must have been inappropriate; she should have said something soothing instead, like,
Well, you are on vacation.
Tate wasn’t great with social cues despite Birdie’s tutelage. Anita said, “Roman thinks I’m completely useless, sitting here on Nantucket, going out for lunch, going out for dinner, spending his money, not working, not contributing to my local community or what he refers to as ‘the wider world.’ So we’ve separated, he’s in New York and I’m here, we’re no longer a couple, and that is
fine
with me.”
“Oh,” Tate said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Sorry?” Anita Fullin said. “
Sorry?
” She threw back some more wine and her hair fell into her face, and Tate wondered exactly how much Anita Fullin had had to drink that morning already. Had she poured a glass with her Grape-Nuts? “So of course what Roman doesn’t know, what I could never have told him, is that I had hopes for Barrett. I became
very
close with Barrett when his wife was dying and then even
closer
after she died. I lent him a lot of money, but that didn’t matter because I
adore
Barrett and would do anything for him. And then, just recently, last week, when I hired him to work for me exclusively, I thought it would be a good opportunity to make him into something.”
“Make him into something?” Tate said.
“Make him into a successful man,” Anita said. “Introduce him to the right people, find him a job…”
“He has a job,” Tate said. “He owns a business.”
Anita stared at Tate. Her face was tan and absolutely unlined. Her lipstick was perfect. “He can do more. He can be like Roman: An investment banker, a man of the world. A man with money and power. He deserves that. He deserves so much more than what’s befallen him.”
“You think so?” Tate said.
“Yes,” Anita said. She finished her wine. She stared at Tate’s untouched wine, and Tate nearly offered it to her. “I do.”
Something about the way Anita said these last two words made Tate realize that, for Anita, men fell into the same two categories: Barrett, and men who weren’t Barrett.
Anita said, “But he blew it today. He walked out on me. I’ve decided to give him until noon to come back. Otherwise I’m going to sit down and make the calls.”
“Make the calls?” Tate said.
“I’m going to call all of his clients and tell them what a selfish bastard he is. I am going to call all of my friends and have them call their friends. I’m going to repossess his boat. I’m going to speak to my attorney about the money he owes me. I’m going to cut off all his other options so he has no choice but to come back here.” She picked up her empty wineglass and stood. “I would have called you, too, but you don’t have a phone.” She smiled. “So it’s lucky you stopped by!”
Tate excused herself to use the ladies’ room. Anita repaired to the kitchen for more wine. Tate walked to the end of a long hallway, past the powder room, onto a sunporch. It didn’t have what she was looking for. She tried another door and found a sitting room with two yellow cats reclining on a love seat. Tate turned around and saw a set of back stairs. She climbed the stairs and crept around—master bedroom, guest room, guest room—until she found the study. The home office. She sat down at the desk in front of the computer and lightly tapped the keyboard. The screen jumped to life. Tate grinned; it was a good, expensive model, a Dell, one of Tate’s favorites. Tate felt like she was seeing an old friend. She checked out the configuration of the desktop and got to work. Her fingers flew. She could do this in her sleep. It was scary, really, but being a computer genius cut both ways. She heard Anita downstairs calling out, “Hello? Hello?” Tate scrambled to work faster and faster until she had the system on its knees; if she pushed one more button, she would wipe out the entire hard drive—all the documents, all the e-mails, all the pictures, all the music, everything. Wipe it out! Tate was giddy.
“Hello?” Anita called up the stairs. “Tate?”
Tate waggled her fingers in the air above the keyboard, a piece of personal theater she liked to use to remind herself of the witchcraft she was capable of. Just having the ability to visit a technical hurricane on Anita Fullin was good enough. Tate stood up from the desk. She experienced a bloom of unexpected satisfaction. Anita Fullin knew her name.
Tate descended the stairs. Anita was waiting at the bottom.
“I think you’d better go,” Anita said.
Tate held up her hands to show she hadn’t stolen anything. Upstairs, the computer waited, hanging by a thread. Maybe Anita Fullin would push the magic button herself.
“I think you’re right,” Tate said.
Tate walked down the hot street toward town. This was where Barrett was supposed to appear and scoop her up so they could drive off into the midday sun. He had quit Anita Fullin; he had set himself free. But where
was
he?
* * *
She bought two bottles of cold water in town and walked all the way back to Madaket Harbor. It was sunny and hot, and unlike on Tuckernuck, the bike path here was paved and populated; people zipped around Tate on bikes, chiming their bells.
On your left!
Cars zoomed past, and she thought each one might be Barrett. But no.
She reached Madaket Harbor at two o’clock. She bought a sandwich and another bottle of water at the Westender store, and she ate on the dock with her feet dangling in the water. She wanted to swim but hadn’t brought her suit. She considered jumping in in her shorts and T-shirt—but she was determined, from this point forward, to act like a grown woman. Not a woman like Anita Fullin or like Chess or like her mother or like Aunt India—but like the woman that was inside herself.
Then she thought,
The grown woman inside me is hot and sticky.
And she jumped in.
She was asleep on the deck in her drying clothes when Trey nudged her with his Top-Sider.
“Hey,” he said.
She opened her eyes, then closed them. When she opened them again, it would be Barrett standing over her, and not Trey. She understood then why Chess slept all the time: when life wasn’t going your way, it was much easier to snooze.
“Come on,” Trey said. “We’re going.”
Tate sat up, bleary eyed. Madaket Harbor was spread in front of her like a painting. Blue water, green eelgrass, white boats. Trey had a bag of ice and a bag of groceries; he was untying the dinghy. She stumbled down onto the beach. Her clothes were stiff with salt, and she didn’t even want to think about her hair.
They got situated in the boat, and Tate said, “
Where
is Barrett?”
Trey said, “He went to the airport to get the husband.”
“The husband?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Meaning Roman? I thought he was all done working for Anita.”
“He’ll never be done working for Anita,” Trey said.
Tate’s heart tumbled. This was probably right. Anita must have called him to lay down the ultimatum:
Come back by noon or I will ruin you.
And Barrett would have done the only thing he could and gone back. He had the kids to think of. He was like a bluefish that Anita had hooked painfully through the lip. No matter how hard he struggled, she wouldn’t release him.
When Tate got back to the house, she found Birdie, Aunt India, and Chess sitting at the picnic table, drinking Sancerre and eating Marcona almonds. Tate’s eyes welled up with grateful tears.
Birdie said, “How was your day?”
Tate said, “Awful.” And she sat down in the fourth spot, where she belonged.
Chess and Tate set the table. Normally, with only a couple of nights left, Birdie would throw together bizarre combinations of leftovers such as scrambled eggs with corn and tomatoes, but tonight they were having steaks, campfire potatoes, salad with buttermilk dressing, and rolls.
Chess set down the place mats and Tate followed behind her with the silverware. Chess said, “Did you find Barrett?”
“No,” Tate said.
“Are you okay?” Chess said.
“No,” Tate said.
Pssst.
There was a noise like air leaking from a tire.
Tate looked around, fearing it was the Scout.
Pssst.
Coming up the beach stairs was Barrett.
It
was
Barrett, right? And not Trey looking like Barrett?
He was windmilling his arm, beckoning her over. “Monkey girl!” Yes, she was coming, she was running, just like in the movies, running into his arms, God, he smelled good, she kissed his neck, he tasted good, he was real, he was here, she loved him, she
loved
him. His arms were around her and he was laughing. She kissed his mouth. He… let her kiss him, but he didn’t kiss her back, at least not in the fully passionate way she wanted him to. Something was off, something was wrong. He was going to tell her he was still working for Anita. Was that it? And what would Tate say? Could she live with that?
Could
she? He looked happy, that was for sure. He was grinning.
She said, “Oh, my God, I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in all my life.”
He squeezed her. He whispered. “I have a surprise.”
A surprise? She heard footsteps. He had brought someone. Again? Tate’s neck stiffened. She tried to pull away; Barrett held her. She peered around him at the person huffing up the stairs.
It was her father.
S
he supposed it would become part of the Tuckernuck family legend, the day she nearly set the house on fire.
It took Birdie a second to figure out what, exactly, was happening. She was startled to see that Barrett had returned; she was delighted for Tate. Of secondary concern was who Barrett had with him. An older man, tanned, trim, good looking. A man who reminded Birdie of… who looked just like… who was… Grant! It was
Grant!
Here on Tuckernuck! Here! Then Birdie realized she was smoking and she couldn’t let Grant see her smoking, so she flicked her cigarette to the ground, which was very unlike her. She hadn’t meant to litter; she just wanted to get rid of the cigarette before Grant saw her holding it. By chance, it landed, not in the dirt at her feet, but in the paper bag where they kept the news-papers for recycling. The bag and the newspapers went up in flames in a matter of seconds.
India pointed and shouted. Birdie was too addled to notice; she was assaulted by an avalanche of thoughts, rolling, tumbling. Grant looked good, he looked
fantastic,
he had lost weight, he was tan, he looked different. He was wearing a white polo shirt, blue and white seersucker shorts, and
flip-flops?
The most casual Grant ever got was golf shoes and driving moccasins. But here was Grant in flip-flops, looking relaxed, at ease, and present in the moment, three things Birdie had asked for for thirty years.
Then Birdie smelled smoke—not grill smoke but
smoke
smoke— and she saw the flames licking the shingles of the house. Birdie had a momentary vision of her grandparents’ beloved house burning to the ground. She looked at Barrett in panic. There was a fire truck on the island, with a 250-gallon tank, everyone who lived on Tuckernuck knew this, but what Birdie didn’t know was who drove that truck or who to call to get it to their property.