Chapter 42 #2
There was a tapping on the glass. A girl’s sharp, painted fingernail, her other hand beckoning Shay to come back inside.
Shay mouthed that she’d be there in a few minutes, and for the first time in his life, William felt that he hated her.
After telling him all of this, after breaking the silent oath they’d all sworn, she would be folded back into the party’s warm embrace, into a roomful of people he did not know, and he would be left out in the frigid, black quiet of the balcony.
“You weren’t even there,” he said, and Shay turned back to him. “You just left.”
“I talked to you every week.”
Her voice was still firm, but he could tell she was taken aback.
William had not known he held this inside of him.
It was like digging with a shovel and striking stone.
“For a while. And that’s not the same, you know that’s not the same, and I was just left inside that apartment with them.
Them barely talking to each other, them barely talking to me—”
“I’m so sorry for that, but do you hear what you’re saying? Doesn’t it make you think—”
“And so you don’t know anything. You weren’t there when Mom got the phone call, but I was, I was there, and—she didn’t even tell me what happened, she just said I had to stay home, even though I knew it was something awful, and I tried calling you and calling you, but you weren’t in your dorm.”
“I’m so sorry.” Shay’s voice was cracking, and how fragile it suddenly sounded, frail as an eggshell. “I hate that you were alone.”
“You left me there alone!” he yelled. “And then you went back to college and left me alone again, and then you moved to New York, and now you barely talk to me—”
“You’re right. I was selfish for leaving, I failed you, but I’m getting help so I won’t do it again, so I won’t fail—everyone.”
“Well, good fucking luck.”
He pushed past her, even when she reached out for him, wrenching the glass door open and shouldering his way through the crowd until he was in the stairwell and then out on the street, somehow exactly where he’d feared being left: alone again in the dark.
When the hotel started to wake, William’s dread began to ebb.
Men and women from the island, cooks and waiters and cleaners, filed past him on the front porch, and their bleary-eyed presence was a comfort.
They were their own watch, even if they didn’t know it.
Gossip would spread quickly in a place as small as this, and they’d undoubtedly heard about the woman, so even if they didn’t understand her danger, they’d know she was out place, know to ask questions.
To stop her before she slipped upstairs.
He needed to shower. His entire body ached, and under the hot water, he felt his muscles loosen.
If he lay down in the spray, he would fall asleep.
The ceremony was at two, and he’d be due at the church half an hour before.
Shay would be safest then, at the center of everyone’s attention.
Please, don’t say anything, all right? she’d said.
But she’d undoubtedly meant don’t say anything to their mother, to Andrew, to their family or her friends. Not to the others from the island.
When he approached the gas station, Red was lighting a cigarette. The nicotine spoiled the salt breeze of the ocean. The day was warm but windy.
“Don’t they feed you at the hotel?” he asked, exhaling a funnel of smoke. William paused, worried that Red was trying to tell him he wasn’t welcome, but then he stubbed out the newly lit cigarette and waved William inside. “You get the first cup of the day.”
He gave William a different mug this morning: God Bless This Mess stamped on its side, a sun rising above the letters in the same shade of buttercup yellow. Without William asking, he put two biscuits on a paper plate. It made William feel safe and cared for, even if he was paying.
“Do you bake these?” William asked, pulling out his wallet.
Red laughed. “No, my personal chef does.”
“I thought maybe your wife—”
“Wife’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why, did you know her?”
“No, but—” William fumbled, and Red shook his head.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m messing with you so much this morning. You’re an easy target.”
“Thanks.” William touched the mug on the counter. It was too hot to pick up.
“That’s a good thing. Easy targets are sincere, open. Liars are the ones that are hard to hit.”
William let out an exhausted laugh. Lying felt like all he had done this weekend—all anyone had seemed to do—and it had made him feel both heavy and empty, like an old Buick running on fumes. Red slid his change across the counter, and William reminded himself why he’d come.
“Have you heard anything about a woman on the island? A woman with a shaved head?”
Red took a seat on the chair behind him, scratching at the salt-and-pepper stubble at his neck. “Gene said something about her. Some of the fishermen thought she was a boy at first, but they heard her voice when she was talking with some man by the docks. She a friend of yours?”
“No. I think she might be . . . a bit dangerous?”
Red nodded slowly. “I see. And why would you think that?”
“She might want something from my sister. Maybe she expects her to leave with her before the wedding, go back to New York. I just know she’s not here for a good reason.” William waited for Red to protest, to say that he was being dramatic. He rotated the mug, and steam rose from its mouth.
“Pruitts know?”
“I don’t think so. Unless anyone on the island has told them?”
Red laughed. “No one talks to them unless they’re taking orders.”
“Is there a sheriff on the island?”
“No, not anymore. We handle everything ourselves, though it’s mostly quiet. Every once in a while, we come together if someone’s wife shows up to church with a black eye, or if a girl says some boy took advantage of her—you don’t need anyone from the mainland for things like that.”
“So, if you think someone’s in danger—”
“You really think Shay’s in danger?”
William was surprised at the familiarity with which Red said her name, but then he remembered that Red knew Shay, perhaps cared for her in his own way. “I know she is.”
“Then you come prepared.”
It took William a moment to realize what he was proposing, and he thought of the news the other week, the story of the man who had opened fire from the roof of a Holiday Inn in Wichita and killed three innocent strangers.
William had fired a gun once—a .22 rifle at his uncle Stephen’s house in Irving Park, which had a long, narrow lawn that ended in a ravine.
When his aunt Janice wasn’t paying attention, his uncle would let William, Oscar, and Scott have sips of his beer.
They lined up the empty cans on the wrought iron side table they’d dragged onto the grass.
William was too little. That’s what everyone kept saying afterward—Come on, how could you, he’s too little—but when they handed him the rifle, he swelled to manhood.
He grew bigger than his eight years, towering over the lawn as Stephen showed him how to hold the rifle, how to aim.
But when he pulled the trigger, he burst into tears.
“I don’t know,” he said to Red now.
In the distance, there was the rumble of men talking. Out the front window, he could see two older fishermen, baseball caps pulled over their heads, ambling down the road. Next to the door, there was a metal rack of lures, fishing line, and folding knives.
“It’s just about ending a conversation,” Red said. “When I see rabbits in my garden, all I have to do is open the door and they know to run.”