Chapter 58
JOEL
Ken had said there would be a right moment.
He said this as he handed Joel a whiskey soda from the bar, and he said it again as the band began a horrible jazz rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon.” The reception was one Joel’s mother would have approved of, lavish but elegant, silver vases of roses and sprigs of green perfectly poised on each table.
By the time everyone was told to take their seats, he was finishing his third drink on an empty stomach, and he had decided that he would tell Andrew everything.
He would tell him about the man, but also about how Joel had slept in Shay’s bed and all the hours before: the readings, the coffees and beers, the long walks.
He would take their world for the fragile thing it was and crack it open onto the parquet dance floor.
“Where’s our Spanish dancer?” Betty whispered into his ear.
The table’s silverware was so polished it looked liquid, like mercury.
Joel had tried to make himself somewhat presentable as Ken drove them toward Haven House, but sitting down, he realized he’d missed a scrape of dirt near his pocket.
He and Carmen—how startling it had been to see her name next to his in perfect calligraphy, though of course no one knew anything but Shay—had been seated next to other college classmates. They did not know what to make of him.
“She broke up with me,” he said.
“No.” A look of disbelief and delight. Betty’s eyes flitted to their tablemates, like she was already deciding who she would tell first.
“Yes.”
“At a wedding? What a monster.”
He bristled. “She wasn’t a monster. You don’t know anything about her.”
“I mean, we all went to school together, but okay.” Betty drew out this last word, and he wondered when they would all stop being like this.
When he was younger, he always thought that adults held a different weight, and that at a certain age you’d shed your thin skin, your uncertainties and insecurities, but he was starting to think that none of this was true.
At their tenth reunion, their twentieth, their fiftieth, they would all be the same people.
Different plates were set in front of him, the Pruitts’ wealth revealed in the delicate cuts of fish, in the sheer number of dishes.
He knew he should eat, but the idea of consuming their food made him ill.
A waiter took his final, untouched plate, no longer asking if everything was all right.
He took a sip of watered-down whiskey. The heat made ice a mere suggestion.
Betty was talking to one of their classmates whose name he couldn’t recall, and he was surprised to find himself wishing Ken were at his table, but he was with the other bridesmaids and groomsmen.
Andrew and Shay were at a sweetheart table.
When he’d first seen her, soothing a flower girl who’d taken off her headband and shoes, it felt like another punch.
After they spoke, Andrew would likely want to fight, and Joel felt that same desire flare in him again.
He’d known who he wanted to harm when he’d hit Ken: Andrew and his bland, handsome face.
Believing that this would allow him to leave, to pack his belongings and run back to New York.
To return to his cramped office with its drawer of red pencils and a mattress that smelled nothing like her.
“Do you have a minute to talk?”
He turned in his seat, finding Shay’s brother—William—chewing his lip.
It was odd, for someone to have such a presence in Joel’s life when they’d actually only spoken once.
In that church basement that smelled like tomato soup, talking about the darkness of the new Bowie album and how the cover made no sense—a garish cartoon cowboy, a speech bubble with no words.
“Of course.”
Though it was not yet sunset, the sky’s hard blue was softening.
Gray clouds gathered in the distance over the water.
There was a steady stream of waiters, like a trail of carpenter ants, filing to and from the house, so Joel and William walked toward the cliff.
The roar of conversation was replaced by the roar of the ocean.
“Are you all right?” William asked.
It was clearly not why he had brought Joel away from the tent, but there was such a gentle look of concern on his face.
William was older now, but he was still the same sensitive boy from the funeral.
This morning, mere hours ago, Joel had imagined they’d be brothers.
He fisted his hands in his pockets. “I’m fine.
I just—didn’t sleep much. Forgot my suit jacket. ”
“I’ve had my own issues with suits this week.” William gave him a small smile.
From this distance, the tent was slight enough to hide behind Joel’s palm.
He remembered being delighted by this as a boy, sitting on the roof of their shed and finding that his thumbnail was the same size as his neighbors’ Plymouth, his pointer finger the height of a maple.
How much your world could change when you saw it from a different angle.
When he turned his attention back, William’s expression had become serious.
“My cousins said they saw you with a woman with a shaved head?” William was worrying something in his pocket. “That you were with her before she left on a boat.”
“Yes,” Joel said. “It was—she was from Synanon. I saw her and Shay talking, but Shay had already convinced her to leave, so I found her a way off the island.”
A small voice at the back of his head questioned whether he should be sharing this, but he could not be bothered to really listen.
He was exhausted, and he did not want to carry what he had been carrying any longer.
It was not his responsibility—Shay had made that clear—and this was William, the person she trusted most in the world.
“So she’s gone, then? Everything’s all right?”
William had taken a step toward him. He looked hopeful, and Joel saw a flicker of Shay in his face: how she often appeared when she first caught sight of Joel, as if his presence promised something. The whiskey started to sour on his tongue. “No, it’s not.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“There’s someone else, a man. I met him once, when I visited Shay on Riverside. I’ve been waiting to tell Andrew, but—well, he’s been a little hard to catch alone.”
William wove his fingers together at the nape of his neck, his elbows thrust forward and his head shaking back and forth, as if refusing everything Joel had said.
He was obviously scared. Even from their brief meeting, it had been clear William was not one for a fight.
I don’t want to be the messenger, Ken had said, and Joel understood—there was guilt by association, a feeling that if you had said nothing, maybe it would all have disappeared.
“Do you think—” William paused to let out a deep breath. “Do you think he’d come to the reception?”
“I don’t know,” Joel said. “It seems unlikely, given the number of people. He’d probably wait until Shay might be alone.”
“And then do what?”
“I don’t know. But I know they’ve hurt people.”
“Do you think she could have—that Shay invited them here?”
Joel thought of how the women had seemed by the docks, but then Shay had been the one to send Cleo away. “No, I don’t.”
William closed his eyes. “I’ll—I’ll tell Andrew,” he said. “He can help make sure she’s never alone. I know there aren’t police on the island, but, well, half the population here seems to be working for the Pruitts, so maybe they can coordinate some sort of—watch or search, I don’t know.”
“Ken and I will speak to Andrew. I’m the one who talked to the woman.”
When William looked at him, Joel could tell he was weighing something, and in that moment, he wondered if Shay had told him everything, or if their closeness had attuned him to the way Joel talked about her, how he looked at her.
Or perhaps it was just painfully obvious to everyone, his heart so exposed.
“All right,” William said. “We’ll all go to talk to him together then.”
They began to walk toward the tent, which grew from a handprint to something he could no longer contain. In the distance, he saw the clouds churn and darken.