Island Girl

by Lynda Simmons

  My stomach tightened as I squeezed the ball. “He’s there already?”

  “Arrived this morning early. He is not threatening, just waiting. Gary is with Mitch in case call does not come.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I found out when we got here.” She flicked a hand at the golf course. “Boys were too quiet, I knew something was wrong. She finally told me when we were buying tickets.”

  I glanced back at the turnstile. “I had no idea.”

  She snatched the ball away, dropped it into her bag. “Of course not. Everything is always about you, so you do not see that Brenda is on verge of tears and children are frightened. You think they want to spend time with grumpy lawyer always checking phone and frowning?”

  “I’m not always frowning.”

  She held up three fingers. “Three days, no smiles.”

  “What do you want from me? This is serious shit, okay? Jim Hodgeson is playing with me. Trying to wear me down and it’s working. I can’t sleep, I can’t think—”

  “And you cannot drink. My heart breaks for you.” She turned me around and shoved me toward the golf course. “No more selfishness. You will play, and you will let little boys win.”

  Brenda spotted us coming back and waved us over.

  More thunder rumbled.

  “Pretty ladies in the house,” the parrot squawked. “Walk the plank.”

  “Remember to smile,” Nadia said and handed me back my blue ball. “Who knows? Might even be fun.”

  “Might be,” I said, putting on a bright smile when we reached the first hole, and picturing Jim Hodgeson on that bloody plank.

  “You’re just in time,” Brenda said, edging us into line ahead of her and ignoring the muttered disapproval of the group behind. “Boys, you go first.”

  Nadia was right. There was no excitement in Aaron’s step, no anticipation on Ethan’s face. Now that I took the time to notice, I saw the tension around Brenda’s smile, the quick, nervous movements of her hands. It was time the Bradleys had their own cheering squad.

  I slipped the ball back into Nadia’s bag and started clapping, whistling. “Come on, Ethan. Give us a hole in one. A hole in one.”

  Brenda raised a brow and Ethan looked over, clearly shocked to see me grinning and doing the whoop-whoop circle in the air with my fist. He gave me a small, uncertain smile, then looked down at his ball. Repositioned his feet. Checked the shot one more time—a straightforward putt up a slight incline with the cup on the curve to the right.

  “Whoo-hoo,” I called, circling my fist in the air again.

  Aaron joined in this time, chanting, “Hole in one, hole in one.”

  Ethan grinned, flexed his fingers on the club, and took the shot. The ball rolled up the incline, curved right, and came to rest a few inches back from the cup.

  “Hole in two,” I called, and Aaron picked up right away. “Hole in two.”

  Nadia joined in, Brenda’s smile relaxed, and Ethan completed his play, shooting the coveted hole in two. Since three was par for the first hole, we gave him a well-deserved round of applause and did the same for Aaron when he also took no more than two shots.

  The boys hooted when Nadia also managed it in two, booed loudly when Brenda took three, and were clapping and calling, “Liz sucks,” when it was my turn.

  I inclined my head graciously, knowing I’d earned that. “Maximum of five,” the attendant reminded me while I lined up my feet with the ball, and the ball with the hole. I drew the club back and swung, whacking that ball right out of bounds and into one of those questionable ponds.

  “Ball in the water,” the parrot squawked. “Walk the plank.”

  Nadia laughed. The kids behind us started to titter and the attendant handed me another ball. “Try again, matie.”

  Thunder rolled, coming closer. I lined up that ball again. Tapped it, and muttered, “Come on, come on,” as it rolled up to the cup, circled, and slowly rolled all the way back down. Honestly, who puts a hole at the top of a mountain anyway?

  “Clap her in irons,” the parrot hollered.

  I tried twice more and could have wept with gratitude when my phone finally rang.

  “Play through,” I said to the kids waiting behind us. “Play through.”

  Nadia put her hands together prayer style and followed me off the course.

  I flipped the phone open on the third ring. “Liz Donaldson,” I said, and held my breath.

  “Liz? This is Jocelyn.”

  I gave Nadia a thumbs-down. Said, “Jocelyn, I can’t really talk now.”

  “It’s about Grace. She doesn’t know I’m talking to you.”

  I stopped at the end of a rope bridge. “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s just—”

  The beep went off in my ear. I had another call! I had another fucking call!

  “Jocelyn, I have to go. I’ll get back to you.” I pressed Flash, said, “Liz Donaldson,” and my heart all but stopped when the voice on the other end said, “This is Jim Hodgeson. We need to talk.”

  I flapped my hand at Nadia. Nodded yes, yes, yes when she put her thumb in the air and watched her take off to get Brenda. Children leapt out of her way, adults scattered, and even the pirates gave her plenty of room—there was nothing as daunting as Nadia in full flight.

  “Walk the plank,” the parrot hollered.

  “Where are you?” Jim asked.

  “With clients.”

  Nadia appeared with Brenda and the boys. I motioned for them to follow as I marched away from the parrot toward the shade and relative calm outside the men’s rooms.

  “So, Jim,” I said. “When can I pick up a check?”

  Brenda had her own phone to her ear, talking to Mitch. “She’s asking about the check,” she was saying. “I don’t know. We’re waiting.”

  All eyes were on me when I said, “What are you talking about? What kind of deal?”

  Nadia shook her head slowly, heavily. Brenda looked worried and Ethan asked, “Is she screwing it up royally, Mommy?”

  Could be, I thought. But to Jim I said, “They want to pay seventy-five percent? If this is your idea, Jim, you’re not doing your clients any favors.”

  Brenda bounced up and down. “Take it, take it, take it.”

  I made slashing motions across my neck, then turned my back. “Forget it, Jim. We’re not negotiating. My client delivered one hundred percent of that equipment and he expects to be paid according to the contract. Call me when you have a check for the full amount. Certified.”

  I hung up. Silence hovered around me, heavy and accusing, broken only by the rumble of thunder, closer still. “He’ll call back,” I said, for my own sake as much as theirs.

  “She hung up on him,” Brenda said to Mitch, and held the phone away from her ear while he hollered, “What the fuck? What the fuck?”

  “Daddy swore,” Aaron whispered.

  “Today it’s allowed,” Ethan whispered back, both he and his brother standing close to their mother, eyeing the woman who was screwing up royally.

  Lightning flashed. More thunder.

  “I’ll call you back,” Brenda said to Mitch, and we started running, making it across the parking lot to the clown car just as big fat drops of rain started to fall.

  “Get in, get in!” Brenda yelled, and the thunder pressed down all around us.

  We made it into the car and closed the doors as the sky let loose, dumping rain so hard and fast it was impossible to see the car in the next spot. The windows steamed over, the sky lit up like a giant camera flash, and my phone rang again just as the thunder started to roll.

  Every head in that car turned to look.

  “Liz Donaldson,” I said, my heart still beating fast, making my voice breathless, ineffective.

  “Liz, it’s Jocelyn.”

  “Jocelyn, I can’t talk now,” I muttered, and the heads groaned and turned away. “I’ll call you back.” I closed the phone. Jumped when it rang again right away. If it was Joce
lyn again, I swear the kid’s life was over. “Liz Donaldson,” I said.

  “Jim Hodgeson here.”

  I gave a giant thumbs-up to the faces around me. No one reacted. Just kept staring at me while Brenda pressed a button on her phone and put it to her ear. “He’s calling again,” she said, still no expression on her face.

  “Do you have a check for us, Jim?” I asked, and prayed for the right answer.

  “No, I have a bank draft.”

  My breath came out in a rush. “A bank draft, you say.”

  Four pairs of eyes widened. Four mouths dropped open.

  “For the full amount,” I repeated, and would have gotten out of the car so I could hear the rest of what Jim was saying if the rain hadn’t still been coming down hard.

  I checked the clock on the dash. Two ten. By the time I got home, changed, got back in the car … “I’ll be there at four to pick it up.”

  “No good. Champlain is on summer hours. They close at three.”

  “Then I’ll pick it up at your office.”

  “Nope, I’ll be on my way up north at the same time.” I could hear the bastard smiling when he said, “Since Vandergroot and I both take Mondays off, I guess we’ll see you Tuesday.”

  The cheering in the car had stopped. Brenda said, “Hold on, Mitch,” and all I could think was, Three more days of Hal.

  I glanced down at my shorts and tank top. What the hell. Jim had heard about the expensive suit. He didn’t need to see it. “I’m leaving now, Jim. I’ll be in Oakville by three.”

  “I’ll wait for you at reception. You’re not to go past that desk. And if you’re later than three ten, you’ll have to wait until Tuesday.”

  “I’ll see you at three,” I said, and closed the phone.

  Brenda said, “Gotta go, Mitch. We have to be in Oakville in less than an hour.”

  The thunder and lightning stopped as we pulled onto the highway, but the drive was slow, with rain still falling and the water so deep at times we could see the tires making waves as we drove. We pulled into the lot at five past three. Brenda took me as close as she could to the front door, but it would still be a thirty-foot dash through stubborn rain and huge puddles in sandals. If I was lucky, I wouldn’t slip halfway there and end up on my butt in one of them.

  “Have we got a bag or something I can put the draft in?”

  Brenda had a zipper-lock bag with cookies for the kids in her purse. She handed three each to Nadia, Ethan, and Aaron, then sent the bag back to me. I zipped it up and pushed it into my back pocket. “Wish me luck.”

  Ethan leaned over and hugged me, pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Good luck.”

  I threw back the door to a chorus of voices calling, “Good luck.” “Don’t get too wet.” “We love you, Liz.”

  “Limitless joy,” Nadia hollered, as I ran full out for that front door.

  Fortunately, the rain was warm and I was grateful for shorts as I splashed through the puddles. Jeans would have been heavy and dragging by the time I reached that door, but the shorts were light and clinging nicely to my ass—the perfect complement to the wet T-shirt thing I had going on when I walked into the reception area.

  The icy cold blast of the air-conditioning made for an even more interesting visual and I was pleased to see Jim’s mouth drop open and the police officer with him swallow hard. Silver linings, as Great-Grandma Lucy used to say. Silver linings.

  I smiled sweetly. “Nice to see you again, Jim.”

  I walked toward them, dripping all over the expensive marble and sliding a little in my sandals—prompting a helping hand from the nice police officer who was there, I supposed, to make sure I didn’t violate the inner sanctum again. If nothing else, we had shaken things up at Champlain Aerospace.

  A crowd hovered at the doorway to the offices and I flashed them a smile, twiddled my fingers, then turned my full attention to Jim, who had finally composed himself enough to say, “Nice to see you too, Liz. I only wish it could have been under different circumstances.”

  As I watched him pull an envelope from his jacket, I took the zipper-lock bag from my back pocket nice and slow. “As you can see, I’m a little wet. Can you open the envelope and show me the draft? I wouldn’t want to ruin it and have to get you to issue another one.”

  He opened the envelope and I sidled up beside him, not close enough to get him wet but close enough to feel the heat coming off him. Everything looked to be in order, so I stepped back and held open the bag. “Just drop that puppy in here and I’ll be on my way.”

  With the draft safely tucked inside the bag, I zipped up the top and held out a reasonably dry hand to Jim. “It’s been a pleasure.”

  He shook my hand and walked with me to the door. “It took moxie to pull this off, Liz.”

  I smiled up at him. “I think the word you’re looking for is balls.”

  He laughed and opened the door. “What would you say to a drink some night?”

  “I’d have to say no.” I smiled as I stepped outside. “You see, I don’t drink anymore.”

  The door closed between us. I turned around to see that the rain had finally stopped and Mitch’s black pickup was parked beside the clown car. He and the kids, along with the staff of Sideshow Legal, were all standing outside, giving me a standing ovation as I came back through the puddles.

  Nadia put her fingers in her mouth and whistled, the boys jumped up and down, and Brenda started to cry when Mitch took the zipper-lock bag and started pumping my hand.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t hug you,” he said. “But you’re a little wet and I have to get to the bank.”

  “I am, and you do,” I said, laughing and bending over at the waist to give Brenda and the boys a safe, long-distance hug.

  “We’re taking you and Nadia for dinner tonight,” Mitch said.

  “Decide where you’d like to go,” Brenda said, walking with him to the truck. “And make sure it’s expensive!”

  The boys splashed along beside them and Nadia stepped forward at last, wrapping her arms around me and lifting me up off the ground.

  “Limitless joy,” I grunted, which was a mistake because I thought she might crack a rib when she hugged me harder.

  GRACE

  “Grace.”

  The voice was familiar. Calling softly. Bringing me up from a sound sleep.

  “Grace, wake up.”

  I opened my eyes. Blinked at the dark. “Liz?”

  Warm breath on my forehead. “No, idiot. It’s Jocelyn.”

  I smiled at the shadow above me. “Hi, Jocelyn.”

  “Hi, Grace.” I could hear her smiling back. “It’s time to get up.”

  Get up? I turned my head to the window. Saw moonlight on the black trees outside. “It’s still dark. We can’t go biking in the dark.” I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes again. “I don’t want to go today anyway. Maybe tomorrow.”

  She climbed on the bed and bounced up and down by my feet. “This is the fourth morning in a row you’ve said that.”

  “It is not.”

  She bounced harder. “Doesn’t matter because we’re not going biking. Now get up.”

  “No.”

  “You are such a pain.” She climbed off the bed, grabbed my arm, and tried to drag me over the side. But even if I wasn’t completely awake, she was still smaller than me and I did not want to end up on the floor. So she did instead, plop, right on her butt.

  “Asshole,” she muttered, and scrambled to her feet. “If that woke your mom up, then we are totally screwed.”

  “My mom takes sleeping pills, so I don’t think that would be enough. And why would we be screwed?” I propped the pillow under my head and opened my eyes really wide as though that would help me see in the dark. All I could make out were the shapes of my furniture against the walls, black holes where I knew there were posters, and Jocelyn’s shadow crossing the room, opening the door and checking the kitchen anyway. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s a surprise.”


  “I’ve had enough surprises.” I turned my head. Stared at the grey square that was my window. “I don’t think I can take any more.”

  “You’ll like this one, I promise.” She plunked a canvas bag beside me. Started digging around inside. “But it’s not going to be dark for long, which means you’ll miss it if you don’t come with me this minute.”

  “Are you planning ghost stories at the lighthouse? Because if you are—”

  “It’s better than ghost stories. So stop arguing.”

  “Why won’t you tell me what it is?”

  “Because that would ruin everything.” She pulled a flashlight out of the bag and clicked it on. “I brought this so you can see to get dressed.”

  She stuck it under her chin and made scary noises the way Liz used to do.

  I smiled, but I guess she couldn’t see me because she said, “Well, I thought it was funny,” and put the flashlight in my hand instead. “You need to find some shorts, fast.”

  I didn’t use the light to look for shorts. I used it to check the clock instead. “It’s four A.M.” I turned off the light and laid it down beside my head. “I’m going back to sleep.”

  “I don’t think so.” She shone the light in my face.

  I put a hand in front of my eyes. “Why are you being so awful?”

  “If I’m being awful, then I learned it from you.” She knocked my hand away. “Get up, get up, get up, get up—”

  “Okay, okay, you win!” I threw my feet over the side and sat on the edge of the bed.

  You’re up before the birds, Grace, my mom used to whisper when I was little and standing beside her bed in the dark. She never minded me being there, and she never took me back to my own bed either. She just lifted the covers and said, Hop in, and she and Mark would make room for me in the middle.

  I guess that’s why I didn’t mind when William used to get up early too. Everything was so quiet and dark, it felt like we were the only ones awake in the whole world. Just me and William and a little night-light shaped like a swan. Liz gave it to me when I brought him home from the hospital. She said it would give me enough light to see what I needed to see in order to take care of the baby but not so much that he’d wake up completely and not go back to sleep.