“Antilles kids?” Huck says. Antilles is the private school over on St. Thomas. “Not those rascals.”
One of the boys guffaws and Huck can practically hear Maia rolling her eyes. Waiting for the Antilles kids is fine, Huck supposes. Powell Park attracts a colorful cast of characters but it’s perfectly safe to hang out there in the midafternoon. So why does Huck feel uneasy? He knew these days were coming; Maia wasn’t going to stay a child forever. But he’s not ready. He should probably acknowledge that he’ll never be ready. He needs Rosie back from the dead; he needs LeeAnn. Ayers has offered to serve as a surrogate mother but she has her own life, two jobs and a boyfriend, so how much can he really ask of her?
Huck has gotten used to the solo life, but right now he could really use a partner.
Irene? He immediately chastises himself for the thought. He must be out of his mind.
That night, after Maia shows Huck her completed homework and then goes into her room to FaceTime Joanie and giggle about God knows what—probably Colton and Bright or possibly a boy who goes to Antilles—Huck climbs into bed with his Michael Connelly novel. He’s been reading this book since before Rosie died, which is an addling thought. When he first cracked open The Late Show a couple weeks ago, his life was one way, and now that he’s on page 223, it’s completely another. Now Rosie is dead—dead!—and he’s hiding a hundred and twenty-five grand under his bed. The book does the trick, though—keeps him engrossed for a few chapters until his eyelids start to feel heavy. He closes the book and turns off the light.
Sleep, he thinks.
But he can’t sleep. He might as well have a pile of uranium under the bed; the money feels radioactive.
A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. In cash.
Why?
Eventually, he drifts off; when he’s awakened by his alarm, his head aches and he’s in a foul mood. In his day, this was known as getting up on the wrong side of the bed.
“Let’s go!” he calls out to Maia. “I have a charter at nine. A bachelor party.”
Maia emerges from her room wearing a pink jean skirt, a black tank top, and black Chuck Taylors. She looks older, as though she aged three years overnight.
“I thought you hated bachelor parties,” she says.
“Put on something else,” Huck says. “That top is too revealing and that skirt is too short.”
“What are you talking about?” Maia says. “I wear this outfit all the time.”
“You do?” Huck says. He has to admit, he doesn’t usually notice what Maia is wearing and he has never commented on it before. “I guess maybe you’re growing, because it looks too small.”
“Maybe you need new glasses,” Maia says with a grin. She peers into the frying pan, where he’s scrambling eggs. “Cut the heat. They’re perfect now.”
Huck snaps the burner off. It’s an ongoing joke that Huck tends to overcook the eggs, and Maia feels about dry eggs the way that Huck feels about dry fish. No bueno.
“Serve them up yourself,” Huck says. “And make your own toast. I have to get ready.”
Maia stares at him. “Is this about yesterday?”
Huck stops in his tracks. He’s facing the refrigerator, where he’s about to grab Maia’s lunch box—packed with a peanut butter and jelly as per her request because all of a sudden sandwiches made from freshly caught fish aren’t good enough. “Yesterday?”
“Taking my friends to town,” Maia says. “You’ve been in a weird mood since then.”
She’s intuitive, he’ll give her that. He can’t very well tell her the truth—that what has put him in a “weird mood” is the hundred and twenty-five grand he found in her mother’s room—but neither does he want her to think that he minds driving her and her friends around. If she believes that, she’ll start asking someone else for rides, and he’ll lose his window into her world.
“That’s not it,” Huck says. “I enjoyed taking you to town.”
“Oh,” Maia says. “What is it, then? Is it Irene?”
At this, Huck does turn around. “Irene?”
“You miss her, right? That’s why you’re grumpy?”
Huck opens his mouth but for the life of him, he can’t think of how to respond. The night following Irene’s departure, he made the mistake of drinking a couple of shots of Flor de Caña and saying some things to Maia that he should have kept private. What exactly did he say? Maybe something as innocuous as I’ve never seen a woman fish like that before. Maybe something more revealing. But did he say he had feelings for Irene? No. Did he ever say he’d miss her? No.
Huck nearly snaps, I’m not grumpy! But he is, and it’s not Maia’s fault.
“Sorry, Nut,” he says. “I’m just tired, I’m missing your mom—and your grandma too, for good measure—and I’m dreading this bachelor party.”
Maia opens her arms to give Huck a hug, which he gratefully accepts. He loves this child to distraction, she’s all he has left, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let whatever mess Rosie was involved in affect her.
“Eat your breakfast,” he says.
Adam is late getting to the boat, which normally ticks Huck off, but today, he’s grateful. He has to think. What does he do about the money? He’s a human being, so part of him fantasizes about keeping it and slipping five hundred here and three hundred there into Maia’s college fund. He’s not rich, he might not even qualify as “comfortable,” but his house is paid off and so is the boat. He has money saved for a new truck once his old one finally dies and he has a fund for boat repairs. The money, if he kept it, would be a cushion. A really soft cushion.
He can’t keep it. He has to report it. But to whom? He’ll call Agent Vasco, he decides. He’ll call her today, after the charter.
But maybe he’ll call Irene first.
A dinghy putters up to the Mississippi. It’s Keegan, the first mate from What a Catch!, a friendly-rival fishing boat, dropping off Adam.
“Sorry, Cap,” Adam says, climbing aboard.
“He was up late talking to Marissa,” Keegan says.
Huck pretends not to hear this last comment, as though ignoring it might make the situation go away. Marissa is the daughter of Dan and Mrs. Dan, the Albany couple from Huck’s charter on New Year’s Eve. Marissa is the girl who did not cast a line, the one who barely took her eyes off her phone’s screen the entire time they were out on the water. Adam asked the girl out for New Year’s Eve, an act of desperation if Huck had ever seen one. But the date must have been a humdinger because after that, they’d been inseparable until Marissa left a few days ago.
The day before yesterday, Huck said to Adam, “Why pick a girl who doesn’t like to fish?”
Adam scoffed. “You know how hard it is to meet a chick who actually enjoys fishing?”
Huck nearly spoke up about Irene—the woman seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the front of his mind and on the tip of his tongue—but instead he said, “Maia likes to fish.”
Adam said, “Maia is twelve. She’ll grow out of it.”
Keegan putters away in the dinghy. Adam removes his visor, runs a hand through his hair, and gazes in the direction of St. Thomas, where they both see an airplane taking off, probably going back to the States.
“Head in the game,” Huck says. “Check the lines.”
“I have to talk to you, Cap,” Adam says.
Huck shakes his head. “Afterward, please. We have a bachelor party today, and you know how I feel about bachelor parties.”
Huck hates bachelor parties. Nine times out of ten, if someone calls looking to book the Mississippi for one, Huck will tell the person his boat is unavailable for the foreseeable future. With bachelor parties, something bad always happens. Huck keeps one case of Red Stripe on ice at all times—and one case only. Bachelor parties often bring an additional thirty-pack of Bud Light (undrinkable, in Huck’s opinion) as well as rum or tequila or sometimes punch in a plastic gallon jug. Huck gives extra alcohol the side-eye, but he has never flat
-out forbidden it—that would be a fatal move for his TripAdvisor ratings—although he thinks to himself that what these kids really want is a booze cruise, not a fishing trip. He nearly always ends up with one participant completely jack-wagon drunk, puking off the back. He’s had guys fall off the boat, and he’s had fistfights. Huck never gets involved in the fistfights; he just turns the boat around and drops the group at the National Park Service dock without a word, regardless of whether they’ve caught any fish.
Huck agreed to book this bachelor party because he has been all but ignoring his business since Rosie died and he needs to get back into some kind of groove.
He pulls up to the National Park Service dock at ten minutes to nine but the only people waiting are four gentlemen, Huck’s age or maybe older. They’re in proper fishing shirts and visors and they have bags from the North Shore Deli, home of a roasted pork and broccoli rabe sandwich that Huck dreams about. He wonders if these guys are waiting for What a Catch! and feels a stab of envy.
Huck gives them a wave as he ties up and considers just poaching this foursome and letting Keegan and Captain Chris from What a Catch! handle the bachelor-party guys—who, Huck guesses, will show up late and hung over after a raucous night at the Dog House Pub.
One of the gentlemen, full head of snowy white hair, steps forward. “Captain Huck?” he says. “I’m Kyle Maguire.”
Kyle Maguire? That’s the name of Huck’s guy. These four geezers are the bachelor party! Huck laughs with relief. He’d been expecting Millennials with their hashtags and their GoPros and their swim trunks printed with watermelon margaritas.
“Welcome aboard!” Huck says.
It’s the charter of Huck’s dreams. The four geezers—Kyle Maguire, his brother Harry, and Grover and Ahmed, childhood friends from Worcester, Massachusetts—are in their sixties, like Huck, and Huck can tell right away that they are good guys. They grin with just the right amount of eager enthusiasm as they kick off their shoes without being asked, shake Huck’s hand, and climb aboard the boat.
Kyle, the groom-to-be, tells Huck he’s a hospital administrator at Mass General and that he has a home on Nantucket, where he goes fishing two or three times a summer. “Up there, it’s striped bass, bluefish, maybe bonito and false albacore if you’re lucky.”
Harry is a lawyer, Ahmed a retired ophthalmologist, and Grover a professor of business at the Kellogg School at Northwestern. Grover asks Huck about his USMC hat and Huck talks about his tour in Vietnam. Turns out, Grover was over there around the same time.
“Are you gentlemen okay with going offshore?” Huck asks.
“Let’s do it!” Kyle says.
Huck decides to take the boat out to the spot that he and Irene fished, what the hell, why not give it a try. The day is sunny and the water is flat; the men relax with beers, Ahmed chats with Adam, and Huck plays music—the Doors, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones. They reach the coordinates where they found the school of mahi before and start trolling.
C’mon, fish! Huck thinks. Maybe the luck he had with Irene will repeat itself.
Kyle gets a bite first. He reels it in as Huck stands alongside in case he needs any help. It’s a barracuda; they all gather around to admire it, then Huck throws it back. After that, it’s quiet for a while, which is when some people on these trips grow antsy. Often, that’s when Huck has to tell them, “That’s why it’s called fishing, not catching.” Huck nearly describes to these four men the day that he and Irene had out here—seventeen mahi!—but he holds his tongue because it doesn’t seem like history will repeat itself.
“So you’re getting married,” Huck says. “Is this your first time?”
“No,” Kyle says. “Been married twice before. First time to my college sweetheart. I have two boys from that marriage, but we split after five years. Then I met Jennifer and we were married for twenty-two years. She died in 2014.”
This story eerily parallels Huck’s own. He’d married his first wife, Kimberly, when he got home from Vietnam, and they divorced six years later, after her second unsuccessful stint in rehab. Then he met LeeAnn and they’d spent twenty blissful years together before she died in 2014.
“So who’s the new gal?” Huck asks. He knows that Maia would likely object to his use of the word gal, finding it old-fashioned or, possibly, offensive.
“Her name is Sheila,” Kyle says. He gives Huck a sheepish grin. “We met on the internet. Match dot com.”
“Really?” Huck says. Rosie used to encourage Huck to try one of those dating services, but to him it was utterly pointless. Who was going to want to move to St. John? A week’s visit, sure, two weeks maybe, but that didn’t make a life together. And no way was Huck moving back to the States. He didn’t care if Christie Brinkley came calling.
“Yep,” Kyle says. “She’s a civil engineer. She builds bridges in the Bay Area, the kind of bridges that can withstand earthquakes. Her husband died of Lou Gehrig’s disease two years ago. She has one son, grown up, who lives near me outside of Boston, so Sheila is moving east from Oakland and we’re tying the knot.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, how long have you been dating?”
“Nine months,” Kyle says. He waves his beer can in the direction of his friends. “They all thought I was rushing into things when I bought the ring after only six months. I can’t describe it. We just clicked. I flew out there one weekend, she came to see me on Nantucket a couple weeks later, then we went to Chicago, where she met Grover and he approved, then we did a week in Napa. At Thanksgiving she came to Boston and I introduced her to my kids. They loved her right away. I proposed when I dropped her off at the airport.”
“Are you worried about her moving in with you?” Huck asks. A week in Napa is one thing, he thinks; sharing closet space is another.
“I know it’s a gamble,” Kyle says. “But I’m sixty-four years old and life gave me another chance to be happy. Only an idiot would say no to that out of fear.”
Huck stares over the turquoise sheet of the water toward the verdant hills of St. John. Kyle must sense that his words have stirred something up in Huck because he claps Huck on the shoulder and says, “You hungry? We got enough sandwiches for everyone.”
They catch another barracuda, then Adam suggests heading over toward Little St. James and Huck agrees; the spot he picked has lost its magic, apparently. In the next place they troll, Ahmed catches a decent-size tuna, then Harry brings in a wahoo big enough to serve as dinner and Huck relaxes. He cracks open a Coke and turns up the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” and casts a line himself. He gets a fish on almost instantly and hands the line over to Grover, who reels in a second wahoo, bigger than the first. Then Kyle catches a tuna. Ahmed takes a nap in the shade. Huck overhears Adam talking to Grover about business school, and suddenly Huck knows what Adam wants to tell him—but he won’t let it ruin the afternoon.
At quarter past two, it’s time to turn the boat back. Kyle passes out Romeo y Julietas and Huck gratefully accepts one. He loves Cuban cigars. LeeAnn absolutely forbade them, so Huck can’t light up without feeling like he’s indulging in a guilty pleasure.
How does Irene feel about them? he wonders.
Life gave me another chance to be happy. Only an idiot would say no to that out of fear.
Huck thinks of the first time he saw Irene, her chestnut braid draped over one shoulder as she marched down the dock calling him “Mr. Powers.” Now that he knows her a little better, he realizes she doesn’t mess around nor suffer fools—but still, it was impressive, the way she talked herself onto his boat.
We just clicked.
Had Huck and Irene clicked? He would have a hard time saying they hadn’t.
Angler Cupcake.
There’s nothing like the wisdom of a twelve-year-old, Huck thinks. Maia was right. Huck misses Irene and that’s why he’s grumpy.
When they tie up back at the dock, Adam fillets the fish for the gentlemen and Kyle pours a shot of tequila for everyone. They clink glasses and throw
back the shots. Kyle thanks Huck profusely and slips him a generous tip, which Huck nearly refuses because the guy has given Huck so much already. If nothing else, he has changed Huck’s mind about bachelor parties.
Temporarily, anyway.
They shake hands and say their goodbyes and Huck says maybe he’ll see them in town over the next few days, it’s not impossible, although Huck hasn’t been out since Rosie died.
“They were terrific!” Huck says to Adam once they’re gone. He slips Adam one of the hundreds that Kyle gave him. Those are the kind of men Huck would have as friends, if he had time for friends.
Adam stuffs the hundred in his pocket. “Cap,” he says. The boy looks green around the gills, downright seasick, as though he will be the one to upchuck off the back of the boat. And just like that, Huck is snapped out of the golden reverie that a good day out on the water provides. He’s back to real life: the money under his bed, the FBI, and whatever Adam has to tell him.
Huck decides to cut the kid a break and do the hard part for him. “You’re leaving me?” he says.
Adam nods morosely. “I’m moving to upstate New York to be with Marissa.”
Upstate New York? Huck thinks. What did this girl Marissa do to him?
“It’s cold in upstate New York,” Huck says. “It snows. A lot. And there’s no ocean.”
“I love her,” Adam says, and he swallows. “I’m in love with her.”
Huck nods. He yearns to tell Adam that, more than half the time, love dies, and it probably dies quicker in places like Oneida and Oneonta. But Huck won’t be that curmudgeonly skeptic today.
“They have lakes,” Huck says. “Great lakes. You can fly-fish.”
Adam looks so relieved that Huck’s afraid the boy might try to kiss him. “Yeah, that’s what I thought I’d do,” he says. “In the summer.”
What Happens in Paradise Page 5
