“We got the watch!” he said. “They just left it there on the sand, right where I threw it.”
“Well, congratulations,” Allie said in a tight voice, but her comment was almost lost in the guys’ exclamations of surprise upon spotting Gary.
“Hey!” Gio almost shouted, just as Ryan said, “You made it.”
Gary nodded. “That I did,” he said. “It only took two flights and a thousand bucks.”
“Can I give you a tip?” Tina said. “You probably shouldn’t complain about that to Savannah.”
Gary looked taken aback, and Tina felt a little thrill of victory. As angry as she’d been at Savannah earlier this week, their bond had only gotten stronger since then. Savannah had made her laugh, had gotten her to dance, and encouraged her to feel young again. It would have been a different trip without her—not as much fun.
“Is she coming?” Gary asked, looking at Gio.
“Are you asking me?” Gio replied, a furrow forming between his eyebrows.
“Wait, I’m confused . . . wasn’t she with you?”
“Nope.”
“But I thought you said . . .” Gary looked at Allie, who suddenly seemed very busy examining the contents of her wineglass.
“Gary, why don’t you pour the guys a drink?” Tina said. “Allie, can you come here for a second?”
She pulled Allie into the living room. “What the hell’s going on?” she hissed.
“Savannah’s having sex with that guy from the catamaran right now,” Allie whispered.
“What?” Tina stared at her, then burst into laughter. “When did she tell you she was going to do that?”
“Right before she left,” Allie said. “You were asleep.”
“So what should we do with Gary?” Tina asked.
“I guess just let him wait for her,” Allie said.
“Okay,” Tina said. “So . . . we’ll go finish making breakfast. Oh, and congrats on not bursting into laughter when Gary asked if Savannah was coming.”
“Tina!” Allie squealed and whacked her friend on the bottom.
“This is going to be good,” Tina said, heading back into the kitchen. She looked at Allie and smiled. “And to think the Weather Channel said we weren’t going to get a hurricane here.”
Chapter Fourteen
* * *
Good-byes
AFTER PAULINE’S TRIP TO Buy Buy Baby, she’d discovered the spot she’d vacated in the hospital’s parking lot was still open, so she’d reclaimed it. Her arms laden with bags, she’d retraced her route through the lobby.
Her worst fear—that Therese would have drawn her final breath while Pauline was gone—wasn’t realized. Nothing in the room had changed, except that Carlos had left.
“Pauline?” her mother said, getting to her feet as Pauline hurried into the room with the bags. “Where did you— What’s all this?”
“I wanted to do something for her,” Pauline whispered as she placed the bags on a table. She looked at her mother, willing her to understand. “I just . . . I wanted to make her happy . . .”
Her mother sat back down and watched as Pauline unloaded the CD player and CDs. She unwrapped the packaging on a CD, using her nails to tear apart the plastic, then inserted it into the disc holder and plugged in the machine. A sweet, acoustic version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” filled the room.
Pauline found the soft pink teddy bear at the bottom of one of the bags and approached the bed. Had she ever touched her sister before? she wondered. She must have, but she couldn’t recall a single instance. She’d always felt as if a glass wall was separating them. Now she lifted Therese’s arm, surprised at how warm her skin felt, and carefully tucked the teddy bear beneath it.
She reached for the pink bottle of Johnson’s baby lotion and squeezed some between her hands, then rubbed them together briskly to warm the lotion. She started with Therese’s left arm, the one she had already touched. She rubbed gently, holding her sister’s forearm with one hand and massaging in the lotion with the other. She hoped Therese could feel her touch and was comforted by it, but she wasn’t sure: Therese didn’t move or open her eyes.
Her skin was so perfect, Pauline thought. Of course, she had never burned it on a hot stove while cooking pasta or scratched it while falling off a bike. She’d never sunbathed on the beach with a group of girlfriends, giggling and confessing the names of their crushes.
Pauline heard a rustling noise behind her, and she looked back to see her mother moving aside a bag to get to the stack of blankets on the table. Her mother chose a pink, silky throw and untied the ribbon that made it look like a present.
“Here,” her mother said, coming over to stand next to Pauline. “Let’s cover her with this.”
Together they removed the awful hospital blanket, and Pauline’s mother tucked it in a corner of the room.
“Did you want to hang this up?” her mother said, walking back over to the table and holding up the mobile.
“If we can find a place,” Pauline said.
“There,” Pauline’s mother said, pointing to the open bathroom door. “We can use the hook for the robes.”
The little room felt so much nicer now, Pauline thought as she straightened the line holding one of the mobile’s dangling wooden animals. The colors, the music . . . It didn’t matter whether Therese opened her eyes; she still deserved this.
Pauline walked back to the bed and reached for Therese’s arm again. She looked up in surprise when her mother picked up the bottle of lotion Pauline had left at the foot of the bed and began working on Therese’s other arm.
“I didn’t know you went to see her last month,” Pauline said after a moment. “I would have come with you.”
Her mother smoothed the lotion up and down Therese’s arm, her movements gentle and rhythmic.
“You and Dwight haven’t been married that long . . . I felt you should be focusing on your new husband. That’s why I didn’t mention it.”
“Did you visit her other times, too?” Pauline asked.
“Every week,” her mother said. “More than that, lately.”
“I should have, too,” Pauline said. Her throat felt so tight it was hard to get out the words. She couldn’t help feeling betrayed that her mother hadn’t told her. “How hard would it have been? The facility’s only a half hour drive away.”
“Darling,” her mother said. “This is exactly what I didn’t want. For you to feel guilty or weighed down by responsibility.”
“It’s just . . . things have been so busy since I married Dwight,” Pauline said. “Parties and charity balls and then there’s the house to run . . .” Her voice trailed off. It sounded awful, when she put it like that.
“Pauline,” her mother said, “you and Dwight have done so much for Therese.”
“It’s just money,” Pauline said. She looked down at her sister again. “I didn’t try to do anything else. I never even tried to know her.”
There was a pause, then her mother said, “Yes, you did.”
Pauline looked up. “What do you mean?”
“You did try to know her . . . back when we first told you about Therese. Darling, don’t you remember?”
Pauline wrinkled her brow. “You and Dad sat me down on the couch in the living room and told me I had a sister . . . And afterward, we all went out to dinner at my favorite restaurant.”
“No.” Her mother shook her head. “We didn’t go out to dinner that night.”
“Really?” Pauline said. She remembered the talk so clearly, but her memory ended with her standing up from the couch. “What happened, then?”
“After we told you, you disappeared into your room. You didn’t ask questions or show any interest. I assumed you were processing things in your own way. You were only a child, but such a serious one. You always seemed older than your years. But then you came out and you asked me to follow you back into your room. You had . . .”
Her mother dipped her head and swallowed hard before she contin
ued. “You had made a little bed for Therese next to your own, with blankets and pillows. You told me she could come back and live with us . . . that you’d take care of her.”
Pauline stared at her mother. “I did?”
“We had to give her up,” her mother said. “You must know we couldn’t have given her the kind of care she needed. Not without sacrificing your life.”
“Mine?” Pauline asked. Her head spun; she’d thought her parents had chosen to send Therese away because they couldn’t handle her. But her mother was saying they’d done it, at least partly, to protect Pauline.
“Think about what it would have been like,” her mother said. “For her and for us . . . it was better this way.”
Pauline nodded because her mother’s sad eyes revealed her need for affirmation, but she couldn’t help wishing she didn’t feel as if her parents had chosen her over Therese. She knew that wasn’t all of it; her parents would have been exhausted, trying to care for her sister. They would have needed a live-in nurse. And when friends or neighbors came over and saw Therese . . . well, Pauline couldn’t pretend that she wouldn’t have been embarrassed as a teenager. All of their lives would have been so different.
Therese began coughing again, and the raspy sound startled Pauline so much that she nearly dropped her sister’s arm. Pauline’s mother reached for the oxygen, but it didn’t seem to help as much; the coughing continued for another thirty seconds, and the sound was different—harsher.
Pauline didn’t realize she’d begun to sing until her mother’s head jerked up to look at her.
“ ‘Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird,’ ” Pauline sang along with the CD. She sang about all the things one could buy that wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference to Therese. She kept singing for a long time, through the entire stack of CDs, while she rubbed Therese’s legs and brushed her fine blond hair, and by the second song, her mother had joined in.
When Therese died in the dark, quiet hours just before dawn, her mother and sister were both holding her hands, whispering that they loved her.
Chapter Fifteen
* * *
Hellos
AHHHHHH, SAVANNAH THOUGHT AS she walked down the moonlit beach toward the staircase leading to the house. Her body was so loose-limbed and relaxed that she felt as if she were floating a few feet aboveground. Could that be due to the great sex, or to the fact that Mr. Red Bathing Suit had pulled out a ziplock bag and lit up a joint for them to share?
Jamaican pot was much more intense than the stuff she’d tried back home, Savannah reflected. She wasn’t a regular smoker, but she never turned down a few puffs if it was offered at a party. Usually it made her feel giggly and sleepy, but this stuff was transformative. She felt boneless, like those chicken breasts she was always broiling for dinner because they were quick and low-calorie. She’d have to cook lots of boneless chicken when she got back home, to make up for all the rich food she was eating during this trip.
But boneless chicken were her kinfolk now, she thought as she began to climb the stairs. Could she, in all good conscience, cannibalize them?
Savannah giggled so hard that she missed a step and sprawled backward, onto the beach. She was pretty sure she’d twisted her ankle, but it didn’t hurt a bit. Aha! Because there were no bones in it! She lay there in the soft sand, looking up at the sky. It was so beautiful. The wind was picking up, and the palm trees were dancing in unison, as if they were all taking a swing class.
She could stay here forever, she thought as she began to move her arms and legs to make a sand angel. Time didn’t matter . . . Time wasn’t real, anyway. It was just an invention of man, a way to try to exert control over what was essentially uncontrollable. The waves crashing behind her had been here long before the advent of time, and they would be afterward, too. Savannah wished she had a sheet of paper and pen to jot down her thoughts; they were so important.
She closed her eyes, but the sound of the waves made her realize she was thirsty. Cottonmouth, that’s what they used to call it in college. Everyone got cottonmouth when they were high, usually followed by the munchies. Ooh, maybe there was some pie left at the house!
She pulled herself up and began climbing the stairs again. Jesus, had there been this many steps on the way down? They seemed to have multiplied. Maybe they’d been having sex, too; they should’ve used a condom, like she had. She began to count, “Three, four, five . . .” She almost slipped again, but she grabbed the rail. “ ‘Five little monkeys, jumping on the bed! One fell off and bumped his head!’ ”
“Savannah?”
A dark figure appeared at the top of the stairs.
Savannah really wanted to finish her song. “ ‘Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, “No more monkeys jumping on the bed . . .” ’ Oh, hi, Gary!”
“I was just going to come look for you,” he said.
“Oh!” Savannah couldn’t think of anything else to say, and she was terribly thirsty, so she walked past him, into the house. All of her friends were in the kitchen, and they turned to stare at her, moving as one. Just like the palm trees. Maybe every single living thing on the planet was in sync right now, at this exact moment. What a beautiful thought.
“Savannah!” Tina said. “Did you see who’s here?”
“Yup,” Savannah said. She found a glass in the cabinet and filled it with water from the purifier built into the refrigerator, then gulped the entire thing down.
“Ah, so good!” she said as she filled the glass again.
“Savannah?” This time it was Allie who spoke. “Did you talk to Gary?”
“Savannah?” Gary had followed her into the kitchen.
“You all love my name, don’t you?” Savannah said. “You keep saying it! Savannah, Shavannah, Shlavannah . . .”
Gio came closer to her and sniffed. “She’s high.” He burst into laughter. “Where’d you get the ganja, Van?”
“The guy from the boat,” Savannah said. “The one who gave Stella her groove back.”
“What guy?” Gary asked.
“Shhh!” Savannah lifted a finger to her lips. She reached into the pocket of her jean cutoffs and pulled out the ziplock bag. “I bought some from him. We can share!”
Tina was the first one to react. She hurried to Savannah’s side, opened the bag, and inhaled. “Ooooh, I haven’t gotten high in forever! Years! No, a decade!”
“Light one up, baby,” Savannah said. “It’s premium.”
“Not in here, though,” Tina said. “Should we go out to the pool?”
“Okay,” Savannah said. “Just don’t try to take off my pants again like last night.”
“Who took off your pants?” Gary asked.
Tina laughed but didn’t answer him. “Van? Seriously, stop molesting that pie and come on out. You joining us, Allie?”
“Nah,” Allie said.
“She’s a good girl,” Savannah observed. “She’s been yelling a lot on this trip, though.”
“You have no filter right now, do you?” Ryan asked.
Tina snorted. “Like she ever did.”
“You, I especially like right now,” Savannah said, pointing to Tina. “You’re fun again.”
She began to walk out of the room, but as she passed Gary, she suddenly had a moment of clarity. She’d been scared, after her all-too-brief experience with her trainer, that she’d never find a man who could sexually satisfy her again. She knew the fear was ridiculous—plus she had a drawer full of vibrators, so it wasn’t like she was going hungry in that department—but she and Gary had always meshed well physically and she’d wanted to know she could have that again. Now she knew she could. The crewman had been . . . insatiable. She’d come twice, her legs wrapped around his muscular waist, her cries drowned out by the sea.
Savannah could sense Gary registering the sand in her hair, and she licked her lips, feeling how swollen they had become from the rough kissing.
“Your shirt,” Gary sa
id. His mouth was a perfectly straight line, like something a little kid would draw on a stick figure.
Savannah looked down and realized she’d missed two buttons.
“Whoops,” she said. But instead of fixing it, she walked by Gary without another word, hoping he picked up the scent of sex clinging to her along with the pot.
* * *
Allie couldn’t believe how close they’d come to getting caught.
She and Dwight were hidden behind the copse of palm trees, but the bright headlights of a taxi had swing around the corner and suddenly illuminated them. For one jumbled, heart-stopping moment she’d thought someone was shining a spotlight on them, exposing their infidelity.
Luckily they were still fully clothed. Dwight’s common sense had pulled them back from the brink a few minutes earlier. He’d tucked in his shirt and stepped back, breathing hard, and when Allie’s hands had reached for him again, he’d squeezed them tightly in his own. “Let’s slow down,” he’d said. “The guys could come back at any second.”
Allie hadn’t wanted to slow down, though; even the mention of Ryan didn’t conjure any guilt. She, who felt shamed when she kept out a book a day past the library’s due date!
But Dwight had been prescient; moments later, the taxi had approached. Someone had gotten out, and then the cab had pulled away.
“It’s Gary,” Allie had whispered, watching him walk around the pool and go into the house. “I can’t believe he’s here!”
“He didn’t see us,” Dwight had said.
“I don’t think so, either, but we need to go in,” Allie had said. “But not together! I’ll go now and you follow in a minute. If anyone asks where you were, just say you went for a walk on the beach to catch Gio and Ryan, but you didn’t see them. I’ll say I was at the pool.” The story had slipped off her tongue as easily as if she’d been lying for her entire life.
“Okay,” Dwight had said. Allie had smoothed back her hair as she hurried inside. But no one was around. She could hear Tina’s and Gary’s voices down the hall, by the bedrooms, so she’d slipped into the kitchen. When she’d come out a few moments later, she’d feigned surprise at seeing Gary.
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