“Should we go back to the guys?” Tina asked. She grabbed one of the lanterns from the kitchen counter and handed Allie a flashlight.
“You’re forgetting something,” Allie said. She smiled, opened the pantry door, and reached inside. “Look what I found,” she said, holding up a full bag of marshmallows.
“See?” Tina said. “You’re lucky. I told you so.”
They stepped outside, pausing to admire the setting sun. Allie glanced over at the tree she’d clung to during the hurricane and shuddered. It was just steps away from where she and Dwight had had their awful, rushed bout of sex. She remembered Tina’s earlier words about the close link between death and sex. Here was physical proof of that.
“Marriages are so complicated, aren’t they?” Tina said. “I mean, look at Savannah and Gary.”
“Do you think she’s going to take him back?” Allie asked.
“Yup,” Tina said. “I kind of knew it the first night, when she didn’t send him away like she’d talked about. Don’t you think?”
Allie nodded. “I can see her softening toward him. Earlier on the beach he whispered something to her, and I saw her laughing. But I’m worried.”
“You mean that it might happen again?” Tina asked.
Allie nodded. “I hate to say it. But I’ve never trusted Gary. I still don’t.”
“Me, too. I’ve never liked him, either, even though it was pretty cool of him to stand up for us with the cop,” Tina said. “But Savannah can take care of herself. I doubt she’d give him another chance if he messed up again.”
“Do you think Gary knows that?”
Tina thought for a long moment. “I have no idea,” she finally said. “I hope so, though, for Van’s sake. I really do.”
* * *
Savannah knocked and waited for Pauline’s voice to grant her entrance, but instead, the door swung open.
“Hi,” Savannah said. The windows’ gauzy white curtains were pulled back, and just enough light came into the room for her to see that Pauline had returned to normal. Her hair was in a sleek ponytail, and she wore designer jeans and a midnight-blue, silky halter top. Savannah knew none of them had been able to shower because the water supply was tainted, but you’d never guess it by looking at Pauline. She couldn’t possibly have washed her hair with Evian, could she? Savannah wondered.
“I brought you water and a banana,” she said, holding up her offerings and suddenly feeling ridiculous.
“Thanks,” Pauline replied. She accepted the water, but not the fruit.
“So, if your headache’s gone, we’re all hanging out down on the beach,” Savannah said. She leaned closer and lifted her eyebrows. “And I’ve got one more joint, just in case you’re interested.”
Pauline nodded. “Dwight’s there? And . . . everyone else? Allie, too?”
“Actually, Allie and Tina were in the kitchen a minute ago,” Savannah said. “They may have gone back down. I’m not sure.”
“I’m going to stay here,” Pauline said. “But thank you for the invitation.”
She started to close the door, but at the last second, Savannah reached out to stop her. Unfortunately, she reached out with the hand holding the banana, which got squished between the door and the frame.
“I guess you really don’t want this now,” Savannah said, looking down at it. “You know, this reminds me of a guy I once dated.” She couldn’t help laughing, but Pauline didn’t join in.
“Was there something else?” Pauline asked.
This was the hostess Savannah remembered—Ms. Stick Up Her Butt. Still, Savannah wanted to say what she’d come to tell Pauline.
“Just, thank you,” Savannah said.
Savannah knew she’d gotten on Pauline’s nerves a few times, like during that dinner when she’d said she only turned her phone off during sex. She’d done it deliberately; passive-aggressive, repressed people like Pauline drove her crazy. She’d been trying to get a rise out of Pauline—some genuine show of emotion. Today, though, she was feeling magnanimous and wanted to end things on a positive note.
“It’s been a great vacation,” Savannah said. She sighed. “I really needed one, too.”
“It’s been our pleasure,” Pauline said, a clear note of dismissal in her voice.
“Okay then,” Savannah said, stung. Her good intentions evaporated; this was the real Pauline, not the woman who’d shared a joint with them two nights earlier.
“We’ll certainly miss you tonight,” Savannah said, her voice ringing with a deliberate falseness.
* * *
Did that bitch really just mock her?
Pauline watched Savannah disappear down the hallway with her mangled banana. That did it; she was sick of this selfish, ungrateful group. They ate the dinners she’d so thoughtfully arranged and belched at her table. They insulted her. And one of them had screwed her husband!
Pauline threw the bottle of water on the floor and stormed out of the room. Allie was in the kitchen, Savannah had said. Good, Pauline thought as she hurried in that direction. But when she arrived, it was empty. She stepped into the living room, but no one was there, either, so she went out onto the stone patio. She could hear laughter filtering up from the beach.
Glad you’re all having fun, Pauline thought as her fingernails bit into her palms. If she saw Allie right now, she’d walk up to her and slap her. Spit on her. Demand that she leave.
Then a traitorous thought wormed into Pauline’s brain: And if Dwight came to Allie’s defense?
Pauline’s rage was instantly erased, leaving in its place a sorrow so deep and raw that she felt gutted. She fell into a lounge chair and stared out at the dusky purple sky.
She knew why she’d married Dwight. His money had sparked the initial appeal, true, but she’d also grown to love him in a comfortable, steady way. She’d imagined being with Dwight forever; he was a constant whenever she envisioned the future.
She wondered why Dwight had married her, though. Was it because Allie was already taken, and Pauline happened to be there, like the last, dusty bottle of soda in a vending machine?
She considered her options. She could still storm down to the beach and confront Allie, letting everyone know Allie’s sweet, innocent exterior was fake. Or she could start walking the ten miles to the airstrip where Dwight’s plane waited. Maybe that’s what she should do. She never should have returned to Jamaica after Therese’s death. She should have stayed with her mother and helped arrange for the funeral. She didn’t belong with this group.
Maybe she didn’t belong with Dwight, either.
She laid her head back on the soft white cushion, listening to the high, sweet chirping of insects, feeling a profound heaviness in her limbs.
She’d replayed Dwight’s and Allie’s words a hundred times in her mind. How did it happen? Allie had asked. That didn’t sound as if the affair had been going on a long time, and the pain in Allie’s voice hinted she wanted it over. Pauline had needed to get away, to amass distance between herself and the horror of her discovery, but now she wished she’d stayed to overhear Dwight’s answer. If their dalliance was brief, and it had already ended . . . well, then she might be able to ignore what had happened, and never bring it up to Dwight. She could learn to live with being second best, even if it broke her heart.
The only other option she could think of was to try talking to Dwight.
She’d come so close to telling him about Therese’s death on his birthday. To telling him everything. She had no idea what his response would have been, which was precisely why she hadn’t tried to bring it up again. She’d always stepped so carefully with Dwight—with everyone! She’d tried her hardest to make this trip flawless, but her efforts had exploded: The chef had left, the hurricane had struck, her husband had cheated . . .
Damn it, she thought, remembering how she’d agonized over the menus, planned the helicopter tour, even brought along extra sunscreen in case someone had forgotten it. What had been the point?
; Something caught the corner of her eye, and she looked to her right to see a black and white butterfly land on a flower in the giant concrete pot next to her. She watched its wings flutter once, twice, and then the butterfly took off again. Pauline reached over and touched the petals of the pink flower it had alighted upon, then dug her fingers into the soil, patting it more securely around the plants that had been wrenched askew by Betty. The dirt was still damp from the storm. She lifted a pinch to her nose and inhaled the wonderful, rich scent. She never gardened; she hired people to do one of the things she loved most in this world. In college Pauline had thought, briefly, about a career as a landscape architect, but then she’d dismissed it. It didn’t fit in with her life plan.
Her life suddenly seemed full of such missed opportunities. She could trace the points where she’d veered in the safest directions, away from risks and possibilities; they stood out as sharply as the angles of the constellations in the clear sky above her head.
Once a young artist had come into the Georgetown gallery where Pauline had worked until she met Dwight. Pauline had been transfixed by the woman’s art; her paintings were bold and original and reminded Pauline a bit of Georgia O’Keeffe, except they featured eyes instead of flowers. All different eyes, with different expressions . . . Pauline never knew eyes could have so many expressions. But the gallery owner didn’t consider walk-ins, and Pauline had turned the young woman away, watching as she zipped up her portfolio and headed back onto the street. What she wouldn’t give for a painting of those eyes now; they’d haunted her for more than a decade. She should have bought one, and maybe helped the woman get a show, become her mentor . . .
Pauline let the soil slip through her fingers as the day’s last bit of light disappeared. Still she didn’t move. Indecision weighted her down so heavily that she felt as if she could’ve stayed on the lounge chair forever, until she crumbled into nothingness.
She heard a noise and turned in its direction.
If she’d needed a sign about what to do, maybe one had arrived: Dwight was walking toward her.
“Hey,” he said. He put his lantern on the side table and sat down in the chair next to hers. “I was just coming to find you, to see if you were feeling any better.”
She looked at him steadily, wondering if he’d really left because it was too painful for him to be around Allie and Ryan together.
“How’s your headache?” Dwight asked.
Pauline kept looking at him instead of answering.
“I hate escargots,” she finally said. “I always have. They’re horrible. Slimy. Repulsive little creatures.”
Dwight blinked. “Okay,” he said. He folded his arms behind his head and looked at her.
“And I know you slept with Allie.”
It was a bluff of sorts; it was impossible for Pauline to know how far things had gone between them.
He flinched, then closed his eyes. “Oh, Pauline,” he said, and his tone told her she’d hit on the truth.
“Do you love her? Do you want to be with her?” She remained perfectly still, feeling as if she were a passenger in a speeding car that was about to crash head-on into a stone wall. Pain and devastation were rushing toward her, and she was powerless to prevent it.
“No,” Dwight said. “It’s—it’s over!”
“It is not over. You slept with another woman, on the vacation I tried so hard to make nice for you,” she said, leaving a tiny pause after every carefully enunciated word, so her accusation felt like a series of flutter punches.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. He started to reach for her, then pulled back, rightly assuming that she couldn’t bear for him to touch her.
“How many times did it happen?” she asked.
“Once,” he said. “And never again.” She looked at him, and to her surprise, she believed him. Dwight’s emotions had always been transparent on his face, and he’d never before lied to her. At least not to her knowledge.
“But you were in love with her in college!” Pauline cried. “You’ve always been in love with her! Why did you even marry me? Because you couldn’t have Allie?”
“That sound outside the door,” Dwight said. “Was that you? . . . Pauline, did you hear me tell her I didn’t love her anymore?”
“You told her that?” Pauline said.
“Yes,” Dwight said.
“Then why?” Pauline whispered. Why did you do this to me?
“I keep asking myself that, too,” Dwight said. He sighed. “She’s worried she might get sick, Pauline. Really sick. And she came to me for help.”
“For help?” Pauline bit off the words. She wasn’t numb, not anymore; now her body felt like it was on fire. “So you decided to help her by screwing her?”
The rough words tasted alien in Pauline’s mouth. She never talked like this to anyone. But it felt strangely good.
“No, no, it wasn’t like that,” Dwight said. “I’m not trying to make excuses, I promise. I just want to explain. P-please.”
“So explain,” Pauline said. She crossed her arms.
“It made me feel, I don’t know . . . like a man!” Dwight said. “That I could help her. That I could help anyone, Pauline. No one’s ever needed me to do that before.”
“I’ve needed it!” Pauline shouted.
“No,” Dwight said, and there was a new note in his voice, one Pauline couldn’t easily identify. “You haven’t needed me for anything.”
Pauline felt unease claw at her belly; what was happening? Why did she feel as if Dwight was talking about something else entirely? She tried to think of something to say, to get their conversation back on track, but it was too late.
“You never want to sleep with me,” Dwight said. “Not anymore.”
“That’s not true!” Pauline said.
“We haven’t had sex once on this trip,” he said. “You’ve always got some excuse, or you pretend to be asleep.”
She cringed; he’d known she’d been faking, but he’d misunderstood the reason. She thought of him reaching to pull her into the shower at the beginning of the trip, and saw herself twisting away. There were so many similar moments before that, too—times he’d started kissing her, and she’d moved out of his grasp or slipped under the covers to give him a quick blow job. She hadn’t known he’d felt rejected; she’d only thought about the reprieve she’d granted herself from failing to get pregnant again.
Was that part of the reason why he’d turned to Allie? Because he thought Pauline didn’t want him anymore?
“And I thought you didn’t want me to see your sister because of me,” Dwight was saying, now looking straight ahead, into the darkness, instead of at her. “Because you thought I wouldn’t know what to do. That maybe I’d make her uncomfortable. I know sometimes I don’t . . . whatever. Fit in.”
“No,” she said. Dwight had blamed himself? She’d never imagined that; she didn’t realize he’d even thought about Therese. “It wasn’t that, Dwight. Never that.”
“So I thought I could research things. Figure out how to act,” he continued. “You said she had something like Down syndrome. I decided to read a little more about it. You never told me exactly what she had.” He gave a little laugh. “But if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s computer research. You know that.”
“I didn’t— I just—” Pauline felt panicked. What was happening? She was the injured party here; she was the one who’d been dealt a body blow. So why did Dwight look so upset?
“I looked into the facility, too,” he said. “My accountant pointed out the name to me a while ago. He thought it looked like an unusual expense, and he always shows me those.”
“It wasn’t that much money!” Pauline said. “Not in the grand scheme of things . . . I just—”
“Pauline,” Dwight said. “Do you really think that’s what I care about? The money?”
She fell silent.
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” he asked.
Excuses swam through her mind, but
she couldn’t grab hold of any of them.
“I was scared,” she finally said.
“That I couldn’t handle it?” he asked.
“Maybe,” she said. Pauline squeezed her eyes shut. The truth. “No, that I couldn’t.”
“I wish you’d told me,” he said. He sighed deeply. “And I wish I’d never cheated on you.”
It’s too late for that, Pauline thought.
“I’d really like to visit Therese with you,” he said.
Too late, Pauline thought again.
She let her eyes drift back to the sky. She’d learned long ago that only a fraction of the constellations were visible at any given time; the overhead landscape was constantly changing. So many stars were glowing in distant places now, even without anyone to bear witness.
She took a deep breath.
“Her favorite song was ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ ” she began. “Therese’s. Therese’s favorite song. And she liked . . . for her arms and legs to be massaged.”
Dwight didn’t say anything, but he was watching her carefully again. Had he caught her use of the past tense? Pauline wondered.
“There’s a question I need to ask you,” she said. “What are your thoughts on adoption?”
“Adoption?” Dwight echoed. He shook his head, but he wasn’t giving a negative answer; he seemed to be trying to clear it. “Pauline—I mean, I think it’s great.”
“What about a child with special needs?” she asked. “Would you ever adopt one?”
“I . . . guess so,” he said. “I’d have to think about it. I mean, sure, maybe.”
“I think I might want to,” Pauline said.
It didn’t matter if she and Dwight could bear children; this was what she needed to do. She’d been surprised that he had been receptive so quickly. But now she remembered: Allie was adopted. It would be something else to link them, another shared experience.
Maybe she wouldn’t ever be able to escape from Allie’s shadow.
“I kept waiting for you to tell me about Therese,” Dwight said. “But you never did. You just gave off these signals of not wanting to talk about her. Just like you gave off signals of not wanting to sleep with me. Pauline, I didn’t know what to do.”
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