The Castaways

ADDISON

Are you going to tell him? Are you going to tell him you love me?

I’m afraid.

I’m afraid you won’t get it.

The $9.2 million deal closed without a hitch, and Wheeler Realty received a check for $368,000, half of which went into Addison’s pocket. Normally this would have been cause for celebration (corporate and personal), but Addison was distracted.

What to do with Tess’s cell phone?

He had flat-out lied to the Chief. Addison was by no means an honest person-he was a real estate agent, after all, prone to stretching the truth, and he had for six months concealed his affair with Tess. But something about looking Ed Kapenash in the eye and flat-out lying about Tess’s phone instilled fear and shame.

Should Addison come clean? Tell Ed that yes, he had the phone? Show Ed the text messages? Tess was afraid-of the water, of Greg, of something more nebulous? There was no way to figure out what had happened on the boat. The Chief had one idea; Addison had another. Should Addison confess to the affair? What would that help? It would help nothing, he decided. It would only hurt.

Addison tucked Tess’s iPhone in the top drawer of his desk, which locked with a key. Addison had one key and Florabel had a spare key swimming in the ashtray where she kept paper clips, rubber bands, and safety pins. The Chief would never find Tess’s phone in Addison’s top drawer, though it was the obvious first place to look. Should Addison move it? Take it home or put it in his car? The skin on the phone was traffic-light yellow, bright as an alarm, impossible to miss. Would Phoebe find it?

He pulled the two pieces of the felt heart from his pocket. He was not only emotionally feeble, but mentally feeble as well. He believed that this heart had power, that it meant something. As he handled it, it ripped again. The heart was disintegrating. Was this a sign? Addison could not accept it as a sign.

Florabel loomed over his desk. She eyed the torn, misshapen pieces of heart on his desk.

“What is that?” She sounded disgusted, as if they were pieces of pig heart.

“Nothing,” he said.

“You need to pull yourself together, Dealer,” Florabel said. As ever, the woman was speaking the brutal truth. She slapped a whopper of a check down on his desk, covering the scraps of felt. “There’s some money. Go get yourself a shrink.”