The Castaways

ADDISON

In a matter of hours, the world was different. He had confessed to Andrea about his affair, he had made love to his wife for the first time in months. And yet life beckoned. Phoebe rose early to get back out to the savannah to help clean up, and Addison went into the office.

It was very early, but Florabel was there, at her desk, drinking the devil’s coffee-black, strong, steaming hot.

“How was the party?” she asked.

The party? It took Addison a minute to figure out what party Florabel was talking about. “It was great!” he said. “The food was delicious!”

“You met my clients? Hank and Legris?”

Addison scratched his nose. Did those names ring a bell? Addison was a professional bullshitter; he was very good at feeling his way through the dark until someone turned on the lights.

“Hank,” he said.

“And his girlfriend, Legris. They’re friends of Phoebe’s? They have that huge sailboat?”

“Oh, right, right, right,” Addison said. The guy with the sailboat, Hank. Friend of Swede and Jennifer’s. Addison had actually been on that boat twice, ten or so years earlier. There had been no Legris then that Addison knew of. Back then, Hank had been newly divorced and had a quartet of young women hanging off him. “Which clients?” he asked.

Florabel gave him a look. “I only have two clients, Dealer. Hank and Legris are buying the Quaise cottage.”

Addison smiled and nodded to mask his sinking heart. Hank the sailboat guy was buying the Quaise cottage. Hank and Legris, friends of Phoebe’s?

“I’m a little confused,” Addison admitted.

“Phoebe is friends with my clients, Hank and Legris, who are buying the Quaise cottage. Phoebe was the one who told them about the cottage in the first place, actually.”

“She was?” Addison’s whole face was itching now. This was not right. Phoebe didn’t know anything about any of his listings, much less his most confidential listing, which was the Quaise cottage.

“Yeah! The reason they bought such a small place is because they have that enormous boat.”

Well, that made sense. But not the other part.

“Phoebe wasn’t the one who told them about the Quaise cottage,” Addison said.

“Yes, she was.”

“She didn’t know about it. She doesn’t know a thing about any of the properties.”

“Well, she knew about the Quaise cottage. I told her about it. She came in here looking for you one day this past spring and I told her you were probably out at the cottage. Remember how much time you spent over the winter fixing it up?”

Fixing it up. Addison scanned his desk for something to grab. Was Florabel making this up to torture him? He was afraid to look at her. He stared at the phone, willing it to ring so that Florabel would answer it and he would have a chance to breathe.

“Phoebe’s never seen the cottage,” he said.

“Sure she has,” Florabel said. “I told her exactly where it was and she went up there. And later she called to thank me. She said she found you, no problem.”

“Found me?” he said.

Florabel nodded, her lips a smug line.

“When was this?”

“This past spring. March, April.”

Addison narrowed his eyes at Florabel. She was such an unpleasant bitch. Was she trying to blackmail him? Was she thinking he would increase her commission, or give her a chunk of cash from the company’s operating budget?”

“What are you after, Florabel?” he asked.

“I’m not after anything, Dealer. I wanted to know if you met Hank and Legris. If Phoebe introduced you. If you made a connection with them, our clients, the buyers of the Quaise cottage.”

“I did not speak to them at the party,” Addison said. “Phoebe did not introduce us.”

“What is wrong with you?” Florabel said. “I was only asking!”

He immediately wanted a drink. What time did they start serving at the Begonia? Could he go over there and get one? He decided he could not. If he got all muddled and messy right now, he would not be able to sort through this and make everything come out okay. Florabel was wrong. Phoebe did not know about the Quaise cottage. The phone rang and Florabel answered it. This gave Addison a chance to think, slowly and calmly, about what Florabel had said. Florabel said the buyers of the Quaise cottage, Hank (last name?) and his girlfriend Legris (What kind of name was this? It sounded like a name from the bayou), were friends of Phoebe’s. This was true. Although who knew what kind of friends they were. Phoebe had known Hank a long time ago, back when she was actively chairing events and attending events that other people chaired, back when she was hanging out with Jennifer and Swede. Phoebe had reconnected with Jennifer and Swede this summer at Caroline Nieve Masters’s Fourth of July party, and she had, to Addison’s knowledge, been out on Hank’s sailboat twice since then. Okay, let’s say that made them friends. Did Phoebe mention the Quaise cottage to Hank and Legris? No, because Phoebe did not know about the Quaise cottage. Here Addison took a moment to reflect. He did not like the way Florabel called him Dealer to his face. He knew this was his nickname around town, but to call him Dealer to his face was blatantly disrespectful. Addison had never asked Florabel to stop, because he knew she wouldn’t. She was that disobedient, that awful. Why had he not fired her years ago? Whywhywhy? Well, she was one hell of an administrator, more organized than Martha Stewart; she kept the office in order, she overlooked no detail, and… she was honest. She would not cheat him and she would not lie.

And since Florabel did not lie, then what she said was true: Phoebe had showed up at the office one random afternoon in the spring, looking for Addison. Addison was at the Quaise cottage, “fixing it up.” Florabel, because she did not lie, told Phoebe that Addison was at the Quaise cottage. She gave Phoebe directions; she may even have drawn a map to the cottage on a piece of Wheeler Realty notepaper. Phoebe drove out to the Quaise cottage. Then, this summer, she mentioned the cottage to Hank and Legris when they said they were in the market for “a little place.”

All this was fine. But Addison still had questions.

One: Did Florabel know Addison had been meeting someone out at the Quaise cottage? (Another reason that Addison had never fired Florabel was that she was the smartest person Addison knew. She was clinically smart; she belonged to Mensa.) So yes, safe to say she knew exactly what was going on. She sent Phoebe out to the Quaise cottage on purpose, she probably insisted that Phoebe journey out to Quaise to find Addison, because… that was the kind of evil bitch that Florabel was.

The bigger, more crucial question was… when Phoebe drove out to the Quaise cottage, what did she find?

Should he call Phoebe?

What was the point? Phoebe knew.

Florabel was trying to get his attention. “Dealer!” she said. She was in front of her desk, snapping her fingers in his face. “God, what is wrong with you today? Your wife is on the phone.”

Phoebe? Now Addison was scared. “Take a message,” he told Florabel. “I’m busy.”

“Busy?” Florabel said. “Jesus, Dealer, if you were my employee, I’d fire you.” She got back on the phone and hung up seconds later. “She wants help out on the savannah. She said there are hundreds of cocktail napkins scattered across the grass.”

“Okay,” Addison said absently.

Phoebe knew about Tess. She found out at some point in the spring when she went looking for Addison, but she found Florabel instead, and Florabel directed Phoebe to the Quaise cottage. Phoebe saw Addison’s car and Tess’s car. She either figured it out from just that, or she peeked in the window (which was too awful to imagine, so scratch that part). She didn’t tell anyone. She didn’t tell Delilah, she didn’t confront Tess or Addison. She had spent the spring under a blanket of heavy medication; possibly the reality hadn’t registered.

Or she didn’t care.

Or she saw things for what they were. She, Phoebe, had become a pharmaceutical wasteland. She had been incapable of any real emotional connection with Addison for eight years. After Reed died on 9/11, she had disappeared. And for those eight years Addison had stood by her. He supported her and worried about her; he flushed pills and went with her to see Dr. Field. He kept her comfortable; he relieved her of all responsibility. He paid the house cleaners double, he learned to like takeout food, he took her on vacations where they stayed at the finest hotels, he kept their social life alive, he made excuses for her when she passed out in her soup or when she blanked out in the middle of a conversation. He kept her safe; he carried her up mountains and across rivers. He gave a hundred thousand dollars to Reed’s scholarship fund and put another hundred thousand into trust for Domino. He went to hours and hours of grief counseling, where Phoebe either cried uncontrollably or sat in a stupor. He gave up all dreams of having a baby. The miscarriage, which also occurred on 9/11, was an accident, caused by extreme stress. Phoebe could get pregnant again, with ease. But no, she wouldn’t, she didn’t want to. She wouldn’t let Addison touch her.

And he had lived with that, for years and years.

And then Tess came to him, or he went to Tess, it was a mutual discovery, they were in love.

Maybe Phoebe understood this. Maybe-God, was it possible?-she approved.

Addison remembered back to when he met Phoebe. She was lying on a towel in Bryant Park. She had been wearing a short, flowered sundress, eating salad out of a plastic container. Addison felt like he had found a diamond bracelet lying in the grass. He remembered his astonishment. You mean something this beautiful doesn’t belong to anyone?

He’d snapped her up. All these years later, he’d held on.

Oh, Phoebe.

He unlocked his top desk drawer, where he had stashed Tess’s iPhone. It was time to stop hiding things; he would give the phone to the Chief. And there, in his top drawer, was an envelope with his name on it. In Tess’s handwriting. Holy hell! Tess’s handwriting? It sure looked like it. Addison looked around. Florabel was on the phone again, whispering with one of her girlfriends.

Addison opened the envelope, and there was a note inside. It said: I am going back to Greg and my kids. I will explain my reasons when I get home. Please know you will always have a piece of my heart. Tess.

He folded the note back up, slid it into the envelope, and put it in the drawer.

He sat in a bubble for… well, he wasn’t sure how long.

Florabel was snapping at him again. “Dealer! What about helping Phoebe pick up the cocktail napkins? Are you going?”

He looked at Florabel, who was the only person with a key to his desk drawer. He opened the drawer and pulled out the envelope. “Did you put this here?”

She sighed in a way that seemed almost sympathetic. “I did.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I found it weeks ago,” Florabel said. Now her voice contained an uncharacteristic element: guilt. “I found it in the Quaise cottage, back when you first gave me the listing. And then, swear to God, Addison, I completely forgot about it. I just found it again last night when I was cleaning my desk. Is it important?”

Addison shrugged. The phone rang, and Florabel seemed eager to answer it. Well, either she was lying, which she never did, or she was telling the truth and had “forgotten” it, which she would never do, and had “found” it when she was “cleaning her desk,” which she never did because her desk was always immaculate. Florabel had been holding on to the letter until she sensed Addison could handle it. She must have guessed who it was from and what it said. Possibly she’d even opened it and sealed it back up without a sign of tampering. Possibly Florabel had been not only a cheerleader but a CIA operative.

I’m afraid you won’t get it. The note. She had left it there for him to find on Sunday, when he normally went to the Quaise cottage to change the sheets and straighten up. But he hadn’t gone on that Sunday because the $9.2 million Polpis Harbor deal had come through, and then the next day Tess died. So Florabel had found the note instead.

Was it important? Please know you will always have a piece of my heart. He pulled out the three pieces of frayed red felt and laid them on his desk blotter. Which piece?

He gathered the pieces up, stuffed them deep in his pocket, and headed out to the savannah to help his wife.