A few minutes later Mike returned with a small chocolate sundae and settled next to Toby, which put him directly across from her. Her heart twisted as Toby shot her a pleading look, imploring her not to ruin this. Mike avoided looking at her altogether.
Her cone was beginning to drip, but she couldn’t take another lick. She didn’t like feeling as if there was something wrong with her because she refused to join the Mike Moody fan club. Even Lucy liked him. But how could Bree forget the past? Except wasn’t that beginning to happen? Each day it grew more difficult to reconcile the adult Mike Moody with the boy she remembered.
A young couple—the husband carrying a baby in a Snugli—stopped to talk to him, followed by an older man hauling an oxygen tank. Everybody was glad to see Mike. Everybody wanted to say hello. Toby waited patiently, as if he’d been through this before. Finally they were alone. “Toby, this sundae is so good I think I’ll have another.” Mike dug in his pocket and handed over a five-dollar bill. “Mind getting one for me?”
As Toby went off, Bree noticed that Mike had barely touched his first sundae. He finally looked at her. “I was coming out to see you tomorrow.”
“I thought you were done with me.” She managed not to sound too petulant.
“This is about Toby.” He pushed aside his ice cream. “The Bayner boys aren’t coming back to live on the island.”
It took her a moment to place the name. “The twins who are Toby’s best friends?”
“His only real friends. Their parents are splitting up, and his mother is staying in Ohio with them. Toby doesn’t know about it yet, and this is going to hit him hard.”
“Great. One more problem I have no idea how to solve,” she said.
He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I might be able to help out.”
Of course he could. Mike could fix everything, something she should have thought harder about before she’d dismissed him.
He balled the napkin. “I never liked how Myra kept him so isolated, but she was odd that way, and she refused to talk about it. Toby’s with other kids at school, but she wouldn’t let him invite them to the cottage or go to their houses. The only reason the twins were friends was because they lived close enough to walk. She overprotected him.”
“What am I supposed to do about it?” It was odd asking Mike for advice, but he didn’t seem to find it strange.
“I coach a soccer team,” he said. “It’ll be a good place for him to start making new friends. Let Toby join.”
She’d already become a beekeeper. Why not add soccer mom to her résumé? “All right.”
He seemed surprised that she’d agreed so quickly. “I’m sure you have some questions. I’m not the only coach. There’s another—”
“It’s fine. I trust you.”
“You do?”
She pretended to examine a ragged fingernail. “You’ve been a good friend to Toby.”
“Here you are.” Toby popped up at Mike’s side with the sundae. Mike surreptitiously moved the first one under his napkin and took up the plastic spoon to start on the second. Toby asked him about fishing rods, and they were soon immersed in conversation.
Long after she should have been asleep that night, Bree was still sitting on the back step, staring out into the darkness, thinking about Mike and the upcoming winter. Her honey was selling better than she could have hoped, and the bee Christmas ornaments were a surprise hit. Pastor Sanders was displaying her products in his gift shop without charging her a percentage. He said he’d take his commission in honey and give it away to any of his parishioners who needed their spirits lifted.
She was saving every penny she could, but she was spending it, too. And not just for more jars. After days of agonizing, she’d placed a big order for some very expensive hand-blown glass globe ornaments that she intended to paint with island scenes and—cross her fingers—sell for three times what she paid for them. But with only a month left before Labor Day, when her customers would disappear, the purchase was a huge risk.
She still had a dribble of cash coming in from the consignment shop at home where she’d left most of her clothes. With luck, that money, combined with steady sales at the farm stand for the rest of the month and a big profit from the hand-painted ornaments she’d just received, might carry her through the winter. If Toby didn’t keep growing out of his clothes, and the old furnace kept running, and the leaky roof didn’t get worse, and her car didn’t need brakes, and …
Winters are long, and people here only have one another to depend on.
It had been easier dismissing Mike’s words in June than it was now, with fall creeping closer each day. If the worst happened, she had nowhere to turn. She needed Mike.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized that ignoring him was a luxury she could no longer afford. She had to change direction. She had to convince him that she no longer hated his guts. Even if it killed her.
Toby’s sleepy voice drifted through the screen door. “What’re you doing out here?”
“I—couldn’t sleep.”
“Did you have a bad dream?”
“No. What about you? Why are you up?”
“I don’t know. Just woke up.” He yawned and came out to sit next to her. His shoulder brushed her arm. The sleepy, sweaty boy smell of him reminded her of summer nights with her brothers when they’d sneak into one another’s rooms and tell ghost stories.
He spoke through another yawn. “Thanks for the ice cream tonight.”
She cleared the lump in her throat. “You’re welcome.”
“A lot of kids are scared of the dark, but not me,” he announced.
She wasn’t either. She had too many real things to be afraid of.
He leaned over to examine a scab on his ankle. “Could we maybe invite Mike over for dinner soon?”
She began to bristle, then realized he’d handed her the perfect method to begin mending her relationship with Mike. One way or the other, she had to make him believe she’d put the past behind her.
“Sure we can.” She briefly wondered when she’d become so cold-blooded, but standing on principle now seemed to be a luxury only the wealthy could afford. “I think it’s time we both got some sleep.” She rose from the step.
“I guess.” He got up. “Do you think he’d like cowboy casserole?”
“Definitely.”
They went inside, and as Toby headed for his bedroom, she called out to him the same way she did every night, “Good night, Toby.”
This time he answered her back. “G’night, Bree.”
AUGUST SETTLED IN FOR GOOD, bringing more sunny, humid days along with the occasional fierce thunderstorm. Most nights, Lucy and Panda met on the boat or in her room, but an unsettling intensity had replaced their playful kinkiness. There were no more strip searches, no more licorice whips. And during the day they bickered.
“Did you use yesterday’s grounds to make this coffee?” Panda said as he splashed the contents of his newly poured cup down the sink.
“You bitch if I make the coffee. You bitch if I don’t,” Lucy retorted.
“Because you refuse to follow directions.”
Temple gave a long-suffering sigh from her perch on top of the kitchen step stool where she was eating half a thinly sliced apple. She’d slicked her hair into its customary long ponytail, a style that put her almond-shaped eyes and increasingly sharp cheekbones on full display. She’d been on the island a little over six weeks. The fleshy cushion beneath her chin had disappeared, and her long, toned legs testified to her hard work. But instead of being happy, she’d grown tenser, more short-tempered, sadder.
“Your directions,” Lucy said to him.
“Which work a hell of a lot better than whatever it is you’re doing,” he retorted.
“In your opinion.”
“Children!” Temple exclaimed. “Do not make me spank.”
“Let me,” Panda drawled.
Lucy curled her lip at him and left the kitchen to take
the kayak out. She resented the tension between them. She wanted the fun back. Without fun, what was the point of this affair?
She was glad when the water got so choppy she had to focus all her attention on paddling.
TEMPLE APPEARED FOR DINNER THAT night in a clean version of the workout clothes she wore all day. Her body was muscular perfection. Her black racer-back top exposed arms with every tendon defined, and her matching Spandex shorts rode low enough to showcase a hollowed-out, muscle-rippled abdomen. She and Panda together were a matched set—both of them overexercised, restless, and surly.
Lucy muttered something about two nutcases on human growth hormones. Temple glanced at Lucy’s waist and made a reference to an aimless loser with middle-aged spread. Panda growled at them both to shut up so he could eat tonight’s crap in peace.
Unlike Panda, Lucy had no complaints about the underseasoned frozen beef stew—thanks to the sweet potato fries and giant sugar cookie she’d downed in town. Temple began a halfhearted lecture about the link between childhood illnesses and adult immunity, and when she asked Panda if he’d ever had chicken pox. Lucy couldn’t resist butting in. “Privacy intrusion. Panda doesn’t talk about his past.”
“And that galls you,” Panda retorted. “You won’t be satisfied until you know everybody’s business.”
But he wasn’t everybody. He was her lover.
“He’s right, Lucy,” Temple said. “You do like to poke around in other people’s heads.”
Panda flipped sides by pointing a fork at his employer. “Somebody needs to poke around in yours. The longer you’re here, the bitchier you get.”
“That’s a lie,” Temple retorted. “I’ve always been bitchy.”
“Not this bitchy,” Lucy said. “You’ve lost twenty pounds, and—”
“Twenty-four,” Temple said defiantly. “No thanks to either of you. Do you have any idea how depressing it is listening to you snarl at each other?”
“Our snarling doesn’t have anything to do with your problem,” Lucy said. “You have a textbook case of body dysmorphia.”
“Ewww … ,” Temple scoffed. “Big words.”
Lucy shoved away her plate. “You look fantastic everywhere except inside your head.”
“In your opinion.” Temple made a dismissive gesture toward her own body. “You can spin it any way you want, but I’m still fat!”
“When will you not be fat?” Lucy cried. “What ridiculous number has to flash on the scale you carry around in your head to finally make you feel okay?”
Temple licked her fingers. “I can’t believe Miss Porky is lecturing me about weight.”
Panda didn’t like that. “She’s not porky.”
Lucy ignored him. “Your body is beautiful, Temple. There’s not an inch of you that jiggles.”
“Unlike your hips,” Temple shot back, but without any real sting.
Lucy gazed at her untouched plate with disgust. “My hips will be just fine as soon as I can eat like a normal person again.”
Temple turned to Panda. “She’s some kind of alien. How can she gain twenty pounds and not have it make her crazy?”
“I haven’t gained twenty pounds,” Lucy retorted. “Ten max.” But sweet potato fries and sugar cookies weren’t her real enemy. Her enemy was the guilt she felt over the pages she hadn’t written, the family she was virtually ignoring, and the panic she experienced whenever she thought about leaving Charity Island.
Panda pushed back from the table. “If you’ll both excuse me, I’m going outside to shoot myself.”
“Do it near the water,” Lucy said, “so we don’t have to clean up after you.”
She and Temple finished their sad excuse for dinner in glum silence. Temple stared out the window, and Lucy picked at the kitchen table’s vomitous green paint.
LATE THE NEXT AFTERNOON, AS Lucy pulled some weeds by the porch and contemplated a trip to a bar in town so she could work on her reverse bucket list, she heard a car pull into the driveway. It didn’t sound like one of their regular delivery vans. She set aside her trowel and went around the house to investigate.
A woman with short, bright red hair and a stocky figure stepped out of a silver Subaru. She wore a loose-fitting white top, serviceable tan capris that would have looked better on someone with longer legs, and athletic sandals. A chunk of turquoise hung from a leather cord around her neck, and silver rings flashed on her fingers. Lucy nodded in greeting and waited for the woman to identify herself. Before that could happen, the front door opened and Mr. Bodyguard stepped out.
The woman turned away from Lucy to face him. “Patrick Shade?”
He stopped at the top of the steps. “Can I help you?” he said, without answering her question.
She came around to the front of her car. “I’m looking for a friend.”
He nodded toward Lucy. “Unless you’re looking for one of us, you have the wrong house.”
“She’s here. I know she is.”
Their visitor’s stocky build reminded Lucy that Temple had enemies. What if this woman were a disgruntled former client? Or a Fat Island television viewer turned stalker?
Panda kept himself firmly planted between the visitor and the door.
“It took me weeks to find her,” the woman said stubbornly. “I’m not going away.”
He moved slowly down the steps. “This is private property.”
He hadn’t raised his voice, but that didn’t make him any less intimidating. She backed against the car, more desperate than threatening. “I have to see her.”
“You need to go now.”
“Just tell her I’m here. Please. Tell her Max is here.”
Max? Lucy stared. This was Max?
But Panda didn’t seem surprised by the woman’s revelation. Was he wearing his professional poker face or had he known all along that the person Temple pined for was a woman?
Of course he’d known. Someone as thorough as Panda wouldn’t let a detail like that escape him.
The woman turned toward the house and shouted, “Temple! Temple, it’s Max! Don’t do this. Come out and talk to me!”
Her pain was so visceral Lucy felt it in her own heart. Surely Temple would hear her and come out. But no sound came from the house, no movement. The door stayed shut. Lucy couldn’t stand it. She cut around the side and entered through the back.
She found Temple upstairs in her bedroom standing off to the side of the front window where she could watch the driveway without being spotted. “Why did she have to come here?” She sounded both fierce and broken. “I hate her.”
Everything Lucy hadn’t understood was now clear. “No, you don’t. You love her.”
A lock of Temple’s hair came out of her clip as she spun around, every muscle of her overexercised body taut. “What do you know about anything?”
“I know this has been tearing you apart all summer.”
“It’ll get better. It’s simply a matter of time.”
“Why did you break up?”
Temple’s nostrils flared. “Don’t be naïve. Do you think I want the world to know that I—I fell in love with another woman?”
“You’ll hardly be the first celebrity trainer to come out of the closet. I doubt it’ll ruin your career.”
“It’ll ruin me.”
“How? I don’t understand.”
“This is not what I want to be.”
“A lesbian?”
Temple flinched.
Lucy threw up her hands. “Jeez, Temple, welcome to the twenty-first century. People fall in love.”
“Easy for you to say. You fell in love with a man.”
For a moment Lucy actually thought she was talking about Panda, but then she realized Temple must mean Ted. “We don’t always choose whom we fall in love with. Lots of women are lesbians.”
Her lip curled, even as her eyes were shiny with unshed tears. “I’m not lots of women. I’m Temple Renshaw.”
“And that puts you a cut above ordinary humans?”
/>
“I don’t settle for second best. It’s not how I’m made.”
“Do you really think Max is second best?”
“Max is wonderful,” she said fiercely. “The best person I’ve ever known.”
“Then what?”
Temple remained stubbornly silent, but Lucy wouldn’t let her get away with that. “Go ahead and say it.”
“I don’t have to. Political correctness doesn’t change the reality. Homosexuality is a defect. A flaw.”
“Got it. You’re too perfect to be gay.”
“I’m not talking to you about this any longer.”
Lucy was filled with pity. The standards Temple had set for herself were impossible for anyone to meet. No wonder she was miserable.
Tires crunched in the gravel. Temple closed her eyes and leaned back against the curtain. Lucy looked out the window. “Congratulations. The best person you’ve ever known just drove away.”
PANDA WAS SAWING AT A dead tree and spoiling for a fight when Lucy came out to talk to him. “I suppose you think I should have told you about Max, too?” he said.
“Yes, but I also understand client confidentiality. I know—”
A loud crash came from the house. He threw down the saw and raced inside. Lucy ran after him. As she reached the front hallway, she heard thuds coming from overhead, then something slamming against the floor. She followed him up the steps.
Temple stood in the middle of the gym, eyes wild, hair undone, the destruction of her prison-kingdom all around her. An overturned weight bench, scattered floor-mats, a hole in the wall. Temple snatched up a ten-pound weight and was about to hurl it through the window when Panda grabbed her.
It was a battle of the gods. Hercules versus Xena Warrior Princess. But as strong as she was, he was far stronger, and it didn’t take long for him to pinion her against his chest.
All the fight went out of her. When he finally released her, she collapsed at his feet. He shot Lucy a silent appeal for help, and she did the only thing she could think of.
Her bread was hidden in the den where Panda could get to it. She’d baked it just that afternoon at the cottage. She carried it to the kitchen where she unwrapped it, cut off the chewy heel, and drizzled it with honey from the jar she’d hidden in the cupboard.