The girl is beautiful and she has a grace you can’t discern from a picture. She is light-skinned, her hair gathered in a frizzy ponytail. She has brown eyes, but her nose and smile are all Russ, and more than Russ, they’re Milly. Looking at Maia is like looking at Milly at age twelve, if Milly were half West Indian.
Irene needs to get a grip, offer everyone a drink and put out some snacks, but she is hobbled by thoughts of Milly. When she goes home—which will be very soon, maybe as soon as the weekend—she will go to see Milly. That morning, she decided that she needs to tell Milly the truth: Russ is dead, Russ had a home and a second family down in the Caribbean. Irene lectured the boys about not keeping secrets, and she can’t be hypocritical. Milly needs to know. Milly needs to know, too, that she has a granddaughter who so strongly resembles her.
“What would you like to drink?” Irene asks Maia.
“Ginger ale, please, if you have one,” Maia says, and she places a hand on her stomach. “I’m feeling a little green.”
Poor thing, Irene thinks as she pulls a ginger ale out of the fridge. This defines what it feels like to be thrown for a loop.
Winnie saunters into the kitchen, wagging her tail. She heads straight for Ayers, who bends down to rub Winnie under the chin. Irene isn’t quite sure who Ayers is or why she’s here. She’s a friend of Rosie’s, maybe? If so, she may have some of the answers Irene is looking for.
Cash says to Ayers, “You’ve never been to this house before?”
“Never,” Ayers says. “I didn’t even know where it was.”
“I’d never been here before, either,” Huck says. “Until the other night, when Irene invited me for dinner.”
“Really?” Baker says. “Didn’t either of you wonder…?”
“You’ve been here before, right, Maia?” Irene asks. She catches a warning look from Huck. He told her that under no circumstances was she to grill the child.
“Yep,” Maia says. “I have my own bedroom here, upstairs at the end of the hall.”
Irene knows she’s pushing her luck but she has to ask. “Do you have any idea what Russ did for a living? Who he worked for or what kind of business he was in?”
“Not really,” Maia says. “Money or something. All I know is he was away a lot.”
This last statement makes Irene laugh, but not in a funny ha-ha way. “You mean he was home a lot.”
Maia blinks, uncomprehending.
“At home in Iowa City,” Irene says. “With me. His wife. Us, his family…” She nearly says his real family, but she stops herself. She will not vent her anger at the girl. The girl is innocent.
She wants to ask, Did your mother know about me? Did she know about the woman she was betraying? Did she know about Baker and Cash, Anna and Floyd? Did. She. Know. Irene realizes she can’t ask; Huck will whisk Maia out of here faster than you can say Jiminy Cricket.
However, Maia is intuitive.
“My mother used to tell me that love was messy, complicated, and unfair.”
“Well,” Irene says. “She was right about that.”
“Amen,” Baker says.
“Amen,” Ayers says.
“Amen,” Cash says.
Winnie stands at the sliding door and barks.
AYERS
Thank God for dogs, she thinks. No matter how tense a situation humans find themselves in—and the situation in the kitchen of the Invisible Man’s villa, with his decidedly visible wife and his sons, Baker and Cash, is an eleven out of ten on the stress scale—a dog lightens the mood.
When Winnie enters the kitchen, she comes right over and buries her nose in Ayers’s crotch, her tail going haywire.
Everyone is trying to act normal, to pretend this visit isn’t completely messed up. Irene says she’d like to talk to Huck and Maia alone, and Baker takes the opportunity to invite Ayers outside. Cash follows with Winnie.
“Go away,” Baker says to him. “Please.”
“Cash can stay,” Ayers says. “I’d actually like to talk to you both.”
They wander over to the pool. There’s a shallow entry where they can all sit with their feet in the water. Winnie lies down between Ayers and Cash, and Ayers strokes her head.
“Let me start,” Baker says. “I owe you an apology.”
“Stop,” Ayers says. She marvels that her parents took her to the rice paddies of Vietnam, the red desert of the Australian outback, and the snow-capped peaks of the Swiss Alps, all with the aim of making her “worldly,” and still she has no idea how to negotiate this emotional landscape.
“Ayers is talking now, Baker,” Cash says. “Respect.”
“Thank you,” Ayers says. She bows her head and smells Mick’s scent on her clothes. When she’d gotten off the phone with Cash the afternoon before—You really shouldn’t be interested in either of us—she had flipped out. She had been blindsided. But once that piece clicked, everything else made sense.
Baker and Cash came to Rosie’s memorial lunch on purpose—because they wanted to gather intel on the woman their father was keeping on the side.
Even saying that phrase in her head fills Ayers with fury. Rosie was nothing more to Russell Steele than a side piece, a baby mama, an island wife. What can she think but that Russell Steele is a despicable human being? And yet she has to be careful, because he is Maia’s biological father. The Invisible Man is also the Pirate, which is sort of like finding out that Santa Claus is the Tooth Fairy.
“You’re both liars,” Ayers says. “Like your father.”
Cash holds up his palms as if to protest his guilt, and Ayers pounces. “Neither of you told me who you were at the memorial reception. You let me believe you were crashing.”
“We were crashing,” Baker says.
“And then I bumped into you on the Reef Bay Trail,” Ayers says to Cash. “Did you follow me there?”
“Follow you?” Cash says. “No, that was a coincidence.”
Ayers narrows her eyes.
“I swear,” Cash says. “I’ve never been here before, I’m an outdoors person, I wanted to get out of the house, see something, take Winnie for a walk. Bumping into you was totally random. How could I possibly have followed you?”
Fair enough, Ayers thinks. Maybe it was just really terrible luck. “But you came on Treasure Island because you wanted to ask me questions about Rosie. Admit it.”
“I came on Treasure Island because I wanted to see you,” Cash says. “Because I thought you were pretty—scratch that, I thought you were beautiful, and I thought you were cool. And you invited me.”
“Sheesh,” Baker says.
“And you!” Ayers says. “You were so much worse.”
“I admit, we went to the reception to do some detective work,” Baker says. “But when I saw you, Ayers… I could barely remember my own name. It was love at first sight.”
“You used me,” Ayers says. The sun is directly in her eyes so she squints, which suits her mood. “You say you like me, you say you love me, but both of you lied to me about who you were or weren’t. And the thing was… I knew something wasn’t right. I knew it.” She drops her voice. “I never met your father, but he spent years lying to my best friend. All I can think is not only did he have no scruples, he had no soul.”
“Whoa,” Baker says.
“She’s right,” Cash says. “I offer no excuses for my father. None.”
Ayers wants to land one more punch. “The two of you are just like him. You’re sneaky.”
“I called you and told you the truth,” Cash says.
“You did not,” Baker says. “I did.”
“You did?” Cash says. “I did, too.”
“Too little, way too late,” Ayers says. She never wants to see either of them again, and this really hurts because she liked them both. She’s also worried that she’ll never be rid of them now because they’re Maia’s brothers. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I’m back together with Mick.”
“No,” Baker says.
“Yes,” Ayers says. “I was with him last night.”
She relishes saying this, even though a part of her is ashamed about taking Mick back so readily. She called him, and he was at her house half an hour later with an order of oxtail stew from De’ Coal Pot, plus a side of pineapple rice, plus one perfect red hibiscus blossom, which he stuck in a juice glass. He’d begged her for another chance. He’d made a mistake and it would never happen again.