The Great Escape

Chapter Fourteen

I DON’T SEE WHY WE HAVE to go to church,” Toby said.

“Take it up with your best friend Big Mike.” Bree knew she sounded petty, but she couldn’t help herself. She slipped into her only remaining pair of heels, strappy bronze stilettos that would make her as tall as Mike. As a bonus, she could always use the heels to stab any serpents that might escape during the worship service.

For the past five days, she’d tried to come up with a way to get out of this, but Mike had backed her into a corner. As long as she was responsible for Toby, she couldn’t afford to have Mike blackball her in the community, something he was perfectly capable of doing. He was a big man outside, but inside, he was small and petty, and he had years of practice manipulating people to do what he wanted.

“We have to go to church because of the way you act so mean to Big Mike,” Toby said. “I’ll bet he thinks you’re going to hell.”

Already there.

Just then Mike’s red Cadillac pulled into the drive. She still couldn’t figure out the best way to warn Toby to keep his guard up. “Mike’s been nice to you,” she said tentatively, “but… sometimes people aren’t always exactly the way they seem.”

He shot her a look that branded her the dumbest person on earth and dashed out the door, the tail of his plaid shirt flapping. So much for good intentions.

She’d tucked her hair into a fashionably untidy bun to accompany one of the few dresses she hadn’t put up for consignment, a sleeveless caramel sheath she’d accessorized with costume hoop earrings. Her arms still felt bare without her bangles. She’d sold all her good jewelry months ago, along with her two-carat engagement ring. As for her wedding ring… The night Scott had left her, she’d driven to the club and thrown it in the pond by the eighteenth green.

Mike hopped out of the car to open the door for her. She handed him the computer laptop he’d given her. “Thank you,” she said stiffly, “but I’m sure you can find a better use for this.”

Toby clambered into the backseat. The interior smelled of good leather with only the faintest trace of Mike’s cologne. She cracked open a window anyway to get some air.

Mike set the computer in the backseat without commenting. Even before they pulled out onto the highway, Toby started chattering about his bike. When he finally paused for breath, Mike said, “Why don’t you ride it in the Fourth of July parade tomorrow?”

“Could I?” Toby asked Mike, not her.

“Sure.” Mike glanced over at Bree. “We finished work on my float yesterday. This year’s theme is ‘Island in the Sun.’”

“Catchy.” How she’d once loved the way this parade marked the beginning of another magical island summer.

“I always have the biggest float,” he bragged. “Hey, why don’t you ride on it?”

“I’ll pass.”

Mike shook his head and grinned, no better at picking up on social cues than he’d ever been. “Remember the year you and Star talked your way onto the Rotary float? Star fell off the back, and Nate Lorris nearly ran her over with his tractor?”

She and Star had laughed until they’d both wet their pants. “No. I don’t remember.”

“Sure you do. Star was always angling for a way to get the two of you on a float.”

She’d always managed it, too. They’d ridden on floats for Dogs ’N’ Malts, Maggie’s Fudge Shop, the Knights of Columbus, and the old barbecue joint that had burned down. Once Star had even gotten them onto the Boy Scouts’ float.

Toby piped up from the rear. “Gram said my mom was worthless.” He delivered this statement so matter-of-factly that Bree was taken aback, but Mr. Salesman had an answer for everything.

“Your gram said that out of sadness. Your mom was restless, and sometimes she could be a little immature, but she wasn’t worthless.”

Toby kicked the back of the seat with no particular venom. “I hate her.”

Toby’s antipathy for his mother was disturbing, even though Bree felt the same. Although lately her resentment toward Star had begun to seem more like the dregs of an old head cold than a full-blown attack of the flu.

Once again, Mike stepped into the breach. “You didn’t know your mother, Toby. Sure she had her faults-we all do-but there were a lot more good things about her.”

“Like running out on me and Gram and my dad?”

“She had this thing called postpartum depression. Sometime women get it after they have babies. I’m sure she didn’t mean to stay away for long.”

Myra had never said anything to Bree about postpartum depression. She’d said Star couldn’t stand being stuck with a baby and had run away so she could “cat around.”

As they reached town, Bree hoped the subject of Star was closed, but bigmouthed Mike couldn’t leave it alone. “Your mom and Bree were best friends. I bet Bree can tell you lots of good things about your mom.”

Bree stiffened.

“I bet she can’t,” Toby said.

She had to say something. Anything. She forced her jaw to move. “Your mother was… very beautiful. We… all wanted to look like her.”

“That’s true.” The glance Mike darted at her held unmistakable reproof. Mike Moody, the master of misdeeds, was judging her for not coming up with something more meaningful, but Toby didn’t seem to notice.

They’d reached the church. The Episcopal church. The largest and most respectable congregation on Charity Island.

Bree looked at Mike. “Serpents and speaking in tongues?”

He grinned. “It could happen.”

A joke at her expense. Still, some of her tension began to fade.

BREE HAD ATTENDED THE METHODIST church as a child, but organized religion with all its unanswered questions had eventually felt too burdensome, and she’d stopped not long after she got married. Mike found seats for them off to the side beneath a stained-glass window of Jesus blessing the multitudes.

As she relaxed into the rhythm of the service, her mood began to lift. For now anyway there were no beehives, no tomato plants to water or weeds to pull. No customers to entice or young boy to disappoint. The possibility that she might not be alone on this planet, that something larger might be watching out for her, gave her a fragile comfort.

Occasionally Mike’s arm, big and solid in a navy suit coat, brushed against hers. As long as she didn’t look at his gold-link bracelet or big college ring, she could pretend he was someone else-one of those steadfast, dependable men with solid values and a faithful heart. He closed his eyes for the prayers, listened attentively to the sermon, and sang the first verses of every hymn without consulting the hymnal.

After the service, he worked the crowd, slapping the men on the back, flattering the women, telling one of the deacons about a house going on the market, turning church into another sales opportunity. Everybody sucked up to him, except it didn’t exactly seem that way. They acted as if they genuinely liked him. The adult Mike Moody was beginning to confuse her, although he still didn’t seem to have any clue about how patronizing he could be, since he called an elderly woman “young lady.” On the other hand, he noticed the distress of a kid on crutches and rushed to help her before anyone else realized there was a problem. It was disconcerting.

He introduced her to everyone. A few of the parishioners remembered her family. One of the women remembered her. People were both friendly and intrusive. How was Toby doing? How long did she intend to stay on the island? Did she know the cottage’s roof leaked? Marriage had made her guarded. She sidestepped their probing as best she could, a process made easier by Mike’s garrulousness.

She learned he was chairman of the island’s biggest charity. Both admirable and good promotion for his business, since it kept his face plastered on all the fund-raising literature. He also sponsored Little League and soccer teams in every age group, ensuring that dozens of island kids were his walking advertisements.

“How about some lunch?” he asked Toby as they climbed back into his car. “The Island Inn or Rooster’s?”

“Can we go to the Dogs ’N’ Malts?” Toby asked.

Mike glanced at Bree, taking her in from head to toe. “Bree’s all dressed up. Let’s take her someplace nice.”

She didn’t want to be indebted to Mike for lunch or mountain bikes or notebook computers. She didn’t want to be indebted to him for anything. “Not today,” she said briskly as he turned the key in the ignition. “I need to start melting beeswax for candles.”

Toby predictably took issue. “That’s not fair. You spoil everything.”

“Now, boy, there’s no need to be disrespectful,” Mike replied.

“Please stop calling him boy,” she said tightly.

Mike glanced over at her.

Toby kicked the back of her seat. “I’m a kid. Mike’s my friend. He can call me whatever he wants.”

Toby was David’s son, and she wasn’t backing down on this one. “No, he can’t.” As she looked over her shoulder at him, she saw Star’s thickly lashed golden brown eyes staring back at her. “That word has a negative connotation-a bad association-in the African-American community.”

Mike flinched, finally catching on, but Toby grew more belligerent. “So what? I don’t live in the African-American community. I live on Charity Island.”

How had she, the whitest of white women, become responsible for instilling racial pride in David Wheeler’s son?

Mike, who’d started the whole thing, concentrated on pulling out of the parking lot. She plodded on. “White people used to call black men-even elderly men-‘boy.’ It was a way of making them feel inferior. It’s very insensitive.”

Toby thought about it for a moment and, no surprise, curled his lip at her. “Mike’s my friend. He didn’t mean to be insensitive. That’s just the way he is.”

Mike shook his head. “No, Bree’s right. I apologize, Toby. I keep forgetting.”

Forgetting to deal with his racism or forgetting Toby was half African-American?

“So what?” Toby muttered. “I’m white, too, and I don’t see what’s the big deal.”

“The big deal,” she said stubbornly, “is that your father was proud of his heritage, and I want you to feel the same way.”

“If he was so proud, why did he marry my mom?”

Because Star had always wanted whatever Bree had.

“Your dad was crazy about your mom,” Mike said. “And she was just as crazy about him, right up to the end. Your mom could make your dad laugh like nobody else, and he got her to read books she wouldn’t have picked up otherwise. I wish you could have seen the way they looked at each other. Like nobody else existed.”

He might as well have slapped her. And he wasn’t done. “It took them a while to realize how much they loved each other,” he said, an unfamiliar toughness clipping his words. “At first Bree was your dad’s girlfriend, but let me tell you, he never looked at her the way he looked at your mother.”

The real Mike Moody, with his calculated cruelty, had finally resurfaced. He kept his eyes on the road. “We’ll drop Bree off at the cottage so she can get her work done, and then I’ll take you to Dogs ’N’ Malts. That okay with you, Bree?”

All she could manage was the barest nod.

As soon as she was inside, she sagged down on the couch and stared blindly at the Siamese cats on the mantel. She’d spent more time lately thinking about her youthful love affair than the demise of her ten-year marriage. But her affair with David had such a clear beginning and end, while the course of her marriage had been so very murky.

She slipped her heels off. The sandals she wore every day had left tan marks on her bare feet. Not that she had much of a tan. This was as dark as she got, a touch of honey and a few more freckles, which made it even more ironic that she’d been charged with raising a young black male.

Despite what she’d told Mike and Toby, she wasn’t ready to tackle melting beeswax today, so after she’d changed clothes, she found paper and began sketching some ideas for handmade note cards. But her heart wasn’t in it, and she couldn’t come up with anything she liked. Eventually she heard Toby burst into the house and head for his room. She listened for the sound of the Cadillac pulling away from the cottage. It didn’t come.

“I know you’re mad at me, but what’s new, right?” Mike said from the doorway.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She got up from the table.

In his businessman’s navy suit, he seemed bigger than ever, and despite her own height, she felt as if he were looming over her. “What I told Toby about David and Star was true.”

She began gathering up her drawing materials. “Only to you.”

He tugged absentmindedly on his necktie. “You want to believe you and David were Romeo and Juliet, but the truth is, you were a rich white girl from Grosse Pointe, and he was a black kid from Gary.” He shifted his car keys from one hand to the other. “David was fascinated by you, but he never loved you.”

She stuffed the notepad in the junk drawer. “Are you done?”

“It was different with Star.” Mike filled the room, sucking up her air. “Neither of them had money. They were both ambitious, charismatic, maybe a little ruthless. They understood each other in ways you and David couldn’t.”

“Then why did she leave?” The junk drawer banged as she shoved it in. “If they were such passionate lovers, why did Star run off?”

“He took a job in Wisconsin after she’d begged him not to. She always hated it when he was gone, and she wanted to punish him. I doubt she planned on being gone for long. She sure didn’t count on sliding off the road and going through the ice in that drainage canal.”

Bree wasn’t buying it. “They found a man in the car with her.”

“A drifter. She was always picking people up. My guess is he was hitchhiking.”

She didn’t want to believe his story. She wanted to believe what Myra had told her, that Star had gotten bored with David and left him for good. Shame curled in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t know why you keep bringing all this up. It happened years ago. It means nothing to me.”

He knew that wasn’t true, but he didn’t argue. “I’m a religious man,” he said matter-of-factly. “I believe in sin, and I believe in repentance. I’ve made amends as best as I know how, but it hasn’t changed anything.”

“And it won’t.”

His gold bracelet caught a stray sunbeam, and he nodded, not so much at her, more to himself, as if he’d made a decision. “I’m going to leave you alone from now on.”

“Right.” She didn’t believe it. Mike never left anyone alone.

In the old days, he’d avoided meeting anyone’s eyes. Not now. And something in his steady gaze threw her off balance. “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me stay in touch with Toby,” he said with an unsettling dignity. “I should have checked with you before I told him he could ride his bike in the parade. I have a bad habit of charging ahead without thinking things through.” A matter-of-fact statement, neither hiding his flaws nor beating himself up for them. “The parade steps off at ten. He needs to be in the school parking lot by nine. I’d come get him, but I’m head of the committee, and I have to be there early.”

She studied a worn spot on her sandal. “I can handle it.”

“All right.”

That was it. No salesman’s pitch to win her over. No bribes of Lemonheads, Skittles, or Eskimo pies. He called out a brief good-bye to Toby and then he was gone, leaving her with the uneasy feeling that she was now truly on her own.

Ridiculous. He’d be back. Mike Moody always came back, whether you wanted him to or not.