The Castaways

DELILAH

D elilah was the best storyteller, and so she would tell the story of Greg and April Peck, the whole sphere of it—Greg’s side, April’s side, Tess’s side. That was the only way to understand. To hear only Greg’s side or only April’s side was like taking one slice out of an apple and claiming the rest of it wasn’t rotten.

Delilah considered herself a neutral third party, a Switzerland, a safe place for either Tess or Greg to go. But really, it was so much more complicated than that. (The most frustrating thing about being an adult was, indeed, how complicated everything was. Throw a party, write a letter to the editor, buy your children a PlayStation—there would be consequences and repercussions you never expected.) The Greg-and-April-Peck story was complicated by the fact that Delilah was in love with Greg.

Okay, there, she’d said it.

She was in love with Greg MacAvoy, who was now dead. And would it be flattering herself to say that he had been in love with her, too? Halfway in love? Delilah had been his confidante, his almost-lover. They were always this close to crossing the line into that territory.

It had started in Vegas, at Le Cirque, with his hand on her foot and then trilling up the back of her leg. This had tipped her off: Greg was interested. His interest made her interested. His interest had, tangentially, been responsible for her taking the dining room manager position at the Begonia. She wanted to be close to Greg outside of the scope of their group friendship. How? The Scarlet Begonia. Delilah worked four nights a week, most of them nights when Greg played and sang. It was officially impossible to watch Greg up onstage with his dark hair flopping in his eyes and his vine tattoo encircling his biceps and his feet in deck shoes no matter what the weather and listen to him sing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and feel anything except powerless against his charms. Every woman in that bar, on any given night, would sleep with him. Delilah placed herself in a distinct category from these women; she was his friend.

But just admit it, Delilah!

No, it was more than that. To sleep with Greg MacAvoy would be a disaster. She had slept with his type before—nascent rock stars, athletes just off the winning field. They looked at Delilah like she was a juicy cheeseburger, they devoured her… and then they wiped their mouths with a napkin and walked away.

She wanted Greg to love her, to value her—someday—more than he valued Tess.

They hung out nearly every night after closing. Greg drank copiously and played a private concert for Delilah, Thom and Faith, Graham the bartender, and whoever else happened to be lingering. He and Delilah talked, he told her everything—or if not everything, then most things, things he did not tell Tess. It happened organically. They started talking about their kids. Barney had been only eight months old when Delilah went to work, the twins were a year and a half, Drew was two. Talking about the kids, after a few drinks, morphed into talking about their spouses. How long had it been before both of them realized there was no forbidden territory? Delilah complained: Jeffrey acts like my father! I did not want to marry my father! Greg complained: Tess treats me like one of the children! She thinks I am completely incompetent! They were simpatico in their restlessness. And where did this lead them? It led to nights when, at three in the morning, Delilah would drive Greg home. Greg would sometimes sit in the passenger seat oblivious to the world before stumbling to his front door, his guitar in its case banging into him like an inebriated sidekick. But he would sometimes direct Delilah to Cisco Beach, where they would watch the waves. Greg would tell her how much he wanted to touch her, kiss her, make love to her, and Delilah would stave him off. We can’t, it will end up in such a mess, our incredible friendship trashed, the guilt will kill you, you don’t think so now, but trust me.

A few nights he shushed her, his finger, callused from too many E minor chords, lightly touching her lips. And then he cupped his hand around her neck and pressed his face to her ear. He breathed into her until she thought, Okay. Just this one time, okay. But they had never so much as kissed. Not even one kiss. She held steady. Her body was the Hoover Dam, resisting the force of all that water. It could hurt. It would hurt Tess and Jeffrey and the four little children at home; it would hurt Greg and Delilah’s friendship. Once Greg had her, he would weary of her. It wouldn’t be as great as he hoped. Whereas to keep him at bay, to keep him always wanting this thing that was just beyond his reach, was to hold him captive.

He sent her love notes on cocktail napkins and cardboard coasters: You look beautiful tonight. Will you run away with me? He made her CDs and left them in her car; he sent her text messages from school: U staying late 2nite? He dedicated songs from the stage: This one’s for you, Ash (because her maiden name was Ashby). He told her dirty jokes, he noticed when she got a pedicure. He said, You are my best friend. When they were all together, the eight of them, the group, he sent her a signal—two fingers, crossed. You and me, babe.

Then came April Peck.

Greg had a day job. He was the high school music teacher. It should not have been allowed—to put someone so goddamn good-looking, with so much magnetism and talent, in that position. But there it was. Greg taught music appreciation to all ninth-graders, he taught guitar to juniors and seniors (this was mostly boys), and he directed the exclusive all-girls a capella group, the High Priorities. It was the girls who were the problem. These were girls with voices like angels, with perfect pitch. When a girl made it into the High Priorities—it was fiercely competitive; tryouts were the first week of May every year, and the whole student body held its breath to find out who made it—she stayed until she graduated. The High Priorities, the twelve of them, were Greg’s darlings. They were all in love with Greg; that was no secret. They were his groupies, his harem. They baked him cookies, they left elaborate illustrated notes like “We a?? U, Mr. Mac!” on his chalkboard while he was at lunch, they endured painful scales and voice exercises (“Red leather, yellow leather!”) . They memorized lyrics in twenty-four hours. Greg lifted his hands and they sang; he brought his hands down and they stopped.

All the girls were beautiful. Even if they were heavy (and yes, it did seem like the best singers were heavy) or had acne or wore braces or their toes turned in. They were all beautiful when they were onstage in their white jeans and pink cashmere twinsets. They were sassy and sexy, they were luminous, aglow. So much feminine beauty and energy and talent, those bodies blossoming, those hearts unfolding, the desire and the jealousy and the yearning for praise, for distinction and admiration—God, it was a time bomb. Delilah had warned Greg about this: all those girls with their raging hormones, their new breasts, their asses squeezed into skin-tight jeans, all falling over themselves to make Greg MacAvoy happy, to be chosen for solos, to sing like a nightingale. It would get him in trouble one day. He had to be careful.

But Greg was careful. Delilah had for years watched him be careful. He taught his girls to sing together, to practice blending their voices. Harmony! he shouted. Listen to one another! He agonized over who to give solos to; he never played favorites. You’re all my favorites , he told them again and again. You’re all my highest priority.

But teenage girls were fragile. They were both brave and stupid. They were innocent and cunning. A few girls, over the years, had fallen so in love with Greg they nearly drowned in it. Greg was always kind, always firm, always funny and avuncular. You feel this way now, but you’ll get over it. You’ll grow up and shine your light and I will seem very small and faraway to you, I promise.

Sometimes the girls showed up at the Begonia “for dinner” in low-cut tops and lower-cut jeans, and when Delilah told them, at ten when the kitchen closed, that they had to leave because they were underage, they—well, they whined. I want to see Mr. Mac play. Just one song. Please? Delilah had small children at home, she knew how to deal with whiners. Off you go. Come back when you’re twenty-one.

They really love you, Delilah said to Greg.

Yes, he said. But do you?

Delilah swatted him, sashayed away. People talked about Greg and those girls, but the crushes were innocent and funny; it was an after-school special.

Until April Peck.

Why April Peck and not some other girl? Like anything, most of it was timing. Delilah had sensed things coming to a head between Greg and Tess. He complained about Tess all the time, and his complaints were angry and mean-spirited. He and Tess were in a rut—sexually and emotionally. The summer had brought the Debacle of the Roof. (Greg dwelled on the roof more than Delilah thought necessary. It was a home improvement project! Could it really fell a marriage?) Tess and Greg had had some serious leaking in the spring rains, and they’d discovered they needed a new roof. They were quoted a price of thirty-seven thousand dollars to replace the roof, which they couldn’t afford. Greg decided to replace the roof himself. He hired two Lithuanian day laborers; he bought twenty-two bundles of shingles at Marine Home Center. He rented the tools and the ladders, and with a DIY website as his professional reference, he got to work. They spent a week getting the old shingles off and a thousand dollars dropping them at the dump, then another two weeks reshingling in the brutal July sun, only to discover that the roof still leaked and had to be torn off and redone by professionals. Tess did not handle this well. There was a lot of innuendo about the roof caving in on the marriage, literally and figuratively. By the time school started in September, Tess and Greg were depleted, stressed out, and sick of each other.

There had been a lot of drives to Cisco Beach to talk that September, a lot of Greg pushing and Delilah resisting. He grew belligerent.

You don’t care about me.

Because I won’t sleep with you, I don’t care about you? Even you, Greg MacAvoy, are too emotionally mature to believe that.

I need… he said.

What? she said.

Something, he said.

April Peck was a senior. She had lived on Nantucket for two years. She lived with her mother in a huge beach house owned by her mother’s parents. There was a father and a brother in New York City. A bad divorce, apparently.

The night in question was October 23, a Sunday night. According to Greg, things at home had been okay: they were having a fire, Tess had roasted a chicken, football was on. Tess wanted to read the rest of the Sunday paper and watch 60 Minutes, and she had to make the kids’ lunches and get her lesson plans straight for the week. Chloe had a fever of 100.7—not anything to worry about, but still. They, the MacAvoys, had not gone over to Delilah and Jeffrey’s house for cocktails and a six-foot sub for the usual Sunday afternoon drunken free-for-all because of Chloe’s fever. If she had something, Tess didn’t want her to pass it on to the other kids. Tess also didn’t want Chloe to get run down. They were staying home, Tess had told Delilah over the phone, to have a “family night.” Delilah had been disappointed and a little hurt—weren’t they all family?

Greg had not wanted to stay home. He loved their friends and the tradition of the free-for-all Sundays. He loved Delilah and Jeffrey’s house, he adored Delilah’s cooking (her repertoire was straight off a sports bar menu—stuffed potato skins, Reuben sandwiches), he loved taking his guitar and getting everyone singing. Sundays, he said, were the days that made him glad to be alive—the drinking, the music, their friends, the kids running around. He could not believe they were turning down a Sunday just because Chloe felt a little warm.

“A hundred point seven is more than just ‘a little warm,’” Tess said.

Greg huffed and considered slamming around the house to demonstrate how pissed off he was, but then he got the great idea that he would put the kids to bed and head over to Jeffrey and Delilah’s alone. He switched immediately into model parent mode. He got the kids in the bath, he gave Chloe a dose of Motrin, he supervised the tooth-brushing and hunkered down with them through three chapters of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Downstairs, Tess finished the newspaper, made herself a cup of chamomile tea, and watched 60 Minutes.

Greg came down from reading to the kids, but he did not speak to Tess. If he told her he was going to Jeffrey and Delilah’s, they would fight. He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to be free. He felt like he was shackled to the house. He opened the fridge and got a beer.

Tess said, “Are the kids asleep?”

Greg said, “What do you think?”

He was angry. And resentful. He felt like a sullen teenager that Tess had grounded.

“Go over there if you want,” she said.

He did not appreciate the way she’d read his mind. She was so sure she was always one step ahead of him. He said, “I’m going into work.”

“Work?” she said.

“I want to play,” he said. “If I play here, I’ll wake up the kids.”

Sheer brilliance. Tess did not like it when Greg played the guitar or the piano at night because the kids did wake up, every time. They loved to listen to him, and would not go back to sleep until he was finished.

“Fine,” said Tess, and Greg left.

Greg’s official version of what happened that night went as follows: He arrived at the school; he played the piano in his room. He figured he had been playing for an hour or so when April Peck walked in. She was wet, he said. Her blond hair was matted and dripping; the soles of her shoes squeaked against the tile floor. When Greg looked out the window, he saw that it had started to rain. Then he realized April was upset; she was crying. She was wearing a jean jacket and a denim miniskirt. The jean jacket was soaked. April took it off and laid it across his piano. Underneath her jacket she wore a white T-shirt, which was also wet. He looked down at his hands, arched over the keys. (In the unedited version, he told Delilah he knew right then that he was in trouble.) He stopped playing.

He said, “What are you doing here, April? It’s nine o’clock.”

April said, still crying, “Play me something.”

Greg said, “You don’t belong in the school after-hours without a reason. Do you have a way home, or would you like me to call your mother?”

April said, “I don’t have a way home. Derek dropped me.”

“Why did he drop you here? ”

“I saw the light on in your room. I thought you would be here.”

Greg said, “I’m going to call your mother and have her come get you.”

April broke into hysterical sobs. In Greg’s words, she threw herself into Greg’s arms. ( Meaning what? Delilah asked. Meaning he was sitting on the piano bench and she lobbed herself into his lap. So she was sitting on your lap? Sort of, yes. It was awkward. I was trying to get her up, get her off me. ) Her white T-shirt was wet and she “did not seem to be wearing a bra.” He said he “patted” April’s back and then tried to ease her up. Up onto your feet! he said. Let’s go. He said she put her arms around his neck and pressed her breasts against his shoulder. He said he jumped up with such force that he dumped April onto the ground and she bumped her shin on the leg of the piano. She howled in pain, even though it was just a bump and couldn’t have hurt that much.

She said, “I just want to talk to you.”

Greg said again, “You don’t belong here.”

She said, “I want you to take me somewhere.”

Greg said, “I’m calling your mother.” He dug out the phone book, but the number wasn’t listed under Peck. The house belonged to April’s grandparents. Greg asked April for the number; she would not tell him. Greg picked April’s jean jacket up off the piano and found her cell phone in the pocket. He scrolled through it for her home number. April grabbed for her cell phone, he held it up over his head, and in trying to get the phone back from Greg, she scratched his face. He gave her the cell phone and said, “Fine. You deal with it, then.” The scratch on his face was bleeding. He ushered April out of the room, turned off the light, locked the door, and headed down the corridor, leaving April behind. April followed him, crying, pleading. Take me home. Please don’t call my mother. She thinks I’m here with you, practicing.

“What?” Greg said. He was very, very angry now. He was afraid, too, and incredulous. What must April’s mother think about a so-called practice at nine o’clock on a Sunday night? Greg said, “I can’t take you home, I’ve been drinking.” As soon as he said it, he realized it was a huge mistake, and it was at that point that he wondered if April had been drinking or if she was on something. He hurried out to his car in the rain. Parked next to him was the car he knew to be April’s, a white Jeep Cherokee. He said he peered into the front seat to check that it was indeed April’s car, and he saw a bra lying across the driver’s seat. He got into his car and drove home, leaving April in the rain in front of the school, crying.

He should have gone home, he said. He should have crawled into bed next to Tess and told her exactly what had happened. But he did not do that, because he did not want to go home to Tess, and he knew that if he told her what had happened, she would blow a gasket. She would find something wrong with the way he’d handled things (indeed, he felt he’d handled things badly, but the situation had been impossible). Tess would berate him, they would fight. Which was why he’d left home in the first place.

So he went to Jeffrey and Delilah’s. Everyone was still there: Addison and Phoebe, the Chief and Andrea. Delilah was buzzed; she’d shrieked enthusiastically when he walked in. She fixed him a plate of food, which he was too agitated to consider eating, but he sucked down a cocktail pronto.

Jeffrey said, “Where’ve you been?”

Addison said, “It’s Phoebe’s Packers, so we decided to stay.”

Andrea said, “Where’s Tess?”

“Home with the kids,” Greg said. “Chloe has a little fever.”

Jeffrey said, “Are you okay? You look terrible.”

They all turned to look at him. This, he told Delilah, was the moment when he should have told them what happened. Full disclosure.

“What happened to your face?” Andrea said. She inspected the place where April had scratched him. “You’re bleeding.”

He didn’t know what to say. At that moment the real story seemed grotesque and not remotely feasible. “The goddamn cherry tree in my yard,” he said. “I didn’t see the branch.”

Andrea gave him a funny look. She didn’t believe him. She thought something else had happened. She thought… what? That Tess had scratched him? Now was the time to set things straight, but Greg didn’t want to lend his encounter with April Peck any more energy than it already had. Was there a crime in that?

So he lied. And lying begat more lying.

“It’s fine,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I think I might be coming down with a little something myself.”

The following afternoon April Peck filed a complaint with the superintendent’s office.

April’s story went like this: She had left a book that she really needed in her locker, and she had swung by school to pick it up. Luckily, the men’s basketball team was playing and the door to the school was open. Since April’s boyfriend, Derek, who had graduated the year before, played in the men’s league, she stopped by the gym to look for him, but he wasn’t there. She saw a light on in the music room, peeked through the window, saw Mr. Mac, and decided to say hi.

She said it had been raining and Mr. Mac encouraged her to take off her wet jacket. She said Greg patted the spot next to him on the piano bench. “I’ll play you something,” he said.

She said she declined. She told him she had just come by to say hi. She had to pick up her book and get home to study.

He said, “Won’t you just stay and listen to one song? No one at home wants to listen to me play.”

She said she didn’t want to, but she agreed. She said she felt self-conscious without her jacket on because her T-shirt was so wet it was see-through and she wasn’t wearing a bra. She said that the song Mr. Mac played, “Tiny Dancer,” made her uncomfortable. She said he was more than singing it. He was singing it to her in a way that seemed to mean something. April said when she went to stand up, Mr. Mac stopped playing, grabbed her arm, and kissed her. She said he tasted like beer. She said he touched one of her breasts through the wet T-shirt. She said she could tell he had an erection. He said, “I know why you came here.” She turned to leave—to run!—and stumbled over the piano bench. She said he reached out for her, saying, Please don’t leave . I need… I need… I need ... He had her by the arm again. She said she was afraid, so she scratched him, hard, on the face. She dashed out of the room, out of the school, to her car. She said as she pulled away, Mr. Mac was standing in the rain, calling her name.

Delilah heard the two stories, in tandem, on Monday night. Delilah was horrified. She was—how else could she say it?—crushed.

Jeffrey said, “We have to support Greg in this. He needs us. This is going to blow up into one of those huge, ugly stories that ruins his reputation.”

Jeffrey was, as ever, correct. The stories traveled around the island like an infectious disease. Everyone was talking about it. Delilah knew this because for the remainder of the week, wherever she went—the post office, dry cleaners, Stop they had traveled to Italy and Luxembourg.

And there was the chief of police factor.

And what the administration knew that no one else did was that the high school phys ed teacher, Bob Casey, had long been complaining to the superintendent’s office that April Peck was lascivious, her behavior in school inappropriate and dangerous to teachers who were only trying to help her.

And and and! When the superintendent and his “inquiry team” asked April Peck which book she had gone to retrieve from her locker on the night in question, Sunday, October 23, April Peck floundered.

“Which book? ”

“That’s the question, Miss Peck. Which book were you coming to school to get?”

“You mean the title?”

The inquiry team frantically scribbled notes.

She said, “Why do you want to know that?”

“It’s just a question,” Flanders said. “We’re asking you the title of the book you came to get.”

Finally she said, “A Separate Peace.”

Which was required reading for freshmen. Not seniors.

With news of this prime-time flub, the plaintiff caught in a lie, Greg crowed his innocence with a previously unseen confidence and vigor. The girl’s a liar! She’s been lying all along!

What Delilah chose to believe was that Greg was both lying and telling the truth, as was April. The truth fell somewhere in between. The truth was an amalgam of his details and hers. But the truth had been burned in the incinerator, dumped in the ocean a hundred miles off the coast. They would never know the truth.

For weeks and then months, Delilah was cool and distant with Greg. She had been denying him for years, yes, but for all of those years she had been in love with him. Surely he realized this? Surely he understood that turning to April Peck would wound her? The cocktail napkins and cardboard coasters that came to her now said, Do you still hate me?

Onstage, he said, This song is for you, Ash . And it was Natalie Merchant’s “Kind and Generous.” Or it was “Landslide,” Delilah’s all-time sentimental favorite.

In February, once the matter was dead and buried in the public eye and almost so among the eight of them, Delilah said, “You had everyone else fooled, but not me.”

And he said, “That’s too bad. You’re the only person who matters.”

Which sounded like total bullshit, but she was won over anyway.

If the story had ended there, it would still have been awful, but ultimately it would have been forgivable. It would have been catalogued under We all fuck up. So what?

But then.

Fast-forward almost as far as you could go (there was an end point now, because Greg was dead), to the night before Greg died. Another Sunday night. It was now June 19, and the Begonia was filled with tourists whom Delilah didn’t know. It was a blah night; Delilah was feeling a little flat, a little premenstrual, a little down. Greg and Tess’s anniversary was the following day, they were going on a sail to the Vineyard, they were taking a champagne picnic, Greg was taking his guitar, he had written Tess a song, they were going to stay overnight in a Relais her ego was hurt, and her heart, and her hopes. Nine months earlier Greg’s marriage to Tess had been looking like a terminal case, but now here it was, rising like a phoenix out of the ashes. She pretended to be happy for them, but she wasn’t.

At five minutes to ten, April Peck walked into the Begonia. Delilah nearly stumbled in her very high and wicked Jimmy Choos. She was surprised the alarms weren’t going off. The little-lying-bitch alarms.

Delilah rushed her. April was wearing a shell-pink slip dress embroidered all over with tiny flowers and a pair of expensive-looking silver stilettos. She looked stunning and mature and confident—nothing like the other girls who had tried to pass themselves off in here. If Delilah hadn’t known better, she would have said the girl was of age, or close enough to let slide. But she did know better.

“The kitchen just closed, April,” Delilah said. “And you’re underage. So I can’t let you in.”

April stared. “How do you know my name?”

Delilah stared back. What was the savvy answer? The truth? They lived on an island where everyone sort of knew everyone else. Delilah and Jeffrey went to all of the High Priorities concerts to support Greg, so Delilah supposed the first time she had seen April Peck was in the high school auditorium two springs earlier. Even among all the lovely songbirds, April Peck had stood out. She was the most beautiful of the beautiful, and she had a solo in “Fire.” Her voice had been rich and smoky and simmering and strong. Before all this shit with Greg, April Peck had been the kind of teenager adults noticed because she had star quality. And after all this shit with Greg, Delilah was mortified to admit, she had stalked April Peck a time or two.

Once she had seen April standing in front of the magazine rack at the Hub (paging through Elle —predictable), and Delilah had lingered on the other side of the store, fingering the polished shells they sold from barrels. She studied April Peck, she deconstructed her: the hair, the jeans, the ass, the breasts, the lips (moving ever so slightly as she read, which made Delilah feel sorry for her). April’s cell phone rang—it sounded like the bells of Westminster Abbey—and April answered in her silk-sheets voice. “Allo?”

She left the store, and Delilah followed her. April Peck was fascinating. Why? She was the object of Greg’s desire. Greg had been so bitter and banged up on that Sunday night in October that he might have made a pass at anyone. But it had been April Peck for good reason. She was flawless. Delilah allowed herself a few seconds of sheer envy, then decided she would find a flaw. She followed April Peck up Main Street. April climbed into a white Jeep Cherokee while she was still on the phone. She backed up without looking in her rearview mirror and nearly rammed into a guy in a Ford F-350. The guy opened his window to shout, but then he saw April and whistled instead.

There you had it.

How do I know your name? Delilah thought. When you pulled a stunt like you did with Greg, you instantly became famous. Surely April realized that. Still, the question threw Delilah. It made her feel defensive and weirdly at a disadvantage. She knew April Peck, but April Peck did not know her. April Peck was a celebrity and Delilah was a nobody. But this was a ploy by April Peck, a stall tactic.

“I can’t let you in,” Delilah said. “You’re underage.”

“No, I’m not,” April said.

“You—”

April opened her straw clutch purse and produced an ID. A Massachusetts license that furnished her name, April Peck, her address, 999 Polpis Road, and her birth date, June 1, 1988. Which made her twenty-one years and eighteen days old. Delilah peered at the license closely. It was a fake, of course. It looked real, but it was fake.

“You’re handing me a fake ID?”

“It’s not fake. It’s real. I’m twenty-one.”

Delilah laughed. “You just graduated from high school. I know who you are, April, and I know how old you are.”

“It’s a long story,” April said wearily. “I don’t need to eat. I ate. I just want to sit and listen to Greg play.”

Greg. That was a nice touch, calling him Greg. Delilah was wearing a Diane von Furstenberg dress that put her boobs on magnificent display. (When she’d walked into the Begonia earlier that evening, Greg had said, “Would you wear that dress every night for the rest of your life? Please?”) But the dress also stretched tight against the premenstrual bloating at her abdomen. Compared to April Peck in her sleek size zero, Delilah felt like a lumpy cow. She crossed her arms.

“I’m not letting you in.”

April Peck exhaled in one long stream, to let the world know she was growing impatient. “Call the police. Have them run the license.” She stared defiantly at Delilah. “Be my guest. I’m serious.”

Delilah had been fantasizing about a showdown, but now that it was happening, she was uncomfortable. She had been ambushed; she didn’t have her footing. It was a tug of war, and Delilah was about to end up facedown in the mud.

There was a hand on her back. Greg.

“Let her in,” he said.

Delilah turned to him, stunned.

“She’s not of age,” Delilah said.

“Delilah,” Greg said. “Let her in.”

April sidestepped her way around Delilah and walked into the bar. She took a seat, alone, at the table closest to the stage. Delilah felt like she was watching a horror film. Greg followed April and talked with her for a minute. April said something, and he laughed. He laughed! Then he climbed up onstage, and with the predictable toss of his hair, he sat down in the chair and started singing.

Delilah never drank during service. It was a good rule, adhered to even when Addison and Phoebe were in, or the Chief, even when a table full of college boys offered to buy her what they called a glass of “chardonnay wine.” But now Delilah hip-checked Graham aside and poured herself a goblet of cabernet and a shot of Wild Turkey and carried both of them to the ladies’ room. She locked herself in the handicapped stall and threw back the whiskey first—awful—then chased it with a deep swallow of wine.

This was hideous, right? Greg had trampled Delilah’s authority; he had humiliated her. And for whom? For April Peck bin Laden, the lying bitch seductress with her fake ID. The very same woman—girl!—who had trashed his marriage and his reputation. She had nearly cost him his job, and his life here, and yet there was Greg defending her, ushering her in, then laughing at whatever insipid thing she’d said. He was up onstage playing for her now.

Delilah strained to listen from the confines of the bathroom stall. “Tiny Dancer.” Impossible. But yes, he was singing it. He had not sung that song since the mess with April Peck had occurred back in the fall. But he was playing it now. Delilah sucked down more wine, but the wine only fueled the fire of her rage. It was absconding with the last shreds of patience and understanding that she had left. Should she call the Chief? Have him send someone down to charge April with identity fraud? Should she call Tess? And say, Greg is onstage right now singing that song to April Peck.

The door to the ladies’ room swung open and Delilah could hear Greg singing more clearly. The second verse.

The head waitress, Amelia, who was a real hard-ass, barked, “Delilah? Are you in here?”

Delilah drank more wine. “Yeah.”

“Are you planning on coming back out?”

Delilah left her wine on top of the toilet paper dispenser. She did not want a scene where April became the adult and Delilah the adolescent.

“Yes,” she said.

April Peck left at midnight, when Greg took his break. She had consumed three glasses of pinot grigio; one of them, Graham told Delilah, had been comped by Greg. April left a huge tip—forty bucks—which made her Queen for a Day in Graham’s mercenary eyes. April had slipped out while Delilah was in the ladies’ room polishing off yet another shot of Wild Turkey chased by yet another goblet of cabernet, and Delilah did not see her go and did not have the opportunity for another parry. Which was good or bad? Good, she decided. She was drunk by closing time; she couldn’t do the counting that cashing out required, and so she had Graham do it and slipped him twenty bucks for the trouble.

Thom and Faith were at one end of the boomerang bar with their sixteenth or seventeenth vodkas, and Greg was at the other end brooding over a Sam Adams draft. Delilah had seen Greg’s brooding act a million times before; he used it like a petulant twelve-year-old girl. If I make moody, faraway eyes, someone will ask me what’s wrong. Delilah had meant to storm out of the Begonia after closing without a word to anyone. But she was just drunk enough to want another drink. Greg was dopily sitting there and Delilah could not control her urge to vent.

She took the stool next to him, asked Graham for a glass of cabernet, and whispered viciously, “I just don’t get it.”

“I know,” Greg murmured.

“Have you been… talking to her?”

“Sort of,” he said.

“Sort of!” Delilah said. She sounded like the indignant wife, the shrew. She was supposed to be the cool girl, the one who could take any news and shrug it off.

“She came in to talk right before she graduated,” he said. “And we decided to mend the fence.”

“Mend the fence,” Delilah repeated.

“Put everything behind us. She asked for forgiveness.”

Delilah narrowed her eyes. “She’s a liar.”

Greg sipped his beer. The mooniness was disappearing. “Well, she’s not twenty-one.”

“No shit,” Delilah said. “And you made me let her into the bar. I could be fired for that. The Begonia could be shut down.”

“Oh, please,” Greg said.

“I just don’t get you,” Delilah said.

“Sure you do, Ash.”

“No,” Delilah said. “I don’t. Were you telling me the truth about that night with April? The whole fucking truth?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Nobody believes me.”

“I would like you so much better if you just admitted you were lying. I wouldn’t even care if you said you fucked her that night. Just as long as you told me the truth.”

“Tess feels the same way,” Greg said. “But I have nothing to add or detract from my story. It stands. And at this point, it is dried up. It is burned , Delilah. There is no reason to talk about it any further.”

“Except that April came in tonight.”

“Like I said, we mended the fence.”

Delilah’s head was spinning. Graham, behind the bar, was a hologram. Thom and Faith were studiously pretending to watch a rerun of Law she should not be driving. If the police got hold of her, she would fail the breathalyzer. She was so drunk she would break the thing. Greg sped away, oblivious. In so many ways he was just a boy. What was she doing? She had a man at home—Jeffrey. Jeffrey was too old and Greg was too young. This was ridiculous. She couldn’t chase Greg like this. She had to get home to bed, she had the twins tomorrow, and she liked to be on top of her game when she had the twins. If she gave the kids free run of the PlayStation while she took a nap, Tess would hear about it. Delilah was so drunk, she could not trust herself to be fortresslike with Greg. She would give in to him tonight, of all nights, and it would end up a mess. It would ruin everything.

Turn around!

Such good advice, but Delilah ignored it. Greg’s taillights were two red pinpricks in the distance, and then he rounded the curve by Sandole’s fish store and disappeared from view. Delilah followed at a law-abiding pace.

She was a cat, Jeffrey always said, because she could see in the dark. It was one of her many unsung talents, and tonight it was a talent she was grateful for. She was four or five hundred yards away when she spotted two cars parked at the end of Cisco Beach. Two cars: one was Greg’s 4Runner, and the other was a white Jeep Cherokee.

Delilah swung into the next driveway. A voice was screaming in her head—no words, just screaming. She looked again. She was very, very drunk, an unreliable witness. Yes, it was a white Jeep Cherokee. April’s car. Greg had come to Cisco Beach, to their spot—his and Delilah’s—to meet April Peck, and… what? Mend some more of that fence?

Screaming.

Delilah backed the car out of the driveway, turned around, and headed for home.

She vowed she would never speak to him again. She didn’t care what kind of rift it caused within the group. Greg MacAvoy was a rat bastard and Delilah would not speak to him.

The next morning Tess showed up at a little after nine to drop off the twins. Delilah felt like absolute crap; she had vomited up the contents of her stomach in a lurid cabernet hue. She had cried, and spilled her guts to Jeffrey. She was leaden, her head ached, her stomach was puckered like a lemon, her balance was off, she was exhausted. She had not slept for a minute. She could not stop thinking of the two cars, side by side, and then the imagined scene between Greg and April Peck that followed.

Delilah had showered and dressed and made the kids Belgian waffles with caramelized bananas and whipped cream for breakfast. She had to put up a front for Tess. Delilah would take the kids to the beach, then to the farm for strawberry-picking, then home to make jam and eat cheeseburgers, and perhaps end the day with ice cream sandwiches, sparklers on the back deck, and a game of Monopoly.

Tess, when she arrived with the kids, seemed a little off. She looked adorable in a red bikini top and white denim shorts, cutesy flip-flops, starlet sunglasses, but her smile was tentative. Something was on her mind. What was it? She was in full apoplectic mode as far as leaving the children was concerned. She kissed them half a dozen times each, she said I love you fourteen times, and she came back from the car for one more hug apiece. I love you so much, please, please be good, make healthy choices, I’ll be back tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest, depends on how your father does with the sailing. It’s pretty windy.

Delilah knew Tess was ambivalent about sailing, and every other sport that involved the open water. She said, “Are you nervous, Tess, about the sail?”

“Terrified,” Tess said plainly. She met Delilah’s eyes with what felt like an indecent amount of honesty.

Delilah hung in the balance for a suspended moment. Shouldn’t honesty be met with honesty?

She couldn’t bear to think about it now. Could not bear it! Delilah’s decision could not be taken back, any more than Greg’s indiscretions could be taken back, any more than Tess and Greg could be brought back from the dead. It was all over and done.

And yet the whole mess festered in Delilah. Physically she was healthy, but her emotional state was frayed. Two weeks after Greg and Tess died, she had nearly caused four catastrophic car crashes. She drove, but she did not pay attention. She did not sleep. Phoebe gave her enough Ambiens to euthanize an army battalion and still she did not sleep. She was tired all day with the kids; she dropped the boys off at camp and then had to set the kitchen timer to remind herself to pick them up. She did not have the energy for fishing or hiking around Quaise Swamp or taking a kayak off the Jetties. She gave the kids too much money for the snack bar, or she dropped them at the movies, and then she sat listlessly in her car for two hours with the air-conditioning on, watching people go into and come out of the Begonia. She had not given Thom and Faith an answer about her job, but she would have to tell them soon that she was not coming back.

She stopped cooking. Every night it was pizza or prepared food from the farm. And she had stopped drinking. This last change may have sounded like it was for the best—better, certainly, than Delilah drinking herself into a coma every night. But Delilah’s relationship with alcohol had always been positive, and now alcohol was one more thing she couldn’t bring herself to enjoy.

She tried to be kind to Jeffrey, and he in turn was extraordinarily solicitous with her. He brought her flowers and just-picked vegetables and jars of preserves that the girls in the farm kitchen had put up. He took the kids and let her sleep. He did not say, “Pizza, again?” He looked at her grieving and considered it normal. He was wary of the sleeping pills and happy about her abstinence. He knew there was something else, but he did not ask her what it was.

That she had loved Greg and Greg had loved her, but they had not acted on this love.

That Greg had had a relationship of some sort with the little blond bin Laden.

That Delilah had not been brave enough to speak the truth.