The Castaways

PHOEBE

E veryone had left her except for the Chief and the hundred other people who were dancing. Phoebe had no shortage of dance partners. She danced with Swede, she danced with Hank Drenmiller, she danced with the executive director of Island Conservation. They all told her how wonderful she was, how generous and kindhearted. Phoebe felt like the belle of the ball, the way she used to feel on special nights before Reed died, like she was pretty and charming and so, so lucky to have been born into her life.

But something was eating at her, an impostor feeling, a feeling that she did not deserve any of this. She had been drinking champagne all night to combat this feeling, but as was always the case with alcohol, her underlying feelings became stronger rather than weaker. Pretense peeled away, exposing…

The band finished “These Boots Were Made for Walking,” and Phoebe and the executive director separated and politely clapped. Phoebe scanned the crowd. Everyone was having a lot of fun; she could feel good about that. She saw Eddie on the fringes of the room, holding a savannah sidecar. He wasn’t dancing and he wasn’t talking to anyone, but he looked happy.

Phoebe was rafting down a champagne river. The band launched into “Love Potion Number Nine.” Phoebe grabbed the Chief’s hand. “Come on, Eddie. Let’s dance.”

“I don’t dance,” the Chief said. “You know that. Not with my wife, not with the Queen of England.”

Phoebe pulled him onto the dance floor. “But with me, tonight, yes.”

“No,” he said, but he was trying not to smile.

“It’s my party,” Phoebe said, “and you’ll dance if I want to.”

And guess what? The Chief could dance. He was as strong and solid and surefooted as Phoebe’s father. He led, she followed. She was seventeen again, at the Whitefish Bay Pool Club at her homecoming dance. She had been runner-up as queen to Shelby Duncan, Reed’s girlfriend. Reed and Shelby had looked silly but sweet in their foil crowns.

Phoebe became confused. The Chief twirled her, then gathered her up in his arms. He was her father. He was a safe place. She looked him square in the eye. He stopped, held her out at arm’s length.

“That was a great thing you did,” he said.

Phoebe said, “There’s something I have to tell you.”

The Chief did not move. The song ended, people clapped. Phoebe was falling. Falling! She let go of her pole and toppled into the champagne river. She was drowning. Would anyone save her?

Phoebe told the Chief as they sat on folding chairs in the dark night outside the bright oval of the tent.

“I gave Tess a pill,” she said. “Only one. But it was a doozy.”

Phoebe tried to explain, but her words were jumbled. Tess and Addison having an affair, in love, discovered by Phoebe in the cruel, cold days of early April. She saw them together at the Quaise cottage, but she said nothing. What could she say? She understood. In a weird, drug-addled way, she approved. But not really, of course. Not wholly or completely. She had her moments of clarity, her flare-ups of jealousy. Addison was in love with Tess. But Phoebe said nothing, did nothing. She hid beneath a shroud of drugs. She waited. Days, weeks, months. She watched the affair; she took its temperature. Addison was in deeper than Tess. Tess wanted to pull away; Addison wouldn’t let her. He wanted her to leave Greg. How did Tess feel about this? Phoebe couldn’t tell.

Tess came to Phoebe two days before her anniversary. The sail was going to happen; they had checked the forecast. There would be plenty of wind. Greg was gung-ho about the sail, about the anniversary celebration; they needed it, they deserved it. He had a surprise. He had written her a song. Andrea was making a picnic. Delilah was taking the kids overnight.

Tess had not needed to ask. Phoebe anticipated her. She knew Tess was nervous about the sail (all that open water, the wind, the waves), and there was additional anxiety on top of it, something else, something Tess was going to do or say, something she was either going to confess or suppress.

Phoebe said, “I’d like to give you something.”

Tess looked like she might protest. No gifts! Delilah went to Phoebe for drugs, as did Andrea and Greg when they had a pulled shoulder muscle or a headache. But never Tess.

“That would be great,” Tess said.

Phoebe could have taken it easy on her. Ativan, Xanax, even a valium or two would have been enough to take the edge off. But in the back of her mind, Phoebe held the vision she had seen through the cottage window. Addison in bed, holding Tess in his arms, Tess’s eyes closed, Addison gazing at the ceiling.

Phoebe gave her one of the precious Number Nines, the contraband pills that came from Reed’s college roommate Brandon, off the big drug company black market. She would send Tess straight to the heroin stratosphere.

“Be sure to take it with food,” Phoebe directed. She put the pill in Tess’s palm and folded her fingers over it.

“She took it,” the Chief said.

Phoebe nodded. Tess had taken the pill, and she had drunk the champagne that Andrea had packed. Then the boat caught a gust and Tess had lurched or been thrown overboard. She was not a great swimmer under the best of circumstances, and with the drug coursing through her, she hadn’t stood a chance.

Greg most likely had died trying to save her.

Finally Phoebe cried. Not the breathless, hysterical sobs that she had released in the shock of first finding out, but rather, she cried deeply. She was a bottomless well of sorrow, guilt, and regret. She cried like a woman who had done the unthinkable. She had killed her best friend, leaving two children motherless.

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” Phoebe said. “I just wanted to… I don’t know… give her a shove. But what else can I think now, but that I…”

Even with ten savannah sidecars in him, the Chief was a man of reason. He touched her back and said, “You didn’t kill her. You gave her the pill to calm her nerves. You were trying to help her.”

Phoebe wanted to be tried for murder. She wanted death row.

“I could have given her Ativan,” Phoebe said. “But I gave her the Number Nine.”

“The pill wasn’t what killed her. She drowned. She fell off the boat, which would make it an accident. Or…”

“Or she was pushed,” Phoebe said.

“Or she was pushed.” The Chief sighed. “But here’s the thing—I’m glad you told me. The drug showed up on the tox report, and that tox report has been eating at me since… I didn’t know what to think. Well, what I thought was that Greg shot her full of smack, then dumped her overboard so he could be with April Peck.”

Phoebe said, “What I did was no better. I gave her a pill I knew she couldn’t handle. I wanted to ruin her anniversary. Tess was having an affair with my husband and I wanted to turn her into a zombie. And then she died, Eddie. She is dead and Greg is dead, and it is my fault .”

“All you did was give her the pill,” the Chief said. “You didn’t make her take it.”

Phoebe would not be comforted. “It’s the strongest opiate out there. It’s not even legal, Ed. I would take one, you know, in the darkest days, and I would be in outer space. I couldn’t drive or make a sandwich. I couldn’t wash my hair. I was so out of it.” She looked at him. “I’m a monster.”

The Chief took her hand. The tent blazed before them like a big white birthday cake. Phoebe felt exhausted, weak, full of heartache. The fact of the matter was, she missed Tess. The absolute truth was that Tess and Addison could have gotten married and left Phoebe homeless and destitute, and it still would have been better than this, because Tess and Greg would be alive. They would all be together. Still.