Great Big Beautiful Life(105)

“Sure,” Hayden says. “Anything’s possible. But it still feels like we’re being played here somehow, and I can’t figure out how or why.”

I frown. “Same.” I want to trust Margaret—I mean, I keep asking her to trust me, so I should be giving her the benefit of the doubt—but something’s strange about this. “She’s never mentioned Cecil to me. I mean, she talked about the doctor who testified at the Atwood trial, but she didn’t use his name, and she’s definitely never suggested she has friends on the island. As far as I know, it’s just her and Jodi, in that house, all day, every day. And lately Jodi hasn’t even been there.”

“Same for me,” he says.

We fall into silence while the coffee burbles. Then I pour each of us a mug. “Have you asked her about it?” I say. “About him, I mean?”

Hayden shakes his head and sets his mug on the counter. “I didn’t want to press her if there’s some explanation that she’s working up to. But like I said, something’s been off about this job since the beginning.”

His head cocks, his lips parting.

“Just to say it again,” I chime in, “there’s no pressure to tell me anything.”

“No, it’s not that,” he says. “It’s just…you know when someone’s lying to you, right? Or when they think they’re telling you the truth, but there’s more to it?”

“Sometimes, yeah.” And then after a second of thought: “A lot of times.”

“It’s just that feeling. All day, every day. Even when she’s telling me things that are verifiably true. And for someone who’s gone so far out of her way to concoct this whole ridiculous scenario,” he says, “she’s weirdly reticent actually talking about herself.”

“She’s quiet during your sessions?” I say, shocked.

He snorts. “No. Never quiet. Just…evasive. She’s fine to talk about books and movies and recipes and the fucking weather, but she’s so guarded about the rest. Sometimes she cancels last minute even though, ostensibly, she doesn’t go anywhere.”

An idea clangs through me, something we already visited once long ago. “Maybe she really is sick. Maybe Cecil’s here because he’s a doctor, someone she trusts. And he’s taking care of her.” When I’d asked her why now, the only answer she’d given me was If not now, when?

“Why keep that from us though?” Hayden asks. “It’s not uncommon for people to decide to do things like this right at the end of their lives. I mean, three-quarters of every meeting I’ve taken since I wrote about Len is with some aging celebrity who sees the end coming and wants a chance to tell their story. We’ve signed NDAs. If she’s sick, why not tell us?”

“Because people aren’t always logical or practical,” I say. I think back to being a teenager, to Audrey and me finally going to public school, all of her surgeries safely ensconced in the past.

We could’ve shut up some of the bullies if they knew what my sister had been through—why we’d been homeschooled and isolated up to that point. But Audrey was adamant no one know. “Would you mind if I ask her outright?”

“What, if she’s sick?” Hayden says.

I shake my head. “About Cecil.”

He grimaces. “It’s up to you, but…”

“But?”

He sighs, rakes a hand through his dark hair. “I don’t know. It’s possible she won’t take it well. We’re so close to the end of this. If you want this job—”

“I want this job because I want to tell her story,” I say. “But if she can’t be honest with us, there is no job.”

“Okay.” He nods. “So we ask her.”

“We ask her,” I agree.

I hold my hand out as if to shake on it, as if it’s a deal. As soon as he clasps it, though, I yank him close, wind my arms around his neck, and kiss him. His hands slide back along the counter on either side of me, his chest pressing into mine as he deepens the kiss.

“You taste like coffee,” I whisper.

“So do you,” he says.

“Yes, but I always taste like coffee,” I point out.

He slides my shorts down. “Maybe I wanted to taste like you.” He kneels in front of me, work forgotten, everything forgotten except that thing that we’re not saying. That we love each other. That when he looks right at me, the world stops turning.



* * *



? ? ?

On Wednesday night, I meet Hayden at his hotel room at the Grande Lucia.

He opens the door before I’ve even knocked. On the table just inside sit a pizza box and a salad from the place right behind Little Croissant.

There’s a heaviness in the air, and I know we can both feel it: the hotel walls closing in on us, the sand pouring through the hourglass, the back half of the book thinning with every turned page. His balcony drapes are drawn to one side, the door open and the ocean beyond painted purple, pink, and blue by the setting sun. Even this feels like a reminder that our days, our hours left together in this bubble, are numbered.

Hayden snatches the remote and turns off the muted TV before facing me, our hands linking together. He kisses my forehead once, then draws back to gaze at me through the half-light of the bedside lamp. “Do you want to know what she said about Cecil?” he asks me.