Great Big Beautiful Life(5)
Most people had simply accepted that we’d never find out what happened to her. Just another Amelia Earhart, a woman lost to time.
But there were still some active Margaret Ives online communities dedicated to the rumors surrounding her vanishing. To debunking or proving them, depending on the poster’s point of view. They were treated like true-crime-junkie communities, bits of old interviews trotted out as evidence for or against a favorite theory.
Those specific message boards got me nowhere.
The Not So Dead Celebrities message board, however, led me here, to Little Crescent Island.
And if I could find her through that post, there’s no telling how many other Hayden Andersons might be flying cross-country to Little Crescent Island this very minute.
My phone buzzes on the mattress beside me, and I feel around until I find it. My stomach rises expectantly—maybe Margaret’s already made a decision—but then I see the screen.
Theo. Now, a different sensation rumbles in my stomach, that anxious flutter I still get when I hear from my on-again, off-again not-boyfriend.
How’d it go with the heiress? he asks. I’m touched he remembered. Probably too touched. I haven’t talked about much else the last few weeks. But still! He reached out to check in—that’s something!
I hesitate over how to phrase it and settle on: She’s intriguing and her house is a dream and I want the job so, so, so badly.
All true. It wouldn’t do me any good to add and I’m terrified I’m not going to get it, because a six-foot-three rock face of a man with a Pulitzer and a scowl to freeze a Gorgon is on the scene.
I watch the phone for a minute, two, three. I set it aside. I was drawn to Theo for his easy confidence and his laid-back, carefree way of moving through the world. There’s something so appealing about a person who doesn’t take anything too seriously. Until you have to text with one. Theo’s terrible at it. To be fair, I’m not amazing myself, but he’s the king of sending a message, to which I immediately reply, and then waiting a full day to acknowledge my response.
By then I may have lost my dream job and also fully melted into this bed, the puddle formerly known as the writer Alice Scott.
“Get yourself together, Scott!” I cry, pitching myself back onto my feet and slapping my laptop shut.
“You’re on a beautiful island with a growling stomach and an open schedule,” I tell myself, snatching my phone and stuffing my feet into my sandals. “Might as well make the most of it.”
* * *
? ? ?
Little Crescent Island is a vacation destination, but it’s not a nightlife hot spot. Most of the people here seem to be either retirees or families with kids, and it’s nine o’clock on a Tuesday night, so pickings are slim on the main drag.
The first open restaurant I come to is called Fish Bowl, and the menu posted out front seems to be ninety percent alcohol and ten percent seafood.
Inside, it’s cramped and wonderfully kitschy, with bamboo wall paneling and fishnets suspended from the ceiling, all manner of colorful plastic fish and glow-in-the-dark seaweed caught in them. A ponytailed server in a tight white shirt and short shorts whisks past me, tray in hand, and says cheerfully, “Sit anywhere you want, hon. We’re slow tonight.”
There are plenty of open tables, but two older gentlemen in matching bowling shirts are sitting at the bar, and I’m feeling kind of chatty, so I head their way. Right as I’m sidling onto a stool two down from them, though, they’re tossing money onto the glossy, dark wooden countertop and standing to go.
One catches my eyes, and I flash a smile.
He smiles back. “Highly recommend the Captain’s Bowl!”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” I promise, and he tips an invisible hat before shuffling off after his companion. On the way out, the two of them stop to have a word with the ponytailed server, and she gives the lover of the Captain’s Bowl a peck on the cheek, so either they’re all locals or this place just has over-the-top service.
I go back to perusing the menu, resuming a practically lifelong debate of mine: whether to order fish tacos or fish and chips.
I’m still working on this when someone plops a massive bowl of startlingly blue liquid, ice, and roughly five fruit spears down in front of me. I look up, surprised, to find the ponytailed server smiling at me from behind the bar. “Captain’s Bowl,” she says. “Courtesy of the captains themselves.”
“Oh?” I glance toward the front door, the gentlemen from earlier long gone now. “What are they the captains of?”
“Uncle Ralph is the captain of the bowling team, and Cecil is the captain of this restaurant,” she muses. “Each has his own seat of power, but Cecil’s carries a bit more weight here, understandably.”
“Well, next time you see him, thank him for me,” I say.
She nods once. “Will do. Now, are you eating too tonight or just swimming?” She tips her chin toward the gargantuan bowl of violently unnatural blue, and I burst out laughing.
“What’s even in this?” I ask.
“Everything,” she says. “Plus some Coca-Cola.”
I take a tiny sip through the neon-pink straw, and it feels like I just inhaled sugar, then poured gasoline down my throat, but in a fun way.
“Food?” the woman—her name tag says Sheri—asks again.