He did not have one last pass.
Ayers had decided to verify Maia’s sighting with a second source. She’d texted Lindsay, another server at the Beach Bar, someone she considered a friend, to ask if she’d noticed Mick and Brigid slip away during service.
The response: TBH, yes, B. stranded me tonight with all her tables for…half an hour? She’s been crying since Monday, and I assumed Mick was going to talk with her about it because it’s been distracting for all of us. But they were gone an unusually long time and when they came back, B. looked much happier.
Ayers pulled the ring off her finger and nestled it back into its little velvet box. She wondered about the happy bride-to-be who would eventually wear it.
She sent Mick a text: I know you kissed Brigid. I’m leaving the ring in the box under the big rock at the end of my driveway.
Mick texted back: K.
K? Ayers thought. What kind of response was that? Didn’t he want to know how Ayers had found out? Didn’t he want to try and deny it? Wasn’t he going to fight for her?
Apparently not.
The engagement was over; it had lasted slightly more than forty-eight hours. Ayers should never have taken Mick back. Brigid was some kind of narcotic for him.
She sent a second text: Best of luck to you two.
She wanted to say something else, but You deserve each other was too cliché and Just remember—once a slut, always a slut seemed too mean. In the end, Ayers wrote, Poor Gordon. Because Ayers felt sorry for Mick’s dog. She’d miss him.
And then Ayers had texted Baker to let him know what was up. Maia saw Mick kissing Brigid on the beach tonight. I’m giving the ring back.
Baker responded: Can’t wait to celebrate your newfound freedom!
Ayers is so tired. She’s flattened. She lies in bed until three thirty, which is the last possible moment she can get up and make it to La Tapa on time, but she still can’t muster the energy to move. She picks up her phone—there’s no word from Mick, or from Baker either, for that matter—and calls La Tapa.
Tilda answers.
“Til,” Ayers says. “I can’t make it in tonight. I know it’s trash of me to bag on you so late but honestly…” Honestly, the mere idea of lifting trays, opening wine, remembering orders—nope, it’s beyond her today.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tilda says. “We have only thirty on the books. Besides”—here, Tilda lowers her voice—“we all know what happened with Mick.”
“You do?” Ayers says. She’s not sure why she’s surprised; it’s a tiny island, the coconut telegraph and all that. Brigid is probably crowing about her triumph all around town. Ayers wonders if Mick came by to get the ring. Maybe he gave her ring to Brigid; he is just enough of a cheeseball to do exactly that.
“Yeah, he’s staging a sit-in at Cruz Bay Landing. Him and Gordon.”
“A what?”
“He’s been at the bar at CBL since it opened this morning. He has the ring in front of him. He’s stinking drunk and he claims he’s not moving until you take him back. Gordon is tied to his bar stool.”
“You’re kidding me,” Ayers says.
“Not kidding, saw it myself,” Tilda says. “I think AK is going to cut him off soon, but he might have to call the police to get Mick out of there.”
Ayers is slightly revived by the news that Mick is staging a sit-in at Cruz Bay Landing, crying into his beer. So he is upset after all.
“He gave me this whole song and dance about how Brigid was taking a new job at Island Abodes, something he arranged to get her away from him. And not two days later, they’re making out on the beach. I don’t care if he sits at CBL for the rest of his life, I don’t care if he turns into petrified wood and moss grows on him and a bird builds a nest in his hair, I’m not taking him back.”
“Good girl,” Tilda says. “You’re on the schedule Saturday night. I’ll see you then?”
“Yes,” Ayers says. “Thanks, Til.”
Thursday passes in a blur. Friday comes and Ayers doesn’t feel any better. She feels worse—dull, leaden, sluggish, and dizzy. Her coffee tastes sour; food holds no appeal. She doesn’t have to work at La Tapa but she’s supposed to hang out with Maia in the afternoon.
She can’t imagine getting in her truck and driving to Gifft Hill, much less doing some kind of fun, enriching activity. Waterlemon—they were supposed to snorkel at Waterlemon. If Ayers tried to snorkel, she would end up sleeping on the sandy floor of the Caribbean.
She sends Maia a text even though Maia is at school and (technically) not allowed to check her phone: I can’t pick you up, Nut. I’m sick.
Two seconds later (so much for the rules), there’s a response: It’s okay, I’m grounded anyway, plus there’s been drama at home.
Drama? Ayers texts. At home meaning with Huck? This is unusual.
Too much to text, Maia says. Call me later.
Later is Saturday at noon. It takes everything Ayers has to get out of bed, take a shower (her hair is in the first stages of dreadlocks), and make herself eat a piece of toast at her tiny kitchen table. She fights to keep the toast down. Something is up with her; this isn’t just emotional distress. After all, Ayers hiked the Reef Bay Trail only two days after Rosie died.
Ayers checks her arms and legs, praying that she has overlooked some kind of weird bite or sting that would explain this. She’d gone backpacking all over the world with her parents when she was growing up, and she’d witnessed travelers in the throes of all kinds of exotic ailments. There was a pretty, blond college student doing a gap year in Nepal who nearly died of giardia, a couple of Israeli kids in India who had leishmaniasis that they thought they’d gotten from sand flies on Goa, and in Thailand, they’d met a family who had been infested with sea lice.
Leptospirosis? A guy Ayers knows down here contracted that from cleaning palm rats out of traps.
Ayers is making herself sicker just thinking about this. Stop thinking about it! She texts Maia. You busy?
A second later, Ayers’s phone rings; her screen says Nut and lights up with a picture of Maia at Carnival a few years ago, her face painted royal blue and crimson.
“Hi,” Ayers says. “Whatcha doin’?”
“Decorating my new room,” Maia says. “Or, as Gramps calls it, ‘moving the mess.’”
“New room? Are you…”
“Taking Mama’s room,” Maia says. “I’ve slept in here the past two nights.” She pauses. “The sheets still smell like her. How long do you think that will last?”
Ayers’s heart feels like a dying rose shedding its petals. “Oh, Nut,” she says.
“I worry I’m gonna make the smell disappear faster by sleeping in the bed and that one night it won’t smell like her, it will smell like me. But I don’t have a choice because Irene is sleeping in my room.”
“Irene?”
“Yeah,” Maia says. “Have you not heard? Baker didn’t call you?”
Baker has not called her, which she finds strange, since he’s supposedly so keen on celebrating her “newfound freedom,” but she figures he’s been busy getting settled in, and, frankly, she’s relieved that he hasn’t asked to see her. “No,” Ayers says. “Heard what?”