On Tuesday night, I fill in my notes from my session in the garden with Margaret, adding details from my outside research as I go.
Back in the sixties, when all of this happened, no one knew for sure what Laura had given the authorities to earn her own legal protections. Most people took it for granted that, after the group’s arrest, she’d flipped and agreed to be a witness for the prosecution, a deal offered to her only because of her family’s wealth and power.
I’d never read anywhere about the extortion, or the tense diner meeting. I wonder now why the lid had been kept so tightly shut on that. If it was the preference of the government or if the Iveses themselves had pushed to keep Laura’s role in the raid a secret.
Based on everything Margaret’s told me, the trial was hard on Laura. Even in the quick and loose courtroom sketches, she looks terrified. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was too afraid of retribution to allow David Atwood to find out she’d done more than turn on him. She’d set him up.
I flip between web browsers until I get back to an old article from the New York Times. Front page. In the grainy photograph to the right of the article, Laura walks with her head down out of the courtroom, surrounded by lawyers and bodyguards. Several paces behind her, I spot half of a face I didn’t notice before. A man in a three-piece suit, with oversized glasses, turning to speak with someone else in the crowd. He’s only partially visible, but it’s enough to send a zing down my backbone.
I recognize him.
From more than one place. I click back to the browser where I was analyzing courtroom sketches. I scroll down, checking my hunch.
There, just like I thought.
A loosely scrawled cartoon version of the man in the suit. Round face, a gap between his teeth. The associated documents describe him as Dr. Cecil Willoughby, testifying on the medical state of Laura Ives during her involvement in the People’s Moment Plot.
I’m shaking with adrenaline as I pull out my phone from my sleep-shorts pocket and flip to the picture Cecil Wainwright texted me.
I zoom in, close enough to get his long hair out of the frame.
Round face. A gap-toothed smile. The same man.
I feel almost dizzy as another wave of déjà vu hits me. Because I’m fairly certain this isn’t the only time I’ve seen Dr. Willoughby in the news.
In a new window, I pull up the infamous press conference video, the one filmed outside the hospital, announcing the death of Cosmo Sinclair.
There he is again, clad in a white coat, his hair short and slicked neatly down.
Dr. Cecil Willoughby.
Captain Cecil Wainwright.
The guy who owns Fish Bowl. The one who throws himself yearly not-birthday parties and never leaves home without a bucket hat. The one who’s been incredibly interested in the presence of not one but two writers on Little Crescent Island.
With shaking hands, I text Hayden: Holy shit.
I know, he says. I’m coming over.
I scoop coffee into a fresh filter. “What does this mean?”
“I still don’t know,” Hayden replies, leaning against the counter. He braces his hands on it, on either side of his hips, and a tiny sliver of his stomach shows when his shirt rides up.
I pull myself back to the task at hand. “I mean, it’s too big of a coincidence, right?” I fill the pot at the sink. “There’s no way this doctor and Margaret end up in the same place, both using different names, and don’t know about each other.” He opens his mouth to respond, but I get there first: “If you don’t want to talk about this—”
“I do,” he says. “Anything I say, you’d get to anyway. It’s faster if we just do this together.”
I nod, chest warming at the thought, and pour the water into the coffee maker’s tank, then drop the pot on the warmer and hit brew. “I mean, theoretically, is it possible she doesn’t know he’s here? Or vice versa?”
“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.
My gut clenches. I know he’d tell me, and I’m dying to hear, but with how little time we have left and how many rules we’ve already broken, this feels like a line I can avoid crossing.
I’ll ask her myself tomorrow.
“Tonight, I want it to just be us.” No thinking about the job, or about our lives on opposite sides of the country, or how heartbroken I might be come Saturday night.
“Just us,” he agrees softly, lifting my hands to kiss the tips of my fingers. When our lips next meet, every ounce of my restraint cracks. I reach for the buttons on his shirt. He slips mine over my head and lifts me against him, my thighs wrapping around his bare waist, his heart and mine pounding in sync. He carries me to his bed and we tumble onto it, the rest of our outer layers coming off as we bury ourselves in the blankets, the soft smell of almond everywhere and still not enough. I press my nose against his neck and inhale, his low laugh vibrating through me.
He skims my underwear down my legs, leaving trails of goose bumps behind, and I push his briefs down too. We tangle together, a knot of heat and electricity. “Is this okay?” I whisper, my hands on his jaw, his on my hip bones as he settles his weight on top of me.
“It’s just us tonight,” he whispers.
My heart thrills, but I still ask, “Is that a yes?”
He kisses me more deeply as his hand wanders over to his wallet on the bedside table. “Yes,” he says, pulling a condom out and kissing me once more before sitting back on his heels.
“Thank god,” I breathe, watching him work the condom on. I pull him back to me hungrily, my whole body tightening in anticipation of the moment he presses against me, then relaxing to make room for him as he pushes into me with a rough groan.
“Oh, god,” I cry out, a little too loud, but I’ve never been great at playing it cool, and it feels so good to finally have him. He shivers over me, holding still until I urge him closer, gradually taking more of him, little sparks flying across the corners of my vision from the sensation. He bucks his hips once, a test, and I cry out again.
“You okay?” he asks, cupping my jaw in one hand.
“I’m amazing,” I breathe.
“You are,” he replies. My laugh is cut short when he moves again. The pleasure whites everything else out. I arch up under him, and his hands scrape down to my thighs, gripping hard as he thrusts into me. “I want you on top of me,” he says.
We roll together until I am. I sit up on my knees, then slowly lower myself onto him, my eyes falling closed at the hot slide of our bodies together. He folds me over him, kissing me deep, his tongue stroking into me as I lift myself slowly and sink back down.
“God, Alice.” He grips my waist, hard enough that his nails will likely leave marks but still not hard enough. No part of him could ever be deep enough in my heart or body to satisfy me.
I grind myself against him; knot my hands into his dark, overgrown hair; bite down on the side of his neck to keep from crying when he grabs my ass and pulls me even harder against him. He catches my breast in his mouth, and everything in me tightens. I sit back, gasping for breath before I come undone.
“Sit up,” I tell him, pulling on his shoulder, and he does, his back pressed to the headboard. I shuffle closer, his hands gently guiding me onto him in this new position.
“Alice,” he hisses against my throat as I move with him, slowly now, almost delirious. A small noise rises in my throat, a hm? that turns into something more like a purr.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he whispers, his lips moving in a light, teasing pattern along my neck. “I thought I’d been in love before, but this is different.”
“I know,” I whisper back, still moving in that languid rise and fall, the need in me mounting with every glide, my voice thin and breathless. “I feel like you’re mine. Like you’re mine in a way no one else ever has been.”
“I want you to be mine,” he murmurs, gripping me harder. We move faster.
I try to tell him I am, to explain to him that all the things we don’t know about each other, all the time we haven’t spent together, couldn’t possibly weigh more than this feeling in my bones, the joy of being close to him.
But I can’t. The feeling swells within me, too big for words.
We flip over again, him stretched out on top of me, one of his hands holding both of my wrists above my head.
“I love you,” he tells me again, and I try to say it back, but the only thing I can get out is his name, again and again, like I’m begging him for something. Begging for him.
And then his name breaks into a wordless cry as I bow up under him, the waves of sensation pummeling me, his hiss of my name my only tether through the dark wash of pleasure.
He breaks too, and I tighten my thighs around him, holding him to me as we crest. I have no idea if it goes on for seconds or for hours, that feeling. But finally it draws back, and he slides clear of me and drops beside me onto the bed, pulling me into a curl against his sweat-slicked body.
We lay there, catching our breath in a heap, the blankets kicked off and his arm a loose coil around me, so long that we start to drift off.
“Will you stay?” he murmurs sleepily.
“We haven’t even eaten dinner,” I tease. “You can’t kick me out yet.”
“Tonight, I mean,” he says.
“If you want me to,” I say.
“I want you to,” he says. “I always want you here.”
“Here?” I sit up and straddle him again. “Or here?”
He smiles. “There’s good for me.” He pulls me back down to him.
Dinner will have to wait.
