Susan Phillips - The Great Escape

Viper looked up at Panda. “Go ahead. Take him out.”

PANDA LIFTED AN EYEBROW AT her. “Take him out?”

Toby was a disagreeable little cuss, and she hated being spied on. Still, she couldn’t help but like his spirit. “He’s too much for me,” she said. “It’s the least you can do.”

Toby stumbled backward in his effort to get away, only to slip on a patch of pine straw and go down hard. He scrambled to his feet and started to take off again, but Panda captured him by the seat of his baggy shorts. “Hold on, kid. This conversation isn’t over.”

“Let me go, you jerkoff!”

“Hey! What’s going on here?”

Lucy turned to see Big Mike Moody approaching on the path, a large pizza box in his hands. She’d forgotten all about her invitation for him to return and annoy Panda. He must have spotted them through the trees.

“Big Mike!” Toby was back on his feet, still struggling to get away.

“Trouble here, folks?” The real estate broker flashed his shiny white teeth at Panda. “Nice to see you on the island again. Hope you’re enjoying that house.”

Panda gave him a brusque nod.

Big Mike gestured toward the boy with his free hand. “What’s up, Toby? You in trouble? Toby’s a friend of mine. Maybe I can help out here.”

Toby shot Lucy an enraged glare. “She says I was spying on her. She’s a big liar.”

Big Mike frowned. “Best you settle down, boy. That’s no way to talk.”

Lucy stiffened. As annoyed as she was with Toby, she didn’t appreciate hearing him addressed as “boy.” Either Big Mike didn’t know or didn’t care how offensive that appellation was to African American males, regardless of their age. If her brother, Andre, had been around, Big Mike would have gotten a big lesson in racial sensitivity.

But the offense didn’t appear to have registered with Toby. As Panda freed him, he rushed to Big Mike’s side. “I didn’t do anything. Honest.”

Big Mike had already transferred the pizza box to his left hand, and he draped his right arm around the kid’s shoulders, undoubtedly transferring his cologne in the process. “Are you sure about that?” Big Mike said. “Miss Viper here seems pretty upset.”

Panda snorted.

The way Big Mike was taking her in said he was still trying to place her face. She looked down.

“I didn’t do anything,” Toby said again.

Lucy decided wearing a cologne-saturated T-shirt was sufficient punishment for Toby. “I don’t want you spying on me anymore. If it happens again, I’ll talk to your grandmother.”

Toby screwed up his face. “My grandmother’s not home right now, so you can’t talk to her.”

Not even a smart-aleck kid could ruffle Big Mike’s amiability. “You know what I think, Toby? I think you owe Miss Viper an apology.”

She wasn’t a big believer in forced apologies, but Big Mike patted Toby’s shoulder. “Don’t you have something to say to her? Or would you rather wait till she comes to your house?”

The boy looked at his feet. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Big Mike nodded, as if Toby had spoken from the depths of his heart. “That’s better. I’ll take Toby home now. He won’t be giving you any more trouble, will you, Toby?”

Toby scuffed his feet and shook his head.

“I didn’t think so.” Big Mike still held the pizza, and he extended the box toward Panda. “The two of you go ahead and enjoy this. I can come over and talk to you later about the boat.”

“The boat?” Panda said.

“A twenty-foot Polar Kraft. The owner only took it out one summer, and he’s practically giving it away. Miss Viper told me you were in the market.”

Panda glanced down at her. “Miss Viper misunderstood.”

Big Mike knew how to roll with the punches, and his smile grew broader. “She seemed pretty sure, but hey— You have my card. When you’re ready, you give me a ring. That boat’s a real bargain. Now you two enjoy that pizza. Come on, Toby.” He steered the boy along the path in the opposite direction from the house.

As they disappeared, Panda looked down at her. “You told him I wanted to buy a boat?”

“You might want to buy a boat. How was I supposed to know?”

He shook his head and turned toward the house only to stop and lift the box closer to his nose. “Why does this pizza smell like perfume?”

“Big Mike believes in marking his territory.” She quickened her steps and left Panda to walk back to the house alone.

BREE HEARD TOBY COMING THROUGH the woods before she saw him. It was almost seven, and once again she’d forgotten to fix him dinner. Usually when that happened, she’d go inside and find him sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal from one of the many boxes Myra had picked up on her last trip to Sam’s Club before she’d gotten too ill to travel to the mainland.

Bree told herself to get up off the step and do something—anything—other than smoke, stare at Myra’s beehives, and think about those long-ago summers when she and Star ran back and forth like wild things from this cottage to the house. But she didn’t have a lot of bright thoughts to choose from. Her shattered marriage? Nope. Her empty bank account? Definitely not. As for her self-esteem … How could she think about something that didn’t exist?

This cottage, along with Myra’s honey house, had once been her second home, but in the last three weeks, the place had become her prison. If only she could run to the summer house, curl up on the screen porch with her Walkman again, and listen to the Backstreet Boys while she watched her brothers and their friends race up and down the steps to the dock. David had been one of those beautiful boys that last summer, although during the day he’d worked a fishing charter while the rest of them played.

Bree stared at the bees and lit another cigarette just as Toby came out of the woods. Someone was with him. She shielded her eyes and saw a good-looking man walking at his side. He was big all over, tall, with wide shoulders and a broad chest. One of those attractive men who stood out in a crowd. The kind of man—

She sprang off the step.

“Hey there, Bree,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

Thirteen years fell away. His physical transformation meant nothing. She hated him now as fiercely as she had the last time she’d seen him. “Toby, get in the house,” she said stiffly. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Hold on.” He ruffled Toby’s hair as if he had that right. “You remember what I said, Toby. Summer people are naturally paranoid. You can’t keep going over there.”

“I wasn’t doin’ nothing bad.”

The hair tousle turned into a knuckle rub. “Sooner or later, he’ll find out about your grandmother. And just so you know … You can’t cash a check he’s made out to her. Now you go inside while I talk to Bree.”

Bree clenched her hand into a fist. Mike Moody ranked along with her ex-husband, Scott, as someone she’d never wanted to see again. She’d known Mike still lived here, since his face stared out from half a dozen billboards along the island’s main road, but she’d intended to make sure she never ran into him. Yet here he was.

Toby stomped into the cottage. Mike came forward with his big suck-up smile and his hand extended to shake. “You’re looking great, Bree. Beautiful as always.”

She pressed her arms to her sides. “What do you want?”

He let his arm fall but didn’t lose his phony smile. “Not even a ‘hello’?”

“Not even.”

He’d been a smelly, weaselly-eyed fat kid with bad skin and crooked teeth who’d tried unsuccessfully to worm his way into their group of summer kids each year. But the only islander they’d let in was Star. Mike was too loud, too uncool. Everything about him was wrong—his clothes, his snorty laugh, his unfunny jokes. The only one who’d tolerated him had been David.

“I feel sorry for the kid,” David had said after one of her brothers had insulted Mike. “His parents are both drunks. He’s got a lot of problems.”

“We all have problems,” Star had said. “You’re only sticking up for him because you’re kind of an outcast, too.”

Had he been? Bree didn’t remember it that way. From the beginning, David had fascinated them. He was charming, charismatic, good-looking. Raised in poverty in Gary, Indiana, he was attending the University of Michigan on a full scholarship. At twenty, he was the same age as her oldest brother, but David was more worldly. Although she couldn’t remember any of them saying it out loud, they all thought it was cool to hang out with a black kid. Beyond that, there wasn’t one of them who didn’t believe David was destined for great things.

Mike gestured toward her cigarette. “Those coffin nails’ll kill you. You should give that up.”

He was still uncool, but in a different way. The crooked teeth, acne, and extra pounds might be long gone, but he still tried too hard. The scraggly, dirty blond hair of his teenage years had been tamed by an expensive cut, then overtreated with grooming products. His cheap summer wardrobe of ill-fitting shorts and T-shirts had given way to white slacks, a high-end polo shirt, and a belt with a Prada logo, all of it too ostentatious for casual island living, although not as objectionable as his heavy gold-link bracelet and college class ring.

Her cigarette burned close to her fingers. “What’s this about?”

“Toby’s run into some trouble with the new folks next door.”

She tapped the bottom of the filter with her thumb and said nothing.

He jingled the coins in his pocket. “No one seems to have told the new owner that Myra passed, so he thinks she’s still taking care of the place. But turns out Toby’s been doing the job ever since Myra got sick. I didn’t know about it till just now, or I’d have put a stop to it.”

The cigarette burned her fingers. She dropped it and stubbed out the butt with the toe of her sandal. A twelve-year-old trying to do an adult’s job. She should have paid more attention to his disappearances. Something else to make her feel incompetent. “I’ll talk to him.”

She turned away to go into the house.

“Bree, we were kids,” he said from behind her. “Don’t tell me you’re still holding a grudge.”

She kept moving.

“I tried to apologize,” he said. “Did you get my letter?”

She was good at walking away from her own anger. She’d spent ten years doing exactly that. Ten years pretending she didn’t know Scott was a serial cheater. Ten years avoiding a confrontation that would end her marriage. And look where it had gotten her. Exactly nowhere.

She whipped around. “Do you still spy on people, Mike? Are you still the same sneaky rat now that you were then?”

“I had a crush on you,” he said, as if that justified everything. “The older woman.”

A year older. She dug her fingernails into her palms. “So you went to my mother and told her you’d seen David and me together. Great way to get the girl.”

“I thought if the two of you broke up, I’d have a chance.”

“Never in a million years.”

Once again, he dug his hands in his pockets. “I was seventeen, Bree. I can’t change the past. What I did was wrong, and all I can do now is say I’m sorry.”

She and David hadn’t suspected Mike was spying on them that night when they hid in the dunes and made love. Mike had gone to her mother the next day, and Bree had been sent off the island that same afternoon into exile at her horrible Aunt Rebecca’s in Battle Creek. Bree had never come back to the island, not until three weeks ago when she’d gotten word that Myra had died and left Bree responsible for her grandson.

Mike pulled his hands from his pockets. “Let me help you with Toby.”

“I don’t need your help. Leave us alone.”

He rubbed his gold bracelet with his thumb. “I care about the kid.”

“I’m sure it’s good for your image in the community to pretend to watch out for poor orphans.”

He didn’t display even a flicker of shame. “I knew you wouldn’t roll out the welcome mat for me, but I thought maybe we could work together on this.”

“You thought wrong.”

He gazed around at the weedy yard and small honey house with its peeling white paint and sagging tin roof. A gust of wind stirred the leaves but didn’t disturb his expensive haircut. “You won’t get much for this place if you try to sell it. There’s no water view, no beach access, and the cottage needs work.”

He wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already figured out. Unlucky in love and in real estate—that was her. The bank had foreclosed on the five-million-dollar house she and Scott had bought in Bloomfield Hills. The last she’d heard, they’d listed it for one-point-three million and still couldn’t move it.

Mike wandered toward Myra’s abandoned garden where young tomato plants were struggling to survive the weeds. “If you take Toby off the island, you’ll destroy the only security he has.”