Susan Phillips - The Great Escape

They’d reached the church. The Episcopal church. The largest and most respectable congregation on Charity Island.

Bree looked at Mike. “Serpents and speaking in tongues?”

He grinned. “It could happen.”

A joke at her expense. Still, some of her tension began to fade.

BREE HAD ATTENDED THE METHODIST church as a child, but organized religion with all its unanswered questions had eventually felt too burdensome, and she’d stopped not long after she got married. Mike found seats for them off to the side beneath a stained-glass window of Jesus blessing the multitudes.

As she relaxed into the rhythm of the service, her mood began to lift. For now anyway there were no beehives, no tomato plants to water or weeds to pull. No customers to entice or young boy to disappoint. The possibility that she might not be alone on this planet, that something larger might be watching out for her, gave her a fragile comfort.

Occasionally Mike’s arm, big and solid in a navy suit coat, brushed against hers. As long as she didn’t look at his gold-link bracelet or big college ring, she could pretend he was someone else—one of those steadfast, dependable men with solid values and a faithful heart. He closed his eyes for the prayers, listened attentively to the sermon, and sang the first verses of every hymn without consulting the hymnal.

After the service, he worked the crowd, slapping the men on the back, flattering the women, telling one of the deacons about a house going on the market, turning church into another sales opportunity. Everybody sucked up to him, except it didn’t exactly seem that way. They acted as if they genuinely liked him. The adult Mike Moody was beginning to confuse her, although he still didn’t seem to have any clue about how patronizing he could be, since he called an elderly woman “young lady.” On the other hand, he noticed the distress of a kid on crutches and rushed to help her before anyone else realized there was a problem. It was disconcerting.

He introduced her to everyone. A few of the parishioners remembered her family. One of the women remembered her. People were both friendly and intrusive. How was Toby doing? How long did she intend to stay on the island? Did she know the cottage’s roof leaked? Marriage had made her guarded. She sidestepped their probing as best she could, a process made easier by Mike’s garrulousness.

She learned he was chairman of the island’s biggest charity. Both admirable and good promotion for his business, since it kept his face plastered on all the fund-raising literature. He also sponsored Little League and soccer teams in every age group, ensuring that dozens of island kids were his walking advertisements.

“How about some lunch?” he asked Toby as they climbed back into his car. “The Island Inn or Rooster’s?”

“Can we go to the Dogs ’N’ Malts?” Toby asked.

Mike glanced at Bree, taking her in from head to toe. “Bree’s all dressed up. Let’s take her someplace nice.”

She didn’t want to be indebted to Mike for lunch or mountain bikes or notebook computers. She didn’t want to be indebted to him for anything. “Not today,” she said briskly as he turned the key in the ignition. “I need to start melting beeswax for candles.”

Toby predictably took issue. “That’s not fair. You spoil everything.”

“Now, boy, there’s no need to be disrespectful,” Mike replied.

“Please stop calling him boy,” she said tightly.

Mike glanced over at her.

Toby kicked the back of her seat. “I’m a kid. Mike’s my friend. He can call me whatever he wants.”

Toby was David’s son, and she wasn’t backing down on this one. “No, he can’t.” As she looked over her shoulder at him, she saw Star’s thickly lashed golden brown eyes staring back at her. “That word has a negative connotation—a bad association—in the African-American community.”

Mike flinched, finally catching on, but Toby grew more belligerent. “So what? I don’t live in the African-American community. I live on Charity Island.”

How had she, the whitest of white women, become responsible for instilling racial pride in David Wheeler’s son?

Mike, who’d started the whole thing, concentrated on pulling out of the parking lot. She plodded on. “White people used to call black men—even elderly men—‘boy.’ It was a way of making them feel inferior. It’s very insensitive.”

Toby thought about it for a moment and, no surprise, curled his lip at her. “Mike’s my friend. He didn’t mean to be insensitive. That’s just the way he is.”

Mike shook his head. “No, Bree’s right. I apologize, Toby. I keep forgetting.”

Forgetting to deal with his racism or forgetting Toby was half African-American?

“So what?” Toby muttered. “I’m white, too, and I don’t see what’s the big deal.”

“The big deal,” she said stubbornly, “is that your father was proud of his heritage, and I want you to feel the same way.”

“If he was so proud, why did he marry my mom?”

Because Star had always wanted whatever Bree had.

“Your dad was crazy about your mom,” Mike said. “And she was just as crazy about him, right up to the end. Your mom could make your dad laugh like nobody else, and he got her to read books she wouldn’t have picked up otherwise. I wish you could have seen the way they looked at each other. Like nobody else existed.”

He might as well have slapped her. And he wasn’t done. “It took them a while to realize how much they loved each other,” he said, an unfamiliar toughness clipping his words. “At first Bree was your dad’s girlfriend, but let me tell you, he never looked at her the way he looked at your mother.”

The real Mike Moody, with his calculated cruelty, had finally resurfaced. He kept his eyes on the road. “We’ll drop Bree off at the cottage so she can get her work done, and then I’ll take you to Dogs ’N’ Malts. That okay with you, Bree?”

All she could manage was the barest nod.

As soon as she was inside, she sagged down on the couch and stared blindly at the Siamese cats on the mantel. She’d spent more time lately thinking about her youthful love affair than the demise of her ten-year marriage. But her affair with David had such a clear beginning and end, while the course of her marriage had been so very murky.

She slipped her heels off. The sandals she wore every day had left tan marks on her bare feet. Not that she had much of a tan. This was as dark as she got, a touch of honey and a few more freckles, which made it even more ironic that she’d been charged with raising a young black male.

Despite what she’d told Mike and Toby, she wasn’t ready to tackle melting beeswax today, so after she’d changed clothes, she found paper and began sketching some ideas for handmade note cards. But her heart wasn’t in it, and she couldn’t come up with anything she liked. Eventually she heard Toby burst into the house and head for his room. She listened for the sound of the Cadillac pulling away from the cottage. It didn’t come.

“I know you’re mad at me, but what’s new, right?” Mike said from the doorway.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She got up from the table.

In his businessman’s navy suit, he seemed bigger than ever, and despite her own height, she felt as if he were looming over her. “What I told Toby about David and Star was true.”

She began gathering up her drawing materials. “Only to you.”

He tugged absentmindedly on his necktie. “You want to believe you and David were Romeo and Juliet, but the truth is, you were a rich white girl from Grosse Pointe, and he was a black kid from Gary.” He shifted his car keys from one hand to the other. “David was fascinated by you, but he never loved you.”

She stuffed the notepad in the junk drawer. “Are you done?”

“It was different with Star.” Mike filled the room, sucking up her air. “Neither of them had money. They were both ambitious, charismatic, maybe a little ruthless. They understood each other in ways you and David couldn’t.”

“Then why did she leave?” The junk drawer banged as she shoved it in. “If they were such passionate lovers, why did Star run off?”

“He took a job in Wisconsin after she’d begged him not to. She always hated it when he was gone, and she wanted to punish him. I doubt she planned on being gone for long. She sure didn’t count on sliding off the road and going through the ice in that drainage canal.”

Bree wasn’t buying it. “They found a man in the car with her.”

“A drifter. She was always picking people up. My guess is he was hitchhiking.”

She didn’t want to believe his story. She wanted to believe what Myra had told her, that Star had gotten bored with David and left him for good. Shame curled in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t know why you keep bringing all this up. It happened years ago. It means nothing to me.”

He knew that wasn’t true, but he didn’t argue. “I’m a religious man,” he said matter-of-factly. “I believe in sin, and I believe in repentance. I’ve made amends as best as I know how, but it hasn’t changed anything.”

“And it won’t.”

His gold bracelet caught a stray sunbeam, and he nodded, not so much at her, more to himself, as if he’d made a decision. “I’m going to leave you alone from now on.”

“Right.” She didn’t believe it. Mike never left anyone alone.

In the old days, he’d avoided meeting anyone’s eyes. Not now. And something in his steady gaze threw her off balance. “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me stay in touch with Toby,” he said with an unsettling dignity. “I should have checked with you before I told him he could ride his bike in the parade. I have a bad habit of charging ahead without thinking things through.” A matter-of-fact statement, neither hiding his flaws nor beating himself up for them. “The parade steps off at ten. He needs to be in the school parking lot by nine. I’d come get him, but I’m head of the committee, and I have to be there early.”

She studied a worn spot on her sandal. “I can handle it.”

“All right.”

That was it. No salesman’s pitch to win her over. No bribes of Lemonheads, Skittles, or Eskimo pies. He called out a brief good-bye to Toby and then he was gone, leaving her with the uneasy feeling that she was now truly on her own.

Ridiculous. He’d be back. Mike Moody always came back, whether you wanted him to or not.

I’M NOT GOING!” TEMPLE DECLARED from the gym floor where she was doing a mind-boggling set of one-handed push-ups at Lucy’s feet while hip-hop played in the background. Even Panda agreed that opera didn’t make the best workout music.

“You need to get out.” Lucy dangled the short brown wig she’d swiped from the Evil Queen’s closet in front of the owner’s nose. “Shutting yourself up like this isn’t healthy. Witness your hissy fit yesterday just because I brought a couple of sprigs of honeysuckle into the house.”

“They smelled like Jolly Ranchers.”

“Save your breath.” Panda returned the monstrous weights he’d been lifting to the rack. “She prides herself on being insane.”

Temple rose, switching from push-ups to jump squats. Strands of wet dark hair stuck to the back of her neck and her face glistened. “If you understood what I’m going through, you wouldn’t suggest this. You have no idea, Lucy, what it’s like to be so famous.”

Lucy rolled her eyes just like Toby.

Temple got the point and gave a dismissive wave. “You have secondhand fame. It’s different for me.”

Panda snorted. His sweat-soaked T-shirt clung to his chest, and the hair on his legs lay damp against his skin. It had been only a week, but Lucy could swear his already buff body was starting to show those creepy overdeveloped muscles. When Lucy had inquired why he was torturing himself so much, he’d asked her what the hell else he was supposed to do with his time? The enforced isolation was wearing on him nearly as much as Temple, and as each day passed, both of their moods had grown darker.

“I’ve been on the island for a month,” Lucy said patiently, “and I haven’t had a problem.”

“It’s how you look. People are afraid of you.”

Lucy loved the idea and paused a moment to admire the new thorn and blood-drop tattoo she’d applied yesterday to replace the one that had started to flake. In another couple of days, she’d have to fix her dragon. And maybe add a tattoo sleeve on her other arm … “Nobody expects to see either Lucy Jorik or Temple Renshaw at a Charity Island Fourth of July parade,” she said, “and if nobody expects to see you, they don’t see you.”

When she’d stopped at the farm stand yesterday, Toby had been decorating his bike while Bree examined a bedraggled bee costume that Toby’s grandmother used to wear in parades. “The question is … ,” Bree had said to Lucy as she straightened an antenna, “how desperate am I to attract new customers?”