Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

“This is it,” the Chief said. “We’re done. Let’s have some lunch, and then we’ll head back.”

Eddie nodded, but his heart was heavy. The bluffs of Sankaty were right in front of him. This was the island where he had lived for more than half his life, but for the past six hours, he felt like he’d been lucky enough to escape to another planet.

The Chief had made Italian subs with salami, ham, capicola, hot soppressata, provolone, olives, and cherry peppers. Eddie was so hungry, he devoured the whole sandwich without thinking-the peppers and the soppressata stung his lips and tongue, but he put out the fire with cold beer.

“So, how’d you like it?” the Chief asked.

“Great stuff,” Eddie said. “I couldn’t imagine a day better than this.”

The Chief packed up the lunch trash and finally cracked open a beer for himself. Eric was now snoozing on the cushioned bench, and so the Chief pulled the anchor, then said to Eddie, “Come sit with me as we motor back, would you? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Eddie felt as if his heart were pumping a mixture of habanero sauce and snake venom. Here it was, then: the real reason for the invitation to fish. It had nothing to do with a budding friendship, nothing to do with Eddie being a good guy or the kind gesture of ordering littlenecks with the Chief at Cru because his longtime buddy was dead. Eddie grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler. He needed to sober up, pronto. Predictably, the capicola and soppressata repeated on him, and his heartburn started its low smolder.

He had come out on the fishing expedition without any Tums.

“Sure thing,” Eddie said, his voice higher than normal. The Chief was at the wheel, and Eddie took a seat next to him. “What’s up?”

The Chief was silent, his eyes unreadable behind his sunglasses. Another boat passed them-someone the Chief seemed to know, because he waved-and Eddie, although he didn’t know the person, waved as well. He was so flustered that he had defaulted to indiscriminate waving. The Chief stood up and peered over the console. Eddie realized he was checking to make sure Eric was still asleep.

The Chief settled back down behind the wheel. “I’m only telling you this because I like you, Eddie. I think you’re a hell of a guy.”

Telling me what? Eddie thought, but he couldn’t eke the words out.

“And I’m sure you think that because I’m the chief of police, I believe myself to be morally superior, but I do not think that, and I do not judge. I deal with people who make mistakes every hour of my working day-some of them are big, ugly mistakes-but most people, I find, are decent. Scared, lonely, bored, and misdirected at times, maybe-but decent.”

Eddie sucked down half the bottle of water. He would basically trade his big toe for a handful of cherry Tums. “What is it you want to tell me, Ed?”

“People talk on this island,” the Chief said. “You can’t fathom the way people talk. The gossip, the rumors-it’s absolutely insidious, and most of it I ignore. None of my business, I don’t care, ninety-five percent of it is not even true.” The Chief throttled up, and the boat jumped over waves and slapped the surface of the water with a force that rattled Eddie’s teeth, jaw, and skull. It was almost as if the Chief were trying to physically punish him. “But then I saw that phone call come in, and so I thought I’d better speak up.”

“Phone call?” Eddie said. He couldn’t even remember whom the phone call had been from. All he cared about was that it hadn’t been Nadia. It had been…

Before the Chief could respond, the wind lifted Eddie’s Panama hat off his head. By the time Eddie realized what had happened, his precious Panama hat was whipped away. It danced across their wake, fifty, then a hundred, yards behind them. Gone.

He turned to the Chief, wondering what kind of absurd request it would be for the Chief to swing the boat around so Eddie could fish for his hat-it would mean another $375 dollars and six weeks to replace-but the Chief’s eyes were focused straight ahead on the blue, watery road between them and Nantucket Harbor.

The Chief had to raise his voice in order to be heard over the motor. “There’s a rumor going around,” he said. “I’ve heard it three times now.”

“Rumor?” Eddie said. His second hat. Goner than gone.

“A rumor that you’re having an affair,” the Chief said. “With Madeline King.”

Eddie shook hands with the Chief and with Eric and stumbled off the North Wharf holding a sturdy gallon ziplock bag containing five pounds of striped-bass fillets.

The Chief had said he believed him, but Eddie was dubious.

At first, Eddie had laughed. He found the idea genuinely funny. “Me?” he said. “Me and Madeline? Oh my God, no, no, no!” Eddie wasn’t sure how to successfully get his point across. “No, I’m sorry for laughing right in your face, but that is simply not true.”

The Chief said, “Eddie, I told you, I don’t judge.”

“Well, in this case, there is no reason to judge,” Eddie said. “Because it’s not true. I don’t cheat on my wife. I’ve never been unfaithful, not once.”

The Chief’s face was blank. Eddie was probably saying too much. That was the problem with situations like this: if you said too little, people assumed you were guilty, and if you said too much, it sounded like you were overexplaining because you were guilty. Eddie wanted to ask the Chief where he had heard the rumor about him and Madeline-who were the three sources? Maybe Eddie could contact those sources and try and quash the gossip. But those, most likely, weren’t the original sources. Gossip was like a virus that split and multiplied thousands upon thousands of times. If the Chief had heard the rumor three times, then it was everywhere.

Eddie nearly said, The reason Madeline called is because she lent me money and she wants it back.

That would, no doubt, explain the whole thing away, but the last thing Eddie Pancik wanted anyone on Nantucket to know was that he’d borrowed money from his best friends, who were by no means loaded themselves. For a real-estate agent, financial troubles were the kiss of death. If people thought he was a failure, then he would become a failure. No one was going to seek out a real-estate agent who was sinking.

“It’s not true,” Eddie said, in as humble and plaintive a voice as he could muster.

“Okay, Eddie,” the Chief had said. “Okay.”

The subject had dropped there, but even as Eric carved up the bass with the precision of the surgeon he would someday become, Eddie felt the conversation fouling the air. On top of everything else, Eddie had heartburn and the start of a hangover. There were Tums in his car and in his desk drawer at work. Suddenly, Eddie couldn’t wait to get away.

With the handshake, the Chief had said, “Thanks for coming today, Eddie. I enjoyed hanging out. Let’s do it again.”

“The pleasure was mine,” Eddie said. That had been true, until the very end. “Thank you for inviting me. I’d love to join you again sometime.”

But as Eddie walked away, he was sure there wouldn’t be another time. Or maybe there would be. The Chief said he didn’t judge.

Eddie pulled out his phone. There was only the one missed call from Madeline-no texts, no new business. Should Eddie call Madeline back and tell her about this rumor? Maybe if they both worked to combat it, it would go away? Or would their joint effort have the opposite effect?

He decided not to call Madeline. He decided not to give the absurd idea any energy. He sure as hell couldn’t have Grace finding out.

Instead, he dialed Nadia. He said, “You need to be at the house at ten o’clock tonight.”

“We on it, Eddie,” Nadia said. “Today, we all go to salon for hair, and to the dentist.”

Dentist? Eddie thought. He felt virtuous for five or ten seconds; this side job was encouraging the girls to take care of themselves. He doubted any of them had ever visited a dentist before in their lives. He prayed they’d gone to Dr. Torre and not that clown McMann.

The sun beat down on the top of Eddie’s bald head. He couldn’t believe he’d lost another hat!

Tums, he thought. He needed Tums.

Eddie headed in the back door of his office and stuck the bag filled with fish fillets in the kitchen fridge, which also held three bottles of Dom Pérignon, kept handy to celebrate big closings, and a couple of cartons of Greek yogurt, which was what Eloise liked to eat for lunch.

He popped out to the main room. Barbie was on the phone, Eloise was on the computer.

“Hello, all,” Eddie said.

“Eddie,” Eloise said. “How was the fishing?”

“I can’t complain,” Eddie said. “A day on the water is better than a day anywhere else.”

“I didn’t even know you liked the water,” Eloise said.

“No,” Eddie said. “Me either.”

“Well,” Eloise said, “I brought you some Boston cream doughnuts from the Bake Shop, just in case you didn’t catch any fish.” She held out a box of doughnuts-eight left, which meant Eloise must have eaten four herself, because Barbie wouldn’t touch doughnuts.

“I did catch fish,” Eddie said. “But I can’t resist.” He plucked a doughnut out of the box.

“Oh, I know,” Eloise said. “I know all your favorite things.”

The phone rang, and Eloise hurried to answer it. Please, Eddie thought, let that be a twenty-million-dollar listing.

Eddie carried the box of doughnuts over to Barbie’s desk and sat down at the chair next to it, meant for the buyers and sellers.

She said into the phone, “Listen, I have to call you back later. Bye-bye.” And she hung up.

“Who was that?” Eddie asked.

“P,” Barbie said.

P for personal. Eddie was aware that Barbie had men, lovers, dates, whatever, but he had no idea who they were and no clue whom to ask. Barbie knew everyone on this island, but she didn’t have any close friends. For holidays, she celebrated with Eddie and Grace and the twins-or else she went away, presumably with the men she knew. Were any of the men wealthy? He wondered. Manolos were expensive, and Barbie drove a 1974 Alfa Romeo that required near-constant upkeep. But Barbie had bought her house in Fishers Landing outright in 1999, and she had no children. Her life was blissfully simple.

Eddie wished he could be more like Barbie. No one was out on the street gossiping about Barbie.

Eddie said, “Why is Eloise being so nice to me?” Sometimes Eloise buttered up Eddie after she’d had a fight with Barbie.

“No idea.”

“You didn’t lose your temper?”

“No, I didn’t,” Barbie said. “How goes your bromance with the Chief?”

“Funny,” Eddie said. “It’s not a bromance. It was two guys fishing, Barb. I caught a striped bass. I have some to share, if you want a pound or two.”

“No, thanks,” Barbie said.

“Do you still have that bad feeling about the other thing?”

Barbie nodded. “I could be wrong. I’ll probably regret not going in. I could use the money.”

So maybe the men Barbie dates aren’t wealthy, Eddie thought. Maybe she dated Chris, the mechanic who fixed her Alfa Romeo.

“That makes two of us.”

“This market had better pick up,” Barbie said. She stared listlessly at her computer screen.

“Have you heard any rumors about me?” Eddie asked.

“Rumors?” Barbie said.

“No?”

“No.”

Eddie nodded and stood up, taking the box of doughnuts with him. He could not resist Boston cream. He devoured the doughnut in three bites.

The annual Nantucket-Martha’s Vineyard all-star baseball game was normally one of Madeline’s favorite days of the summer. But this year, Madeline was distracted by her writing.

Write as fast as you can, Angie had said.

Madeline had spoken to Eddie three times and left him as many messages, but it had become clear that she and Trevor weren’t getting their money back anytime soon. Madeline had gone so far as to drive by the spec houses on Eagle Wing Lane to check on their progress, but all three were boarded up and silent. Nobody was working on them!

She had called Trevor. “There aren’t any trucks out front, no workers, no action, no nothing!”

Trevor said, “Maybe Eddie is taking a hiatus for the summer. Maybe he has other things going on.”

“He said June!” Madeline said. “It’s practically July now. He said August at the latest. But there is no way these houses are going to be finished by August. They might not be finished by next August.”