Wreckage (23 page)

Her strategy was avoidance. The busier she could make their lives, the fewer opportunities for dwelling on the past. So Lillian attempted to make that first summer home spectacular. They went to the pool and the park, searched the shelves at the library for the newest Captain Underpants book, and played every game that the boys wanted in their backyard—from baseball to two-hand-touch/tackle football.

One of their summer projects was to change Josh and Daniel’s bedroom from a little boy’s nursery to a big kid’s room. They made a weekend of it. Friday night, they picked out the colors at Home Depot, then taped the ceilings and baseboards while snacking on pizza.

Saturday they painted and painted and painted until tiny midnight blue paint speckles covered their hands, faces, and hair. Even Daniel didn’t tire of the hard work. Taking turns picking their favorite songs from Josh’s iPod, it felt more like a dance party than a home-improvement project.

That night they camped out in the basement, watching movies and snuggling on the couch bed. It was as close to heaven as Lillian had felt in a long time.

Sunday, after making a quick run to church, they came home for a lunch of chicken tacos and sweet corn before running upstairs to finish the job. They worked fast, pulling off tape, sticking on sports team decals, and throwing away the large plastic sheets that’d protected their furniture and carpet during the project. When the room was complete, Lillian called the boys to stand in the doorway and survey their hard work.

“It looks great, guys!” Lillian squeezed their shoulders simultaneously. Daniel’s soft shoulder welcomed her touch, like her fingers and his skin were meant for each other. He cuddled into her, burying his face in Lillian’s side like he’d done a few weeks earlier with Jill. Lillian smiled.

On her other side, the thin muscles under Josh’s skin reminded Lillian he was more grown than little, and she squeezed him a bit tighter. Soon he’d remember that moms aren’t cool and hanging out with family for the weekend isn’t a preferred activity.

“It’s awesome,” Daniel whispered. “Can I call Emma to come over and see it? Aunt Jill made me promise we’d invite them when we were done.”

“Of course!” Okay, maybe she sounded a bit too chipper. She didn’t exactly love the kids calling Jill their “aunt” but Lillian was working on overcoming her one-sided rivalry with her best friend. Plus, over the past eighteen months the boys bonded with Jill’s daughters, Emma and Jane. Daniel’s position on girls being “icky” had clearly evolved. He and six-year-old Emma were now inseparable and Josh and Jane had settled into a quiet friendship, spending most of their time writing the next installment in their comic book series:
The Adventures of J&J
. Lillian read all fifteen installments and immediately declared it a literary masterpiece.

“Why don’t you go give them a call? We can make sandwiches. Ask Aunt Jill if she has any chips she can bring over, would ya?” Lillian called after the seven-year-old, already skipping down the hallway. “What about you, bud,” she asked Josh, “What do you think about your room?”

Flipping his hair back with his left hand in a way that was becoming habit, Josh scanned the room with his dark brown eyes. “Yeah, it’s great. Thanks, Mom.” He wrapped his left arm around Lillian’s waist and hugged her gently. He lingered there for a second before letting his arm fall and then nervously flipping his hair back again.

“Mom, can I ask you a question?” His voice trembled when he said her name and she still knew that meant he was trying not to cry.

“What’s up, baby? You know you can ask me anything.” She turned to face him. Sure enough, little reserves of tears clung to his lower eyelids. This time she pushed back his hair to see his face.

“Are you going to leave us again?” A miniature tear fell onto his cheek.

Her heart skipped a beat. “Why in the world would you ask that, Josh?”

He pulled away. “You were gone for a long time and you were with that man, Dave. Sammy at school said that ’cause you were with him and Daddy was here that you wouldn’t want to be married anymore. His parents got divorced last year and now he takes the bus on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays and walks on Thursdays and Fridays. He said his parents started by fighting a lot and then they didn’t sleep in the same room anymore and then his daddy moved out with his girlfriend.”

Lillian had never met Sammy but she had an immediate desire to find him, point her finger in his face, and say, “Mind your own business, kid!” Unfortunately, this wasn’t McDonald’s PlayPlace, where she could gently urge some stranger’s child to stop wailing on her toddler with his Happy Meal toy. Instead, Josh was going on ten and she couldn’t fight his battles for him anymore.

The tinge of truth in what Josh said made her feel worse than ever. It’s one thing to lie to an adult, but to your own children? Most nights she fell asleep on the couch or in the spare room after spending hours on the phone with David. Jerry hadn’t said anything about her absence and she thanked God for that, not knowing what she’d say if he confronted her with phone bills or hurt feelings.

Apparently the kids had started to notice. What would’ve been tiny disagreements two years ago, like how Jerry’d stopped putting the toilet paper onto the actual roll or the first time her hair clogged the drain in the shower, turned into huge arguments that had to be taken into the other room away from their boys. The words “I wish you hadn’t come back” or “I don’t want to be with you anymore” had never been spoken, but they were always there, threatening to break the silence and change their lives.

As her son’s worried face peered up at her, Lillian placed both of her hands on his thin shoulders, and looked her son directly in the eyes. “I’ll always be here for you, Josh, always. I won’t let anything take me away from you and your brother again. When I was on that island, the
only
thing that kept me going was the thought of you two.” Josh nibbled at his bottom lip thoughtfully. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?” Lillian urged him. “Is there something else you need to say, sweetie?”

“The reason I’m worried is, well . . .” As Lillian used her fingers to dry Josh’s face, he flinched away from her callused fingertips. “Mommy, stop, listen. Daddy had a girlfriend.” He paused, watching Lillian as though he thought she’d scream or faint at the revelation. When she said nothing, Josh continued. “We met her one time and I didn’t like her. Daddy said it was okay to like someone new because you were gone forever and you’d want us to be happy. But I didn’t want to and I didn’t want him to and now look at how things turned out. You weren’t gone forever and it wasn’t okay to like her.”

Lillian let the words sink in. Jerry was completely up front with the fact he’d dated a few times but he’d never mentioned a girlfriend, especially not serious enough to entail a visit with the kids. She wanted to be jealous, any wife in this situation would be. She should want to know what this woman looked like or how old she was. It should kill her knowing that in some romantic situation Jerry might’ve kissed her or even more. She wished she could transfer the jealousy she felt for Jill to the secret date, but Lillian didn’t have the right to judge Jerry since she was completely unwilling to receive his judgments in return.

“Joshua, you’re such a tenderhearted little boy.” She pulled him in for a hug and he let her. His head now reached her shoulder rather than her chest but he still smelled the same, laundry detergent, soap, and the faint bite of little boy sweat. “Your daddy didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t know I was alive. It would’ve been silly for him to wait forever. Remember the judge your daddy went to see a year ago? He signed a paper that said I was dead. You had a funeral for me and Grandma. He wasn’t cheating on me, baby. I completely understand and I’m not mad at all. I’m proud that you were brave enough to tell me and that you love me enough to be worried about me.”

“I can’t lose you again, Mommy,” Josh whispered into her shoulder, letting out a tiny sob.

“Don’t worry, honey, I won’t let anything come between me and my babies,” she said as she rubbed small circles between his shoulders. She meant it.

She thought about that conversation a lot lately. That’s why she said yes to this god-awful interview and suffered through manipulative questions and innuendos. She wanted to tell the story one last time and tell it right, and then leave it all behind her: the crash, the island, Kent, David, and even Paul. If it meant lying to Genevieve Randall and all of America, it was a fair trade. So as hard as it was when Genevieve asked Lillian how she felt about Kent’s death, she screwed her face into a look of sheer grief, pushed a few tears into her eyes, and responded, “Devastated.”

CHAPTER 22

LILY-DAY 156

The Island

It’s Sunday again and it’s six weeks and two days since I killed Kent. Forty-four days since I plunged a knife into his back—slashing through his skin, stabbing between his ribs—and felt the sickening ricochet of the stone off his vertebrae. I still can’t decide if it was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life . . . or the bravest.

David seems to have his own opinions. For the past few weeks, he’s been sleeping by the fire and I’m lucky if he strings three words together when he talks to me. Sleeping alone in that shelter is a harsh punishment. Sometimes I’m sure I totally deserve it, and the ghosts that haunt the dark shadowy corners keep me awake at night.

Stepping out into the sunlight, I see that David stoked the fire and a freshly caught fish is sizzling on the cooking stone. My stomach rumbles at the savory smell, but as hungry as I am I want to get to the lagoon before David returns. I’d rather starve than eat with him in silence.

Thankfully, preparations for my scheduled Sunday bath take little to no thought anymore. My pack, Margaret’s old suit jacket, is a dingy gray and no longer turns white when washed in the ocean. At least the bloodstain doesn’t show anymore.

I walk over to the hollowed-out coconut tree stump at the corner of our jungle camp. It’s the closest stump to the ocean and easy to identify. Flipping up the thin piece of limestone that covers the rough opening, I grab Margaret’s ratty old makeup bag and use my toes to slip the stone over the hole.

Wandering down the beach, I head for my favorite spot in the lagoon. Bathing in salt water is difficult and I never come out completely clean—especially my hair, which is always stiff and coated in a white film of salt—but I still can’t go back to the freshwater pool in the jungle.

One time, right after Kent died, I tried. I thought since he was gone the fear that tainted that place would be erased by his blood. But as my feet sunk into the moist dirt around the pool, I knew it was a mistake.

“He’s not coming, he’s not coming, he’s dead,” I reminded myself. Once I reached the place where he’d grabbed me and the spot where he held me down with my face in the mud until I couldn’t breathe, it all came back. How I had to lie there, helpless, unable to get the knife that David had made for me. How close I’d come to surrendering.

I couldn’t stay. My heart thumped in my eyes and ears. I staggered away, dropping Margaret’s bag of watered-down shampoo and nubs of hotel soap. Margaret’s necklace and wedding ring rolled out with a clunk. I couldn’t stop and pick it up, not without remembering how it cut my neck when Kent ripped it off and tossed it in the mud.

Instead, I ran through the trees and down the snaking footpath toward the ocean. The hanging branches and vines slapped at my arms and face, pulling at my hair like girls in a schoolyard fight. When I tore into camp, tender crimson scratches covered every inch of exposed skin, beading up with unspilled blood.

David was there, and when I fell into the sand, he took me in his arms and carried me to the shelter. Without letting go he used his teeth to tear open the last alcohol wipe from the first aid kit, cleaning my wounds so tenderly the sterilizing liquid didn’t even sting. When the swab was dark red and my breathing returned to normal, he didn’t let me go. He held me for hours that day. It’s the last time I fell asleep in his arms, the only place I feel safe anymore.

When I woke, the sun was down and I was alone in the shelter. The flickering fire outside threw off enough light for me to spot David, asleep on the ground. His sun-browned torso lay uncovered, sweat gleaming on his back from being so close to the flames. His black hair was so long, the loose curls reaching down his shoulders, and a few strands covered his face. I could tell by the steady rise and fall of his back he was sound asleep.

I missed his body next to mine. Once Kent was gone, I slept on David’s chest, his heartbeat my lullaby. But that night, when I reached out to wake him, my hand grazed something cool on the edge of bamboo floor. The makeup bag. Lying on top of the bag was the delicate gold chain that held Margaret and Charlie’s wedding rings. How did he find it? It didn’t even matter that my ring was still missing. I slipped the chain over my head, an ugly knot where Kent had snapped it. The metal was cool against my chest.

David always seemed to know what I needed. I felt selfish for wanting to wake him. Instead, I grabbed the bag and wrapped it in my arms like a child with his favorite teddy bear. I lay down, bag still clutched to my chest, and fell asleep watching him, letting the warmth from the fire fill the space he usually occupied.