Osprey Island

Bud nodded. His eyes were trained down. He looked almost humble, and humility was not something to which Suzy was even remotely accustomed in her father. “I’ve got to ask you . . .” he began, then fixed his eyes on her and spoke quickly, with urgent purpose. “I need you to take over for Lorna. I’ll try to find someone, but until then . . .” He stared, waiting for a one-word answer he might snatch from her like a relay baton.

“You want—?” Suzy screwed up her face. This was something she sensed she didn’t want to hear.

“You’re the only one who knows the Lodge. How things work. I’ll pay you, of course.”

Suzy’s lips pursed defiantly. “This is your way of asking ?”

Bud regarded his daughter blankly.

“Would please be so difficult?”

She exhausted him. Bud made a gesture as if to say, I concede to you, take anything you want from me, take everything, take it all! If “please” is what you require, then I give you “please.” He never said the word aloud.

“Fine,” Suzy said. “Fine. Whatever. Until you find someone.”

Bud sighed, eyes closed, shaking his head. “It’s going to be a hell of a time.”

“Yeah, well, for all of us.”

Bud nodded. He turned to go.

“You’re welcome,” Suzy called after him, the way she did with her first-graders.

He turned back around mid-stride, gave a cursory half nod, and continued down the hall.

Bud called a staff meeting in the dining room that evening. Nancy was back up at the house, still sleeping off the tranquilizers Doc Zobeck had pumped her full of that morning. The Lodge felt as it had the day they’d gotten word of Chas’s death in Vietnam. It had been Doc Zobeck back then too who’d given Nancy her fill of Valium, just to get her past the screaming, past the part when they were afraid she’d truly lose her mind. Bud hadn’t known what to do with himself that terrible day. He was the owner of a large hotel, always a thousand things to do. Except that day, when he couldn’t think of one. He was of no comfort to his wife, who howled like a dully stabbed beast; he could not even conceive of going to his daughter, who was sixteen and terrified him for that reason alone. Bud’s memory had blurred and distorted that time just after Chas’s death. Nothing had felt real. And it was dangerous, Bud knew, what a person might do if what was real didn’t feel real. Some time down the road, what was real would come back, and when it did the chances were good that it’d slam him so hard he wouldn’t have a choice but to feel the pain.

What Bud felt now wasn’t pain; it was more gnawing ache. There was fear, and along with it an uncomfortable lurking sense of being swindled. All these years finally culminating in Lorna’s greatest revenge. But revenge for what? Hadn’t he been good to Lorna and Lance? Hadn’t he kept them on at the hotel years after any normal person would have fired them for being drunks and freeloaders and not one ounce of help at all? Hadn’t he spent years defending that charity to his wife? Bud had long felt a certain responsibility for Lorna, and he’d taken care of them all those years, and what was her final thank-you? To load herself up and pass out and nearly burn the whole place down? It was a move that would surely hurt him, if not close the whole goddamn place down before the end of the season if he wasn’t careful. Bud had no choice but to be extraordinarily careful.

The staff was gathering in the dining room, in chairs and on the floor. Already the alliances were forming, the summer romances, hands grazing the backs of necks, the ever-insistent touch: I am here. Bud had seen it so many times before, those summer loves, so few of which would last, so few of which would make it as far as Labor Day, most of which were nothing more than summer sex. But it kept the staff happy, their furtive trysting in the bushes, and that’s what Bud was about, wasn’t it? Keeping everybody happy? His life, his livelihood—ironic as it may have been—was about keeping people happy. And keeping people happy, Bud had learned, was about keeping them from seeing what they didn’t want to see. They came for a vacation: a dream, a refuge, an escape. And if it didn’t turn out quite exactly as edenic and impervious as they’d dreamed, they didn’t want to know. Death is everywhere, they might concede, but for god’s sake, don’t point it out on the sightseeing tour!

Bud addressed his staff: “Thank you all for coming down this evening. ” Bloodshot eyes fixed him with spongy stares. “It’s been a difficult day,” he said, “a very, very difficult day for us all.

“This hotel—this island—will not be the same without Lorna Squire, and we need to support each other and Lorna’s family during this time. We have a big season coming up, and it’ll probably do us more good than we know to put a face on and face the guests. Help us get through our own grief . . .” He looked around at his audience. The Irish girls all looked the same to him, every summer. In the far corner stood Roddy Jacobs. Leaning in an archway near Roddy, Suzy was staring Bud down, her face critical, waiting to hear what he would say, waiting, as usual, to hear what he would say wrong. And in her view, Bud knew, that would be everything.

“I know,” Bud went on, “that no one here’s much in a holiday spirit right now. Lots of sadness.” He fumbled for a lead-in. “But our guests are going to be here on vacation, they’re coming to enjoy themselves. Fourth of July weekend we’re booked full. It’s important for our guests to enjoy themselves, and it’s also important that we set a tone for the rest of the season to come. Show our guests what kind of an establishment we run here, and send them home with great memories to tell their friends about the Lodge at Osprey Island.” This part of Bud’s speech was canned. He’d given it so many times. “Fourth of July weekend is important for us: we do well on opening weekend, we do well for the season.” Bud paused. He looked around. “Already . . .” He didn’t know how to go on. “Already this . . . accident . . . is going to make things difficult for us here, as a business. We’ve got a lot to overcome.” He spoke quickly now. He spoke to the floor. “In proper honor, of Mrs. Squire, we’ll cancel our Fourth of July celebration— bus the guests over to Wickham Beach for the fireworks there. For those of us who knew Lorna, this will not be a time for celebration. But our guests, they didn’t know Mrs. Squire. This is their vacation, and they don’t want our worries laid on top of what they already got. Not while they’re on vacation.”

Bud was in business mode: The maintenance shop off the rear parking lot would become the new home of the laundry facilities— equipment would be arriving the next day; he’d made the necessary arrangements with great speed and efficiency—and a new maintenance building would go up on the site of the old laundry shed. A demolition crew would begin in the morning, construction immediately following, and everything would be finished— We’ll cross our fingers, Bud said—in the next week and a half before the guests started showing up.

One of the Irish girls raised her palm in the air like a schoolchild. Bud looked at her uncertainly. She took his stare as a sign to speak.

“What should we do when people—guests—when they ask about it?” Her voice was riding as though she might quake and dissolve into tears. “What should we tell them?” She was whining now. “What exactly should we say?”