Irene bows her head. She notices his use of the pronoun we, which she finds both sweet and confusing. What he doesn’t understand is that there is no we. Irene has lost her house here and her home in Iowa City. She feels like Wile E. Coyote in the old cartoons: suspended over a canyon, running on air, and then looking down and realizing there’s nothing beneath him. Irene’s problem can’t be fixed. It can’t be made better by fresh grilled mahi for dinner. Irene’s problem is that her husband of thirty-five years, in addition to keeping a mistress and fathering a child and lying about his whereabouts, had been evading tax laws and laundering money.
“Did I ever tell you that Russ sent me flowers on New Year’s Day?” Irene asks. “Calla lilies, a beautiful bouquet. He must have arranged it with the florist ahead of time and paid extra because of the holiday. And do you know what I thought when I got them? I thought, What a lovely man Russell Steele is. I am so lucky to have him.”
“AC,” Huck says. He turns off the heat under the eggs and takes a step toward her, but she holds up her palm to warn him away.
“He was dead by the time the flowers arrived.”
“Irene,” Huck says. “You’re allowed to be upset.”
Apparently, Irene hasn’t avoided the nervous-breakdown stage after all because what she wants to do is scream, You’re damn right I’m allowed to be upset! It’s a good thing the man is dead because if he were alive, I’d kill him!
But Irene holds her tongue and a second later, Maia walks into the kitchen. She’s wearing pink shorts, a gray T-shirt with a hand-painted iguana on the front, and a pair of black Converse.
When she sees Irene, she does an almost comical double take. “Um…hi? Miss Irene?”
“Good morning, Maia,” Irene says. She turns the corners of her lips up, which physically hurts. Then, as a demonstration that everything’s okay, everything’s fine, she takes a sip of her coffee. It’s strong. One small mercy.
Maia looks from Irene to Huck and back with raised eyebrows. “Did you…stay here last night?”
Irene nearly laughs. She has no idea what to say. Part of her wants to claim she’s here just to pick up Huck for their charter, but in another second, Maia is going to notice Irene’s suitcase open on the coffee table.
“I did,” Irene says. “Huck was kind enough to let me sleep on the sofa.”
“Okay…” Maia says.
Huck spoons some eggs onto a plate and pushes the button on the toaster. “Irene and the boys lost the villa, Nut,” he says. “There’s some…tax trouble.”
Tax trouble is a useful phrase, Irene thinks. It’ll put everyone to sleep.
Maia takes a seat at the table. “So you guys can’t stay there anymore?”
The toaster dings. Huck pulls butter and jam out of the fridge and sets them on the table along with the plate of eggs and toast. “I have to get ready,” he says, and he disappears down the hall, leaving Irene to explain the unexplainable.
“We can’t,” Irene says. Cash called his friend Tilda and spent the night at her house. Irene asked Cash to call Baker and let him know what had happened. Baker was planning on moving down to the island from Houston with his son, Floyd—though these plans will certainly have to change. Hopefully, Baker hasn’t done anything that can’t be undone. “The villa belongs to the government now. Because Russ…your dad…he owed the government money for taxes, and since he’s not here to pay them, the FBI took the house instead.” This isn’t quite true, but it’s close enough.
“So none of us can stay there?”
“No,” Irene says. “They let me leave with only one suitcase. Just my clothes. So the stuff in your room…might be difficult to get back.”
Maia’s fork hovers over her breakfast. She looks so much like Russ’s mother, Milly, in that moment that Irene wants to hug her. Those eyes. Milly’s eyes.
“Are you guys leaving, then?” Maia asks in a wavering voice.
“Oh, Maia,” Irene says, and her eyes fill with tears. “No? I don’t know? The FBI also took my house in Iowa City.”
“They did?”
“They did,” Irene says. She can no longer stand, she’s shaking too badly, so she takes the seat next to Maia. “That house is what’s called a Victorian, and it had been a dream of mine since I was a young girl to restore and live in a real Victorian house. When Russ and I were first married, I kept clippings in a file folder of paint colors I liked, sofas, wallpaper, old sinks, light fixtures, doorknobs.”
“Like Pinterest?” Maia says.
“Yes, like Pinterest,” Irene says. “And once Russ…your dad…took the job down here, I had the money to buy a real Victorian house in a style called Queen Anne, which has elaborate gingerbread fretwork trim…” She looks at Maia. “Do you know what that is?”
Maia shakes her head.
“It looks like a house in a fairy tale, with a deep front porch and a turret and some stained-glass windows.”
“Cool,” Maia says. Irene thinks maybe Maia is indulging her, but it is cool.
“It was as if my entire Pinterest board came to life,” Irene says. “The house is filled with antiques and hand-knotted silk rugs. There are built-in cabinets and salvaged fixtures and stained-glass windows and murals on the walls and chandeliers, and I have a doorbell that used to ring in a convent in Italy.” She needs to stop. What is she doing, unloading all this on a twelve-year-old? “I would have loved for you to see it.” This is true, Irene realizes. She wanted
