They’re talking, but not touching. Swan tosses her hair, leans her head back, raises her face to his. She lays her palm on Baker’s strong chest, and Ayers feels a pang of longing. The first time she saw Baker was at Chester’s Getaway, when he crashed Rosie’s funeral reception. He had seemed such a stunning, fresh presence in that sea of all-too-familiar faces, some of which were also all too unpleasant (Mick had had the gall to bring Brigid).
At first, Ayers thought Baker was a tourist. Learning he was the Invisible Man’s son had been shocking, but on later reflection, she’d known there was something about him. She sensed that meeting him wasn’t random luck. Rosie, in a way, had sent him to her.
Then he went back to Houston.
Then he returned. They’d slept together. It had felt…right. They clicked. There was light, heat, chemistry.
Then he left again. For only a few days—but a few days was a few days too many. Mick proposed.
Then Baker came back. He’s here now. He has a job, a Jeep, a villa. Floyd is in school. Baker is a tourist no longer.
Swan takes hold of Baker’s arms and stands on her tiptoes.
No, Ayers thinks. She gets out of the truck, slams the door. Both Baker and Swan turn toward the noise. Swan’s heels hit the ground.
“Hey,” Ayers calls out. She crosses the street and strides up the driveway to the two of them. They’re standing farther apart now.
Swan looks…miffed. “Ayers?”
Baker says, “Ayers, hey!” He takes a step away from Swan.
“Sorry I didn’t text or anything,” Ayers says to Baker. “But I just got out of work and I was wondering if you wanted to come see my new place?”
Swan emits an audible breath and Ayers thinks, I know. This is brazen. You will rewind and replay this moment for your school-mom friends dozens of times until they’re all sick of hearing it, and maybe none of you will ever speak to me again. Maybe you’ll boycott La Tapa and post anonymous nasty comments on the Treasure Island Tripadvisor page, but I don’t care. Baker is the father of my baby and although I’ve treated him carelessly, I’m not giving him up without a fight.
Then she thinks, The good news is, Skip is still available.
“Yeah,” Baker says. “My mom can watch Floyd, and Swan was just leaving.” He takes Ayers’s hand and squeezes it. “I’d love to come with you.” Irene
Baker sees Maia at school while he’s picking up Floyd and invites her over for dinner.
“I hope that’s okay?” he says when he tells Irene. “I’ll go get her and drive her home.”
“Of course,” Irene says. She still isn’t ready for a détente with Huck—nope, not at all. Rosie’s relationship with Russ happened while Rosie was living under Huck’s roof. He said he’d never met Russ—Irene believes this—but could he not guess the man Rosie was involved with was married? Obviously, the Invisible Man was married. That was why he was invisible!
Huck should have asked more questions. He should have followed Rosie to the villa. He should have put an end to it.
Are these unreasonable expectations? Maybe. But the bald fact remains: Huck stood by and did nothing. For years.
He’s the only one left for Irene to blame. She can’t summon the same ire or resentment toward Maia. Maia is a child. Russ’s daughter. The boys’ sister.
“Maia is always welcome,” Irene says, and she sees relief cross Baker’s face.
Maia arrives bearing two large square packages—one light, which she carries, and one heavy, which Baker carries.
“These came for you,” Maia explains. “To Gramps’s post box.”
While Maia and Floyd take a predinner swim in the pool, Irene slices the packages open. One of them holds her Christmas ornaments, still carefully wrapped up in tissue. Irene sighs, recalling her industriousness on New Year’s Day before her dinner with Lydia at the Pullman Diner, before the phone call when she learned Russ was dead.
On New Year’s Day, she had been a different person—irritated and hurt that her husband was traveling for work over the holiday but determined to make the best of it and be productive. She’d wanted to wake up on January 2 and have all traces of Christmas gone. Back then, nothing had annoyed Irene more than lazy neighbors who left their outside lights up until Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, their wreaths up until Valentine’s Day. She had carefully removed and wrapped all the ornaments because she was a methodical person who believed God was in the details. She would be grateful for the effort the following Christmas when she opened the box and everything was just so.
She’d never imagined she’d be opening the box that spring in the Virgin Islands.
The most precious ornaments aren’t her collection of intricate and clever Christopher Radkos or the vintage ornaments she picked up at estate sales across the country but rather the ornaments the boys made in elementary school. A cardboard disk covered in green foil decorated with beads and dried macaroni, CASH written in glitter on one side. A puffy painted Santa face with cotton glued on for a beard. Irene is
