If you read the diaries closely then you know that Rosie didn’t start taking Maia with her to see Russ until 2016. Once this happened, my questions grew more insistent. I didn’t like the idea of Maia spending time with any adult I hadn’t met.
Again, I was shut down.
There were whispers around town about the “Invisible Man,” and some of it reached my ears. I learned he was white, he was wealthy, he had a villa somewhere on the north shore. Did I think he was married? It crossed my mind, but again, Rosie was in her thirties, old enough to know what she was doing.
To be honest, AC, I was worried about Rosie—and Maia—getting hurt. I didn’t give a thought to any woman Russell Steele might have been betraying. When I think of it this way, I understand what you mean about us being on “opposite sides” of this thing.
Although this isn’t a letter of apology, I do want to say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry you were betrayed and I’m sorry you were hurt. I also want to tell you something about my past that you might not know.
Before I moved to St. John and met LeeAnn Small, I was married to someone else, a woman named Kimberly Cassel, whom I met when I lived in Key West. Kimberly was a hot ticket—a star bartender and one hell of a fisherwoman. She was also a serial philanderer and an alcoholic. Before our marriage ended, Kimberly revealed that she had fooled around with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of the men who came into the bar where she worked. Kimberly got pregnant and miscarried at fourteen weeks, which was devastating to me at the time and felt even worse when I discovered the child might not even have been mine.
I put Kimberly in rehab and divorced her, which might sound like a door that shut clean and firm, but I assure you, the hurt lasted for a very long time after.
I tell you this only because I want you to feel less alone and to know that I do have some idea of what you’re battling.
If you made it this far in the letter, AC, then I’m grateful—and not only grateful but hopeful that, at some point in the future, we can have a conversation and mend things between us. I miss you for many reasons, but mostly I miss our friendship. As unlikely as it might be, the friendship is genuine.
With love,
Huck
Irene clears the emotion from her throat and reads the letter again. Then she folds it up and returns it to the envelope. She heads back into the kitchen to unload the dishes from the drying rack and she holds the letter over the kitchen trash. It feels like Huck is, once again, rushing her. If he’d learned anything from watching and listening to her the past couple of months, he would have known that what she needs is time.
She can’t bring herself to throw the letter away. She tucks it into the front pocket of her suitcase.
As she’s falling asleep, she thinks, Huck wrote me a letter. And she smiles.
The next day, Irene e-mails Natalie Key to thank her for the boxes. She doesn’t call because she knows Natalie is handling a new, highly sensitive, high-profile embezzlement case and is very busy. She’s surprised when the phone rings.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get you more,” Natalie says. “Your books and clothes will be returned eventually, once they’ve been documented and it’s been determined that they have minimal resale value. Certain other personal items as well—your teakettle, kitchen utensils. But no antiques, and not the rugs. Not your cars. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Irene says—and the strange thing is, she means it. She owned a house filled with things, some of them very expensive. But none of it matters. She’s doing just fine without things. Why had she put so much time and energy into them in the first place?
“Also…” Natalie says. Her voice takes on a sober tone and Irene assumes she’s about to say that Irene’s retainer has run out. “I heard from the Feds. There were personal journals of Rosie Small’s that were discovered—but unfortunately, these didn’t contain enough hard facts to incriminate Todd Croft.”
Irene closes her eyes. All of that pain…for nothing? Huck should have buried the diaries in a drawer and given them to Maia ten or fifteen years from now. In ten or fifteen years, the love affair between Russell Steele and his Mona Lisa wouldn’t hurt Irene the way it does now.
“That guy Croft,” Natalie says. “He’s the mastermind. There’s no other way.”
“He’s such a mastermind, he managed to walk away unscathed,” Irene says.
“Fined,” Natalie says. “Heavily fined. But make no mistake, that guy has money hidden.”
“He killed Russ,” Irene says. “And Rosie. And Stephen Thompson. And he’s getting off scot-free.”
“I thought for sure we were going to help send him to jail,” Natalie says. “I’m sorry, Irene.”
She received the study materials for her captain’s test, but when she starts reading the introduction, she sees that, in addition to passing the test, she has to have at least three hundred and sixty days logged on the water as a mate or crew member.
Three hundred and sixty days!
She has, maybe, thirty.
Irene sags at this news. She chastises herself for not realizing this would be the case. If it were just a little studying and a test, then every clown out there would have a captain’s license. She feels so naive. Here she announced her grandiose plan—her own charter, Angler Cupcake, direct competition for Huck. She had cinematic fantasies of standing proud at the helm of her own boat with a full charter, puttering past the empty Mississippi. In some versions, she waves to Huck. In others, she ignores him.
He must have known she didn’t have enough hours
