Anders’s pleasure at his cleverness returned twofold—or as pleased as he could feel in a room teeming with dead insects, anyway.
“Give me five minutes. I’ve got to go change.”
Anders watched her disappear through the only other door in the room, which he presumed led to a bedroom and bathroom. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets and purposefully strode forward, suppressing a shudder and giving the vermin morgue a wide berth.
He skirted the sofa and stepped right up to the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, books stuffed in every which way like a game of disheveled Tetris, except for one shelf that held a record player and about fifty LPs. He casually flipped through them, not recognizing nearly any of the obscure bands, and then moved on to the books. He often thought bookshelves could tell you more about a person than the inside of their bathroom cabinet. This one was no different. There were the expected dry science titles—like Field Guide to Chesapeake Bay Insects and Dragonflies: Behavior and Ecology—and heavy classics mixed in with paperback mysteries and romances.
Then Anders spied a spine that gave him pause: For Whom the Bell Tolls. He plucked it from the shelf and eyed the cover, thumbed through the worn pages. It was an old edition, one that had clearly been read multiple times in its life. He flipped to the famous epigraph penned by John Donne, knowing what he’d find, as he’d had to memorize it in his tenth-grade English class.
No man is an island. The email handle of the mysterious missive he’d received weeks ago.
“That’s one of Tom’s favorites.”
Anders jerked at the voice and looked up at Piper.
“I couldn’t get through the first chapter, I don’t think.”
He blinked, and glanced back down at the book. Tom’s favorite. Well, clearly he wasn’t the anonymous emailer. Unless he’d found a way to type from beyond the grave.
He slid the book back in its rightful place.
“Come on, let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
Piper side-eyed him. “I know you’re a reporter, but you’ve really got to stop asking so many questions.”
And that was how Anders ended up on a dead man’s bicycle following Piper down the windy deserted path toward Graver’s Beach.
The cracked paved road was flat, flanked on both sides by seagrass as tall as cornstalks. And though Anders knew the island was only 1.2 miles long, the road meandered for what seemed like miles, an unending maze, until finally—after twenty minutes of pedaling—the seagrass gave way to flush marshlands. Anders, sucking in deep lungfuls of air and sweating liberally, opened his mouth to ask how much farther, when Piper stopped, dismounting from her bike in one swift motion and setting the kickstand with her foot. Anders gratefully followed suit, although with much less grace.
He followed her along a footpath, around a bend, until they were dumped out on a rock-studded sandy expanse of land, dwarfed only by the never-ending breadth of sea lapping on its shore. Piper kicked off her shoes and led him to the middle of the beach, where she sat on a flat cloud-gray rock and patted the space beside her.
Anders hesitated before sinking beside her. He didn’t know why they had to come all the way out here to do the interview, but Piper had told him not to ask questions and he thought it best to follow her directive, so as not to ruin his chances.
He waited for her to say something, but she just pleasantly stared at the water. So he took it as his cue to dig the recorder out of his pocket and set it discreetly between them, pressing the record button.
“I’m just gonna . . .” he said quietly, motioning to it.
She turned to look at him and then the recorder. She rolled her eyes before reaching for it and clicking the stop button.
“Wait! What are you—”
“I didn’t invite you here for an interview.”
“But I thought—”
Piper broke eye contact, jerking her head to Anders’s feet, as if just noticing them. “Why do you have your shoes on?”
“I always wear my shoes.”
“At the beach?”
“Well, I don’t really go to the beach, if I can help it.”
She stared at him incredulously, and then shook her head, muttering. Before he knew it, she had deftly reached down, grabbed his left shoe with both hands, and jerked it off his foot.
“Hey!” he protested, as she did the same with the other shoe, and he was left with his legs sticking straight out, his heels hanging inches from the gray loamy sand.
“Now put your feet down.”
“No.”
She cocked an eyebrow and Anders wondered if she’d been taking lessons in intimidation from Mrs. Olecki. Regardless, he would have protested again, except his thigh muscles had started quivering and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep his legs hovering in the air. So he let them drop, making a disgusted face when the mushy, mud-like sand rose up to greet the sides of his feet, sliding between his toes.
“See? How does that feel?”
“Gritty. And slimy.”
“I know,” she said, sighing. “It’s wonderful.”
They sat in silence, Anders wondering what on earth Piper had brought him out here for if not for an interview, and how much longer he’d have to keep his feet in the sludge. When he finally opened his mouth to ask, Piper beat him to it.
“Better now?”
“What do you mean?”
“This is where I come whenever I’m upset. Being out here . . .” She swept her arm at the craggy rocks, the sand, the water. “It helps.”
They sat in silence for a few more beats and Anders stared out at the sea, watched as a seagull dove into the water in search of a fish but came up empty. He studied Piper from the corner of his eye, her face turned up toward the sun like a morning glory. Eyes closed. Peaceful. Content. Suddenly she opened one and caught Anders looking at her.
“You’re still thinking about your podcast, aren’t you?”
Guilty. Anders didn’t respond, but apparently his expression was all she needed.
She closed
