Now who could be calling her so early on a Sunday morning? Her first thought was Tom’s mother, who had taken to calling more often in the past few weeks. As she crossed the room, the ringing appeared to grow louder, more demanding—convincing her it was, in fact, Tom’s mother. She plucked the receiver off its base.
“Arlene?” she said.
But as soon as she heard the voice on the other end, she realized it wasn’t Tom’s mother. It wasn’t Tom’s mother at all.
“Oh,” she breathed. She put her hand on her heart, as if checking to make sure it was still there. Still beating. For the first time since the storm, her eyes pricked with tears. “Oh, Tom.”
The teakettle whistled, an insistent shrieking, but Piper could barely hear it for the roaring in her ears.
Chapter 21
Thursday morning, if the trilling of Anders’s 5:00 a.m. alarm hadn’t woken him, the throbbing of his bandaged finger would have. He groaned and rolled to his side, slamming his good hand onto the clock to silence the ringing, and then sat up. He was exhausted, but he had to catch the buy boat back over to the mainland so he’d have time to shower and change at his apartment before work.
But by the time he got to the docks, BobDan informed him the boat had left a full hour earlier (Anders couldn’t comprehend why anybody on the island even owned clocks, at this point, since they clearly never chose to go by them), and he’d have to wait for the mail boat. He didn’t get into the Winder docks until eight, which gave him no choice but to drive straight to the office without stopping by his apartment like he had planned.
And his backup plan to immediately get coffee was thwarted when he spotted Greta, standing cross-armed and stern at his desk. “My office. Now.”
Anders dropped his bag and, heartbeat speeding up, followed his boss to her office, where she shut the door behind him. Probably not a good sign.
Once they were both seated in chairs across from each other, Greta’s desk between them, she opened her mouth to speak, but then sniffed the air, wrinkling her nose.
“What is that?”
Anders sniffed the air, too, the distinct scent of not-so-fresh briny crab juice filling his nostrils.
“Er . . . I don’t smell anything,” he lied.
Greta’s eyes narrowed. “Where were you yesterday?” Before Anders could respond, she waved her hand. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is you weren’t in the office. And you weren’t out on assignment, though that’s what Jess tried to convince me of. I haven’t said anything the past few Fridays you’ve cut out early—and yes, I noticed. But a Wednesday? Anders, I can’t have that.”
“I’m sorry,” Anders started, his bandaged finger throbbing in earnest.
“It’s not just about the days either. Yes, you’re getting your work turned in, but you’re making careless mistakes. I had to field a phone call this morning from Earl on the school board—you misspelled his last name.”
She thrust the paper across the desk, her finger pointing at a line in his latest article, and Anders’s eyes grew big as walnuts. Anders had used a mnemonic device to remember Earl’s last name, Fuquall, by thinking “Fuckall.” And now everyone who read the paper knew the way he remembered it as well.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you, Anders, but consider this your warning. No more leaving early. No more distractions. I know we’re a small paper, but we’re a small paper that’s using a considerable amount of our small budget to pay you to be here. And not fuckall of it up.”
Anders raised a brow, impressed with her quip, but something told him she didn’t expect a laugh in return. “I understand,” he said.
“Oh, and Anders?” Greta said, shuffling papers on her desk as he stood to leave. “Take a shower. You smell like you crawled inside a tuna fish can to die.”
Back at his desk, Jess peeked over their cubicle divider. “Sorry,” she said. “I tried to cover for you.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Jess squinted at him. “Isn’t that what you were wearing yesterday?”
In his periphery, Anders saw Hector’s head pop up from his desk like a meerkat. His booming voice carried. “Caldwell got lucky?”
Jess raised her eyebrows. “Did you?” she whispered.
“No, I—”
Hector appeared beside him, slapping him on the back so forcefully Anders’s chest almost crashed into his desk. “Let’s hear deets,” he said, before immediately clapping his elbow across his face. “Dear God, man.”
“I know, I know.” Anders pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s crabs.”
Jess let out an involuntary gasp, while Hector took a small step backward, shaking his head. “You gotta wrap it up, dude. That’s rule number one.”
“No, not . . . I’m talking about real crabs. Crustaceans. I was helping—” Anders sighed. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
Hector slowly backed away and Jess shot him a concerned look before disappearing behind the cubicle. Anders sank into his chair and massaged his temples. He had plenty of headache-inducing problems, starting with the powerful throbbing in his tightly bandaged ring finger, the whole-body exhaustion from rising so early, and the most recent conversation in which he nearly lost his job and only source of income.
But
