“You and your drugs!” Mr. Gimby shouted. “Ruining this island.”
“OK,” Harold said quickly, before the longtime feud between Lady Judy and Mr. Gimby could escalate further. “And now I’ll turn the floor over to Anders, who’s come to . . . well, I’ll let him tell you what he’s come here for.”
With that, Anders walked over to the podium, looking like a fish on the hook, his eyes wide and frightened. If BobDan hadn’t been so angry, he might have even felt bad for the boy.
Anders swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and then down. “I want to start off by apologizing. I know I misled a lot of you about what I was doing out here for all those months, and I didn’t mean to.”
“You lied!” someone shouted. It sounded a lot like Mrs. Olecki, but Anders couldn’t spot her in the crowd.
“I did. And I shouldn’t have. I ended up hurting the people I care about most.” His gaze locked on Piper, and then scanned the rest of the room. BobDan intensified his scowl, so Anders couldn’t miss it. “And that’s why I’m here tonight, not just to apologize but because I care about the island and what happens to it.” He paused and took a breath. “Recently I met with the real estate developer—Jacob—who came out here some time ago.”
Everyone started screaming at once.
“We won’t have outsiders telling us what to do!”
“This is a dry island!”
And most surprisingly: “Traitor!” Even BobDan thought that insult was a bit over the top.
“Just listen to him!” Piper shouted over the din. “Please. If not for me, then for Tom.”
At the invocation of her dead husband’s name, the room quieted a bit.
“Tom?” someone shouted from the back row.
“Yes, Tom,” Piper said, quieter now. “He agreed with Jacob. He thought he was different; that he had good ideas for our island. In fact . . .” She hesitated. “He’d been secretly meeting with him before he died. And then I started to as well.”
The crowd gasped.
“Look,” Anders said. “I understand that you guys don’t want to have some stranger coming in and telling you what to do. I get it—I do think Jacob has good intentions, but I understand. The thing is, you have to do something. If you don’t, this island is going to be gone, and your way of life with it, and that’s just the truth.” He paused, waiting for another outburst, for people to object, but there was only some low grumbling. And it was then he realized that even if people didn’t agree on the cause, they did know their island was in danger. “I don’t want that to happen,” he continued. “This podcast, it’s making a lot of money now. And it’s yours. All of it. I want to give it to you. It’s the least I can do for what I did. And you all can vote how you want to spend it.”
The roar swelled again.
“Why should we trust you?”
“Why don’t you leave us alone?”
“Nobody asked you to come out here!”
Anders looked in the direction of where that last voice came from and something occurred to him in that moment. “You know what?” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the crowd. “That’s actually not true. Somebody did invite me out here.”
“Who?” BobDan asked, the first word he’d uttered during the meeting. He didn’t believe a word Anders said and he wasn’t about to let him peddle lies up there.
“I don’t . . . know,” Anders faltered. “It was an email. From somebody called NoManIsAnIsland.”
“What?” Piper breathed. And though the word was barely audible, her sharp head snap grabbed the attention of the crowd—that and the fact that her bronzed skin had turned ghostly pale. Silence enveloped the room once again as everyone looked from Piper to Anders. “That’s Tom’s email address.”
The crowd gasped again.
“Tom?” Anders’s brow crinkled. “But it was after . . . I don’t think it could have been . . .”
“Goodnightinthemorning.” A loud exasperated sigh came from the back of the room, along with a squeak of metal chair as someone stood. “It was me.”
Every head turned to look at Pearl Olecki standing with her hip stuck out and her head cocked, a look of irritation on her face. “I emailed you.”
“From Tom’s account?” Piper asked, confused.
“Well, I didn’t know it was Tom’s email, did I? I don’t know how those darned things work. It was open on the screen when I booted it up. I thought it must be a community account or something.”
“But that was months after he . . .” Anders said. “Why was his email account still open?”
The crowd fell quiet, as if waiting to find out that Tom had really been alive after all.
“I used to go to the store some nights,” Piper finally offered quietly. “When I couldn’t sleep, and I’d already been through all the notes and pictures he’d left behind. I liked reading his words.” She shrugged. “I must have forgotten to log out.”
Anders paused for a beat, wishing he could swallow Piper’s pain and make it his own, if only so she wouldn’t have to feel it. Then he turned his attention back to Mrs. Olecki’s admission, trying to wade through his confusion. “Wait a minute.” His eyes narrowed at her. “So you wanted me to come do a story on Piper and Tom? But—”
“No!” Pearl’s eyes shot heavenward and she lightly growled, as if she couldn’t believe anyone could be so obtuse. “I wanted you to write about that good-for-nothing cell tower they’re building out here. It’s too close to everyone, and we’re all gonna get cancer, but no one seems to give a care! Any self-respecting reporter would have looked into it, but you couldn’t take your eyes off Piper long enough to
