In the din of watermen shouting back and forth, a familiar voice drifted to his ears, drawing his attention to land. Sure enough, when he turned his head, he spotted Piper standing next to a bench, in animated conversation with BobDan.
He started walking toward them up the long dock, his stride slightly off-balance thanks to the missing shoe. And he noticed Piper glance his way, her eyes shining, her hand held up to her mouth but not quite covering a wide grin. He couldn’t be sure, but it felt as though she were laughing. At him.
He stepped off the dock onto hard land, and when he finally reached the twosome, Piper dropped her hand. “Did you have a good afternoon?”
Anders bit off his instinctual reply—Does it look like I had a good afternoon?—and plastered a manufactured smile on his face. “It was . . . something I had never experienced before. And it only cost me forty dollars”—he reached down to hike up his pants leg and show off his muddy-sock-clad foot—“and a shoe.”
“A bargain, don’t you think?” Piper said, her eyes twinkling. Anders peered at her, unable to shake the creeping suspicion he was in the middle of a game he hadn’t signed up to play and didn’t even know the rules for—and that Piper was winning.
Just then, BobDan put his hand on Anders’s shoulder and squeezed. “Peter Jennings,” BobDan said jovially. “Just the man I wanted to see. Think you could come help me in the office? I have a few boxes need moving.”
Anders looked into the old man’s eyes. Something felt off—BobDan had been nothing but gruff with him from the moment they first met, and suddenly he was being . . . friendly? And overly so. His hand dropped to Anders’s elbow and he tugged—not gently. Were the boxes on fire?
“Wait!” Piper said, and Anders turned toward her. “Anders hasn’t met Tom yet.” She looked to the empty air to her right. “Tom, this is Anders, the journalist I was telling you about. Anders, my husband, Tom.”
Anders froze, staring at Piper. It seemed ridiculous in hindsight that he hadn’t planned for this eventuality. That he hadn’t given any thought to how he would respond. Up until this point, this delusion of Piper’s—and the islanders going along with it—was something that felt outside of him; something he was observing from afar. But now it was here, staring him in the face. Or not here, depending on how you looked at it. But something he was going to have to deal with, just the same. BobDan’s grip tightened on his arm.
Anders’s mind raced as he considered his options, and the story of the emperor with no clothes popped into his brain. When his father read him that fable as a child, Anders naturally saw himself in the role of the tale’s hero—the little boy in the crowd who finally shouts out the truth. The emperor was naked! Everyone could see! It was frankly absurd everyone else went along with it. Of course Anders would never do that.
But now, here it was, happening in real life. And as the pressure mounted—BobDan’s glare nearly burning a hole in his face, his bony fingers pressing harder into Anders’s elbow, Piper’s brows drawing into deeper confusion as she waited for Anders to respond, and was it just his imagination, or had every waterman at the docks stopped what they were doing to watch this exchange?—Anders no longer had to speculate what he would or would not do.
“Hey, uh . . . Tom,” Anders said to the same empty air Piper had looked at. “Nice to, er . . . meet you.”
And just like that, the men at the docks seemed to spring back to life around him, BobDan’s grip relaxed, and Piper smiled, her brows unknitting. “Oh, I’ve told Tom all about you. I’m sure he feels like he already knows you, don’t you, babe?”
Tom, of course, did not respond.
“Anyway, we’ve got to go. Tom’s mother is expecting us. Coming back next weekend, Anders?”
“Um, yeah. Yep. I will be here,” Anders said, slowly enunciating each word, his brain still processing the encounter.
Piper walked off, and Anders watched her retreat, until she passed the One-Eyed Crab and was out of earshot. He turned to BobDan, who was looking at him with steely eyes. “Not a word, Dan Rather. Not one word.”
“But—” Anders started. Surely that encounter warranted some kind of explanation from the old man. Anders felt a spark of excitement—this was the perfect entrée to finally ask about Piper and Tom. He opened his mouth to ask if he could record their conversation, but BobDan cut him off before he could even get a word out.
“It’s not any of your any mind what goes on around here. I want to be real clear on that. Looks like you’ve determined to be here for God knows how long, but I ’spect you to focus on your climate whatever and leave everything else the hell alone. Starting with her.” He stuck his bony pointer finger out in the direction Piper had gone. “She’s been through more than enough, ya hear?”
BobDan didn’t wait for a response. Just turned on his heel and hoofed it toward the marina office. Anders stood there for a minute, gawking in BobDan’s direction, something that felt a lot like shame creeping up on his face. He wanted to defend himself. He wanted to tell BobDan that he knew Piper had been through a lot—that he wanted to help her, which was more than it seemed like anyone else in this town was doing. But he was also lying about the actual story he was covering in his podcast and knew he didn’t exactly have the moral high ground.
“Hey,” Anders called after him, weakly. “I thought you said you needed help.”
BobDan just growled and waved his arm in a shooing motion behind him, which Anders took to mean he did not want Anders to follow—nor did he need his help.
Having nowhere else to go, Anders sat down on the bench to wait for BobDan to come back out for the four o’clock ferry departure. As he waited, rolling the incident over in his mind, how easily he had spoken to a man that did not exist, how fiercely protective BobDan, and everyone else apparently, seemed to be of Piper, it occurred to him—not for the first time that day, he thought, peering at his one muddy-sock-clad, shoeless foot—that perhaps he was out of his depth.
* * *
—
“Caldwell!” The booming voice from across the room made Anders jump, though he should have been used to Hector Ochoa’s baritone by now. The sports reporter sauntered over to Anders’s cube, smacking on his ever-present wad of gum. He paused in midchew when he noticed Anders glaring at him, his finger pointing at the cell cradled between his ear and shoulder.
Anders turned his attention back to the voice mail that had just clicked on in his ear. “You’ve reached the therapy office of Janet Keene. Please leave a message at the tone. If you are having suicidal thoughts or this is an emergency, please dial 911.” Janet Keene was a D.C.-area therapist specializing in delusional disorders. Anders hoped she’d be able not only to give him guidance on what he should do the next time he was face-to-face with “Tom,” but also to offer some great expert insights to weave into his next podcast.