Anders’s mouth moved open and closed, searching for words. He finally clamped onto some. “Let me get this straight. This entire time—these past however many months—you’ve been pretending to have had a psychological break?”
Piper flinched at how awful it sounded out loud and she could barely muster the strength to push the word out of her mouth with a puff of air. “Yes?”
“Oh. My. God.” A large purple vein was noticeably pulsing in Anders’s neck and he looked so angry Piper felt the need to defend herself.
“It’s not like it’s been easy!”
“Then why did you do it?”
This was the question Piper dreaded; the one she didn’t have an answer for. Or a good answer, anyway. How to explain that it was easier in a way? Because if she stopped pretending, then she’d have to face the truth: that Tom was really, truly gone. But before she could begin, Anders rounded on her again.
“So wait . . . that time you said Tom was asking you what tie to wear when I was on your porch—you were messing with me?”
“It’s not like that,” she said. “And to be fair, he was color-blind. That part was true.”
“And the marina!” The vein grew larger and more purplish. “I said hi to him! And you knew—”
“Right. I did feel bad about that.”
Anders was silent for a few beats, absorbing it all, and Piper wasn’t sure what to say without making everything even worse. “So why don’t you just tell them the truth? It’s not too late. Or you can just pretend that you’re . . . better or whatever.”
“I don’t know. Every time I think I’m going to, I just can’t.”
“But you have to.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not real!”
Piper got quiet and looked out to the water. Seconds turned into minutes as she tried to put words to how she felt. Finally she said: “It is to me.”
“What?” Anders’s forehead crinkled in genuine confusion. “But you just said—”
Piper put a hand up. “I mean, not the way everyone is pretending—the way I’ve been pretending. But . . . sometimes I swear I can feel him beside me, his breath in my hair. Or I can hear his laughter. I talk to him, too. All the time. When I tell him things, I know exactly how he’d respond”—she felt her voice begin to crack and brought her hands up to her chest to try to quell the rising emotion—“and when I close my eyes, I can hear him say it.”
Anders nodded, solemn. “Those are called PBHEs.”
“What?”
“Post-bereavement hallucinatory experiences. It’s the scientific term for . . . never mind.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
They sat in silence for a few beats and then Piper spoke up again: “Have you ever read The Phantom Tollbooth?”
“No.”
“It was one of Tom’s favorite books as a kid. I never really got the appeal, but there’s this one line that says: ‘If something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn’t there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That’s why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones.’”
She felt Anders’s eyes on her, and then he, too, turned to look out over the water, and they sat like that, side by side, in silence, watching the sun drop closer to the horizon.
Finally, Anders broke the silence. “So who was that guy on the boat?”
Piper took a deep breath and exhaled. “Jacob. He’s a real estate developer.”
Anders continued to look at her, his eyebrows raised, waiting.
“Back in October he came to the island with all these ideas to boost tourism and use the money to rebuild our infrastructure. He wasn’t the first—we’ve had so many people come over the years to peddle their ideas to ‘save’ us. They all want to build high-end resorts or waterparks or, one time, a casino.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Anders held up his hands to slow Piper and try to process what she was saying. “Why would somebody want to build anything on an island that is purportedly sinking? Doesn’t sound like a very sound business decision.”
She paused. “I thought you understood.”
“Understood what?”
“The island can be saved.”
“What?”
“Or at least protected. That was the conclusion of my mom’s study—we can’t stop climate change, but we can build jetties from bargeloads of sand and get taller, stronger bulkheads and create ripraps, which are basically rock walls that can shield the island on its most vulnerable sides from storm surges and wind to help prevent erosion.”
“But I thought the Army Corps said it was a waste of money.”
“Well, they think it is, because to them we’re just ninety crazy people that could solve all of our problems by moving to the mainland. They don’t think we’re worth saving. But all developers see is a big dollar sign. This island could be here for eighty or a hundred more years—that’s plenty of time to get a return on their investment and then some.”
“And that’s what this guy—Jacob—wants to do?”
She nodded. “Yeah, but he’s different than the other investors. Or at least Tom thought he was. That he would work with us and let us have a say in the changes that were made. And that Jacob’s motives were more altruistic than selfish. I told him he was crazy—at that meeting everyone made it clear that they didn’t trust him—and I thought that was the end of it. But then I found out Tom had secretly kept meeting with him. We fought about it.” She paused, not trusting her voice, but also compelled to finally say it out loud. “The night before he died.”
She took a deep breath and continued. “I thought it was a social death wish, going behind everyone’s back to work with this stranger. I was terrified everyone would be furious when they found out. I accused him of . . . only caring about himself.” Piper inwardly cringed, thinking of the last words she’d said to her husband. “And then he . . . died. He was gone, just like that.” She waited a few beats for her voice to steady once again. “I forgot all about the developer, until one day, out of the blue, he called. He hadn’t heard what had happened to Tom, even though it was all over the paper. And when he asked for him . . . well, it brought the entire night screaming back to me, and I decided right then and there that I would pick up where Tom left off. If it meant that much to him, it was the least I could do. And maybe, somehow, that would be enough.”