“Anders,” Leonard said one day, after the doctor had nearly tripped over his feet getting out of the room as quickly as possible when Anders walked in. “Can you do me a favor?”
“What?” Anders asked. He was moving a vase of puffy chrysanthemums from Leonard’s bedside table to across the room, as Leonard kept sneezing and thought it might be the flowers. Anders’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he set the vase down, then tugged it out of his pocket. After glancing at the screen, he tossed it on the bedside table, in the empty space the vase had left.
“You gotta tone it down a little bit.”
Anders stared at his stepdad, and nearly laughed at the irony of someone who was gregarious and over-the-top in every aspect of his life asking him to tone it down. His phone buzzed again, and Anders ignored it.
“Are you kidding? We need answers! This is absurd. Your risk of having a second stroke doubles for up to five years after the first one—and they can’t even tell us why you had the first one. How are you supposed to prevent it?”
Leonard looked Anders squarely in the eyes and said calmly, “Maybe I’m not supposed to prevent it.”
Anders’s head jerked forward on his neck like a chicken. “What? What is that supposed to mean? You’re OK with just dying next time?” His phone came alive again, and Anders wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or if it was buzzing more loudly, more insistently, this time. Leonard glanced at it, too, and then back at Anders.
“Well, no, I’m not OK with dying. I’d prefer not to, if I can help it. But some things in life are out of our control. Most things, actually.”
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Anders said, as his phone went off for a fourth time.
“Are you going to get that? Sounds important.”
“No,” Anders said.
“Who is it?”
“Nobody.”
Leonard raised an eyebrow at him.
“It’s Good Morning America.”
Leonard laughed, but quickly stopped when Anders’s face didn’t change. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. They want to do a segment on What the Frick?”
“Anders! That’s amazing! Why aren’t you answering the phone?”
Anders sighed. And then he sat down heavily into the chair beside his stepdad’s bed and slowly began to unravel the entire story, starting with his dishonesty from the outset, through to Piper’s confession and her secret meetings with the developer, and ending with Piper never wanting to see him again.
“Well,” Leonard said when he was done. “You sure made a mess of things.”
“I know. And I don’t know how to fix it.”
“What’s your gut tell you?”
“That I need to explain everything to Piper—whether I do Good Morning America or not. Though I think I should—and not just for me, but because I really think it could help. The publicity from a platform that big could be a boon to tourism there, bringing sorely needed money into the island, which is exactly what she’s trying to accomplish.”
“True,” Leonard said thoughtfully. “But maybe that’s not the way she’s trying to accomplish it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that, from your podcast anyway, it sounds like the people on the island are very private—and maybe they wouldn’t view that amount of attention or exposure in the same way.”
Anders absorbed this, and then, realizing Leonard was right, felt even worse that he had done exactly that with his podcast. Leonard reached over and patted Anders’s hand.
“Chin up. You’re a good kid. You’ll do the right thing.”
Anders’s hackles raised—as if Leonard had scratched his fingernails down a chalkboard. Anders wasn’t a good kid. He wasn’t good to the people on Frick Island and he hadn’t been good to Leonard, certainly—growing up he’d been difficult and temperamental and ungrateful. He’d shouted horrible things at him. Anders cringed remembering the unoriginal juvenile insults he’d lobbed Leonard’s way: that he wasn’t his real dad, that just because his mom loved him didn’t mean he had to, and worse, that he hated him, he hated his stupid laugh and his stupid jokes and his goofy smile. And Leonard took it, in his roll-off-the-back, life-is-ducky, I’d-prefer-not-to-die-but-whatever-happens-happens! kind of way.
“Why do you do that?” he said, irritated.
“Do what?”
Anders thought of the video—of Leonard’s raucous cheering—and he thought of the ridiculous comments he left on every single one of his podcasts. And he thought how he didn’t deserve any of it—especially not for the break-dancing, anyway. “Why do you believe in me, when I’ve given you absolutely no reason to?”
Leonard cocked his head, his eyes dancing with amusement, as if he knew the secret to the universe and Anders was just too thick to see it. “For the same reason the people on Frick Island believed Piper.”
Anders raised his eyebrows. “Because you’re insane?”
Leonard chuckled. “Yes, that’s it. Because I’m insane.” He looked pointedly at Anders. “And because I love you. So very much.”
Anders stared at his stepdad for a beat, until his nose started to tingle and his vision blurred. And then he decided perhaps he was allergic to the chrysanthemums, too.
Chapter 28
Anders’s stomach twisted in a hundred knots as he rode the ferry back to the island. He had spent three days at home, mulling over his choices, until finally he called the producer back at Good Morning America and asked her to give him one more day to decide. He had considered calling Piper, but he didn’t have her phone number, and even if he could find it, he decided this was likely a conversation he should have face-to-face—if she would even see him. He was going to tell her everything—lay it all out on the line and then leave it up to her. If she wanted to do the talk show, if she thought it would help, he would do it. If not, simple as that, he’d say no.
As the boat pulled closer to the dock, Anders saw a huddle of people—mostly watermen—standing around, and as they got even closer, he could see their faces were long, drawn, and he knew in his already twisting gut that something was wrong. When they reached the pilings and Anders stepped off the boat to tie it off, BobDan’s wife, Shirlene, noticed them and peeled off from the group. Wringing her hands, a worry line carved deep into her forehead, she approached the boat and glanced from Anders to BobDan.
“What is it?” BobDan asked, and the gravity of his voice further cemented Anders’s concern.