“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 do your job.”
“Pearl,” Tom’s cousin Steve said with a steady, patient voice, only slightly tinged with anger. “I’ve told you a hundred times that cell towers do not increase the risk of cancer. I even showed you the research from the American Cancer Society about the non-ionizing radiation, remember?”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel safe?” Pearl shot back. “Your fancy name for radiation? Radiation is radiation.”
“But you thought I was Mormon!” Anders said. “You didn’t even know who I was.”
“Well, I didn’t know what you looked like when I emailed you.”
Harold stood up. “OK, I think we’ve gotten a little off course here.”
Pearl glared at her infernally patient, sensible husband. He swallowed. “Look. If Piper thinks this developer has some good ideas, then I think we owe it to her—and Tom—to listen to what they’ve got to say. The truth is, people are coming here whether we like it or not, thanks to Anders’s podcast.” He nodded toward Anders and caught his eye, but Anders found no malice in his expression. The crowd began murmuring again and Harold held up his hand. “Now, we could turn them all away. Shut down the island. Cut off our nose to spite our face. Or we could come up with a plan. Together.”
* * *
—
Three hours later, after a lot more squabbling and shouting, the town had voted 64 to 27 to accept Anders’s money and voted on a five-member committee to spearhead what to do with the funds, with the caveat that selling alcohol at the restaurant and/or general store was still strictly off the table. When the meeting was adjourned, people got up and started congregating in groups of three or four, then slowly filing out. Nobody approached Anders, and in all his time on Frick Island, he had never so strongly felt like the odd man out. Like the Come Here that he was.
Still, as he snuck out a side door into the dark night, he was unable to keep the grin off his face. Maybe he wouldn’t ever be fully forgiven—maybe he didn’t deserve it—but at least he was able to carve some good out of his colossal mistake.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?”
Anders paused, and turned to see Piper standing behind him on the road. Then he considered her question and frowned, a pit forming in his stomach. “I don’t actually know,” he said. He didn’t think BobDan was going to give him a ride back over to the mainland this late, nor did he expect Mrs. Olecki to offer up a room. “I think I’m stranded.”
“Serves you right.”
He dipped his head. “It probably does.”
They stood facing each other in silence, Anders regretting once again how sorely he’d messed everything up. And then he saw the tears well up in her eyes, and he felt even worse.
“I think Tom would have been really happy with tonight,” she said when she spoke again, her voice cracking but not breaking.
Anders nodded.
“I really miss him.”
“I know,” he said.
She bit her lip and looked up. “But what’s even worse is that I missed you, too.”
Anders didn’t think that was worse at all. He thought it was the best thing he’d heard in a very long time.
Piper’s eyes overflowed and Anders dug in his pocket for the handkerchief he’d remembered to stuff in there just for this purpose. He handed it to her, and his chest puffed up a bit, wishing Mrs. Olecki could see him now.
“I forgot to thank you for the Girl Scout cookies,” she said, dabbing at her eye with the cloth.
He raised his eyebrows. He had begun to assume that she hadn’t opened the packages he’d sent.
“And the Taylor Swift record.”
“You’re welcome,” he said.
She sniffed again. “And the video.”
“Did you watch it? I didn’t know if you had a VCR.”
“Jeffrey has one. We watched it together.” She dabbed the handkerchief at her eyes, her nose. “You are a spectacularly bad dancer.”
“I know.”
“You would have been a terrible stripper.”
He grinned. “Yes.”
She sighed and slipped her arm through the crook of Anders’s elbow. “Come on. I guess you can stay at my house tonight. Since you’re stranded.”