The Invisible Husband of Frick Island - Colleen Oakley Page 0,40

silence became overwhelming. He spoke without turning his head. “So are you related to BobDan, down at the docks? Noticed you have the same last name.”

“Him and half the island,” said an amused voice, but one that was decidedly not male. Anders swiveled his head only to lock eyes with Piper, who stood at the desk as if she had replaced Bill Gibbons with the flick of a magician’s wrist and a puff of smoke. Before he could decipher where exactly she’d come from, recognition flashed in her eyes. “Oh. It’s you.” Her inflection didn’t indicate pleasure at seeing him again. But it didn’t indicate displeasure either.

“It’s me,” he agreed. His palms started sweating again, despite the cold air. He peered at her, as if studying an animal in its natural habitat. Now that he knew for sure that Piper had an . . . imaginary husband, for lack of a better phrase, his nerves were slowly overtaken by morbid curiosity. He felt the familiar buzz at that first deep dive into a new story; the anticipation of the things he might uncover, the answers to the five Ws and an H that he learned about in his first newspaper reporting class in college. And then a thought struck Anders—what if Piper thought her husband was in the room right now? His eyes darted around as if an apparition of Tom might appear.

“You OK?” She peered at him strangely.

“Huh? Yeah—yep.” He rocked back on his heels, glancing around the room once more. Then he cleared his throat, trying to get back on track. “You told me I should come here . . . ?”

“I remember,” she said. A coiled lock of hair fell in her line of sight, and she tucked it behind her ear. “I just thought it would be last week—and then you didn’t show, so.”

“Oh.” Anders felt slightly shamed for breaking a promise he didn’t remember making. “Hey, do you mind if I record our conversation?”

She narrowed her eyes. “For your podcast thing?”

“Yeah.” He waited with bated breath for her response. If he could get her voice on the podcast, it would deepen the story so much more—and if she mentioned Tom? Anders got nearly light-headed with excitement.

“For your dad,” she said, and he was surprised she had not only been listening to him that morning at breakfast but remembered what he had said.

“Him and a few other listeners,” he corrected, which was more or less true. Nine hundred was a lot to Anders, but in the grand scheme of things, still not that many.

“I don’t know,” she said, hesitating. And Anders tried not to betray what he was feeling. If she said no, of course he’d be disappointed, but he’d respect her wishes. He could still get plenty of material for the podcast, but obviously Piper’s story was what his listeners were most interested in.

“I guess no one out here would ever hear it,” she said, though it wasn’t directed at Anders as much as herself.

“I mean, they could,” Anders said. “It’s on the Internet. Anyone can find it if they want.” It was something that occurred to him this week—that anyone on the island could listen to his podcast, and most people out here, given their propensity for privacy, probably wouldn’t be thrilled with the content. But it was a risk Anders was willing to take. If people confronted him and wanted him to stop, well, he would cross that bridge when he got to it. For now, he was operating under the mantra that it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission. That seemed to be how podcasts worked—Serial, S-Town. The ethics of it were debated ad nauseam online, but they didn’t follow the same tenets of newspaper journalism. In podcasts, story was king. And this was one hell of a story. Still, he wanted to be as honest with Piper as he could be, without scaring her off.

“Well, there’s really only one computer that actually gets Internet service on the island,” Piper said. “It’s at the market. And it’s painfully slow.”

“Really?” Anders said, although it made sense, Jess’s words reverberating in his mind: You’re about to go back in time. Well, that was one less thing for him to worry about.

Piper nodded. And then she shrugged. “Yeah. I guess it’s fine to record.”

While Anders nonchalantly dug his mini recorder out of his bag, trying to hide his excitement, and clicked it on, Piper bent down behind the desk, the entire upper half