The Invisible Husband of Frick Island - Colleen Oakley Page 0,8

He had no idea where he was going. He stepped to the side to let the last few passengers walk around him and pulled out his phone.

He knew the day’s festivities took place in front of the Methodist church, but when he punched in the address and nothing came up, he realized he had no service. He looked up to ask someone where the church was, but the passengers that had been near him had already dispersed, halfway down the road leading away from the dock. Before he could decide whether to follow, a rumble of a deep voice caught his attention. He removed one of his earbuds and turned his head, coming face-to-face with the captain, still holding the bucket.

“Straight down the road there, take a right at the general store. Sign says Blue Point. Can’t miss it.” The man’s voice was as grizzled as his skin and his accent warbled, as if he were talking around a mouthful of marbles. Anders just stared at him.

“You going to the Cake Walk, ain’tcha?”

“I am,” Anders managed.

“Well, go on, then. Although, weather like this—prolly get canceled anyway.”

Anders looked up at the cloudless sky. For the heat? he wondered.

“Storm brewing to the east—see the wind picking up on the water?” The word “water” came out “wudder.”

Anders did not, but he nodded anyway so as to placate the senile old man.

On the sunbaked road leading away from the docks, every building Anders passed looked to be larger incarnations of the crab shanties—houses built with wooden slats or shingles, sanded by wind, salt air, and time. A few had their own hand-painted, often crooked signs declaring what they were—a restaurant called the One-Eyed Crab, an antiques store, and a post office. A rusted-out Chevy with no windshield and three flat tires sat in front of the antiques shop as if it had died there one day and no one bothered to move it. Although where would they move it to? Surely there was no mechanic on the island, for it was the first car Anders had seen. And it would take a barge to get it off the island—probably the same barge that got it over here in the first place, which couldn’t be cheap.

At the end of the road, as promised, Anders came upon a building with a sign that announced: Blue Point General Store. Anders stood for a minute in front of it, considering the rickety stairs leading to a cement slab porch, the air-conditioning unit that precariously hung out the front window at an angle and looked like an insurance claim waiting to happen, the way the building sloped slightly to the left as if a strong breeze had one day pushed it sideways and it never recovered. This was, according to Wikipedia, the only market on the island. The only place residents could buy their groceries. And it was a far cry from a Food Lion.

As Anders stood there, slack-jawed and contemplative in the middle of the road, he thought how he had been to a lot of beach towns before. Small towns, even. But he had to admit, he’d never seen a town quite like this.

Chapter 3

Two Weeks After the Storm

It was two days after the memorial service when Piper woke up suddenly, as if startled by a loud noise, and found herself staring at her husband’s eyes. Eyes she often thought were the color of the Chesapeake Bay, briny and gray with a hint of sky. Eyes she hadn’t seen in two full weeks.

“Tom!” she cried, her heart swelling with joy, relief, and love. Always love.

His face still groggy with sleep, his head lying on his pillow exactly in the dent Piper had been staring at for days, he blinked at her.

“You’re here,” she said, sitting up.

“Of course I’m here,” he said.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

Tom yawned. “Seriously? I know how much you like your sleep.” He arched an eyebrow. “Why are you acting so strange?”

Piper stared at him, all the words pooling in her mouth—that though she knew better, everyone said he wasn’t coming home; that she’d started to believe them; that the weight felt so heavy in her chest at times, she thought she might never, ever breathe again—but suddenly none of that seemed to matter. He was here. Tom was home. And then, she remembered her hair. She hadn’t bothered pulling it up into a top bun at night or wrapping it in a scarf like she usually did. She couldn’t remember the last time