“Sure, Peter. What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry if this is inappropriate. I know technically we work together, you know? I was actually just curious if maybe your sister had mentioned... Well, I wrote her a letter. And she hasn’t said anything. So I’m sort of worried now that maybe I forgot a stamp? Or maybe I got the address wrong? One Bottle Hill Lane, right?”
The island was so small that you honestly didn’t need addresses. If I wrote “Elvira Montgomery” on an envelope, with nothing else but a lipstick kiss for directions, it would reach her in two hours. Our postman, Albert Craws, wasvery good. And he was also very generous; I never used stamps. I sometimes wrote him nice things where a stamp should go—Hope you’re well, Albert! Don’t work too hard, Albert!—but I had never once actually paid to send a letter. Peter could have messed up every single step of mailing that letter to my sister and it still would have gotten here. Which meant of course she’d received it, of course she’d showed it to me, and of course she had no intention of writing him back.
“I don’t think she mentioned anything about a letter,” I said, hating to lie to him, hating my sister for making it necessary for me to lie to him, hating my sister for always managing to drag me into her problems. “You know my mom. She’s so absentminded, she probably checked the mail and ended up burying the letter in her rose garden.”
My mother was anything but absentminded, but it seemed like a good excuse; she did occasionally bury non-rose things in the rose garden.
I couldn’t tell if Peter bought it. His face flushed a quick red, and he took a visible breath. Then in a small, even voice he said, “I just think if someone takes the time to write you a letter, you should respond to them.”
“Maybe you should write another one and hand deliver it?”
Even my sister would have a hard time pretending she hadn’t gotten a hand-delivered letter.
“Sure,” Peter said, shrugging, relaxing, smiling a little.“Yeah, I could do that. Thanks, Georgina. I guess I’ll see you around.”
He disappeared around the back of the house.
Mary joined me a second later, like she’d been staring out the window, waiting for him to leave.
“Why does it feel like I’m always apologizing for you?” I asked her. She sat on the arm of the chair I was in and played with my hair. We both had long hair, all the way down our backs, but that was mostly because the island’s one hairdresser, Shirley Braves, was impossible to track down and also, inexplicably, hated cutting hair.
“I never asked you to lie for me. And I’ve never promised Peter anything,” Mary countered.
“So if you don’t like him, you need to cut him loose. Once and for all. Snip, snip, snip.”
“You’re being a real nosy Rosey, you know that?” she said, getting off the arm of the chair, wheeling around to face me. “I can hang out with whoever the fuck I wantandI can fuck whoever I want to hang out with....” She squinted, as if trying to figure out if that made sense.
“Truce. It’s too hot to fight,” I said.
“Yeah, what’s up with that?” she asked, instantly distracted. “I thought I saw snow flurries this morning, but it’s beautiful now. Oh, great. Another taxi. I’ll see you later.”
She went back inside.
It was like that all day, taxi after taxi bringing birdhead after birdhead to the inn.
The light was starting to change by the time my mom came out onto the front porch. “We’re only waiting for a few more guests,” she said. “Great turnout this year, huh? How are you feeling, Georgie?”
“I’m fine,” I said. Above us, a cloud hid the sun and I shivered.
“That’s probably the last of them right now,” Mom said, pointing down the drive at Seymore’s cab just turning into view. She put her hand on my shoulder. “You can take a nap before dinner, Georgina. Put on a happy face for now, okay?”
I smiled as big and fake as I could. She rolled her eyes and went back inside. Mary caught the door and slipped out onto the porch before it closed.
“The lobby is filled with birdheads,” she whined. Then, seeing the taxi: “Oh thank God, is that the last of them?”
“Who are we missing? Nobody we know, right?”
“I looked at the register; these are newbs. A man and a woman. Two twin beds. So like, unhappily married, I’m guessing.”
“Or friends.”
“Right, because you take so many island vacations with your platonic male friends?”
Mary was in one of her moods, when everything you said became fair game for a fight. She was probably just as tired as I was. I looked down at her feet: the soles of her shoes were a solid half inch above the porch. I yanked herdown, and she mumbled an apology but then visibly brightened. I followed her gaze down to the driveway, where our last guests were just emerging from Seymore’s car.
Where our last, very young and attractive guests were just emerging from Seymore’s car.
