Osprey Island

Bud sighed, eyes closed, shaking his head. “It’s going to be a hell of a time.”

“Yeah, well, for all of us.”

Bud nodded. He turned to go.

“You’re welcome,” Suzy called after him, the way she did with her first-graders.

He turned back around mid-stride, gave a cursory half nod, and continued down the hall.

Bud called a staff meeting in the dining room that evening. Nancy was back up at the house, still sleeping off the tranquilizers Doc Zobeck had pumped her full of that morning. The Lodge felt as it had the day they’d gotten word of Chas’s death in Vietnam. It had been Doc Zobeck back then too who’d given Nancy her fill of Valium, just to get her past the screaming, past the part when they were afraid she’d truly lose her mind. Bud hadn’t known what to do with himself that terrible day. He was the owner of a large hotel, always a thousand things to do. Except that day, when he couldn’t think of one. He was of no comfort to his wife, who howled like a dully stabbed beast; he could not even conceive of going to his daughter, who was sixteen and terrified him for that reason alone. Bud’s memory had blurred and distorted that time just after Chas’s death. Nothing had felt real. And it was dangerous, Bud knew, what a person might do if what was real didn’t feel real. Some time down the road, what was real would come back, and when it did the chances were good that it’d slam him so hard he wouldn’t have a choice but to feel the pain.

What Bud felt now wasn’t pain; it was more gnawing ache. There was fear, and along with it an uncomfortable lurking sense of being swindled. All these years finally culminating in Lorna’s greatest revenge. But revenge for what? Hadn’t he been good to Lorna and Lance? Hadn’t he kept them on at the hotel years after any normal person would have fired them for being drunks and freeloaders and not one ounce of help at all? Hadn’t he spent years defending that charity to his wife? Bud had long felt a certain responsibility for Lorna, and he’d taken care of them all those years, and what was her final thank-you? To load herself up and pass out and nearly burn the whole place down? It was a move that would surely hurt him, if not close the whole goddamn place down before the end of the season if he wasn’t careful. Bud had no choice but to be extraordinarily careful.

The staff was gathering in the dining room, in chairs and on the floor. Already the alliances were forming, the summer romances, hands grazing the backs of necks, the ever-insistent touch: I am here. Bud had seen it so many times before, those summer loves, so few of which would last, so few of which would make it as far as Labor Day, most of which were nothing more than summer sex. But it kept the staff happy, their furtive trysting in the bushes, and that’s what Bud was about, wasn’t it? Keeping everybody happy? His life, his livelihood—ironic as it may have been—was about keeping people happy. And keeping people happy, Bud had learned, was about keeping them from seeing what they didn’t want to see. They came for a vacation: a dream, a refuge, an escape. And if it didn’t turn out quite exactly as edenic and impervious as they’d dreamed, they didn’t want to know. Death is everywhere, they might concede, but for god’s sake, don’t point it out on the sightseeing tour!

Bud addressed his staff: “Thank you all for coming down this evening. ” Bloodshot eyes fixed him with spongy stares. “It’s been a difficult day,” he said, “a very, very difficult day for us all.

“This hotel—this island—will not be the same without Lorna Squire, and we need to support each other and Lorna’s family during this time. We have a big season coming up, and it’ll probably do us more good than we know to put a face on and face the guests. Help us get through our own grief . . .” He looked around at his audience. The Irish girls all looked the same to him, every summer. In the far corner stood Roddy Jacobs. Leaning in an archway near Roddy, Suzy was staring Bud down, her face critical, waiting to hear what he would say, waiting, as usual, to hear what he would say wrong. And in her view, Bud knew, that would be everything.