Mack knelt beside her. “Lacey, what’s wrong?”
The tears started up again, out of her control. “I miss him,” she said.
“I know, Lacey,” Mack said. “I know you do.”
She cried more tears, tears she thought had dried up long ago. Mack held her hand, saying nothing. After several minutes, she snuffled into her handkerchief, and blew her nose. “I’m okay now,” she said. She noticed a bandage on Mack’s arm. “What happened to you?”
“Rough night at home,” he said. “Actually, I came to ask you a favor. I’d like to stay here tonight, if I could.”
Relief flooded Lacey, replacing, almost, the emptiness, the blankness. “For Pete’s sake, of course. Stay here, please.”
Mack squeezed her hand. “Okay, I will. Thank you.”
She wouldn’t have to be alone, then. Maximilian was missing, but Mack would be here instead to help her fend off the horrible darkness. For one night more, at least.
Monday began as a mild, sunny day, and Mack made headway on the remaining eighty shutters. Around noon, the wind shifted from southwest to due west and by the time the chambermaids finished cleaning the rooms at one o’clock, the sky was low and gunmetal gray.
Again, Bill didn’t show up in the office. Therese fluttered around behind the chambermaids, but when they finished their work, she retreated to her house. Mack shuttered away. When the wind picked up, sand pelted the side of his face and the back of his neck, a thousand tiny needles. A gust lifted his Texas Rangers hat off his head. His hands were busy with shutter and drill gun, and all he could do was turn and watch his hat blow down the beach. It was eerie in a way; suddenly the beach was deserted. Bill and Therese had dropped the future of the hotel in Mack’s hands.
By three o’clock, waves pounded the beach so that Mack felt the vibrations through the soles of his work boots as he rushed to finish shuttering. He skipped room 7, Clarissa Ford’s room, and when he made it down to room 2, she stepped onto her deck with a lit cigarette. The wind plucked the cigarette from her fingers immediately; it was halfway to Jetties Beach before she even realized it was gone.
At 3:45, the first drops of rain fell. Mack screwed in the final shutters. The wind moaned; Mack’s right ear filled with sand. Then the rain picked up. Sand blew in drifts halfway up the snow fence. Mack held his drill inside his jacket, raised his arm to shield his eyes, and ran for the back door of the lobby. By the time he reached the back door, he was soaked and his boots were filled with sand. He stood under the eaves and looked at the roiled, black sea. Mack thought of Maribel, at home on the sofa reading, her feet bundled in an afghan. She hadn’t said a word to him when he left that morning. No apology, no explanation-nothing but the silent assurance that whatever he was doing, it wasn’t enough. Mack watched the waves crest and crash. One came halfway up the beach. The next one even farther. He didn’t understand her.
Inside, Vance and Love played gin rummy at the front desk. Jem was slumped in one of the wicker chairs, asleep.
“You can all go home,” Mack said. “I’m staying at Lacey’s tonight. I’ll take care of things until this bitch passes.” He shook Jem’s shoulder. “You can leave, Jem. Why don’t you take my Jeep? You can’t walk home in this.”
Jem opened his eyes. “The Jeep? What will you drive?”
“I’m not going home tonight.” And then, before he could think better of it, he said, “Take the Jeep and check on Maribel. She’s all by herself. I’m sure she wants company.”
Jem sat upright in the chair. “Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?”
Mack’s stomach prickled with jealousy, and with fear. He pictured Maribel crying, he pictured his fingers gripping her wrists, leaving behind white bracelets. “It’s no joke, man. I can’t get home tonight. You’d be doing me a favor if you checked on her.”
“I’d be doing you a favor? Really?” Jem said.
“Just go,” Mack said. He flipped Jem his keys.
Jem didn’t hesitate. He took the keys and ran, following Vance and Love out the door. Because the windows were shuttered, Mack couldn’t watch them drive away. And that kept him from yelling after Jem, and telling him it was all a mistake.
As soon as the rain started, Bill got out of bed and ran to the living room window. The ocean was huge, the waves bigger than any Bill could remember. The lobby was shuttered, and so were the rooms-Mack’s doing. Bill couldn’t bring himself to feel one way or another. He couldn’t feel anything except this crazy longing, this crazy sadness.
Therese came up the stairs. “You’re up,” she said. She stood with him at the window. “Our kingdom. I hope it doesn’t get washed away.”
“What does it matter?” Bill said.
“Bill,” Therese said, “she’s coming back.”
“She’s not coming back!” Bill said. “Stop saying that, Therese. Cecily isn’t coming back!”
Therese said quietly, “She is.”
“She’s not,” Bill said. The Brazilian boys chased Cecily now. One boy-Gabriel-grabbed Cecily’s bright red hair. He held a razor to her neck.
Bill went to the closet and put a slicker on over his pajamas. “I’m going up to the widow’s walk.”
“What?” Therese said. She collapsed on the leather sofa. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“What does it matter?” Bill said. He marched through the bedroom and opened the door to the attic. In the attic was a flight of stairs leading to a hatch that popped up onto the widow’s walk. Bill had trouble opening the hatch door; he pressed his hands flat against it and pushed with all his might. Then the door flipped open and the wind and the rain nearly knocked Bill down the stairs. He knelt on the stairs and clenched the railing. He would get up there, and sit on the widow’s walk. It might kill him, but what did it matter? He was the father of two children: one dead, one missing.
Then he heard a voice, footsteps. Therese climbed up after him.
“I’m coming up there with you,” she said. She was five or ten feet away, but it sounded as though she were calling to him from the end of a long tunnel. The wind lifted her pale orange hair; she looked like a ghost or a witch, but she looked beautiful, too-his bride, the woman he loved.
Bill gripped the railing with one hand and reached for her with the other. The wind was impossibly strong. Poetically strong-if they did manage to climb onto the widow’s walk, maybe the wind would pick them up and carry them away, to their son, their daughter.
Rain drove through the hatch. Bill was soaked to the skin. He was in bare feet.
“Come on,” he said. He raised his head through the opening. The sky screamed in his ears, the world rained down on him. All he could see was white. Bill tried to look around, but he couldn’t find the sea, he couldn’t find the hotel. The sky was blank, the color of wind. Wind filled his eyes, his ears, his nose-he was drowning in the wind. What are you waiting for? A sign from God? “You can have it!” Bill screamed to the sky. He was sure that somehow S.B.T. could hear him. “You…can…have…it!” He lost his balance and faltered in his footing, but Therese steadied him. He brought his head back inside. The stairs were wet and slippery; Therese’s blouse stuck to her skin. Mascara ran down her face, her orange hair was wet, the color of a pumpkin.
“He can have it.” Bill said. “I give up. He can have it.”
Therese held on to him. “Who can have what?” she asked. “What are you talking about? Who are you screaming at?”
Bill had lost his hope. He didn’t have the stuff in him; beneath his skin and bones and cartilage, he was dry, an empty gourd. He managed to close the hatch door, spurred on by what was now his hatred of this storm. Once the hatch was closed and locked, Bill followed Therese into the bathroom. He vomited into the toilet. He vomited up the Brazilian boys with their razor blades, and Cecily screaming with fear. He vomited up S.B.T. taking the Beach Club from him. He vomited up Dead and Missing. He vomited until it was all gone, and the inside of his mouth was puckered and sour.