Page 33 of Everything You Hate
“Marginally.”
She smiles. A flicker, there and gone, but it’s honest. No camera behind it.
We stand there. The silence stretches.
I’ve been watching her all night. Watching her chop potatoes because Shea asked her to. Watching her follow a five-year-old around the table with a stack of plates like taking orders from Hazel was the most natural thing in the world. Watching most of my family fold her in without a single question, no caution, no hesitation.
I wanted to hate it. I tried. But every time she laughed at an embarrassing story, the hate wouldn’t stick.
“Can I ask you something?” she says.
“You will even if I say no.”
“You’re right.” She turns to face me, and the smile is gone now. “Everyone in there let me in. Your whole family, inside of an hour. Even Bodhi softened a little bit. You haven’t, and I’d like to know what I did to make you hate me.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“Then what is it?”
I should give her the easy answer. Malcolm. Bodhi. The permits. All true, all useful, all a door I can close without opening anything else. “You want the real one?”
“I’d prefer it.”
“You’ll make a spectacle out of us.” I turn to look at her. “That’s what people like you do. Not out of malice. It’s just the job. You find something that means something to the people living inside it, and you turn it into content, and you leave, and the people living inside it are still there afterward with the mess.”
Her jaw sets. “That’s what you think I’m here for.”
“I think it’s what happens whether you mean it or not. Eight million people saw your post this afternoon about this island.”
“Including you.”
“Yeah, including me, because I need to know what the hell we’re in for. Some of those are going to come.”
“Why are you mad at that? Bodhi said you need a good tourist season.”
Jesus, she isn’t getting it. “Because some of them are going to dig holes on my brother’s land looking for a treasure that was never here.” I keep my voice level, which takes effort. “You’ll be gone by then. Onto the next place. And Port Haven’s the one that has to live in the aftermath.”
“So a story is worth telling only if nobody hears it.”
“That’s not?—”
“No, that’s exactly what you said.” She steps toward me, and she’s not shivering anymore. Anger’s warmer than cashmere. “You want the story told quietly. To the right people. In the right tone. Where it can’t do any damage.” Her chin comes up. “Do you know what happens to stories like that, Dean? They die. Nobody remembers them. That fire I wrote about—do youremember the Marine’s name? The one who saved the woman he loved by driving them off a cliff into a river?”
I do. Donovan Scott. But I’m not going to admit it. “Scarlett?—”
“You do know, because I told it loud.” Her voice cracks on it, and she doesn’t stop. “Because their love story ran everywhere and it wouldn’t go away and people had to look at it. And because of that, people saw the devastation of that fire and donations poured in for that town. That’s not a spectacle. That’s the whole job. And the alternative isn’t dignity, it’ssilence, and silence is how a place gets forgotten while everyone in it congratulates itself on being private.”
“You think this island wants to be famous?”
“I think this island isdying.” She throws a hand back toward the house, toward the kitchen where Bodhi’s laptop is still sitting on the sideboard. “Your nephew just told the whole table you’ve got until Thursday or you lose the docks. The diner’s breaking even. The bookstore’s underwater. Your family is holding this place together with their hands, and you’d rather it sank quietly than let anyone outside look at it.”
“That’s not what I’d rather.”
“Then what?”
“I’d ratherknowwhat it costs before we pay it.” I’m closer to her than I was. I don’t remember moving. “I’ve seen what happens when the wrong story gets loud, Scarlett. So have you. Hell, it happened to you. So forgive me if I’m not in a hurry to hand my family over to?—”
“To what? To me? The disgraced talk-show host?” She spits the words like they taste bad. “Is that what you were going to say?”
