The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley (autobiographies to read .TXT) 📗

steadily mimicking Lady Jane’s movements, taking crabs apart with a practiced speed that had once left Piper in the same slack-jawed awe Anders was now experiencing. They barely glanced at what they were doing, instead looking at each other as they chatted comfortably about various subjects—their children (who mostly lived off the island), then the disappointing upcoming Halloween season where only one child (Bobby) would be trick-or-treating, which turned into reminiscing about holidays past, when kids would run from house to house with a sock to collect change instead of a candy.

“’Member that year BobDan came out the house with his mama’s pantyhose? Determined to get the most money as anybody.”

“He’s always been resourceful.” Shirlene beamed.

“He was tickled to death with hisself, too.”

“Yeah, ’til his mama came shrieking out the front door, realizing what he’d done. It was her last good pair.”

Chuckles peppered the air, as Piper watched Anders struggle with his first crustacean—he’d been at it for a full six minutes, enough time for Lady Judy to have dismantled four crabs. And the conversation turned to the construction of the cell tower.

“Should be done in three weeks’ time, they said. Then we can all tune in to that podcast of yours, Anders. Like a listening party.”

Piper felt Anders tense beside her and wondered if he was nervous picking his first crab under everyone’s watchful eye, like she had been.

“Three weeks? That’s what they said three weeks ago.”

Pearl frowned. “It’s the ugliest thing ever been on this island.”

“I don’t know—’member ol’ Dewey Winkins?”

The ladies howled. Piper caught Anders’s eye and he grinned.

“He tried to get his cod in every cave he could find, didn’t he?”

“Sure enough did.”

Lady Judy looked up. “He never did try it with me.”

The ladies howled even louder, as Anders dug his knife into a particularly tough part of the crab’s shell. All of a sudden it gave, and the knife slipped directly into the ring finger on his left hand.

“Holy shit!” Anders shouted.

Piper gasped.

The room fell dead silent and every pair of eyes turned toward him. He looked up, stunned, likely from both the exquisite pain in his finger and the sudden quiet.

“Sorry,” he said. “I cut my finger.”

Piper jumped up and Pearl peered over the table at the red blood dripping down his hand. “Oh, dear. That’s gonna need a stitch.”

Anders swayed a little as Piper pressed the paper towels she’d retrieved into his hand to stem the flow. “Come on.” She took his arm gently to help him stand. “I’ll take you to the doctor.”

They rushed out into the dark evening. “There’s a clinic out here?” Anders asked, as they hurried down the street.

Piper hesitated. “Not really. He’s more of a dentist.”

“A dentist?”

“Well, retired now. We used to have a real physician, but he died a few years ago. Dr. Khari kind of took his place for all medical-related issues.”

“Maybe I’ll just wait until I get back to the mainland.” They both looked at the paper towel Anders was clutching; even in the dark, they could tell it was soaked through with blood.

“I don’t think you can.”

—

Dr. Sandeep Khari had just picked up his steaming chai tea when an urgent rapping at the door nearly made him drop his ceramic cup. He pressed the pause button on the remote, the Dowager Countess’s mouth freezing in midbarb (he’d have to rewind that—he hated to miss the full effect of her quick-witted insults), and sat stock-still, mirroring the screen, hoping that perhaps whoever it was might go away.

When he first moved out to Frick Island after a long, exhausting career in the obnoxiously loud bustling city of D.C., he had hoped to live out his years in quiet solitude. He had no idea the impressive letters of a higher degree after his name would inexplicably earn him the business of any and all medical-related questions on the island—from malaise-ridden pets to reflux in babies to opinions on broken fingers and weird skin rashes—and that quiet solitude would be nearly impossible to come by.

The knocking echoed throughout the house again, more rapid this time and followed by a pleading “Dr. Khari?” Sandeep sighed heavily, put his cup down on the sideboard, and went to the door.

“Piper,” he said, steeling himself for the same tongue-lashing she’d given him two months earlier, ordering him to stop procuring Valium for her mother-in-law. He had not. He took a deep breath. “I told you—”

“He needs stitches,” she blurted out.

Anders stepped forward from the darkness behind Piper, startling Dr. Khari. He’d never met the boy, but he’d seen him before, once at the One-Eyed Crab and again at the market one afternoon. Yet, he knew his name was Anders and he was a reporter investigating climate change for a podcast, because you couldn’t go five steps in this town without hearing all manner of other people’s business whether you wanted any part of it or not.

To be clear, Dr. Khari did not.

The blood-soaked towel clutched in the boy’s hand drew his attention and Sandeep raised his eyes to the sky, pleading with whatever gods would listen for the umpteenth time to send a doctor—a real, degreed medical doctor—to the island posthaste. And then, seeing as how his prayer hadn’t been answered yet, and likely wouldn’t be answered in the next five minutes, he ushered them both into the house and went to the bathroom to get his suture kit and lidocaine.

It wasn’t until the two had been in his kitchen for nearly an hour, and he was halfway through the seven stitches the gash needed, that he noticed. (This wouldn’t have surprised his wife, Adhira—God rest her soul—whose subtle and not-so-subtle hints of interest he didn’t pick up on for three years when they met in dental school.) How Piper’s forehead was creased in such concern over his condition, she resembled a shar-pei. Or how she let out a little gasp each time the needle pierced his skin, as if it were entering her own. Or how the boy kept glancing