Diary

Why did Peter sacrifice his life to marry her? His graffiti, it wasn’t a threat. Angel says it was a warning. Why was Peter trying to warn everyone?

A door opens into the stairwell above them, and a voice says, “There she is.” It’s Paulette, the desk clerk. It’s Grace Wilmot and Dr. Touchet. It’s Brian Gilmore, who runs the post office. And old Mrs. Terrymore from the library. Brett Petersen, the hotel manager. Matt Hyland from the grocery store. It’s the whole village council coming down the stairs toward them.

Angel leans close, clutching her arm, and says, “Peter didn’t kill himself.” He points up the stairs and says, “They did. They murdered him.”

And Grace Wilmot says, “Misty dear. You need to get back to work.” She shakes her head, clucking her tongue, and says, “We’re so, so close to being done.”

And Angel’s hands, his leather driving gloves let go. He backs off, now a step lower, and says, “Peter warned me.” Glancing from the crowd above them to Misty, to the crowd, he backs off, saying, “I just want to know what’s happening.”

From behind her, the hands are closing around her shoulders, her arms, and lifting.

And Misty, all she can say is, “Peter was gay?”

You’re gay?

But Angel Delaporte is stumbling backward, down the stairs. He stumbles to the next floor lower, still shouting up the stairwell, “I’m going to the police!” He shouts, “The truth is, Peter was trying to save people from you !”

August 23

HER ARMS ARE NOTHING but loose ropes of skin. Across the back of her neck, the bones feel bundled together with dried tendons. Inflamed. Sore and tired. Her shoulders hanging from the spine at the base of her skull. Her brain could be a baked black stone inside her head. Her pubic hair’s growing back, scratchy and pimpled around her catheter. With a new piece of paper in front of her, a blank canvas, Misty picks up a brush or a pencil, and nothing will happen. When Misty sketches, forcing her hand to make something, it’s a stone house. A rose garden. Just her own face. Her self-portrait diary.

Fast as her inspiration came, it’s gone.

Someone slips the blindfold off her head, and the sunlight from the dormer window makes her squint. It’s so blinding bright. It’s Dr. Touchet here with her, and he says, “Congratulations, Misty. It’s all over.”

It’s what he said when Tabbi was born.

Her homemade immortality.

He says, “It might take a few days before you can stand,” and he slips an arm around her back, hooked under her arms, and lifts Misty to her feet.

On the windowsill, someone’s left Tabbi’s shoe box full of junk jewelry. The glittering, cheap bits of mirror, cut into diamond shapes. Every angle reflecting light in a different direction. Dazzling. A little bonfire, there in the sun bouncing off the ocean.

“By the window?” the doctor says. “Or would you rather be in bed?”

Instead of “in bed,” Misty hears dead .

The room is just how Misty remembers it. Peter’s pillow on the bed, the smell of him. The paintings are, all of them, gone. Misty says, “What have you done with them?”

The smell of you.

And Dr. Touchet steers her to a chair by the window. He lowers her into a blanket spread over the chair and says, “You’ve done another perfect job. We couldn’t ask for better.” He pulls the curtains back to show the ocean, the beach. The summer people crowding each other down to the water’s edge. The trash along the tide line. A beach tractor chugs along, dragging a roller. The steel drum rolls, imprinting the wet sand with a lopsided triangle. Some corporate logo.

Next to the logo stamped in the sand, you can read the words: “Using your past mistakes to build a better future.”

Somebody’s vague mission statement.

“In another week,” the doctor says, “that company will pay a fortune to erase its name from this island.”

What you don’t understand you can make mean anything.

The tractor drags the roller, printing its message again and again until the waves wash it away.

The doctor says, “When an airliner crashes, all the airlines pay to cancel their newspaper and television advertisements. Did you know that? None of them want to risk any association with that kind of disaster.” He says, “In another week, there won’t be a corporate sign on this island. They’ll pay anything it takes to buy their names back.”

The doctor folds Misty’s dead hands in her lap. Embalming her. He says, “Now rest. Paulette will be up soon for your dinner order.”

Just for the record, he goes to her night table and picks up the bottle of capsules. As he leaves, he slips the bottle into the side pocket of his suit jacket and doesn’t mention it. “Another week,” he says, “and the entire world will fear this place—but they’ll leave us alone.” Going out, he doesn’t lock the door.