Then, this weekend a text came to my phone from a foreign number. It said: Please come to the villa. I want to see you. Things will change, I promise.

I blinked, read the text again, read the text a third time. Russ had never texted me before. We’d both agreed cell phones weren’t safe.

Things will change, I promise. It wasn’t a text saying he had left Irene, but I gave in anyway. I ached with missing him.

March 2, 2017

Love is messy, complicated, and unfair.

Things have not changed in any way except that the villa is newly redone and Maia has been allowed to decorate one of the rooms as her own. Also, I finally came clean with Huck and Ayers and told them that, yes, there was a man—I even said his name out loud once—but my relationship was nobody’s business but my own.

Huck and Ayers disagreed. Huck wants to meet the guy and so does Ayers; I’ve put them both off, saying that when the time is right, introductions will be made. When the time is right will be when Russ leaves Irene. He says he’s getting closer to making a clean break. They live separate lives. Baker and his family are happy in Houston, and Russ has just set his son Cash up in an outdoor-supply business in Colorado. Once Irene finishes working on the house in Iowa City—it still isn’t done—he’ll move down here full-time.

He doesn’t talk about work and I know enough not to ask. He spends a lot of time in the Cayman Islands as well as the BVIs—in Anegada, specifically. He asked me if I wanted to go back to Anegada; it’s the one place he’s not afraid to be seen with me.

“Maybe?” I said the last time he asked. I worry that he has business interests in Anegada, and I can’t risk getting mixed up in them.

Huck calls Russ the Invisible Man, and I don’t object. That’s exactly what he is.

November 3, 2018

I haven’t written in ages, and usually when I take breaks like this it’s because too much is going on for me to stop and write about it. But life has been relatively placid, if also topsy-turvy. When Russ is away, I work at La Tapa, live with Huck, hang out with Ayers, and take care of Maia, who is growing into a very cool young person. When Russ is here, I live with him. Sometimes Maia comes with me; sometimes she decides that she would rather stay home.

“It’s not that much fun watching you guys kiss all day,” she said. “Even if there is shuffleboard and SpaghettiOs.”