consequences of not showing up.
Deliberately, just to rub Mattie’s nose in the disparities between them, Linc had put on an expensive sweater and khakis for their little meeting, and he’d shaved. Mattie had come down the steps from working in Ellis’s gardens, but he would have been a mess, regardless. He’d tied his stringy, greasy hair into a ponytail and wore a stained T-shirt and torn, frayed jeans that sagged on his scrawny frame.
He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and tapped one out. “Your crazy uncle has me moving a rhododendron. He doesn’t think it’s thriving where it is. It looks fine to me.” He stuck the cigarette between his lips. “What the hell about me? I’d like to thrive.”
“Then stop smoking. That’d help.”
“Sarcastic little shit, aren’t you, considering the spot you’re in?”
Linc felt his jaw set hard. “I hate your guts.”
Mattie laughed. “Feeling’s mutual, kid. You got my best friend killed-”
“Your best friend? You didn’t even go to his wedding. You were in a ditch somewhere sleeping off a couple bottles of cheap booze.”
“So I was.” Using a small disposable lighter, Mattie lit his cigarette, inhaling deeply before returning lighter and pack to his pocket. “Do you have my money?”
“A thousand. I can’t get my hands on ten grand at once without drawing attention to myself. I told you-”
“Show me the thousand.”
Linc reached into his day pack, dropped at his feet, and withdrew a sealed envelope. His stomach rolled over. Sweat erupted on his back. He couldn’t believe what he was doing, but what choice did he have? Especially now, with his sister Grace’s State Department appointment in the works.
He handed the envelope to Mattie. “Go ahead and count it if you want. It’s all there.”
“I don’t need to count it. If you’re lying, I know where you live, don’t I?”
“You’re scum. I don’t know what the Brownings ever saw in you. They were good guys. You’re a piece of shit.”
Mattie didn’t react with his usual anger and defensiveness. “Chris and his grandfather looked past my mistakes. They saw the real me. I’m getting back into my photography.” He folded the bulging envelope, squeezing it into the palm of his hand as if it held all his answers-as if it wasn’t just money. “Your money’s going for a good cause. Think of it as your penance and my new beginning.”
Linc snorted. “The real you is a bottom-feeding lowlife. It always has been. It always will be.”
“I never stole from the people who cared about me.”
Shame rippled through Linc, and his legs weakened under him. “If you’re so good, why don’t you tell the police what you know? About me. The burglaries. Why blackmail me?”
“A guy like me doesn’t get many second chances.”
“Why did you wait until now?”
“I wasn’t going to put the squeeze on a teenager. And now-the timing’s right. You’re not going to the police, not with your sister’s big appointment hanging in the balance.” Mattie grinned, the sarcasm-the pleasure he took in what he was doing-back. “What do you think Grace would say if she could see her baby brother now?”
Linc couldn’t bear to think about Grace’s disappointment. Eighteen years older, more like an aunt than a sister, she was the only child of their father and his first wife, a marriage that had ended the summer Doe Garrison had drowned. He and Grace had no other siblings. It was just the two of them.
Mattie blew cigarette smoke out of his nose. “Relax, kid. I’m not greedy. Once I have my ten grand, we’re square.”
He was forty-two but looked older. Grace said she remembered when he was a talented, promising photographer. But Mattie Young had hit the self-destruct button a long time ago.
“I returned all the items I stole,” Linc said, hating the meekness in his voice. “Why punish me?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Mattie gave him a knowing look. “Don’t you punish yourself?”
Linc didn’t answer.
“And you didn’t return everything, did you? Abigail’s necklace is still missing.”
“I told you. I didn’t steal it. I didn’t attack her. I didn’t kill Chris.”
“Who’ll believe you without proof of who did steal the necklace and attack her, of who did kill Chris?” Mattie dropped his half-smoked cigarette onto the stone and crushed it under his cheap work boot. “I need to get back to your uncle’s rhodie. Work on the rest of my money. I want it within the next few days. All of it.”
“I’ll get it just to watch you piss it away.”
“All that anger. It’ll eat you alive if you let it.”
“I hope you choke on your own vomit.”
Mattie shrugged. “You’re not alone.” He squatted down, picked up the crushed cigarette and tucked it into a front pocket as he rose. “Best to cover my tracks. Your uncle doesn’t let me smoke on the grounds. If he or your father or sister finds out about the money, what will you tell them? Do you remember your cover story?”
Linc didn’t want to argue with him anymore. “I’ll tell them I bought some of your old photographs.”
“Very good,” Mattie said, then smiled. “See you soon.”
After his blackmailer left, Linc turned and faced the water, looking down at the near-vertical hillside. Juts of exposed granite ledge, moss, bare roots of trees-spruce, pine, fir, a few beeches and birches-clung to its thin, acidic soil.
Linc gulped in a shallow breath. He felt hollowed out, a shell of everything he wanted to become. He was twenty now, and he hadn’t succeeded at anything yet-except video games and getting kicked out of schools.
And begging his father’s forgiveness.
Avoiding his sister’s disappointment.
What would the scandal of what he’d done seven years ago-of what he was doing now, paying off a blackmailer-do to Grace’s appointment? The FBI was running a background check on her. It could take several months. She’d already begged Linc to behave, which was part of the reason he was on Mt. Desert for the summer.
But Mattie Young had approached Linc three days ago and demanded ten thousand dollars in exchange for his silence, changing everything.
Countless times, at his lowest depths, Linc had used Chris’s words to give himself courage-to try again after yet another failure.
Linc knew what his dead friend would have him do.
Tell everything. Confess.
Not let Mattie confuse and manipulate him.
But Linc also knew he wouldn’t come clean.
He couldn’t tell anyone about the blackmail-or what he had done that had gotten him into this mess.
CHAPTER 7
Grace Cooper stepped carefully in the lush grass of her uncle’s backyard, as if she didn’t want to leave footprints. “Ellis has worked very hard to make these gardens look natural. It seems contradictory, doesn’t it?”
Abigail smiled, enjoying her tour of the award-winning gardens. “Everything’s so beautiful. I’m lucky if I can keep a pot of geraniums alive.”
“I know how you feel,” Grace said with a laugh.
Ellis was transplanting a bush with Mattie Young and had left his niece to deal with his unexpected guest, suggesting a quick garden tour. At thirty-eight, Grace was striking with her fine blond hair and strong features. Her eyes, a clear, pale blue, were her best feature. She was gracious and politely reserved.
The mix of perennials and annuals, their colors and textures contrasting here, complementing there, sparkled
