“It’s a busy island that gets three million tourists every year,” Doyle said. “Of
“What about things happening among the Garrisons and the Coopers?”
Doyle scoffed. “Something’s always going on with them. Owen’s starting up this field academy. He just got back from digging for earthquake survivors.”
“The Coopers?”
“Grace Cooper’s up for a big State Department appointment. Her father’s doing some complicated business deal. Her uncle’s designed a new garden for one of his rich friends. Her brother’s here this summer. He made it through a whole year of college.” Doyle narrowed his eyes on his fellow, more experienced law enforcement officer. “But you know all that, don’t you, Lou?”
“Yeah. I do. Well…” He smiled. “I hadn’t heard about Linc Cooper not getting kicked out of another college. You’ll call me when Abigail turns up?”
“I’ll call. Thanks for stopping by. By the way, did you stop by the Browning house just now?”
Lou shook his head. “No, why?”
Doyle decided not to tell him about the boys and their ghost. “Just curious. Sure you don’t want to come in?”
“I should get back. Say hi to the boys for me.”
After Lou left, Doyle locked up his car and headed inside. The house wasn’t the same without Katie. He didn’t know how he’d manage for six weeks without her. The place needed vacuuming. He had to take out the trash, clean the bathrooms, mop the kitchen floor. Normally he and Katie and the boys split the housework, but he could see now he hadn’t been doing his fair share.
He didn’t need to deal with Abigail right now. She had a way of getting on his last nerve.
With a little luck, she’d get assigned to a hot case in Boston and forget about the anonymous call. Let the state and local police investigate. Stay out of it.
Doyle snorted, noticing he’d left the coffeepot on that morning.
What was he thinking?
Luck just never seemed to be on his side.
CHAPTER 4
Abigail left Boston early Monday morning, and by the time she took Route 3 over the Trenton Bridge onto Mt. Desert Island, she ran into a wall of fog. Not pretty fog, either. It was slit-your-throat depressing fog. She had her coffee can of journal ashes on the front seat next to her. She’d almost dumped them at a rest stop between Augusta and Bangor, just to be rid of them. It was as if every memory of her life with Chris was in there, condensed, trying to pull her inside with them and draw her into the past, keep her there forever and never, ever let her go.
She stopped in Bar Harbor at a streetside deli-restaurant and bought containers of clam chowder, lobster salad and crab salad, and two huge peanut butter cookies. Droopy-eyed tourists griped about the fog.
Well, Abigail thought, climbing back into her car, it could.
When she arrived at her house on the southern end of the island, the fog, if possible, was even thicker, encasing the tall spruce and pine trees in gray, obscuring any view. Water, rocks and sky were indistinguishable.
The front steps were slick with condensation, and the air tasted of salt and wet pine needles.
Her 1920s house was too small, too simple, for today’s coastal living standards. If she put it on the market, it would sell for its location. A new owner would almost certainly bulldoze it and build from scratch.
She unlocked the door and, with the damp air, had to push hard to get it open. Inside, her house felt like a tomb. Cold, dark, still. Midafternoon, and it might have been dusk.
Flipping on a light in the entry, Abigail walked into the kitchen and dropped her keys on the counter, the silence not comforting, only making her feel more alone.
The ashes called to her.
She could hear Chris’s voice.
He’d wanted her to fall in love with his boyhood home-not the house so much as the island, its breathtaking beauty, its simplest pleasures. She didn’t need to have the same memories he had, he’d said.
She spun on her toes and ran back outside, slipping on the steps and the stone walk, sinking into the soft gravel of the driveway as she went around to the passenger side of her car. She ripped open the door and grabbed the coffee can.
Without thinking, she ducked under the dripping branches of a pine tree on the side of the house, emerging on the strip of grass that passed for a yard.
She made her way through the gloom along a footpath worn into the damp grass and rocky dirt, following it to the tangle of rugosa roses and the tumble of granite boulders that marked the water’s edge. No marshes and bogs here, no gentle easing from land to ocean. Two centuries ago, the Brownings had parked themselves on the rockbound island and carved out a living for themselves amid Mt. Desert’s gales, salt spray, acidic soil, impenetrable granite and incredible, austere beauty.
Abigail tucked her coffee can under one arm. Beneath her, the Atlantic was gray and glassy, barely visible in the fog. She heard seagulls but couldn’t tell how far away they were. Sucking in a breath, she plunged down the rocks, careful with her footing on steep, potentially slippery sections. As her familiarity with her stretch of coast kicked in, she moved faster.
The tide was out, and she dropped down from a rectangular boulder onto smaller rocks covered in seaweed and barnacles, cold, gray water seeping over them. She could feel the dampness in her bones now. When she’d packed up for Boston last night, after Scoop and Bob had left her with her notes and files and mess to clean up, she’d imagined dumping her ashes on a crisp, clear Maine afternoon.
She crept out to the edge of a rock slab-the water was deeper here, deep enough for the ashes. Holding the coffee can in front of her, she peeled off the plastic lid.
“Abigail?”
“Oh, my God!”
Startled, she spun around at the voice, real or imagined, and the coffee can went flying, ashes spilling over her, the rock, the water. The can banged off granite and into the gray ocean.
“Chris?”
She shook herself. What was wrong with her, calling out to her dead husband?
Squatting down, she reached for the coffee can, but it floated farther away. Determined, she lurched forward- too far forward. She dropped her left hand onto the rock at her side to regain her balance, but a cluster of sharp barnacles dug into her palm. She jerked her hand back and started to jump up, but slipped, tipping over into the water.
She shuddered at the shock of cold water and scrambled right back up onto her rock. She was soaked, cursing.
A man materialized out of the fog above her and lowered his hand to her. “You’re wearing the wrong shoes.”
“The wrong-” She looked up at Owen Garrison, handsome as ever, dry. “I nearly drown, and you’re worried about my shoes?”
