A murder of crows took off from the tops of the trees, cawing loudly. Emer edged away again.
‘It was Susannah who killed Uncle Matt. In revenge for what happened to Kate. She’s the murderer, not him.’
38
Susannah
September 1966
The body was so heavy she had to get her mother to help her. She put every ounce of strength into dragging it across the garden as quickly as she could. Her brother-in-law hadn’t been a big man, but he was all sinew, apart from the beer gut. She tried not to look at his face, nor to think of him as a human being as she and her mother flipped him over and into their small row boat. The horror of the last hour seemed surreal, but she was only too conscious of the fact that Silas might turn up any minute wondering why his brother wasn’t at The Sand Bar. For once, her mother was speechless, working almost as a machine as she helped Susannah weigh the body down with granite rocks. Once Susannah was ready to launch the boat, she gave her mother quick instructions.
‘Go back to the girls,’ she said. ‘Give them some lunch.’
‘But Kate?’ Her mother pointed to the still form beneath the white sheet. Her face was pale with shock, and she was shaking non-stop. Susannah wanted to scream again with loss, but held it in. It helped to remind herself of what this monster had done to her sister. He deserved to be dropped to the bottom of the ocean and eaten up by fishes.
‘When I get back, we’ll get the cops,’ she said. ‘But wait till I’m back. ‘
She pulled the outboard and it sputtered to life. Praying none of their neighbours were looking out of their windows, she sped out of their small cove to sea, bumping up and down on the choppy water in her haste.
The official story went like this: Susannah had arrived on the morning ferry to discover her mother and nieces cowering upstairs in terror, her sister murdered in the garden and her brother-in-law gone. The boat had still been there, so all she could assume was that after he’d killed his wife, his shame had driven him into the ocean and his own self-inflicted end.
For days after they’d taken Kate’s body away to the mainland for an autopsy, Susannah had sat staring out of the kitchen window at the sea, half-expecting to see her brother-in-law emerge from the ocean like a sea-monster and come to wreak his revenge on her family. Silas visited often, and was all over her. Constantly questioning her about where she thought Matthew might have gone. Implying Kate’s death had been an accident. Susannah knew that Matthew’s family didn’t believe her. Especially Silas. Every time she went into town to market, she felt the eyes of the whole island on her. They were a spectacle. She couldn’t wait until the cops had concluded their investigation and they were free to leave.
When she’d sent Ava a telegram with the news that her sister and brother-in-law were dead, Ava had immediately offered to come get them all in the Ford. But Susannah had stopped her. She didn’t want Ava to be dragged into anything on the island. She’d sent a hasty telegram back. They would come soon. If not her mother, then she and her nieces. She was going to take the girls as far away as she could from the island. Rebecca was so little that hopefully she’d remember nothing of the night of the storm. But she was worried about Lynsey. She kept asking for her mom. And crying when Susannah tried to explain she’d gone to the angels. Some days, it was hard even to get up. Susannah would curl up in bed with Lynsey and Rebecca. The three of them under the sheets.
As for her mother, it was as if the events during the storm had dislodged something in her mind. She kept asking Susannah where Kate was. Or even calling her Kate, sometimes. And every day at three, she’d run into the kitchen and start boiling a pot of water.
‘Better get the potatoes on, Kate,’ she’d call out to Susannah. ‘He’ll be back soon.’
‘Mom, it’s Susannah,’ she’d reassure her, taking the pot out of her hand. ‘He’s not coming back. Not ever.’
Her mom would start to tremble as she remembered the night of the storm.
‘Oh, Susie,’ she sobbed, ‘he killed our Katie.’
The two of them would embrace. In the losing of her mother’s mind, Susannah had never felt closer to her.
Finally, six weeks after the murder, the case was closed and they were allowed to bury Kate. There had been no sign of Matthew Young since the night of the storm. A national manhunt had been set up, but seeing as he had not been seen on the ferries that day, nor had he taken his boat, it was assumed he’d committed suicide by walking into the ocean.
Ava drove up all the way from New York for the funeral. Susannah fell into her arms in relief. She’d been holding it together for her mom and the girls for so long. To see Ava broke her.
‘It’s gonna be okay,’ Ava kept saying, stroking her hair.
But nothing was ever going to be okay again. Susannah had to carry a deep, dark secret to her grave. It would eat away at her own life, and it would shadow the lives of all around her. No matter how much she wanted to, she could never tell Ava what had really happened to Kate’s husband.
A storm blew up the day of the funeral, but it didn’t stop the islanders coming out to show their respects. Everyone had loved Kate. Matthew’s family stood a little apart, Silas and Rachel, pregnant again, with three small children hanging off her. Rachel was sobbing but she didn’t go
