“I’m not,” said Lisa’s father. “You’ll just have to trust me.”
“How can I trust you?” she said. “Sometimes I don’t even recognize you anymore. We used to be best friends, Andrew, but you’re so different now. I don’t even know how to describe it. What happened to us? We never spend time together anymore. You’re always so busy. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to embarrass you. I’m just upset because I’m still trying to get used to my mother being gone.”
She burst into tears. Lisa’s father attempted to comfort her by pushing a box of tissues in her direction, but she continued to cry. Sabrina was too preoccupied with her own problems to pity Lisa’s mother. She expected emotions to run high, and it played to her advantage.
“Arthur, we need to decide how to tell the children,” she said. “They’re not going to be happy when they find out we’re staying here indefinitely. Maybe we can arrange for them to go to school with Lisa and Veronica. That way, they’ll already have a couple of friends. It’s a shame Josh and Shannon won’t get to spend the rest of their senior year with their class, but they’re very resilient. They’ll adjust easily enough.”
“I hope so,” said Arthur.
Sabrina got up. Now that the confrontation was over, she felt exhausted. She had expended every ounce of her strength, and she had nothing left to give. As she finally recognized how sick she was, the pain she had ignored since her diagnosis flowed through her body and took her breath away. Her chest burned as if it were on fire, and she felt the baby slipping in her arms.
“I need to lie down,” she said. “Arthur, I’ll leave Yvonne with you.”
He reached out to help her, but she didn’t take his hand. She gave Yvonne to him and struggled upstairs on her own. She knew it wouldn’t be long before she had to depend on him for everything, but she wanted to postpone that eventuality for as long as possible. She went into her room, collapsed onto the bed, and pinned her hopes on the ingenuity of a killer. If Peterson’s drug couldn’t save her, then nothing could.
Chapter 4
The crumbled remnants of the fort jutted out of the ground like broken bones. A brisk wind blew, driving sand into every crack in the walls. Lisa felt her face going numb, but Veronica seemed impervious to the cold. She scampered up the slope and looked over the parapet with an exclamation of delight. She wasn’t exactly breaking the rules, but Lisa kept an eye on her all the same. The last thing she wanted was to grieve her mother by allowing Veronica to get hurt. She followed Veronica, and as she climbed above the thick outer wall that separated her from the sea, the roar of the waves filled her ears, and an icy blast took her breath away.
She turned her face toward the sun. The industrial section of town lay in the distance across the river. The morning fog lingered there, and Lisa could barely discern the shapes of the warehouses that lined the far side. Even the towers of the oil refinery were invisible. Further up the river, the bridge crossed over at a peak of eighty feet, and beyond the bridge, concealed in mist, Hamilton Estate lurked in the shadows. Lisa remembered the ominous things Richard had said about it, but before she could get too preoccupied with unsettling thoughts, Veronica demanded her attention.
“Lisa, look,” she said. “There’s a boat down there.”
Sure enough, a small motorboat was bobbing up and down in the waves. It was tied to a concrete pillar that had been placed there to measure the height of the water, and it looked like it might break loose and drift away at any moment. A wrinkled bundle of orange cloth that looked like a hunter’s vest lay in the bottom.
“Who do you think it belongs to?” said Veronica.
“I don’t know,” said Lisa, but even as she spoke, she remembered Graham’s strange departure from Molly’s house on that night when they had first met. The thought of him sneaking around in the fort was so terrifying that she tried to think of an excuse for them to go home, but it wouldn’t be easy to convince Veronica, whose enthusiasm for adventure knew no limits. Stephen, who had become a permanent fixture at Veronica’s side, smiled for the first time. He was finally beginning to come out of his shell, and to Lisa’s annoyance, he seemed to share Veronica’s curiosity.
“Maybe it’s lost,” he said.
“Or abandoned,” said Veronica. “Either way, the rope isn’t tied tightly enough. It’s only a matter of time before it floats away. If we climbed down there, we could probably wade out to it and drag it up on the shore to keep it safe.”
“You’re crazy,” said Lisa. “If you think I’m going to let you do something so incredibly stupid, you can think again. I’m sure whoever left it there doesn’t want us messing around with it.”
“But it would be so much fun,” said Veronica. “Why are you always so boring?”
Lisa turned in exasperation and found Josh standing beside her, listening to the quarrel with amusement. He hadn’t spoken to her since their mortifying encounter with Sabrina in the kitchen, and she suspected he was trying to avoid any further embarrassment by interacting with her as little as possible.
“Stephen, I wouldn’t risk it,” he said. “There are probably thousands of sharks out there.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Veronica. “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve never even seen a shark.”
“Suit yourself,” said Josh. “I’m not going to tell you what to do.”
He smiled at Lisa and walked away as if he knew his job was done. She wanted to thank him for helping her keep the younger children out of trouble, but she couldn’t think of anything to say without looking ridiculous in
