“Wow, it really is a small world. Girl from Maine meets boy in California.”
“You know those Venn diagrams, those circles that overlap?” asked Luisa. “I’m into math and that’s how I think about things. We all travel in circles, you know family groups, interest groups, economic groups, age groups, and when people share a certain number of factors it’s pretty likely that their circles will overlap and they’ll meet.”
“So Matt and Alison shared a number of factors?” asked Lucy.
“Yeah. They were both young, they were both runners, they were in the same city, and they shared the same fantasy. She saw herself as a damsel in distress and he saw himself as a knight in shining armor.”
“So what was Alison’s dragon?” asked Lucy. “Drugs?
“No. It was her family. She didn’t get along with them at all. I used to think that it wasn’t so much Matt who she liked as our whole extended family. You know, the parties and dinners with all the uncles and cousins and aunts.”
“Well, Ed Franklin wasn’t the easiest guy to get along with . . .” began Lucy.
“Oh, no, it wasn’t her father. It was her monster mom and her slimy stepfather. Her words, not mine. And she hated the half brother, Trot or Trig. I forget his name. She said he was awful.”
“In what way?” asked Lucy, fascinated.
“I’m not sure, exactly,” admitted Luisa, “but Matt told me that she had him install a deadbolt on her bedroom door so she could lock herself in at night.”
“Oh,” said Lucy as they turned to walk back. She knew from her work as a reporter that sexual abuse in families was not uncommon and often had tragic consequences. “Do you think that she might have killed herself?”
“No. She would never have committed suicide,” said Luisa, certainty in her voice. “I’m sure of that. And she didn’t use drugs, either. She got addicted to pain killers after an accident, but she went to rehab and after that, she wouldn’t even take an aspirin.”
Bill and Rey were shaking hands and saying good-bye when the women returned and joined them.
Lucy also took Rey’s hand and said, “I hope everything goes well at the arraignment. Be sure to give Matt our best wishes.”
“I most certainly will,” said Rey, taking Luisa’s arm and walking with her to the rental car.
Lucy and Bill were quiet as they walked to the SUV, but as soon as they were inside Lucy asked if Rey had come to a decision about the future of the pub.
“He wants to go ahead,” said Bill. “He says it’s a blessing in disguise and he’s hiring an architect to design his dream restaurant and he wants me to build it.”
“I guess that depends on the insurance company.”
“I guess it does.”
Lucy took a detour on the way home, driving out to Route 1 to see the AMERICA FOR AMERICANS billboard. It was exactly as Zoe had described it, and it dominated the view. You couldn’t avoid seeing it even if you wanted to. Lucy suspected a good number of people probably agreed with the anti-immigration sentiment.
“I wonder if Rey and Luisa saw it,” said Bill as Lucy drove on past.
“I think they must have. Of course, they would have thought it utterly ridiculous since their family was here long before the American Revolution.”
“But it’s not really about immigration, is it? We’re all descended from immigrants after all. It’s about race and ethnicity. You know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words? Well there are only three words on the sign, but the picture of those mug shots of the three accused drug dealers says that Mexicans are criminals.”
“I wonder who’s behind it,” said Lucy, switching into investigative reporter mode. “Those billboards are expensive.”
“I have a feeling you’re going to find out,” said Bill as she turned off Route 1 onto Shore Road, heading back to Tinker’s Cove and home.
* * *
Lucy was running late when she was finally able to leave for work, and she knew that Monday morning was always busy. There were usually new developments over the weekend, and a lot of people seemed to have nothing better to do on Sunday afternoon than to write e-mails to the local paper, which had to be answered.
Phyllis greeted her with a smile, and asked how Bill was doing. “Everybody’s talking about that explosion,” she said, peering over the zebra-striped cheaters perched on her nose. They matched her sweater and also her fingernails.
“Bill’s got a broken arm,” said Lucy, studying Phyllis’s manicure. “How do you get stripes like that on your nails?”
“They’re stickers. I heard the explosion, you know, and the sirens. It was scary. I thought the whole town was going to blow up.”
“It was a heck of a blast,” said Ted, turning away from his computer screen. “He was lucky he wasn’t blown to bits.”
“That’s what he tells me,” said Lucy, attempting a joke while hanging up her coat. She didn’t like to think about the explosion and what might have been. Now she was realizing, for the first time, that the blast hadn’t affected only her family and the Rodriguez family, but had literally sent tremors through the entire town.
“I’d like to interview Bill, if he’s up to it,” said Ted. “That blast is a big story and I’d love to get a first-person account.”
Lucy plunked herself down at her desk, feeling overwhelmed. It was one thing to cover the news, quite another to be the news. “I was on my way home from Ed Franklin’s funeral when Zoe called. I was only thinking of Bill. I wasn’t thinking like a reporter.”
“That’s perfectly understandable,” said Ted. “But it’s the biggest thing that’s happened in Tinker’s Cove since the big ropewalk fire. I’m running it on page one.”
“They had mutual aid,” said Phyllis, referring to the system by which the local fire departments helped each other. “Trucks came from Gilead, Elna,
