zipper, she felt the fabric close over her curves like a second skin. She turned to face the mirror. This is what Anna saw, she thought. The same face, the same figure. Did she, too, deplore the thickening of her hips, the signs of impending middle age? Did she too turn sideways, to check the flatness of her belly? Surely all women who try on new dresses perform an identical ballet in front of a mirror. Turn this way, turn that. Do I look fat from behind?
She paused, her right side to the mirror, staring at a strand of hair that clung to the fabric. She plucked it off and held it up to the light. It was black like hers, but longer. A dead woman’s hair.
The ringing telephone made her jerk around. She went to the nightstand and paused, heart pounding, as the phone rang a second time, a third, each jangle unbearably loud in that silent house. Before it could ring a fourth time she picked up the receiver.
“Hello? Hello?”
There was a click, and then the dial tone.
Wrong number, she thought. That’s all it is.
Outside, the wind was picking up, and even through the closed window she heard the groan of swaying trees. But inside the house, it was so silent she could hear her own heartbeat. Is this what your nights were like? she wondered. In this house, surrounded by dark woods?
That night, before she climbed into bed, she locked the bedroom door, then propped a chair against it as well. She felt a little sheepish doing so. There was nothing to be afraid of, yet she felt more threatened here than in Boston, where the predators were human and far more dangerous than any animal that might lurk among these woods.
She could feel that fear, still lingering in this house with its barricaded doors.
She bolted awake to the sound of screeching. Lay gasping for breath, heart thudding. Only an owl, no reason to panic. She was in the woods, for god’s sake; of course she’d hear animals. Her sheets were soaked in sweat. She had locked the window before going to bed, and the room now felt stifling, airless. I can’t breathe, she thought.
She rose and slid open the window. Stood taking in deep breaths of fresh air as she stared out at the trees, their leaves silvered by moonlight. Nothing moved; the woods had once again gone silent.
She returned to bed and this time slept soundly until dawn.
Daylight changed everything. She heard birdsong, and looking out her window, saw two deer cross the yard and bound off into the woods, white tails flashing. With sunlight streaming into the room, the chair she’d propped up against the door last night now struck her as irrational. I won’t be telling anyone about this, she thought, as she pulled it aside.
In the kitchen she made coffee from a bag of ground French roast she found in the freezer. Anna’s coffee. She poured hot water through the filter as she inhaled the steamy fragrance. She was surrounded by Anna’s purchases. The microwave popcorn and packages of spaghetti. The expired cartons of peach yogurt and milk. Each item represented a moment in her sister’s life when she had paused before a grocery store shelf and thought: I need this, too. And then later, upon the return home, she had emptied sacks and put away these choices. When Maura looked at the contents of the cabinets, it was her sister’s hand she saw, stacking the cans of tuna on the flowered shelf paper.
She carried her coffee mug outside to the front porch and stood sipping from it as she surveyed the yard where sunlight dappled the little garden patch. Everything is so green, she marveled. The grass, the trees, the light itself. In the high canopy of branches, birds sang. I can see now why she might want to live here. Why she would want to wake up every morning to the smell of the woods.
Suddenly the birds rose flapping from the trees, startled by a new sound: the low rumble of machinery. Though Maura could not see the bulldozer, she could certainly hear it through the woods, sounding annoyingly close. She remembered what Miss Clausen had told her, that the lot next door was being cleared. So much for a peaceful Sunday morning.
She went down the steps and circled around to the side of the house, trying to see the bulldozer through the trees, but the woods were too thick, and she could not catch even a glimpse of it. But looking down, she did spot animal tracks, and remembered the two deer she had seen through her bedroom window that morning. She followed them along the side of the house, noticing other evidence of their visit in the chewed leaves of the hostas planted against the foundation, and marveled at how bold those deer had been, grazing right up against the wall. She continued toward the back, and came to a halt at another set of tracks. These were not from deer. She stood very still for a moment. Her heart began to thud, and her hands went clammy around the mug. Slowly, her gaze followed the tracks toward a soft patch of dirt beneath one of the windows.
A boot’s imprints were pressed into the soil where someone had stood, peering into the house.
Into her bedroom.
ELEVEN
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, a Fox Harbor police cruiser came bouncing down her dirt road. It pulled up in front of the cottage, and a cop climbed out. He was in his fifties, bull-necked, his blond hair going bald on top.
“Dr. Isles?” he said, offering her a meaty handshake. “Roger Gresham, chief of police.”
“I didn’t know I’d get the chief himself.”
“Yeah, well, we were planning to drive up here anyway when your call came in.”
“We?” She frowned as another vehicle, a Ford Explorer, came up the driveway and pulled up next to Gresham ’s cruiser. The driver stepped out and waved at her.
“Hello, Maura,” said Rick Ballard.
For a moment she just looked at him, startled by his unexpected arrival. “I had no idea you were here,” she finally said.
“I drove up last night. When did you get in?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“You spent the night in this house?”
“The motel was full. Miss Clausen-the rental agent-offered to let me sleep here.” She paused. Added on a defensive note, “She did say the police were finished with it.”
Gresham gave a snort. “Bet she charged you for the night, too. Didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“That Britta, she’s something else. She’d charge ya for air if she could.” Turning toward the house, he said: “So where did you see those footprints?”
Maura led the men past the front porch and around the corner of the house. They stayed to the side of the path, scanning the ground as they moved. The bulldozer had fallen silent, and now the only sounds were their footfalls on the carpet of leaves.
“Fresh deer tracks here,” said Gresham, pointing.
“Yes, there were a pair of deer that came through here this morning,” said Maura.
“That could explain those tracks you saw.”
“Chief Gresham,” said Maura, and sighed. “I
“No, I mean some guy might’ve been out here hunting. Out of season, you understand. Followed those deer outta the woods.”
Ballard suddenly halted, his gaze fixed on the ground.
“Do you see them?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. His voice was strangely quiet.
Gresham squatted down beside Ballard. A moment passed. Why didn’t they say something? A wind stirred the trees. Shivering, she looked up at the swaying branches. Last night, someone had come out of those woods. He had stood outside her room. Had stared in her window while she slept.
Ballard glanced up at the house. “Is that a bedroom window?”
