“Car crash. Three years ago, one of the summer people was driving drunk. Hit Franklin’s car and flipped him into a ditch. Broke his spine in three places. He won’t ever walk again. Got big bucks in the settlement, but Franklin didn’t need money. He had that in spades.” The story was a sore spot for Bert.
“I retooled his electric wheelchair for him. Adjusted the wheels for an improved turning radius and rerouted the wiring so he could get more power. Franklin says it runs like a Porsche. Zero to sixty in six seconds.”
Abigail had dropped her chin and let her shoulders fold, sympathy melting her stance into the posture of compassion. She’d seen people slide into it after they learned of her husband’s and son’s deaths. As she stood there in the darkened hardware store with Bert, Abigail knew what she was about to say. The words were already forming in spite of how she hated hearing them herself.
“I’m sorry to hear about your friend.”
“He’s a decent guy. Done a lot for this town. Everyone does what they can.”
An unspoken bond existed between the residents of Chapel Isle. The island was the same as the nets its fishermen cast at sea, a tight lattice of people tied by lives lived closely, knotted by friendship. Being here meant Abigail could become a part of that net as well, which was a bit intimidating. The responsibility may have been more than she could be entrusted with.
“So how’s it going at the lighthouse?”
“Fine. Everything’s fine.” As often as Abigail said it, that didn’t make it true.
“Nothing out of the ordinary?”
“Oh, Bert, not you too? You’re a man of science. You can’t possibly have bought into this ghost story.”
“Had to ask. Most people around here have heard about him. Some believe. Some don’t. Either way, Mr. Jasper took care of this island and its sailors for years. Guess he has the right to be here still.”
Be it a right, a privilege, a curse, or contrivance, Wesley Jasper had become Abigail’s problem. She was lying that everything was fine while painting the caretaker’s cottage top to bottom and trying to appease a spirit she wasn’t convinced existed. If Abigail couldn’t shake the shroud of his presence—real, imagined, or mythologized—she would become known as the woman who lived in the haunted house. She wasn’t even okay being known as “Abby.” She couldn’t let this go any further.
When Abigail got home, the cottage was brutally quiet. She couldn’t concentrate and craved a mindless activity to give her wits a rest. After wandering aimlessly around the living room, she stopped and stood at the window, staring at the ocean while waiting for inspiration to arrive. Minutes passed. She grew impatient. Her eyes drifted across the lawn to the station wagon. The grass was as high as the car’s headlights.
“Lottie did mention a lawn mower.”
A tarnished manual hand mower leaned in the corner of the shed, with a ragged-edged rake propped against it.
“Couldn’t hurt to see if it works.”
Abigail dragged the mower out for inspection. The blades were matte gray, so dull they refused to reflect the sunlight. She pulled the mower along the grass to test if the blades would cut. Much to her amazement, they did. The newly sheared patch of grass was a drastic improvement, incentive to forge onward.
Progress was slow, each pass a struggle, but Abigail didn’t stop. The exertion drained her mind and burned off the angst that had clung to her since running into Bert at the hardware store. The smell of the fresh-clipped grass was a welcome distraction.
Over the course of the afternoon, she worked her way across the yard, pausing occasionally to wipe her forehead with her sleeve. Her hair was soaked with sweat, as was her shirt. The sun was setting once she was through.
The time had come to do Merle’s rounds. A bath would have to wait. Abigail packed a sandwich for dinner. There was one piece of bread left, besides the heel of the loaf. Her sandwich was a sad statement about how she’d been living. She used to love to cook. When she and Paul were newlyweds and low on cash, Abigail had embraced the challenge of concocting lavish meals on their shoestring budget, defying their circumstances with some ingenuity and well-chosen spices. She missed cooking, not so much the act, but the purpose—feeding her family and providing them with what they needed.
Abigail stowed her dinner in the empty bread bag and took it to the car.
Tonight the moon was high, making the street signs legible—that was if they weren’t obscured by branches or leaves. Abigail was still getting the hang of how the island was laid out, reading Merle’s map by her dashboard lights. The roads didn’t run on a grid pattern; quite the opposite. Each curvy lane unraveled of its own accord, unrepentantly irregular, like the rest of Chapel Isle.
The first few properties were unchanged since the previous evening, not a hinge or windowpane disturbed. Abigail was thankful for that. Midway through her route, she took a break to gobble down her dinner. As she sat in the station wagon eating, headlights appeared, glowing in the distance. Then the lights began to flash. It was a police patrol car.
“Uh-oh.”
In her side mirror, Abigail saw Sheriff Larner climbing from the cruiser.
“Evening, Abby.”
“This must seem a little suspicious, me sitting in my car on a dark road, eating a sandwich by flashlight with a hammer in my lap.”
“Not what I expected. Care to tell me what you’re doing?”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“No such thing as a short story around here.”
“I’m checking on Lottie’s rental properties for Merle because…uh, because I owed him a favor.” Abigail
