The Language of Sand

fell on the romance novel she’d started the other day. She remembered that Janine had been reading a similar paperback the first time she’d locked horns with her at Weller’s Market.

“The one thing we have in common is our choice in reading. How ironic.”

After a few minutes in the steamy bathwater, Abigail’s sore muscles ceased to ache as badly. The knot in her neck loosened. When she rejoined the winsome heiress and her rogue pirate captain, their romance had put both in jeopardy from her sinister suitor, who was setting the captain up to be captured and killed. Despite the ridiculousness of the story, Abigail didn’t put the paperback down until she was a hundred pages further into the tale, and then it was only because her stomach was rumbling.

“Hold that thought, heiress. I’m starving.”

Believing she might finally conquer her fear of the oven after the fiasco with the pilot light, Abigail had purchased a frozen dinner at the market.

“Showdown time,” she said, toweling off. “In this corner we have one wet, tired woman. In the other we have the challenger: turkey tetrazzini.”

Abigail switched on the lights as she moved through the house. Having the place lit made it feel warmer. Shivering, her hair damp, she skimmed the cooking instructions on the frozen-dinner package.

“Preheat oven to three-fifty. I can do that. I can preheat.”

She sidled over to the stove and turned the knob. The gas snapped on loudly. Abigail flinched.

“Relax, champ. It’s only warming up.”

Normally, preheating would take ten minutes. Considering the stove’s age, it could take double that to reach the correct temperature.

“Are you going to stand here staring at the darn thing the whole time?”

The answer was yes. Abigail couldn’t bring herself to leave the oven unattended. She was waiting for any sign of danger. After five minutes, she was slouching against the wainscoting. Bored, she opened the refrigerator. In spite of her recent trip to the grocery store, the fridge was disgracefully empty. A lone container of milk and a packet of sliced turkey sat on one tier. An untouched carton of eggs perched on another. The apples she’d set on the bottom shelf had rolled over to a loaf of bread, as though huddling next to it for warmth.

“Even your food is needy.”

She unwrapped the turkey tetrazzini entree, held her breath, and prepared to open the stove door.

“Ready or not.”

Eyes shut, Abigail jerked open the oven, anticipating an intense blast of heat. Instead, lukewarm air wafted out.

“Is that it?”

The instructions said the cooking time would be approximately twenty-five minutes. A half hour later, Abigail’s dinner remained frozen solid. She stabbed at it with a fork and nearly broke the tines. Already running late for Merle’s route, she switched off the stove and slapped together a sandwich to take with her on the road.

“I forfeit. Turkey tetrazzini wins. Time to hang up the gloves.”

While making the rounds, Abigail felt a ripple of disappointment. This would be her last night. Each evening she’d been either humiliated or petrified, yet Merle’s route had given her something she’d been missing—a purpose. She was sorry to lose that.

“Now you must be going crazy.”

The cottage on Timber Lane was her last stop. Abigail elected to believe the thief wouldn’t return so soon, logic that hadn’t leached down to her nerves. Her palms were sweating, making the flashlight and hammer hard to grip. She was wiping her hands on her pants when her customary lap around the house was interrupted by footsteps.

This can’t be happening again. Not again.

She ducked behind a clump of shrubs. This hiding in the bushes was not the type of activity Abigail ever thought she’d be making a habit of.

A glimmer of light flashed in the dark. She recognized the figure of the man from the night before. Moonlight was glinting off his wristwatch, illuminating the arc of his arm swinging as he walked. He had a slow, lumbering gait, a pace suggesting he was an older man or overweight. Abigail tracked him until he turned at the end of the lane, then she scrambled to her car, intent on pursuit. The rational side of her brain advised against it.

What are you going to do if you catch him? Make a citizen’s arrest?

Common sense lost the tug-of-war to curiosity. Abigail threw the station wagon into drive, panning from side to side along the rows of houses. The man was gone. Again.

“Relax. You are not in some scary B movie. You’re on Chapel Isle in a town full of seafaring, bingo-loving people who are, for the most part, sane, and none of them will be jumping out of the bushes with an ax.”

Or so she hoped. Since the man had vanished, Abigail was stuck with the same choice as yesterday. To tell or not to tell. She hadn’t gotten a close enough look to describe him in detail, so the conclusion was simple.

“I’m going home.”

The word home resonated in her ears like the hum of a tuning fork. Had the lighthouse become her home? Her house in Boston, the place she’d truly considered home, was gone, leveled, the land sold off. The new owner would rebuild. It hurt Abigail to picture a new house replacing hers.