Carla Neggers - The Widow

“Abigail-my apologies for not greeting you sooner. I wanted to finish in the garden and wash up before saying hello.” He put out a hand and shook hers warmly. “Wonderful to see you.”

“You, too, Ellis. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your gardens this gorgeous.”

“We had a cool spring. Everything seems to have blossomed at once. Did Grace give you the grand tour?”

“She did. I should let you all get back to your day. Is Linc still here? I haven’t had a chance to say hello-”

“He took off a few minutes ago,” Mattie said.

Ellis seemed faintly irritated at his yardman’s interruption, but he hooked his arm into Abigail’s, smiling at her. “I’ll walk with you. You came up the steps, didn’t you? I was worried the fog would settle in for a few days, but it blew out almost as fast as it blew in.”

When they reached the front of the house, he unhooked his arm from Abigail’s, and she grinned at him. “You’d have made a good bouncer in another life.”

He laughed. “I’m just a political consultant and gardener.”

“I don’t know how good a consultant you are, but you’re obviously quite the gardener.”

“Grace told you we’re selling the place? I could continue here forever, but I have to admit I’m excited about the prospect of a fresh start somewhere. Keeping up five acres of gardens is a huge responsibility. I’ve naturalized more and more in recent years, but it’s still a lot of work.”

“You and Mattie manage everything yourselves?”

“I bring in specialists from time to time. Mattie-well, you know what he’s like. He’s just reliable enough and just hardworking enough that I can’t fire him. I don’t think he’s drinking, not right now. The truth is, I feel sorry for him.” Ellis’s expression softened. “Chris’s death shattered him. He’s never been the same.”

“He’d started drinking again before Chris was killed.”

“True, but he was starting to turn himself around that summer-or so most of us thought. Hard to believe it’s been seven years. Jason thinks it’s been long enough not to affect prospective buyers. Even if Chris wasn’t killed on the property, it was close-” He stopped himself, looked stricken. “Oh, Abigail. I’m so sorry. I know it must seem like yesterday to you. I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay, Ellis. Forget it.”

Abigail was accustomed to people getting tongue-tied around her. She wondered if it’d be different if she’d remarried, if she’d been older when she was widowed.

She said goodbye to Ellis and followed a shaded stone path surrounded by thyme to the steps. Abigail imagined Owen’s eccentric great-grandfather taking the time, the money and the energy to have the steps carved into the granite hillside-all to get to a teahouse. He wasn’t in the same league as his superrich Maine neighbors like the Rockefellers, but he’d had vision and optimism, a trait most people said his great-grandson shared, although Abigail doubted Edgar Garrison’d had a two-inch scar under his eye from a bar fight.

As she descended the zigzag of steps, a slight breeze stirring, Abigail wondered if she should give serious thought to selling her own Mt. Desert Island house. With Lou Beeler’s retirement in the fall, would the dozens of state and local detectives who’d worked on her husband’s seven-year-old murder continue? Who would have his dedication, his interest?

Was it time to give up Maine?

She pushed back the thought, jumping down the last stone step to the narrow, well-kept private road. Owen and the Coopers paid for upkeep. They’d never sent her a bill for so much as a dime. They could afford not to rent out their houses. Abigail couldn’t. Without the money from renting to cop friends, she wouldn’t have been able to afford the taxes, utilities, the occasional repair job.

Chris had never cared about money or social status. Before his death, everyone knew her father was slated to become the next director of the FBI. It hadn’t fazed Chris-he just didn’t think that way.

But other people did, and she’d often wondered if his part-time neighbors on Mt. Desert Island had accepted him in the same way he did them.

“You’re the only person the killer fears.”

Had the killer feared Chris?

Abigail crossed the quiet, isolated road to the driveway entrance she shared with Owen, then turned onto her own driveway, feeling the wind pick up as she got closer to the water.

She’d come up here with questions and something of a mission, but no plan.

What she needed was a plan.

She’d paint, and she’d come up with one.

Linc Cooper pounded onto Owen’s deck in a state, pacing, starting to speak then stopping again. Owen tried to remember when he’d last seen him. Two years, at least. At the time, Linc had just dropped out-or, more plausibly, had just been kicked out-of Brown. He was smart, and most people expected him to get himself together one of these days.

Lincoln James Cooper had everything-except, Owen thought, what any kid needed most, which was a family who believed in him and considered him more than an afterthought. Linc was supposed to reflect his father’s and his sister’s successes and dreams. Whether he had any of his own didn’t seem to matter. It wasn’t necessarily what anyone intended or wanted. It was just the way the Cooper family worked.

Owen’s own family was more straightforward. “Just don’t get killed,” they’d tell him.

Finally, Linc plopped down on a wooden chair and looked up at Owen without meeting his eye. “I want you to teach me what you know. Show me how to do search-and-rescue. Take me on. You’re not doing anything this summer-that’s what I hear, anyway.”

“Linc-”

“I’d pay you. You’re the best, Owen. I want to learn from you.”

“It’s not about the money. Why don’t you apply for a spot in the field academy? We’ll be doing a full range of training.”

The kid shook his head, not even considering the idea. “That’d never work. My family would never let me take time off from school to do SAR training.”

“Don’t put words in their mouths. Besides, you’re over eighteen-”

“You think that matters?” Linc slumped in his chair and kicked out his legs, looking defeated. “My family’s not like yours. I can’t just go my own way.”

“You are going your own way. You’re choosing your own course now.”

He snorted. “Whatever.”

Owen smiled at the twenty-year-old. “Don’t give up so easily. If you disagree with me, fight for your position-”

“I don’t want to fight for anything.” His eyes teared up unexpectedly, and he shot to his feet, turning his back to Owen and looking out at the water. “I’m just tired of being a weak-kneed loser.”

“Get your stuff together.” Owen glanced at his watch. “Meet me here at one o’clock. We’ll go on a hike. Take things from there.”

“You don’t have to-”

“If you’re not here at one, I leave without you.”

Linc shifted back to him and nodded. “I’ll be here.”

He jumped down from the deck and ran back to his rattletrap of a car with more energy, his foul mood and unfocused irritability and defeatism at bay. Owen remembered being twenty. He’d gone against his family’s expectations, but they’d supported his need to figure out his own life.

He watched a cormorant dive into the water just off his rocky point. He had no idea where he’d take Linc, but he liked the idea of getting out on the island. Seeing Abigail yesterday-knowing she was barely a quarter mile up the rocks from him-had thrown him off.

Nothing about her was uncomplicated.

Except, he thought, her determination to find her husband’s killer. That was straightforward, clear and unchanging.