Carla Neggers - The Widow

“Abigail,” she said.

“Yeah.”

She shut the door after the two federal agents left and headed for the back room, making sure the porch door was locked this time. She stood in the middle of the gutted room and heard the clatter of the tools, as if that summer afternoon so long ago were happening now. She remembered the hit on her head. The split second fear that she was going to die.

And, later, seeing Chris. That awful expression. She remembered the countless times she’d tried to describe it in her journals. He knew who’d smacked her on the head.

Mattie.

Probably, she thought. Almost certainly. But what had happened that day went beyond Mattie Young and his anger at Chris, his drinking, his sense of entitlement.

When he’d gone up to Ellis’s house, Chris had asked about Linc, not because he believed the boy was responsible for the break-in, but because he wanted to make sure Linc was safe. That was all.

“Things are happening on Mt. Desert.”

Her caller. The killer. Why draw her up here? Why now?

Abigail went into the kitchen and dug out her descriptions of the photos that had been left for her and Owen. She’d tried to be as precise as possible.

She read through them, pictured each shot-the people in them, the angles, the shadows, the time of day. Lou would have experts looking at them. They’d have all the right equipment.

Objectivity .

She thought of the photo of her and Owen on the rocks. She could feel his arms around her, his breath on her as he’d kept her from running to her dead husband, and she could remember how much she’d hated him. It was a visceral reaction, natural. He was the one who’d found Chris. He was the one who’d first realized there was no hope for her husband.

And he was the one who’d had to tell her.

She put her notes away and headed outside, locking her front door behind her. She saw the fat robin back up on its branch and felt a surge of hope that she couldn’t describe or even understand.

Halfway up the driveway, she veered off onto the path through the woods that led to the cliffs where Doe Garrison had drowned. Chris had taken her out there once, but this had never been one of her favorite spots. The transition from woods to cliffs and ocean was too abrupt-downright scary, as far as she was concerned. She wasn’t much on vertical drops unless there was a rail or a window.

Owen, she knew, wouldn’t mind at all.

One of the differences between them, she thought, picking up her pace.

They’d assumed Mattie took the picture of Doe’s body on the dock, after his and the Brownings’ failed attempt to rescue her. But he was just seventeen then, a boy still himself.

Would a teenager snap a picture of a dead girl-a pretty fourteen-year-old he knew?

And why keep such a picture?

Why leave it for her brother?

Mattie wasn’t in the shot. That suggested it was most likely his work.

Abigail paused in the shade of a massive spruce, its lower branches dead sticks poking out of its gnarled trunk. Despite the ravages of the harsh conditions of its exposed spot, the tree had survived.

The angle of the shot of Doe and her traumatized family and friends meant it must have been taken not from a boat or farther out on the dock, but from the parking lot above, perhaps from a car or truck.

She shut her eyes, seeing the horror on the faces of the Garrisons-Owen, his parents, his grandmother. And Jason Cooper, his arm around his young daughter.

Who would take such a picture?

Chris and his grandfather were there, on the sidelines, grim and sad, but not a part of the Garrison and Cooper circle.

Mattie wasn’t there. Definitely. She’d remember.

And Ellis.

Abigail opened her eyes and felt a warm breeze sweep in as if from the center of the island.

Ellis Cooper wasn’t in the picture.

Lou Beeler had never warmed up to Grace Cooper. People said she was nice enough. Smart. Well-connected. But she’d always struck him as a woman wrapped so tight, once she started to unravel, that’d be it. It’d be like unrolling a mummy and finding nothing inside but bits of bones and little piles of dust.

For all her success and riches, she was a woman with no center. Lou was convinced she didn’t really know who she was.

He was relieved not to see any FBI agents parked in the Cooper driveway.

Grace called to him from the front porch. “Lieutenant Beeler,” she said, her voice cool, collected. “I imagine you’re looking for me, aren’t you?”

He walked up the steps, noting that the hanging plants looked parched-missing Mattie Young, no doubt. “Mind if I have a word with you?” he asked.

“Of course not.” She sat on a wicker settee with a little puff-ball of a dog in her lap. But her face was pale, her eyes distant, even as she smiled with an emotionless grace. “Please, sit down.”

Lou shook his head. “I don’t have that much time. I wanted to ask you, Ms. Cooper-” He paused, watching her reaction. She knew why he was there. “When Chris Browning came up to your uncle’s house after Abigail was attacked and spoke to you, why did you tell him your brother was down at the old Garrison foundation?”

“I-I-” She made a choking sound, unable to go on, and fell back against the settee. Her knees went slack, and the little dog slipped down her legs, then jumped off her lap and scampered up onto a nearby rocker.

Lou didn’t relent. “Did you know your brother was on the grounds?”

“No.” She recovered her poise. “I didn’t know. I didn’t lie to Chris.”

“Ms. Cooper-Grace, why did you think your brother was down at the old Garrison place?”

But she couldn’t answer, and Lou realized that she didn’t have to.

He saw her answer in her eyes. The truth had hit her, and hit hard. Just as it did him.

Ellis.

Her uncle had told her.

For the first time in many years, Lou’s knees buckled under him.

Oh, my God.

The two FBI agents pulled over just as Owen started up the steep steps. Special Agent Steele, in the passenger seat, rolled down her window and shouted to him. “You can’t even see those steps from the road. They’re amazing. I guess this island’s full of hidden, amazing spots.” But nothing about her manner suggested she was playing the tourist. “We just saw Detective Browning. She said she’d be along soon.”

Ray Capozza leaned over from the wheel. “You shouldn’t be running around out here by yourself.”

“Probably good advice,” Owen said.

Steele tapped her fingers on the open window. “Advice you’ll ignore.”

He said nothing, and the two agents went on their way. He continued up the steps. He would be able to see Abigail once she started up. He knew every inch of the stone steps, similar to, but not as dramatic as, the more famous steps up to the Thuya Gardens in Northeast Harbor, now open to the public. No such destiny awaited his great-grandfather’s former property.

As he climbed a narrow section of steps, Owen imagined visiting Thuya Gardens with Abigail, hiking every trail on Mt. Desert, kayaking with her-then, with a pang of guilt, realized Chris must have had similar ideas. He shook them off and focused on the task at hand.

When he reached the top of the steps, he saw that Jason Cooper’s car was in the driveway.

Owen looked down the vertical hillside, through the trees toward the road, but Abigail still hadn’t turned up. He walked out to the driveway, feeling the humidity in the air.

He remembered himself charging out the front door and down the steps after his sister.

Twenty-five years ago, if anyone had said one of the Garrison kids would fall off the cliffs and drown, one-hundred percent of the people told would have guessed it would be him.