Carla Neggers - The Widow

She stopped in Bar Harbor at a streetside deli-restaurant and bought containers of clam chowder, lobster salad and crab salad, and two huge peanut butter cookies. Droopy-eyed tourists griped about the fog. “It could last for days.”

Well, Abigail thought, climbing back into her car, it could.

When she arrived at her house on the southern end of the island, the fog, if possible, was even thicker, encasing the tall spruce and pine trees in gray, obscuring any view. Water, rocks and sky were indistinguishable.

The front steps were slick with condensation, and the air tasted of salt and wet pine needles.

Her 1920s house was too small, too simple, for today’s coastal living standards. If she put it on the market, it would sell for its location. A new owner would almost certainly bulldoze it and build from scratch.

Perhaps just as well .

She unlocked the door and, with the damp air, had to push hard to get it open. Inside, her house felt like a tomb. Cold, dark, still. Midafternoon, and it might have been dusk.

Flipping on a light in the entry, Abigail walked into the kitchen and dropped her keys on the counter, the silence not comforting, only making her feel more alone.

The ashes called to her.

She could hear Chris’s voice.

“It’s not a palace, but I wouldn’t give up this place for the world. I love it here, Abigail. I don’t want to live here. But I don’t ever want to sell it.”

He’d wanted her to fall in love with his boyhood home-not the house so much as the island, its breathtaking beauty, its simplest pleasures. She didn’t need to have the same memories he had, he’d said.

“We’ll make our own memories.”

She spun on her toes and ran back outside, slipping on the steps and the stone walk, sinking into the soft gravel of the driveway as she went around to the passenger side of her car. She ripped open the door and grabbed the coffee can.

“We’ll raise our kids out here.”

Without thinking, she ducked under the dripping branches of a pine tree on the side of the house, emerging on the strip of grass that passed for a yard.

She made her way through the gloom along a footpath worn into the damp grass and rocky dirt, following it to the tangle of rugosa roses and the tumble of granite boulders that marked the water’s edge. No marshes and bogs here, no gentle easing from land to ocean. Two centuries ago, the Brownings had parked themselves on the rockbound island and carved out a living for themselves amid Mt. Desert’s gales, salt spray, acidic soil, impenetrable granite and incredible, austere beauty.

Abigail tucked her coffee can under one arm. Beneath her, the Atlantic was gray and glassy, barely visible in the fog. She heard seagulls but couldn’t tell how far away they were. Sucking in a breath, she plunged down the rocks, careful with her footing on steep, potentially slippery sections. As her familiarity with her stretch of coast kicked in, she moved faster.

The tide was out, and she dropped down from a rectangular boulder onto smaller rocks covered in seaweed and barnacles, cold, gray water seeping over them. She could feel the dampness in her bones now. When she’d packed up for Boston last night, after Scoop and Bob had left her with her notes and files and mess to clean up, she’d imagined dumping her ashes on a crisp, clear Maine afternoon.

She crept out to the edge of a rock slab-the water was deeper here, deep enough for the ashes. Holding the coffee can in front of her, she peeled off the plastic lid.

“Abigail?”

“Oh, my God!”

Startled, she spun around at the voice, real or imagined, and the coffee can went flying, ashes spilling over her, the rock, the water. The can banged off granite and into the gray ocean.

“Chris?”

She shook herself. What was wrong with her, calling out to her dead husband?

Squatting down, she reached for the coffee can, but it floated farther away. Determined, she lurched forward-too far forward. She dropped her left hand onto the rock at her side to regain her balance, but a cluster of sharp barnacles dug into her palm. She jerked her hand back and started to jump up, but slipped, tipping over into the water.

She shuddered at the shock of cold water and scrambled right back up onto her rock. She was soaked, cursing. Freezing . But as she climbed up onto a boulder above the tideline, she slipped again, banging her knee.

A man materialized out of the fog above her and lowered his hand to her. “You’re wearing the wrong shoes.”

“The wrong-” She looked up at Owen Garrison, handsome as ever, dry. “I nearly drown, and you’re worried about my shoes?”

“Now that you didn’t drown, yes. You’re going to slip and slide all the way back up to your house in those shoes.”

They were five-dollar slip-on sneakers she’d picked up for the summer. Bright red. Fun. Not intended for tramping through the wilds of Maine.

She took Owen’s hand, noticed the warmth of his firm grip as he helped her up onto his boulder. If she didn’t accept his help, she’d only land up in a worse predicament. Maybe break an ankle.

She had to be practical.

“You startled me,” she said. “That’s why I fell.”

He shrugged. “Sorry. Did you cut yourself on the rocks?”

“I scraped my hand. It’s no big deal. The cold’s numbed it.”

She was shivering. She hadn’t expected the ash-dumping to turn into an ordeal, and she still had on her shorts and T-shirt from her trip. Even without the dunking, she’d have been cold in the relentless fog.

Owen wore jeans and a lightweight fleece the color of the fog-and, she noticed, of his eyes.

“Want me to fetch whatever it is you dropped?” he asked.

“It’s just a coffee can of ashes.”

“From your woodstove?”

She shook her head. “I brought them up here with me-”

“Abigail…”

“Oh-no, no. They’re not human ashes.” ButAbigail had no intention of telling him they were ashes of seven years’ worth of journals she’d burned yesterday in a grill. “They’re just from something I burned. I can fetch the can later.”

Owen, however, had already jumped lightly down to the wet slab below the tideline. He scooped up the coffee can and, in two long strides, was back up on the dry boulder with her-not breathing hard, not wet. She did notice he’d gotten a glob of ashes on his hand and fleece.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the can from him. “I should go back and put on some dry clothes. That water’s damn cold.”

“About fifty-five degrees.”

She winced. “Now I’m really freezing. What’re you doing out here?”

“I heard you and decided to investigate.”

“But you didn’t know it was me,” she said.

“No, I didn’t.”

He wasn’t explaining any further, obviously. Abigail started past him, slipped, cursed and felt him clamp a hand on to her upper arm. She gritted her teeth. “I see what you mean about my shoes.”

“Hikers fall all the time because they underestimate how slippery wet rock can be.”

“I’m not a hiker. I was just out here doing a cleansing ritual-never mind.” She sighed at him. “You’re going to hold my arm until I reach grass, aren’t you?”

“Unless you want to keep falling.”

“Or I could take my shoes off. Except then I’d be even colder.” She smiled. “I have tender feet.”

He hadn’t released her arm. She wasn’t wearing her weapon, thankfully. It was locked up in her car. All the panic and urgency she’d felt about getting rid of the ashes had dissipated with the shock of the cold water and her sexy Maine neighbor. Now, she just wanted warm clothes and a bowl of hot chowder.