Ellen Block - The Language of Sand

“Yes, I care. Except those houses that are being robbed, they’re for the tourists. They’re not for us. I worry for Lottie’s sake. If she’s hit, she’ll get the insurance money, then she’ll have to pay to fix whatever damage the burglar did and her rates will skyrocket. That’s a raw deal. Fact is, she sends me around only so she can keep track of which units have been broken into and which haven’t. It’s not prevention. It’s treading water.”

“What if it was your house? What then?”

“It won’t be.”

“How do you know?”

He wouldn’t answer.

“Merle,” Abigail pressed.

“Whoever’s doing these burglaries, they never target islanders’ homes. Don’t even step foot on our side of town. Because as soon as they came to one of our houses, there’d be real hell to pay.”

“Then who is it? Someone from the mainland who visits during the summer?”

Merle looked at his feet, as though his expression might give him away.

“You think it’s somebody from Chapel Isle.”

He frowned yet didn’t disagree.

“Why would someone who lives here do that?”

Merle lowered himself onto a folding chair. What he was about to say appeared to pain him more than his injury.

“Wasn’t the best summer this year. People were praying for better. Heck, they were counting on it. Fishing industry’s gone soft. There are more boats in these waters than fish. People’ve gotten to depend on the summer money. Weak as this season was, it’s not a shock someone’s gotten desperate. Not a shock at all.”

“Do you think the sheriff knows what’s going on?”

“Dunno.”

“What if he does?”

“Then he does.”

That was how it was on Chapel Isle. A secret could be widely known but still be a secret. A crime could occur with an island full of witnesses and not be a crime.

The road from Merle’s house brought Abigail to an intersection. She could either turn right toward town or left to the lighthouse. She had a choice to make: whether to tell the sheriff what she’d seen or let it lie.

As her engine idled, a school bus pulled up on the opposite side of the road. Children were running from their houses to catch it and waiting in line to board. It was such a normal sight that it made Abigail feel normal simply watching it.

The school bus rode onward, passing her station wagon. She flipped her turn signal. She went left.

Abigail spent the rest of the day pushing and pulling the manual lawn mower across the backyard. The constant whirring of the blades drowned out thought. The steady motion anesthetized her mind. When she finished, the lighthouse appeared taller and the brick caretaker’s house seemed less dilapidated.

Satisfied, she went inside, then drew herself a hot bath. Abigail had gone three days without bathing, a lapse that would have been unconscionable in the past.

“Your hygiene certainly has suffered since moving here. Welcome to the new Abby.”

For a change, she was excited about being in the bathroom. The white grout made the tiles gleam. The pale yellow paint gave the cramped room an airier feel. While the bathwater ran, Abigail went to the study to grab something to read in the tub. She perused the shelves. None of the books struck her fancy. That was until her eyes 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.