And then she saw something else—another stretch of clearing within that adjacent parcel. She followed it, zoomed in until it was clear—a house.
A house, and the clearing before it—a driveway.
She zoomed out again, followed the driveway until it disappeared behind more trees. But, assuming it remained straight, it would end at the next road.
Like the driveway and the fence, the road weaved through woods. Still, she was able to guess at the path it carved through Hastings. And the point where it intersected another road, which ran along the river. River Road. And that road eventually intersected Hastings Pass.
Nic held her finger to the screen. She started at the inn, and followed Hastings Pass until it ended at the river. Then she followed it to the left, along River Road, until it met the road with the driveway. Abel Hill Lane. And from there, all the way to the driveway and then to the house—the house that sat on the parcel enclosed by the fence. Farther down Abel Hill Lane was a small cluster of redbrick buildings with flat black rooftops and narrow roads connecting them to one another and to two roads—Abel Hill Lane and River Road. Maybe that had once been the pharmaceutical company that had closed down years before. Or the chemical company before that. Maybe they were the same set of buildings, one company taking over the other.
Nic searched for addresses on Abel Hill Lane. There were seven in total. She pulled them up one at a time, first on the map and then on satellite imagery. There was a small ranch, number 53. Then a cape, number 67. Then five others—none of them matching the satellite image of the house with the fence. None of them with a long driveway. None of them with enough acreage to be that same property.
She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.
Everyone was lying about something. And now Edith Moore wanted the reward money. She knew about the purse, the three letters.
But wait—Nic pictured that morning with Edith Moore and Reyes. In her car, looking across the road to where she said she saw her mother. Rain coming down in sheets. That’s how she’d described it. Maybe she’d seen the color of the purse, but the letters? Could she really have seen the letters from that far away, through the rain, at night? And yet she knew about them.
She knew, or someone had told her—someone else who knew about her mother’s purse.
And what did that have to do with Abel Hill Lane?
Her father said they’d stopped searching when they reached that fence.
Maybe she should just get a drink. Maybe get a few. Calm her nerves. Settle her mind.
But she couldn’t stop.
She typed inHastingsand thenhistory.
And then she started to read.
21
Day fourteen
There is antifreeze in the cupboard. But this is not all that I assess in the kitchen with Alice. Alice and her Happy Face.
I assess many, many things. Thoughts and emotions, but mostly instincts which, as before in the woods, require the closest scrutiny.
Alice has unlocked the grate. She has set me free and it is a gift I cannot squander.
I could run for the front door, to my tools in the woods. But it’s dark and cold and I don’t know where Mick is. He could be outside in his truck, watching the camera feeds. He could be five minutes away. Ten minutes away. Days of work would be undone.
I could take this child hostage. Put a knife to her neck right in front of the camera. It is not beneath me. It is not out of my capabilities, and I don’t allow myself to think about the implications.It’s nothing personal, Alice.
There are other things, worse things. But nothing gets me the time I need to get through that fence.
I go back to what I have found here—to the antifreeze in thecupboard. I know about this from my other life when I was a science teacher. When I was a good mother. When John and I were still in love. Before we had a child that died. A child I killed.
Before life started to close its hands around my throat.
We finish eating and I clean the dishes and put a kettle of water on the stove.
“We should go to bed,” Alice says.
“Yes,” I agree. “You go ahead. I am going to make a cup of tea to bring with me.”
Alice leaves and I take a teacup from a cupboard. I bring the cup to the cupboard under the sink and pour in the antifreeze. Dolly cannot see the sink.
