“Or not,” I said with more force than I might have had I been with Kevin alone. I liked Jimmy, but I didn’t trust him like I did Kevin. It wasn’t that I thought he was fishing for information to pass on to the police. But my loyalty to Grace was key. I figured if Chris’s father was part of a past she didn’t want to discuss, there was a good reason. Men weren’t always a solution. There were times when they made things worse.
Suddenly too antsy to sit, I reached back for my coat. “I have to go.”
“No,” Kevin said in alarm, grabbing my hand as it closed on the phone. “Forget I mentioned Grace. It was a stupid question.”
“No,” I said sadly now, “it wasn’t. I’m sure other people will be asking the same thing. But she’s a good mother.” Phone in hand, I slipped free. “She isn’t answering my texts. If she’s home with Chris, I want to go over.”
“Maybe she’s saying she wants to be alone.”
“Maybe she’s saying she’s scared and confused. Maybe she’soverwhelmed.Likely,” I said with mild accusation aimed at Jimmy, “they took her phone, which means she’s cut off from the world. Maybe they’ve disabled her so she can’t think straight. Maybe she needs a friend who can.” Arms in sleeves, I slid from the booth.
Kevin had to shove at Jimmy twice until he slid off the bench and let him out. As soon as he was upright, he pulled me in for a hug. “Are you okay helping her?”
“I’ll have to be. She has no one else.”
“But are you okay?”
I drew back and met his eyes. I considered the question, then nodded. “I am,” I said and smiled to prove it. “I’m a master at blocking out painful thoughts, you know?”
I left without a single glance at the dark booth in the rear of the pub, but I walked quickly, even ran across the parking lot. My stranglehold on the steering wheel didn’t ease up until the pub was well behind me.
***
Edward hadn’t followed me. As I drove, I wondered if this was good or bad. He owed me an explanation for why he was here, and I didn’t mean his being the voice of a group. He knew I was in Devon. This was my turf. He could have let someone else be the voice. But he hadn’t. That made me really uneasy.
Let it go, Maggie. Pack it away. Inhale, hold, exhale.
As I cruised through the center of town, I repeated the exercise. The streets were their usual peaceful, quiet selves. On one of those inhales, I conjured up lemon verbena. I told myself that Devon was my ally. And it worked for a bit. When it came to denial, I was a pro.
Turning north on the Blue, I drove past the entrance to the Inn. A tiny little voice said the parking lot there might be filled with vehicles whose tires I wanted to slash, but I pushed that from mind, too, and drove on.
Grace lived at the far reaches of Devon, just close enough to the town line to allow Chris to attend our schools without having to pay, as students from outlying towns often did. I had been to her house many times. It was the fourth and last bungalow on a road that snaked around enough to set each home apart. She said she loved the privacy this gave, that she was barely aware of having neighbors at all, and I couldn’t fault that. Hadn’t I chosen similar isolation on Pepin Hill? The problem for me here was that the twists in the road hid trouble until I was smack on top of it.
5
The road was narrow. Rounding that final turn, I had to brake and plow left to avoid hitting the taillight of the SUV at the end of the line of SUVs parked half on, half off the crusted berm. The vans were parked head-in opposite these, their satellite dishes staggered on the uneven terrain. Some people remained inside, heads ghosted by phones. Others, at the ready, braved the cold to lean against bumpers.
I had slowed to avoid that first car and stayed slow in the narrow funnel they’d left of the road. That was my first mistake.
Doors were suddenly flung open, led by a person of indeterminable sex loping toward me, which meant that I couldn’t exactly speed up again without risking hurt. I had my foot on the brake and was completely stopped by the time she—I saw that, though it was little comfort—came abreast and gestured my window down.
I might have yelledGo away!through the glass, actually would have yelled something more obscene, if that hadn’t seemed like a cowardlything to do. Thinking that this wasmytown,myfriend,mynew life, I rolled my window down to tell her to let me pass.
That was my second mistake. She had barely asked if I was a friend of the family when a camera appeared and a flash went off. I brought a hand up, but too late.
Raising the window again, I faced forward and accelerated only enough to let her know I wasn’t chatting. I might have stopped had it been Ben Zwick, if only to tell him to go to hell. But I doubted he was here. The cynical part of me figured that, with the temperature having dropped into the twenties, he would be in a cozy suite at the Inn eating a flat iron steak—rare, with horseradish-dill aioli and a bottle of the sommelier’s vintage merlot. I was sure he had underlings doing his dirty work here in the cold, dark night.
Others came forward as I inched ahead, a few running alongside my truck, but I kept my eyes on Grace’s home. It was a frame structure consisting of a modest bottom topped by dormers that looked uncannily like eyes whose brows were raised as they watched the road. But arched brows were the end of notable where the exterior was concerned. Grace’s show of spirit was on the inside, which, of course, these people would love to know, but couldn’t see. Every curtain was drawn. The only light escaped from those upstairs dormers and was thickly diffused. These were bedrooms, not that I expected either Grace or Chris was asleep.
She had no bell, just a brass knocker in the shape of a frog. I used it at the same time that I texted to let her know it was me, which was a waste if the Feds had her phone. But I couldn’t be the first person using the knocker tonight, and she wouldn’t blindly open the door to this mob. I stood an arm’s length back, where she might see me from a window, and kept my head down against the ghosts, listening for footsteps inside, a shoutedGo away!, anything. After what felt like forever, during which time I was swarmed by moving mouths and cameras, I heard the tumble of three different locks. Then the door opened enough for her to grab my sleeve and pull me in.
Only when I was leaning against the closed door did I realize I was shaking. Blaming it on the cold, I breathed,“Nightmare.”
“You don’t know the half,” Grace said as she rebolted the door, “but you can’t stay, Maggie.” She sounded exhausted, and though I could barely see her in the dark, the little light that seeped down the stairs suggested a wilted version of the woman I knew. Her curls were caught back in a scrunchie that left as much loose as not, and her face was glow-in-the-dark ghostly. Barefooted, wearing baggy sweats, she seemed smaller than ever.
Feeling her helplessness, I said a gentle, “I heard about Rutland. How’s Chris?”
“Terrified. They booked him. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”
