“He said to be careful ‘cuz he won’t always be here to keep me safe.”
“Well, that’s all right, then, because I can keep you safe when he’s not around.”
She smiled. “He said that too.”
So his little sister talked to ghosts. Was that weird? No weirder than Batman, he decided.
“Are you done now? Can we go home?”
She seemed to check with an invisible someone, then nodded. A shiver swept down his spine.
“Okay. Let’s go then.” As he stood up, she slipped her hand into his. She’d never done that before.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked.
“A little,” he admitted. “Just because I was scared. Next time, you can tell me if a ghost wants to talk to you. That way I’ll know if you’re actually lost or not.”
She agreed to that, and they walked along the mossy path back to their grandparents’ house, where Jessie ran straight to the upstairs cots without saying a word to anyone.
As if she’d never spoken in the woods at all.
No one believed him that she could speak, because it had taken another year for Jessie to talk to anyone else. After a while, he stopped insisting that she could talk, she just chose not to. It was up to her, when to talk. His job was to protect her whether she spoke or was silent.
Ever since then, he’d taken that job seriously, even when she’d told him at the age of twenty-one that he could stand down, that she was a grown woman and could handle herself. They’d both known that he’d always have that role, no matter what she said.
So if she was now in trouble, yes, he’d be her first call. And just like in the woods that long-ago day, he’d felt her presence on the other end of that phone call.
Jack returned from that memory to find himself in the kitchen, staring at the refrigerator. His grandmother used to pin Jessie’s drawings to the door with little magnets shaped like vegetables. Sometimes they’d jar loose if someone closed the door too firmly. The drawings would waft to the floor and get kicked under the fridge. It became a running joke—“the Sunderland Fridge Gallery.”
He knelt on the floor and peered under the fridge. Sure enough, a piece of sketch paper lurked there in the dust. He fished it out and brushed it off. It was a watercolor of a beach scene, two young children crouched on the sand building a sandcastle. Was it him and Jess? He didn’t think so, because they were both blond, unlike either him or Jess at any age.
Did it mean something? He had no idea, but if she’d wanted to hide it where he might find it, and no one else would, the Sunderland Fridge Gallery would be the perfect place.
7
Unfortunately, or fortunately—Tina was torn on that question—Marigold had no problem with Jack Finnegan being involved in the search for Adam Johnson.
“I’m an open book,” she explained, as she drove through the little town center where most of Sea Smoke Island’s businesses were located. “Everyone knows my business that wants to know it. Lucky for me, I’m not all that interesting. So you’re saying Jack Finnegan is on the island right now?”
“You’re a fan?”
“No, but in the course of my work as an assistant constable, I’ve heard that he has a history here. It’s the Sunderlands, right? They owned that little house back there? I heard they left it to their grandkids.”
Tina would never stop being amazed at the encyclopedic memory islanders had regarding real estate on this pile of rocks. “Yes, he’s one of the grandkids. Apparently his sister has been staying here, and now she’s missing.”
This next part was delicate. She hesitated, giving Marigold a surreptitious side-eye scrutiny before speaking. Would she burst into tears at the thought of her fiancé two-timing her? Or was she past that stage, given that he’d skipped out on their wedding?
“Marigold, would it shock you to learn there’s a chance Adam was seeing someone else on the island?”
They were just entering the town square, an open area where three gravel roads converged around a flagpole surrounded with vivid plantings of geraniums and zinnias. To get almost anywhere on the island, you had to drive around that flagpole; it started to feel like déjà vu after a while.
“Wait, what?” Marigold pulled over to the side of the road and jerked the truck to a stop. “You mean while we were engaged?”
Shit. Maybe she should have waited until they weren’t in a moving vehicle. “Sorry to spring it on you like that.”
“Yeah, you should be. I nearly ran into the freaking flagpole. You’re saying he was seeing someone else on Sea Smoke? How? This island’s about the size of a sandwich.”
“Footlong or… never mind.” Tina cut off her natural urge to crack a joke. “I know it sounds unlikely, but is it possible? Apparently Jack’s sister Jessie is a bit of a shut-in.”
