Tell Christopher I’ll be home as soon as I can. It’s storming here, but I should be able to get on a plane tomorrow morning.
Theresa must have been waiting for her text because she replied immediately.
You don’t have to come home. I’ll make sure you get to see him this weekend. Stay and finish the game. That’s what he would want.
Lucy stared at the screen, not knowing what to reply, so she just put her phone back in her pocket.
Hugo came back, carrying a pile of towels.
“Here.” He handed her one. She rubbed it on her hair and her face. She didn’t want to think about how she looked. Probably insane.
“Who was she?” Lucy asked. She wrapped a dry towel around her shoulders. “Or am I not supposed to know?”
He sat on the coffee table in front of her while she pressed close to the fireplace, trying to dry herself.
“You figured out the riddle?”
“It says the two men lost ‘a’ wife and ‘a’ daughter. Not ‘his’ wife or ‘his’ daughter. Could be anyone’s wife, anyone’s daughter they lost.”
Hugo nodded. “You’re clever.”
“I’m a teacher. That’s all. Who was the lost girl?”
“Her name was Autumn Hillard,” Hugo said, saying the girl’s name as if it were covered in dust, a hidden name no longer spoken. “NDAs were signed, and the family couldn’t go to the media with their story, so there’s nothing online about it.”
Lucy’s stomach clenched. A nondisclosure agreement.
“There was a lawsuit? Against Jack?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Jack is Jack, you know. It’s why he’s so easy to love. Also why he’s so maddening.”
She was almost afraid to ask, but she had to know. “What happened?”
“The day I met him, Jack told me the number one rule of Clock Island—Never break the spell.”
“The spell?”
He shrugged. “Kids believed Jack was the Mastermind. They thought Clock Island was real. They thought if they told him their wish, he’d grant it. Seven years ago, Autumn wrote Jack a fan letter. She told him her wish, that her father would stop coming into her bedroom at night.”
“Oh my God.” Lucy covered her mouth with her hand.
“You don’t want to know how many letters he gets like that.”
“No, I probably don’t.” She lowered her hand. “What happened?”
“She lived in Portland, so he thought he might be able to help her. Really help her. Not just do the usual—write back and encourage her to tell a trusted grown-up what was happening. All those letters were turned over to the authorities, but it’s hard to get the police to investigatean accusation made in a piece of fan mail.” Hugo rubbed the back of his neck. It was apparent this was a story he didn’t want to tell. “He called her.”
“He called her?”
“She put her number in the letter. Jack called her. And this is where it all went off the rails. He just can’t help himself, you know. His own father was an absolute tyrant. Our Jack’s a teddy bear until you show him a child in trouble, and then you’ll see a teddy bear turn into a grizzly.” Hugo smiled. Then the smile was gone. “At some point during their conversation, he told her something like, ‘If I had one wish, it would be to bring you to Clock Island, where you’d be safe with me forever.’”
It all made sense now. “She believed him.”
“She did. She thought if she could get to Clock Island, she could stay with him. She did what you did—hopped a ferry. But the ferry wasn’t coming to Clock Island that day. When no one was looking, she jumped off and tried to swim for it.” Hugo met Lucy’s eyes. “Jack used to walk on the beach every morning before breakfast. That stopped the day he found her body washed up on the Five O’Clock Beach.”
Lucy was too shocked to speak.
Hugo went on, fast, like ripping off a bandage. “The family threatened to sue, accused Jack of being a pedophile. Pretty rich of them, right? But like I said, the police can’t do much with a single accusation made in a fan letter written by a dead girl. Jack’s lawyers paid them off. I don’t know the number, but I think it was several million dollars, and everyone signed NDAs. Jack was a zombie then. Otherwise, he would have fought it. After that, he stopped writing, stopped walking on the beach, stopped living. That’s when I moved in.”
