“You mean like a Nikon hanging around his neck and a tripod under his arm?”
“Something like that.” She paced the plywood floor in the unfinished room, stopping at the window, where she looked out at the view that was so serene it seemed to ridicule her situation.
“Are you trying to figure out who took the picture that wound up on the internet?”
A tiny thud thudded in Annie’s stomach. God, she was getting sick of this. “I am.”
“I bet John wasn’t too pleased when he saw it.”
“Never mind John.Iwasn’t too pleased.” Her words snapped out. “Sorry, Lottie. I didn’t mean to bark.”
“No problem. I’m sure I’d feel the same way if somebody posted something like that about me. And Joe sure wouldn’t be pleased.”
“Right. But what about a camera? Did you notice one?”
Lottie sighed. “Sorry, but I didn’t. I know that Bill—that’s his name, right?—had a bottle of beer in one hand, but I don’t think there was anything in the other. And no strap hanging around his neck.”
“Oh.” Though she was disappointed, Annie wasn’t surprised. She turned from the window, walked to the chair by the sleeping bag, and sat. “And Simon?”
“He had a green map. You know, the kind with the illustrations of tourist attractions all over the island and how to get there? The ones you get free at the boat terminals and the airport and in lots of places?”
Yes, Annie knew the map. They kept a stack at the Inn’s front desk in the reception area, and Francine put one in each guest room. “When you got to OB, did you drop Simon and Bill off or did you stay with them?”
“Oh, we wouldn’t have stayed with them—that would have been pushy. Joe booted all of us out of the car at the foot of Circuit Avenue, then he went somewhere and parked. I told Simon to meet us at the carousel at ten if they needed a ride back to Chappy.”
“Did they?”
“They did.”
“But I take it you didn’t see who took the picture?”
“Sorry, Annie. I wish I had.”
“Me, too, Lottie. Me, too.”
* * *
With all the things throughout her life that would go down in history as totally not worth repeating, Annie rarely felt sorry for herself. So she had no idea why, compared with the real struggles, losses, and challenges that she’d endured, something as relatively inconsequential as a stupid photo felt so monumental. Maybe because on the island she couldn’t escape it; she felt marked as a topic of scorn.
Releasing a growl that was only as loud as Annie dared so no one except maybe Murphy would hear, she let her whole body shudder as if that could shake off any demons that came with needing to have a “brand.” After all, Annie Sutton was not, did not want to be, a celebrity. She was just a writer who struggled with her work like many people struggled with theirs: good days, bad days, days of enthusiasm, days when she wondered why the heck anyone would care about what she did. Sometimes she still felt like a fake, that the notoriety she’d received in her genre was a fluke. She’d heard that other writers sometimes felt that way, too.
“Well,” she said out loud once her shudder was done shuddering, “I do believe I’m feeling sorry for myself after all. I am such a brat.” Why couldn’t she be more like Meghan—stoic in spite of adversity? Understanding that the man she loved might no longer love her? After everything Meghan had triumphed over, it was both pathetic and embarrassing for Annie to think that she was the one with the corner on misery.
“My stupid brother,” she muttered as she peeled her thoughts off herself because it felt safer to turn them back to him. “My foolish, stupid brother.” She wondered what Kevin actually would do if he knew Meghan was well and was on Chappaquiddick, waiting for him to return. At least Annie had a plan. All she needed was the courage to pick up the phone.
* * *
He answered on the first ring. “If it isn’t my celebrity sister,” Kevin said with a playful cackle. “How does John feel now that you’ve dumped him for a journalist?”
So. He had seen the post.
Annie brushed off his glibness as an attempt to amuse her. At least he sounded goofy and cheerful. So he must not have spotted Meghan.
“Not funny,” she said. “I can’t figure out if I was set up or if someone was in the right place at the right time, so to speak, and thought it would be funny.” Changing the subject was the best thing to do. She did not want to share John’s caustic reaction—or suggest anything that might make Kevin look at the photo again, when further scrutiny might make him question if the blur in the background could possibly be his wife. Hisformerwife, she corrected herself.
She tried to concentrate on her mission to communicate with her brother as if she weren’t hiding the biggest imaginable secret from him. “How are things there?”
“Um . . . no different from when we talked yesterday.”
