Rubbing his chin, a habit that Earl often claimed helped him think, he said, “It’s a good idea for you to go to my house. But how about if I drag a sleeping bag upstairs over the workshop and camp out here? It’s only half-finished up there, but it would mean that one of us will be here twenty-four-seven.”
“Are you sure?” Annie asked.
“No reason not to. My wife will be grateful to have a break from me. Besides, I expect that, like most women in America, she has a crush on Mr. Anderson. She’ll want to know we’ve done everything possible to make him comfortable.” He rolled his eyes a little, the way Lucy, his granddaughter, often did.
Annie laughed, her anguish over their conversation with Kevin starting to fade.
“He is kind of good looking,” Francine chimed in. “For an old guy.”
The “old guy” was perhaps Annie’s age. Or close to it.
“Well, okay, then,” Earl continued. “Why not let him use Kevin’s pickup, too? Then our guest won’t have to wait to rent something.”
“Seriously?” Annie asked.
Earl shrugged. “Kevin left it up to us to figure it out. Besides, the truck sits in the driveway, taking up space. It’s unlocked. The keys aren’t in it, but I bet they’re around here somewhere.”
Leaving the keys in an ignition wasn’t uncommon on the Vineyard, especially on Chappy. After all, if anyone dared to steal it, they’d first have to cross back to the main island via theOn Time, then try and get it onto one of the big boats. Which meant they’d have to provide the vehicle number and an ID. In short, stolen cars and trucks happened so infrequently that when they did, the thieves were typically caught long before they made it to the mainland.
However, Annie wasn’t sure they’d find the keys, especially if Kevin had never gotten rid of the handgun that he’d kept locked in the glove box. She did not, however, mention that to Earl. Nor did she suggest they hunt for the keys. If she wanted to avoid making Kevin angry, giving Simon Anderson free rein with the vehicle wouldn’t help. So she nixed the idea.
Earl said he’d come back later and help her move whatever she wanted to get out of the cottage to make the place guest-worthy for Tuesday.
Before thinking about the million things she’d need to pack and store, Annie called Simon. “We’ve been able to arrange accommodations for you,” she said.
“Thank you,” he replied in a voice that sounded sincere, which boded well with Annie, who’d half-assumed that he’d be cavalier, because he might have expected nothing less. She wondered if his visit might turn out okay after all.
* * *
A couple of hours later, Annie was nearly done layering her clothes into plastic tubs, leaving her closet empty for Simon’s belongings. She had until Tuesday morning to finish looking through, storing, and/or securing whatever else she wouldn’t want him to have access to, though she supposed he’d have more interesting things to do while he was there than prowl through her closets or the junk drawer in the kitchen. She decided to leave the abundant volumes of reading material in her bookcases; he might enjoy perusing them. Maybe he’d admire the small but weighty reproduction of a famous sculpture of Agatha Christie that Annie kept on the top shelf. Murphy had given it to her when she’d started writing her first mystery. “To help channel your muse,” she’d said. Annie continued to consult it whenever she had writer’s block.
She thought about the other items she should tuck away. The electronic files pertaining to her books and finances were on her computer; she’d take that with her. There also were scores of notebooks where she scribbled down ideas, but she doubted that he’d want to steal them. Still, she locked the notebooks and a few hard copies of personal files in her Louis Vuitton trunk that held treasured photos and memorabilia from her past. There was no need to let a journalist loose among the intimate details of her life—no matter howhugely awesomehe might be.
Annie wished she could talk to John about whether she’d been too hasty in giving up her space. Her home. But Abigail must already have arrived and was hopefully enjoying catching up with John and Lucy. And though Lucy had invited Annie to join them (actually, she’d begged her), Annie had politely declined. As much as she wanted to meet Abigail again and try and figure out how they might be friends, she knew John well enough to know that he’d need time to convene, assess, and regroup. She also knew it was going to take a whole lot more than moving the girl’s old bed up from the basement for harmony to emerge. Harmony between John and Abigail, and, as important, between Abigail and Lucy.
Murphy was the closest Annie had ever come to having a sister. But the key difference was that they’d chosen each other as best friends; they hadn’t been tossed together thanks to the same parents and a helix of similar DNA. Instead, they’d met in the hallway of their dorm the day they both were moving in for their freshman year at Boston University. With a map of the floor plan stuck between her teeth, a giant cardboard box heaped high with pillows, clothes, and shoes, Annie fast-walked around a corner toward room 507 and ran smack into a redheaded girl who’d also been fast-walking in the opposite direction, her arms overloaded, too.
They both fell on their butts, their worldly belongings shooting across the linoleum, transforming the hall into what looked like the sorting area in the back room of a thrift store.
The redheaded girl said, “Well. We have collided. Are you okay?”
“It was my fault,” Annie replied. “I’m sorry. I’m okay. Are you?”
“Yup. But don’t be sorry. I was going too fast, too. Let’s forget about it and make a pact to be best friends. Unless you already have one?”
Annie laughed. “Hardly. I just got here.”
“Okay, then. I’m Murphy.”
“Annie.”
“Good. Now let’s clean up this crap and find something to do. Four years is a long time. If we’re going to be best friends, we might as well find out where the fun is.”
It had been that simple. They’d stayed best friends for more than thirty years; through the weddings of their youth and Annie’s young husband’s tragic death, through Murphy’s giving birth to twins, and through Annie’s unfortunate years with her second husband. They’d held each other’s hands when their parents died. The only time Annie had gotten angry with Murphy was when she’d become sick and died, too.
“Some friend you turned out to be,” Annie said now as she snapped the lid on the storage tub closed.
Oh, stop whining, Murphy retorted from above, with more insistence than her usual whisper.
