She looked away.
“I really did come to help, Maddie, and not just with your foot. Your mother’s obit said she was an only child. I know that you were hers. I thought if your grandmother died, maybe, as her only heir, you could use financial guidance.”
And there it was. The real reason he’d showed up was money—of course it was. She wished she could bolt upright, stomp over to him, and shove a finger an inch from his arrogant face. She would have ordered him to leave her alone. To get off the island (preferably, the planet) and mind his own business. But the pain in her foot pulsated fiercely now, and she didn’t dare stand up, let alone bolt or stomp.
Closing her eyes, she said, “Go home, Owen. You’re not needed here. Not to help me with my foot. And definitely not for my financial situation. I’m perfectly capable of handling things. Just as I’ve done since we divorced. Now go. Please.”
When she sensed he hadn’t moved, she opened her eyes. He was still there. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“I didn’t come all this way to leave, Maddie. Was it your grandmother who died or wasn’t it?”
Her foot threatened to jump out of the cast; her brain threatened to jump out of her head. She had no idea how to get rid of the man she used to sleep with. “My grandmother has been dead since I was ten.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. My father told me that way back then.”
He folded his arms. “Google would have had her obit in the archives, too.”
“Not everyone wants their death publicized.”
“Okay, so if it wasn’t her, who was the ‘relative’? And why was whoever it was living in this house—if you could call it that—at the same address I found when I googled ‘Nancy Clieg’?”
On top of the other pains, he was giving her a headache. “As I said, Owen, this isn’t your business. Not to mention that I’m tired and I need to go to bed. So please leave. I do not want you here.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re keeping something from me.”
“Get out,” she said, sharply that time. “And if you breathe one word of this to Rafe, you’ll never see him again.”
He leaned down, his face too close to hers. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I have some influence over our son. And if I tell him you were being abusive to me, he will cut you out of his life.”
He backed off and began to pace, a timeworn method he applied when trying to formulate a cutting remark.
Then Maddie remembered her phone in her pocket. She slipped it out, careful to keep it from his sight. Grateful she now had Lisa’s number, she tapped the screen.
Lisa answered before Owen had stopped pacing and spotted the phone.
“I’m having a problem with a prowler here at the cottage,” Maddie said. “Could you please send your husband over? And I believe you said he owns a shotgun?”
Owen retreated from the room. But she did not hang up until she heard the flimsy screen of the back door rattle closed.
“Never mind,” she said to Lisa. “Problem solved. It was just an ex-husband who needed a reminder that he’s neither wanted nor needed.”
After disconnecting, Maddie went into the kitchen, closed and locked the back door, and shut and locked every window in the place.
Chapter 14
Five o’clock was no time for anyone on the Vineyard to rise and shine unless he or she needed to catch fish for a living. Especially if they’d been awake most of the night, worried that Owen had figured out she was going to inherit a small fortune and that he’d somehow try to grab some of it for himself.
She willed herself not to start overthinking again. Instead, she used all her mental energy—and it did take all of it—to be ready for canoeing when Joe knocked on the door.
He was prompt: five thirty. The sun was almost, though not quite, awake, too.
Before she knew it, she was seated in the front of the canoe, not caring that her position was somewhat awkward since she’d wrapped her cast in a plastic bag “just in case.” Her right leg stuck out straight; her left one was buckled under the small seat and now throbbed more than her right foot. But she’d decided not to take a pill: she wanted to be able to absorb everything about this experience so she’d always remember it.
Joe showed her how to work the paddle, then took the seat behind her. Calmly, steadily, they moved into Menemsha Pond. The water was as quiet as they were; the only sound was each gentle stroke of their paddles. As the sun climbed higher in the cloudless sky, its warmth embraced her face, lifting her mood. She closed her eyes and wondered how to describe something so peaceful. “Just go with it, Mom,” Rafe often said when she was obsessing about anything, from polishing her CV for the tenure committee to trying to create their weekly food shopping list. This, however, seemed far more important than those kinds of things. Best of all, she knew that Joe would keep her safe. She’d started to trust him. Her half uncle, once removed. Or at least that’s what she decided he was.
