Chapter 19
She’d promised to call Brandon.
In order to do that, Maddie would have to stand up and navigate her way to the sofa, where she’d left her phone. And she’d have to go somewhere where her father could not overhear her conversation.
Moving right then, however, did not feel like an option. Though she was in a straight chair, she’d started to rock back and forth, the envelope clutched in her hand. It now seemed like, for months, she’d been targeted; mostly, she’d wonderedwho?Now the bigger question seemed to bewhy?
Was it to bully her? Scare her? Or was it only a harmless prank?
Three notes—and a single, stupid phone call that probably wasn’t related—over a four-month span hardly suggested her life was in peril. If so, her intuition surely would have kicked in by now to warn her.
Wouldn’t it have?
Brandon most likely would say it was time for her to go to the police. But with no signature or return address, no pattern to the timing of the notes, and nothing else that revealed a darn thing, notifying the police seemed pointless. Other thanwatching the cottage twenty-four-seven—which she couldn’t expect them to do now with their smaller, off-season staff—she would be asking the impossible.
She couldn’t tell Rex for obvious reasons.
Joe might know of an up-island mischief-maker inclined to try and run off a washashore for fun. But telling Joe might stir up discord within the tribe.
She supposed she could leave a note of her own under the rock, calling the perpetrator’s bluff:I’m sorry you don’t want me here. Tough luck. I’m not leaving. But that would be juvenile, as if she was tugging at her ear lobes while sticking out her tongue.
After pondering her options, Maddie made a decision: In light of Rex’s condition, her pregnancy, and still having late-night doubts about moving forward with the bookshop, worrying about a few pathetic notes was petty and self-indulgent. The level of danger was low; she might make things worse if she—or the police—tried to flush out and confront the sender. The only sensible solution was to forget it.
With her tea and sandwich untouched and envelope still sealed, she stood up and walked down the hall, past the room where Stephen was perusing the internet. Once in her bedroom, she deposited the unread note in the nightstand on top of the others, changed into a nightgown, and lay down on her bed. Worn out from the weekend and all the worrying that had followed, she stared at the ceiling and tried to focus on being happy that Rex had called, that he was and would be okay, and that everything would come together as it would. Or would not.
By the time Maddie awoke, it was dark. And though she would have preferred to savor the quiet, she was hungry.
Getting up, she put on her robe and slippers and padded down the hall toward the kitchen. But as she approached hermother’s old room, she heard her father say something in a low voice. Thinking he’d been speaking to her, she turned to go in but the door was closed. Then she heard him laugh.
She stopped.
His next words were clear. “I hope it’s only a matter of time. How long can you wait?”
Was he talking to himself? Maddie wasn’t sure if she should interrupt or keep walking and pretend that she hadn’t heard. She waited a few seconds, but there was only silence. Maybe he’d had a talk-to-yourself moment; she was guilty of those—usually in the supermarket—which she followed by a short prayer that no one had heard her.
But as she started to step away, his voice resumed.
“There’s another minor complication, but I think we can get around it.”
He was on the phone. Her intuition pricked her like a thorn on aRosa rugosa.
“Look, Dan,” the lower tone said, “I don’t know what else to say. She gets more entrenched in this place every day. But I can’t believe it’s too late.”
She went rigid. Her father was talking abouther …to …Dan? As in Dan Jarvis of Green Hills College? The same man who had practically handed her the tenure position that she’d since turned down in order to stay on the Vineyard and be with her grandmother and have a new life?
Maddie leaned her ear close to the crack in the old wood doorway that hadn’t needed replacing after the fire.
Stephen had ceased talking; he must have been listening. Then he said, “I’ll keep trying. Remember, I want her there as much as you do.”
Maddie wasn’t sure if she felt angry or afraid.
Creeping back to her bedroom, she closed the door and went back to bed. But even under the covers she couldn’t get warm.
Had her father been trying to appease Dan? Or did he genuinely want her back in Green Hills? Had he been pretending to help set up the bookshop to indulge her … while, all this time, he’d been plotting against her?
Then she remembered the notes.
GET OFF THE ISLAND, the first one had read. She’d found it right after Cranberry Day, when she’d been sure it was from someone who’d heard she wanted the old bait and tackle shop. But her dad had left the Vineyard two days before the note arrived. Could he have put it on the front porch at Rex’s cabin, where she—or Grandma, or Joe, or Rafe, all of whom had come and gone those couple of days—hadn’t noticed? Or had someone delivered it for him? If so, who else would have agreed to the charade?
