Every Vow You Break

by Peter Swanson

  “He did. The thing is that I would really like to leave today. There must be another plane service.”

  “There isn’t really, not for this area.”

  “But what would you do if there was an emergency? If someone needed medical help?”

  “Do you need medical help?” Chip asked, genuine concern in his eyes.

  “No, I’m just wondering.”

  “We’d notify emergency services, of course, and I suspect they’d send a helicopter. It’s actually never happened before, knock on wood.” Chip reached back and knocked on the door to the lodge.

  “All right, thanks,” Abigail said. “I do want to make a call. Is there someone upstairs in the office?”

  “Aaron’s up there, last I checked. If he isn’t, then just come and find me. I’m sorry about this, Mrs. Lamb. Really, if there was anything we could do to help, we’d do it.”

  “When did the plane come yesterday to pick up Alec and Jill Greenly?”

  He thought for a moment. “About three o’clock.”

  She pushed through the doors into the lodge. It was clearly lunchtime, the bar now open, and Abigail spotted Porter, holding a draft beer. He had one elbow on the bar, leaning at a rakish angle, and Abigail thought, He’s pleased with himself. He spotted her and lifted his head in greeting, a half smile on his lips. Her instinct was to walk away, but she went toward him, said hello.

  “I didn’t see you at the pool this morning,” he said.

  “No,” she said.

  “You okay?” he asked, putting his beer down on the bar as though he wanted to free his hands. She wondered if she looked like she was about to faint.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Just not feeling well, and I was hoping to get off this island today and I just found out that the plane can’t come until tomorrow.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” he said in his slight accent.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said.

  “Of course.”

  “Did you know Jill Greenly, the other woman who was here with her husband?”

  “Ah,” he said, and raised his eyebrows a little. “How did you know that?”

  “She told me. You two had been engaged?”

  “A long time ago,” he said. He picked up his beer again and took a long sip.

  “You must have been surprised to see her here.”

  “Yeah, I was shocked. I don’t know if I was as shocked as she was, but it was a big surprise to her. An unpleasant surprise, probably for both of us.”

  “Because of your past relationship.”

  “It did not end well.”

  “Yeah, she told me.”

  “She told you what?” Porter asked, a catch in his voice.

  “Oh, not much, really. I barely knew her.”

  “Lucky you,” he said. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound bitter, but …”

  “But you are bitter.”

  “Yes, I guess. I’d have been better off never having met her,” he said, and Abigail thought he was holding back. For some reason, she heard Bruce’s voice in her head, saying the words “spoiled bitch” with so much hatred in his voice.

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about her anymore. She’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, she’s gone?” he asked.

  “I mean she’s left. This island.”

  “Has she?” He looked surprised, and it was clear that Porter, at least, hadn’t heard the whole story about what Abigail had seen the previous night. Either that or he was pretending he hadn’t heard.

  “She left yesterday afternoon with her husband. By plane.”

  He looked confused for a moment, but all he said was, “Oh, I didn’t know that,” his eyes searching the room as though he were looking for someone. Abigail looked up at his jawline, noticed a small muscle twitching. Clearly, even the idea of Jill Greenly made him anxious.

  “I’ll let you go, Porter,” she said, and he looked back down at her, scratched at his collarbone with his free hand. It drew Abigail’s eyes to his open shirt; he was wearing some sort of necklace made from braided leather. Whatever was hanging from it was hidden by his shirt.

  He finished his beer in one long swallow and said, “You going in to get some lunch?”

  “I’ll be there soon,” she said, and went toward the stairwell instead. She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d been hoping to get from talking with Porter, but just the fact that he seemed evasive, nervous almost, confirmed for her that he might have had something to do with what happened to Jill Greenly. Maybe he’d been the one who attacked her last night.

  The office door was open, but no one was inside. The room was filled with the barely noticeable hum of electricity and the flicker of bad lighting. She heard footsteps behind her and turned to face the same staff member she’d met when she’d come to this office previously.

  “Hi, Mrs. Lamb,” he said. He was carrying papers in one hand and an arrow in the other. Abigail’s eyes must have rested on the arrow, because he held it up and showed her the end. “Apparently when an arrow is missing its feathers it doesn’t fly right.”

  “It’s fletching,” Abigail said automatically.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “Sorry. It’s the name for the feathers on an arrow.” The word had jumped into her head because of Ben Perez, her ex-boyfriend, who’d once written a poem with the word in it. They’d had a disagreement, Abigail claiming that no one would know what the word meant. It was so strange to suddenly think of Ben here on Heart Pond Island, where she felt about as far away from New York City and her old life as possible.

  “Fletching,” he said. “I’ll remember that. I’m Aaron, by the way, if you don’t remember.”

  “Hi, Aaron.”

  “You here to make another call?”

  “I am.” Abigail’s plan was to call Zoe, get her to jump onto her computer and research ways to get off this island. Maybe she’d find another charter service that would agree to fly to Heart Pond Island. If anyone could figure it out, Zoe could.

  “Come on through,” Aaron said, and led Abigail to the same desk she’d used before. He bent over the phone, cradled the handset between his shoulder and his head, and pushed a bunch of buttons on the phone. She stared at his cleanly shaved neck. He had closely buzzed hair on the back of his head and the sides, but a long blond lock at the top that he had to push back now that he was bent over.

  “Here you go,” he said, pulling the chair out for Abigail. “I hope you don’t have a problem getting through. Phones have been tricky this morning.”

  “What do you mean?” Abigail said.

  “They’ve just been in and out a little bit. No big deal. If you have trouble getting through, just keep trying.”

  “Okay,” Abigail said, but she felt angry just hearing about the possibility. Even if Zoe couldn’t help her get off the island, she desperately wanted to talk to her, just to hear her voice.

  “It sometimes happens,” Aaron said, smiling.

  Abigail dialed Zoe’s number from memory, was thrilled to hear a ringtone, but after about five rings she was cut off and a busy signal interrupted the call. “Fuck,” she said to herself. She tried it again and the same thing happened. Then she dialed her own cell phone number. This time it was just a busy signal, not even a ringtone. She turned back to look for Aaron, but he was no longer in the office. It was all she could do not to pick up the phone and throw it across the room. Of course it didn’t work. Of course they weren’t going to let her make a phone call. And then some of her rage was replaced by a surge of fear. She looked around the office again, scanning the ceiling for cameras. Were they watching her? She picked up the handset again and dialed 9 to get an outside line, then punched in 911. It began to ring and she almost hung up. What was she going to say if this actually worked? Hello, I’m being held against my will at Heart Pond Island. I think I’m in danger. It sounded ludicrous, but she was being held here. It was being done by smiling men in khaki pants, but what difference
did that make? She wanted to leave, and they weren’t letting her.

  Spoiled bitch.

  The ringing stopped and went to another busy signal. She hung up the phone quietly and stood as tall as she could to look over all the open cubicles. There must be other phones here, and maybe they worked. She spotted one toward the back of the office. A black office phone next to what looked like a fax machine. She walked over to it, picked up the handset with a shaky hand, and dialed Zoe’s number again. The same thing happened, ringing followed by a busy signal. She hung up. Her heart was starting to race, and her breathing felt shallow, as if she wasn’t able to get enough air into her lungs. She told herself to calm down, that there was still a chance that all the strange things that had happened in the past few days were nothing more than coincidence.

  A woman came into the office, humming to herself. It was Mellie, the only female staff member that Abigail had actually laid eyes on since arriving here.

  “Hello,” Abigail said from across the room.

  Mellie squinted toward her, then said, “Hi, Mrs. Lamb. Making a call?”

  “Trying to,” Abigail said.

  “Yeah, I heard that the phones were glitching again. Sorry about that.”

  “How long does it usually last?” Abigail said, walking across the office.

  Mellie shrugged, said, “Not more than a day, usually. That’s the problem with wanting to have a resort that’s entirely cut off from the rest of the world. You wind up being cut off from the rest of the world.”

  Abigail pressed her lips together and nodded. Mellie pushed a strand of her red hair behind an ear with one of her fingers. She had pale skin covered in freckles. Her eyebrows were so thin as to be almost nonexistent, and she had a deep groove from the top of her lip to the base of her nose. “Mellie,” Abigail said, when they were a few feet apart. “Did you hear about what happened last night?”

  “Er, you mean what happened to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They woke us up early this morning and had us search the island. They said you saw a woman who appeared injured … is that right? … outside your bunk.”

  “I saw Jill Greenly outside my bunk. She was bleeding all down her side, and then she ran into the woods.”

  “I didn’t know it was Mrs. Greenly,” Mellie said, her thin nostrils flaring a little.

  “Yes, it was definitely her, but then Chip Ramsay told me that she’d left the island yesterday. So I guess I was confused.”

  “You’re not confused,” Mellie said, lowering her voice. Then she looked toward the door and added, “I shouldn’t be saying this, but she’s still on the island.”

  “What?” Abigail said.

  “Shhh. I’d lose my job if they knew what I was telling you. She’s here, and she’s not in danger. No, listen to me. The plane will come tomorrow. You just need to keep your head down until then and you’re going to be okay.”

  “I don’t know what … Mellie, tell me what’s happening here.”

  Mellie turned back and looked at the door again. Abigail glanced over her shoulder and saw Aaron come back into the office, his head down, reading something printed on a piece of paper. Mellie leaned in close and whispered, “Don’t trust your husband.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Abigail walked back down the stairway, then turned away from the lodge’s hall toward the tunnel Mellie had shown her earlier that led to the pool.

  She needed a place to sit for a moment.

  There was no one else around as she walked down the dingy hallway, and she was grateful. She didn’t know what she would do if Chip or even Bruce suddenly appeared. She’d probably scream.

  She took the turn that brought her into the tunnel, darker than she remembered. She was scared, but she also didn’t want to go back through the lodge, risk running into someone she’d have to talk to. Her instinct was to run, but part of her knew that if she allowed herself to panic, she’d never stop. So she walked through the tunnel as calmly as possible, finally pushing through the double glass doors into the warm, chlorine-tinged air. She thought of going into the women’s changing room—she’d have it to herself—but she actually wanted to be outside instead, not closed in by walls. She walked past the entrance to the changing room and kept going. There was an unmarked door at the end of the hall, and she pulled it open, relieved to find that it led to the outside world. The cold air felt so good that she just stood for a moment with her back against the door and breathed in and out, even closing her eyes for a moment.

  The slight breeze on the air carried voices that sounded as though they were coming from the front of the building. She couldn’t make out the words, just the deep jokey inflections of men talking, and Abigail cut around toward the back of the building, passing the bench and finding that the path continued past a cluster of what looked like spruce trees. She peered behind her to make sure no one could see that she was entering the woods, then kept walking along the path, now paved with flat rocks. She came to a wooden sign nailed into the side of a tree. Carved into the sign were the words silvanus woods, and there was an etching of a man’s face, ringed with ornate leaves, designed as though they were growing from his skin. The sign itself looked old—it was speckled in places with dark green lichen—but the nails that held it to the tree looked new. The name Silvanus rang a faint bell in her head—she’d taken Latin in high school and remembered enough to wonder if Silvanus was some sort of Roman god.

  She took a few steps past the sign, enough to see that there was a clearing up ahead. She felt trapped, not really wanting to see what was there—her mind conjuring the image of Jill, blood spilling down her side—and not wanting to turn back. She moved tentatively ahead, said, “Hello?” in what she hoped was a normal voice. If there was someone in the woods, she definitely did not want to be surprised by them.

  No one answered, and she stepped into the circular clearing. At the middle was a firepit ringed with blackened stones, and a little farther out a circle of benches, crudely fashioned from logs. Abigail found a place to sit that gave her a view of the path back toward the resort, so that she could see if anyone was coming. Despite the sign with the strange face on it, she felt temporarily safe here. It probably was a feature of the original boys’ camp, a place to gather at night, light a fire, and roast marshmallows. An innocent place, unlike whatever had happened here over the past few days.

  Now that she was sitting, she thought back over the words Mellie had said. That Jill was still on the island and that she was okay. That she should just keep her head down until the plane arrived tomorrow. That she shouldn’t trust Bruce. Abigail tried to build a narrative that fit everything that had happened here so far. Her best guess was that Jill and her new husband had had a fight that resulted in Jill getting badly hurt. Chip Ramsay decided he didn’t want the publicity, and they somehow subdued Jill, then lied to Abigail about her whereabouts. But why was it important to keep Abigail on this island one extra day if they were going to let her leave? She just couldn’t quite figure it out. And how did Bruce fit into it? Maybe because it was now clear that Bruce was not simply a guest here but a part-owner of this place and a close friend of Chip’s. If the Quoddy Resort had decided to cover something up, then Bruce would have been part of that decision. And what about Eric Newman being here? Maybe that was just a coincidence. And then was it just a coincidence that Jill’s ex-fiancé was here as well? If so, it was a huge coincidence. But what other possibility was there?

  When she’d been younger, she and her father had played a game he called “What Movie Are We In?” They’d be sitting out in the backyard watching a flock of sparrows assemble on a tree, and he’d say, “What movie are we in?” and she’d say, “The Birds.” Once, they’d spotted two men sitting in a car across the street from their house, and he’d asked the question, and she’d said, “Home Alone,” even though he’d been thinking of The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Sitting in the woods now, she asked herself, “What movie am I in?”, hearing her father’
s voice in her head. Definitely a thriller, she thought, maybe one of those cheesy 1980s infidelity thrillers. Fatal Attraction, or maybe that movie with Mark Wahlberg where he was stalking Reese Witherspoon. But did she really think she was in that kind of movie? She did earlier, but now everything had changed. Eric Newman scared her, but not as much as what she’d seen the night before, or the similarities between her situation and Jill’s. No. It felt like she was in some kind of horror movie, and that things were going to get gruesome. Nothing was really adding up, and now here she was sitting in a clearing in the woods with a creepy sign. So what movie was she in? Not a classic slasher flick like Friday the 13th, but something weirder. And then she thought of The Wicker Man, not the terrible Nicolas Cage remake, although she had a soft spot for that film, but the 1970s original with Christopher Lee. Like in that film, she was on an island, and strange things kept happening, and she didn’t trust anyone, not even her husband. She wondered if she was going to end up being burned alive.

  The trees around her swayed in unison as a breeze cut through. The air smelled like pine and salt, and in the distance she could smell the fruity aroma of smoke coming from a chimney. And there was something else, the smell of tidal rot, of decay. She stared up at the sky through the trees. High above, birds drifted, and for a moment she closed her eyes and imagined that she could fly. It had been a recurring dream her whole life, the sensation of flying, of being plucked up by a breeze and riding an air current. She’d had the dream frequently when she’d been younger, leading Zoe to believe that Abigail had been a bird in her previous life. (“And I was a cat,” Zoe would always say. “We would not have gotten along.”) Right now Abigail was thinking about what she would give to be able to push off from the ground and float upward and away from this island of horrors. As it was, she would have to wait for a plane to arrive, something entirely out of her control.

  She formed a plan. She would go back to the bunk, not say anything to Bruce about her encounter with Mellie, and tell him she wanted to arrange for meals to be brought to the bunk. Then she’d just hunker down there and hope.