Destiny Bay

by Sarah Abbot

It was time to put such aching thoughts to rest, and so he crept downstairs and through the door and grasped a lush branch of honeysuckle that clung to the verandah post. He lifted the vine, maneuvered himself behind it, and let the tender branches drape and enfold him.

  For what seemed like an eternity.

  Until headlights crested the hill, turned into the driveway, dimmed with the extinguishing of the engine.

  Abrielle emerged from the car, looking tired and worn, looking ripe for the love he could offer. Would Abrielle be coy, as her mother had been?

  The Lover leaned forward, eager to rush to her, grasp her to his chest, to reveal to her the secret purpose of her coming—that Celeste had brought her back to him as he’d always known she would. Yet, he resisted.

  The Lover knew—from sweet experience—that good things come to those who wait.

  Chapter Six

  Abby yawned hugely. She stretched in the morning light, lifting her arms and letting the breeze whisper though the snug white tee shirt she had slept in.

  She had slept like the dead, despite the fact that countless questions swirled in her mind. Although she hadn’t learned anything new about her mother while at the restaurant, she had gained a friend and ally. And maybe, just maybe, Ronnie’s parents would agree to speak with her.

  But had she also gained an enemy?

  She thought back to the first time she’d seen Ryan Brannigan on the lobster boat, thought about the second time she saw him—at the restaurant. Both times he had emanated pure hostility. Why? And then there had been Cora’s wide-eyed insistence that she not eat at Rum Runner’s—her own son’s restaurant! Why? And who else but him could have left that note on her car?

  To let it unnerve her would be to let him win—and it would be a cold day in hell before she let a man with a groundless grudge intimidate her. She couldn’t imagine what she had done to anger him, but she planned to find out.

  Topping her list of priorities at the moment, however, was clean clothing. With no washer or dryer on the premises, Abby had been forced to wash by hand the blouse and undergarments she’d worn the previous day. She even washed a few articles of clean clothing, just to give herself the practice. The washing part she had licked, but the drying part left her feeling a little less confident.

  In yet another experiment in country living, she had resolved to follow the example of Destiny Bay folk and peg her clothing on the clothesline. With a wish on the brisk morning breeze, she grabbed the laundry basket and headed for the backyard.

  Thirty minutes later, she stood back, admiring the graduating sizes of clothing and the pretty rainbow of color they made as bras, undies and blouses snapped in the wind in congratulatory salute.

  It was ridiculous to feel this proud of herself. She knew it was. She didn’t care. “A fine job, Lancaster,” she said, as she grabbed the empty basket and turned toward the cottage.

  A gust of wind rounded the cottage, bending the flowers that grew around it. They parted just so, leaning forward and right, revealing a muddied patch of soil at their base.

  Abby walked over, brow furrowed. She parted the flowers again, peering down at the soil.

  Another breeze, this one cooler, swept off the sea.

  There, directly beneath her bedroom window, was the unmistakable imprint of shoes. Large, utility-soled, definitely male.

  A prickle of unease spread over her suddenly chilled flesh.

  Abby turned slowly, scanning the property behind her, peering into the sun-dappled woods. Someone had been here…worse, someone had been looking into her window.

  And because of the slope of the land, anyone who cared to do so would be able to see into her bedroom window from the backyard.

  She rubbed her arms briskly, trying in vain to warm the goose bumps that were her body’s response to this unsettling discovery.

  Carefully, so as not to disturb the imprint of the shoes, she placed a foot on either side of the muddy indentations. Her heart thumped again—this time, more fiercely—as she looked through the window, hands white-knuckled on the sill.

  She knew what she would see. Still, actually seeing it was something quite different.

  Abby looked directly down onto her bed, specifically, onto the feather pillow her head had lain upon.

  Her gasp mingled with the forest sounds of chattering wildlife, birdsong and shifting branches, interrupting the delicate web of peace they wove.

  Abby lurched out of the soil, paint chips clinging to the palms of her hands, body trembling. She stared at the window, at the trampled flowers.

  “Think, Abby,” she whispered. The command filled her with a quiet burgeoning of determination. When she looked again, it was with new purpose. Her eyes searched the wooded area, intent on discovering the who, the why, the when.

  The who…well, it might have been Simon Gorham, the neighbor who’d started the fire for her before she arrived and who periodically checked the cottage for Cora. It might have been a curious kid, for all she knew. Or it could have been Cora’s son, Ryan Brannigan.

  The why…if it was Simon, his purposes were obvious. If it was a kid, he might have been wondering what TV personalities wear to bed. Abby shuddered at the thought. It wasn’t usually much, in her case. If it was Ryan Brannigan, well, Abby couldn’t even begin to imagine what that meant—nor did she want to.

  As for the when…well, it hadn’t rained since she’d arrived. Those footprints could have been made long before she even got here.

  Yes, of course, that was it.

  “I’m just being paranoid,” she whispered under her breath, making her way back to the deck. She flatly refused to be frightened by a couple of footprints that probably had an all-too-logical explanation. Abby chuckled at herself. It seemed that glaring men, ghost stories and pirate legends had gotten the better of her.

  She grasped the deck chair she’d been eyeing since arriving yesterday. A riot of honeysuckles had all but engulfed a long-forgotten trellis, and had since embarked upon an enthusiastic coup of the chair. Abby plucked away the largest of the vines and began inching the chair from its niche, letting tumble a bower of honeysuckle that had lazed over its arched back. She frowned at a slip of paper that seemed to fall from the vine.

  Picking it up, she saw that it was a receipt for duct tape, tie wraps, and a box cutter, purchased a few days earlier at Lawson’s Hardware.

  Abby stared at the list, her mind spiraling back to a 20/20 episode she’d seen in which the contents of a suspect’s so-called rape kit had been emblazoned across the screen. Hadn’t it contained all of these items? Her mind jumped forward, to the hostility she’d seen in Ryan Brannigan’s face both times he’d looked at her. And then there were those footprints…

  “For heaven’s sake, Abby, this isn’t the city, and it’s certainly not 20/20.”

  Yes, if she’d seen this particular list of items on a receipt back home, she might be more justified in jumping to the conclusion that someone was concocting a rape kit. But here? More likely, Cora—who had been here just the day before—had dropped it.

  In an effort to calm her racing mind, she quickly entered the kitchen and grabbed her notepad. Late the previous evening, she’d begun to compile a list of questions about her mother to ask the people who’d known Celeste. She might meet some at Ronnie’s gathering tonight, and she had an appointment to see the O’Donnells tomorrow.

  On the phone, he and his wife had seemed very friendly, and more than willing to speak with her about her mother.

  She scanned the list.

  What was she like?

  Did you know her personally?

  Did she seem happy?

  How long was she here?

  Did something happen to her here?

  Why did she leave?

  This day had seemed forever in coming, but now that it was here, Abby felt a thousand butterflies take flight in her belly. What if her whole trip had been for nothing? What if all they could tell her about her mother was the color of her hair,
the shade of her eyes? What if all they could give her was what she already had—a fragmented assortment of snapshots, utterly lacking the essential glue of a person, the rhyme and reason that threaded past and present together in a way that created a sum greater than its component parts?

  Abby wrapped her arms around herself, shifting slightly inside her nightshirt.

  A cool breeze lifted from the sea, redolent with salt and briny with moisture. It clung to her, filmed her with a sudden chill that brought her senses to high alert.

  There, on the periphery of her vision, was a fleeting glimpse of white.

  Unease prickled over her flesh, an acute awareness that magnified every sound and movement. Abby turned her head slowly.

  Her heart lurched in her chest, sent the alarm call to every extremity. Abby swallowed thickly, braced her body, her muscles poised for instant flight.

  Heart hammered in her chest as she stared into the trees.

  She had seen something moving, a discordant, springlike release of evergreen boughs—thoroughly unequal to the soft breeze that ruffled the honeysuckle leaves.

  She stood perfectly still, staring into the bracken and boughs, narrowing her eyes for intensified focus.

  “Is somebody there?”

  Silence.

  It could have been an animal. It probably was an animal. Still, she felt incapable of shrugging off the chill that seeped deeper and deeper into her bones.

  Someone had been watching her.

  Abby gathered her belongings and walked toward the door, eyes scanning left and right with every step.

  Her heart thumped in her chest with the sharpness of a snare drum, then, in an instant, felt as if it stopped. In disbelieving silence, she stared at the stones that lined the shore; stared at the pale figure who moved across them, looking out to sea.

  Abby’s notebook dropped at her feet, pages flipping in the breeze. Her pencil slipped through a crack on the deck.

  It was the White Lady.

  A scream lodged in her throat, strangled her need to breathe as she saw the woman dissolve into the mist of the Atlantic morning.

  Abby grabbed at the door handle, charged into the cottage and slammed the door.

  “I’m seeing things,” she said, sliding down the length of the door and landing at its base in a heap. “That’s all it is. I’m seeing things.”

  Seeing things indeed. Seeing a White Lady, a harbinger of doom.

  But that hadn’t been all. Before she had seen the lady, she had seen trees and branches moving, on the other side of the house. And there had been that feeling of instant alert. That flood of awareness that told her she was being watched.

  She closed her eyes and breathed with slow deliberateness, forcing her heart rate to halt its mad gallop through her chest. When she was able, she rose on legs that surged with the painful aftereffects of adrenaline. The deadbolt closed with a satisfying snap.

  Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw another movement through the window.

  She felt frozen to the spot as her gaze met the crazed, menacing glare of the blackest eyes she had ever seen. A shock of white, grizzled hair flung itself out from beneath the edges of a woolen hat; deeply etched lines rimmed eyes, mouth and forehead. A hooked nose protruded over a wide mouth that seemed drawn back in a perpetual sneer.

  Abby… she watched in horror as his mouth shaped her name.

  A scream clawed at her throat, then finally broke free.

  As if the sound had released them both from a spell, Abby darted to her purse and grabbed her phone, and the face seemed to vanish into the woods.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” a voice inquired.

  “There’s a man outside my house! He’s been watching me, and I need help!”

  “What is your location?”

  Abby rattled off her address, sinking into a tiny ball at the base of a wall. “Come quickly,” she said pleadingly, her chest heaving.

  She scrambled to the kitchen and pulled open a drawer, grasping the biggest knife she could lay her hands on, all the while staying on the line as the operator insisted.

  She stared down at the knife in her trembling hand. Would she have to use it?

  “Come quickly,” she said again, her eyes riveted on the window, praying that the horrible face wouldn’t appear there again.

  But just when she thought that perhaps it wouldn’t, the face emerged into full, horrifying being, staring in at her with a wicked grin.

  Chapter Seven

  Abby screamed at the top of her voice, flinging the telephone and running headlong toward the stairs.

  Above the sound of her scream, she heard the distant wail of sirens. “Hurry!” she cried, knowing that no one but the madman outside her window could hear, wondering if he enjoyed the sound of her terror.

  She thudded up the stairs and raced to her bedroom, slamming the door.

  The moment she did so, she was gripped with another fear: she had cornered herself. If the man found his way into the cottage and got to her before the police, she had nowhere else to run.

  The siren was getting closer.

  Someone was thumping on the front door.

  “Police!”

  Abby burst into tears of sheer relief. She rose on trembling legs, and inched around the bed. She gripped the wall as she made her way toward the stairs.

  “Police! Open up!”

  “I’m coming,” she called, knowing she dared not go any faster for fear her legs wouldn’t hold her up.

  She reached the door at last and unfastened the deadbolt.

  The door burst open, and through it rushed the sweetest sight she’d ever seen: a man in blue, with his gun drawn.

  Abby sank to the floor, weak with relief.

  The officer barely spared her a glance. “You alone, miss?”

  “Yes. He didn’t get in.”

  He kicked the door shut and continued into the house, peering around corners as he went.

  He ascended the stairs, and Abby felt that she could breathe at last.

  When he came back down, he had holstered his gun. “Are you okay, miss?” he asked, crouching beside her. He grasped her arm and helped her rise.

  “I’m fine,” she said, though she didn’t quite believe herself. “I’m Abrielle Lancaster. I’m renting this place from Cora Brannigan.”

  “Have a seat, Miss Lancaster,” he said. He turned his back to her and radioed the station. “This is Officer Flynn. Subject is safe. Immediate area secured. We do not require an ambulance.”

  “Do you still require backup?” came a grainy voice.

  “Yes. We need to secure the wooded area behind the cottage.”

  Abby was shivering now.

  “Hey,” said the officer, whom Abby put at about fifty. He didn’t wait for her to respond. Instead, he pulled a quilt from the back of the couch and threw it over her shoulders.

  It was a comforting gesture, and Abby felt her shoulders relax just a bit.

  Officer Flynn pulled up a chair and sat opposite her. He had a strong jaw, blue eyes, and salt-and-pepper hair. Abby guessed that he’d been quite a handsome man, back in the day.

  “My name is Connor Flynn,” he said levelly, his voice soothing. “Why don’t you tell me what you saw?”

  Abby took a deep breath. “I saw a man, and this isn’t the first time I’ve seen him. The first time, I was driving down Cragan Cliff Road. I saw this crazed-looking man, staring at me so intently that it gave me chills. I almost drove off the road.”

  He flipped open his notebook and started writing. “And you haven’t seen him again until today?”

  Abby nodded. “That’s right. I had a funny feeling, like I was being watched. I came inside and that’s when I saw his face through the window.”

  “Can you describe this man?” he asked gently.

  Abby squeezed her eyes shut. “I’ll never forget that face. He was about fifty or so, with weathered skin and wild black eyes. He had on a woolen hat. His nose was long
and hooked.” She opened her eyes, and saw that Officer Flynn was regarding her strangely.

  “What is it?”

  “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but it sounds to me like you’re describing Bartholomew Briggs.”

  “Who?”

  Officer Flynn chuckled under his breath. “The village drunk. He’s harmless enough, but he has been known to scare a few ladies. Likes to pop up in their windows and such.”

  Abby glared. She didn’t know which she was more angry with—the village drunk, or Officer Flynn. “I don’t find this funny in the least, Officer—harmless or not, the man is a menace!” She rubbed her temples. “Okay, I know that made no sense whatsoever, but…”

  Flynn jumped at the sound of tires kicking up loose gravel. His hand was back on his gun as he ran to the back window. “Bloody Johnny and his scanner!” he hissed. He looked at Abby. “Just you wait here, Miss Lancaster. I’ll deal with this.”

  Abby stood and looked through the back window, where a tall, dark-haired man was getting out of his truck. The passenger door opened, and another man emerged. Abby gasped. It was the man from the lobster boat—Ryan Brannigan!

  She crouched back near the edge of the window, wishing it were open so she could hear what was being said. If the flinging arms and angry faces were to be believed, the two men were determined to know what was going on, and Officer Flynn was just as determined to keep them in the dark. Just then, two more cruisers pulled onto the shoulder.

  The two men got back into the truck at last, and pulled away in a cloud of dust. “What was that about?” she wondered aloud.

  “Miss?”

  Abby whirled around to see Officer Flynn behind her. “Oh, you frightened me! I didn’t even hear you come in!”

  His smile was reassuring. “Sorry. You don’t need to worry about those two. They were heading back to town from some kind of trade show when they heard the call go out over Johnny’s scanner. They had no business coming up here, even if one of them thinks he owns this place.”

  “Whatever you say,” she replied dubiously.

  “All I need you to concentrate on is getting yourself ready to go down to the station. I’ve got a few pictures I’d like you to look over. I’ll even take you there by way of the scenic route—show you around our little town.”