by Jean Stone
It wasn’t until the light breeze caught the fringe of the shawl with the ribbon-like beach grass and lifted it into the sunlight that Annie noticed Abigail leaning against the Jeep, smoking a cigarette. By then Abigail was staring at her, so there was no chance for Annie to hide like a child. Again.
As Annie’s thoughts quickly shuffled, rearranging themselves, it was Abigail who spoke first.
“He’s going back to her, you know.”
At first, Annie did not understand. Then she remembered an acting class she’d once taken that taught her how to get inside the head of a fictional character. “Learn to sense when another person wants to hurt you,” the instructor had said. “You can see it in the eyes.” Annie saw that look now in Abigail’s glare.
“Nothing you will say or do is going to stop my dad from going back to my mom.” She took a long drag, exhaled a slow stream of smoke, and ground the cigarette out in the dirt. Then she slid the shawl from her shoulders and sauntered away, twirling the billowing fabric in the air. And Annie was left standing, feeling as if she’d gazed into Medusa’s eyes and had turned to stone, which no doubt was the effect that John’s daughter had intended.
* * *
On the way back to Chappy, Annie tried to dismiss Abigail’s ominous message—whether or not it was true. Her head already hurt from too much on her mind and from the bright sunshine that might be good news for the Ag Fair folks but often triggered a migraine for her. She tugged her visor down, adjusted her sunglasses, and concentrated on how to navigate the traffic without losing her mind.
Being on the cusp of a migraine, however, reminded Annie that Meghan still suffered from her injuries. If only there had been time to tell Winnie about her. Annie trusted Winnie implicitly; she would have liked to ask her for advice on what to do, or not do, about Kevin—like if she should go against Meghan’s wishes and call him and tell him what was really going on.
Then again, this was about Kevin, and he was Annie’s brother. Maybe she should try and figure it out herself. Later. After she’d rested.
But as hard as she tried, she could not shake Abigail’s words. Nor could she shake Winnie’s advice: “. . . talk to Simon. See if he knows who’s behind it.”
Simon, however, did not have a motive to be malicious to her. Unlike Abigail did.
She wished her thoughts didn’t keep leaping back to Lucy’s “impossible” sister—a clearly distressed girl who would know how to spray the word all over the island. Abigail hadn’t succeeded in breaking up her mother’s new relationship, so perhaps she’d decided to try and wreck her father’s. But wouldn’t she have cared that posting it online would humiliate him?
Deciding she could no longer stand her obsessive thoughts, when Annie reached Edgartown, instead of heading to the ferry, she drove into the center of the village and went to John’s. It was almost noon: he might be awake, or he might not. There was a chance, however, that Abigail had made it home by now; Annie wanted—needed—to face her, hopefully in John’s presence. No matter the cost.
Squeezing into the small driveway, she turned off the ignition and went up onto the porch.
Lucy opened the door. Restless, the dog, leaped and barked and wagged his tail, as he tried to push past Lucy and give Annie a proper welcome. At least someone was happy to see her.
“Hey,” Lucy said. “Dad worked late. He’s still asleep.” She wasn’t unfriendly, though her tone was guarded.
“That’s okay. How about you? How’re you doing?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s kind of weird around here, you know?” She did not invite Annie inside.
“We could use more cookies at the Inn. I tried to make some, but they weren’t as good as yours.” It wasn’t true, as Annie had made her mother’s recipe for the sugar cookies with the dollop of strawberry jam, which the guests had seemed to love. But Lucy did not need to know that.
“Yeah. Sorry. I haven’t felt much like baking since what’sher-name got here.”
“Did you go to Illumination Night?”
“For a while. Too many people, though.” Her voice was quiet, as if she were depressed.
Annie looked around at the pretty flower boxes that Lucy had filled early in the summer but now looked dry, most of the blossoms “gone by” in the past few days. “Have you had lunch?”
Lucy shook her head.
“Want to do the Right Fork? My treat?”
“Can Restless come? Maybe he could go for a run in the field. I know a good spot that’s out of the way of the planes.”
“Sure. Let’s do it.” She decided not to ask if Abigail was home. Lucy’s reluctance was more of a concern than having a showdown. Annie cared about the younger girl too much to risk losing her as well as her dad.
In less than a minute, Lucy was on the porch with a Frisbee in one hand and Restless’s leash in the other, the metal hook safely attached to the dog’s collar. The diner was only a couple of miles out of town; not in the direction of West Tisbury and the Ag Fair, so the traffic would be blissfully light.
Chapter 15
They carried their food to a picnic table on the fringe of the airfield. Restless either didn’t notice or care that his leash was looped through the railing and he could not have chased a sea gull if one landed two feet away. He appeared content to watch the people and listen to the chatter and sniff the good scents in the air.
Lucy tucked into her blueberry pancakes; Annie had ordered a grilled steak salad but didn’t have much of an appetite.
“I know you saw the post on VineyardInsiders,” Annie finally said. “And I bet you read the comments.”
Setting down her fork, Lucy looked out to the runway where a red biplane had landed and was taxiing toward the restaurant to let the passengers off and pick up more. It was a popular activity for summer people, a chance to witness the beauty of the island from the viewpoint of an osprey.
“My dad was really upset,” Lucy said.
“I don’t blame him. But it was nothing, Lucy. I went with one of our guests—who, by the way, is a woman. I had no idea Simon would be there, let alone that he would spring from out of nowhere and clip a glow necklace around my neck. Right after he did it he laughed, then took off. The whole thing was over in seconds. Unfortunately, someone took a picture that somehow wound up looking suggestive. Chances are, the same person who took it posted it. I can’t imagine who would do that.”
Lucy shrugged. “Me, either. It’s pretty stupid. The only ones who’d be hurt by it would be you and my dad.” She took another forkful of pancakes, chewed slowly, and swallowed. “And Simon Anderson’s wife and kids.”
Annie took a long drink of her iced tea, not because she was terribly thirsty, but because she needed to process what Lucy had said. “There,” she said, “you see? He’s married. So he has no inappropriate intentions toward me.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure that’s how it always works, or if my dad would believe it, but it might help.”
“I hope he knows me better than to think I’d get involved with a family man.”
“Okay, so who took the pic and posted it?”
“I hoped you might have an idea.”
“I have a weird feeling you’re going to ask me if it was Abigail.”
In spite of Lucy’s protestations that her sister was “impossible” and that she made Lucy want to run away, Annie knew that the bond of being sisters might conflict with clear thinking. She knew she should tread lightly, as the old saying went. “I don’t know Abigail well enough to assume she did it,” Annie said. “In fact, I hardly know her at all. And she doesn’t know me.”
“She knows you’re going to marry my dad. He told her when we were in Plymouth for her graduation.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t think he wanted to make a big deal out of it. Like he didn’t want you to think he was asking for her permission.”
Once again, Annie wondered if she really knew the man she had agreed to marry. And th
ough it was true that people can’t really know one another completely, it felt to her that as time passed she knew John Lyons less, not more. The good parts and the not-so-good. She wondered if he felt the same way about her now.
“What was Abigail’s reaction? Was she upset?” As badly as she wanted to tell Lucy the news that her sister had imparted to Annie, she was determined to stay calm.
“I only heard his side of the conversation when he told her, ’cuz I was eavesdropping from the top of the stairs.”
“Lucy . . .”
“Hey, no lectures, okay? I listened because it was about my dad. And you. I wanted to make sure my sister wouldn’t stick her nose in it. But I don’t think she took that picture.”
“No?”
“Nope. As much as I’d love to be able to get her in trouble, I could see the Tabernacle in the background of the pic. She wasn’t up there. We stayed down at Ocean Park; Abigail met up with a few more of her old friends from school and they hung out down there. Don’t tell Dad, but they were drinking. I got bored and went up to the Tabernacle, but I didn’t see you. It was late, though; the lanterns were still lit but the band was done playing. Maybe you were gone by then. I got a ride home with Helen Jackson. You know her? She works at the pharmacy and the hardware store. She’s a friend of my grandmother’s. Anyway, she said her arthritis was bothering her, so I helped her back to her car and hopped in.”
Annie didn’t pay rapt attention to the rest of Lucy’s story. Instead she focused on the fact that Lucy didn’t think Abigail had done it. And that Lucy had unknowingly given her sister an alibi, because the band had still been playing when Simon had pulled his stunt.
As for Abigail’s declaration that John would be going back to his ex-wife, Annie would have that conversation with John, not Lucy. If he ever got over being angry.
“Lucy?” Annie asked. “I know it’s a lot to ask, and I don’t want you to feel pressured, but is there any way you can take down the post? Like you did those other ones?”
Lucy shook her head. “If there’s a way, I don’t know it. I only know how to delete something I posted myself.”
The next logical step would be to ask Lucy if she’d sneak onto Abigail’s computer and find out if she’d been the “author.” Just in case.
But, as if Lucy had known what Annie was thinking, she added, “Even if we knew who posted it, I couldn’t take it off their laptop unless I knew their password. And I don’t know anyone else’s password. Not my best friend, Maggie’s. Or my sister’s.”
Annie got the message. She also got another message, as her text alert pinged. Thinking it might be John, either to apologize or to dump her, she glanced at her phone. The message was from her editor.
CALL WHEN YOU GET THIS. WE NEED TO TALK.
It was cryptic, but typical of Trish, who was usually in too much of a hurry to want to bother to type. Unless the sun was rising, she preferred one-on-one conversation.
Annie ignored the text and boxed up what remained of her salad.
When Lucy finished her meal they brought Restless to the far side of the field where he and Lucy played catch until one of them tired, though it was hard to tell which one. Lucy had grown up a great deal over the summer: her legs were longer, her figure curvier; her face no longer looked like a child’s. Annie supposed those changes could be part of the girl’s slumping mood, especially when combined with her sister’s unwelcome presence.
When they got back to John’s, Annie simply smiled and said, “Make some cookies for the Inn, okay? I miss seeing your face.” Though Lucy already had been there earlier in the week, Annie sensed it was a good thing to say. Apparently it was, for when Lucy got out of the Jeep she smiled back and promised that she would.
* * *
Annie drove to the Chappy ferry where the line was August-long, so she decided to call Trish and get it over with.
“There you are!” her editor cried. “I’d begun to think you’d run off with Simon Anderson.”
“Hardly. Simon is a married man. With children.” Then Annie’s brain cells aligned; she stared at the back of the SUV in front of her and wondered how Trish had learned about the incident when she lived and worked in Manhattan and VineyardInsiders was a private site. Islanders only, like a little kids’ clubhouse.
“Trish?” Annie asked. “How did you find out?”
“Stop being coy, my dear. We’ve known each other far too long for that.”
“I’m not being coy. Tell me what you know. And how.”
“Seriously? You don’t read the Times online?”
Annie laughed. “It’s summer on Martha’s Vineyard. I barely have time to check my email, let alone read the MV Times.” Then it occurred to her that Trish had meant the Times as in The New York Times.
“You’re on the front page of the Entertainment section,” Trish replied, ignoring the bit about the Vineyard newspaper. The headline says it all: ‘Simon Anderson Must Love a Mystery. ’ The subhead reads: ‘Martha’s Vineyard rendezvous with mystery author Annie Sutton.’ Below that is a terrific picture of the two of you. It looks like you’re in a nighttime embrace, surrounded by all kinds of glowing things.”
The vehicles in front of Annie inched toward the dock; she was too shocked to start her car and move it forward. Behind her a horn blew, then two.
“Are you kidding?” she asked, finally turning on the ignition and inching ahead. “It isn’t true!” A veil of moisture surfaced on her brow.
“Oh, hush, don’t be foolish. Pictures don’t lie. Besides, it’s wonderful news. Nobody cares if it’s true. The fact is, Simon’s name is contagious. He’s highly visible and so damn good-looking he makes hearts throb and juices flow. And now he’s on fabulous Martha’s Vineyard, clearly smitten with an equally fabulous women.”
“He’s a married man, Trish. And, believe me, I’m not that fabulous.” She knew that in addition to being a topnotch editor, Trish had a great sense of building an author’s image and audience. Which might translate into high numbers of book sales, but right then, it felt smothering. And personal. Too personal. Maybe she’d been wrong to think that city life was anonymous.
“The fact that he’s ‘married with children’ only makes the story more titillating.”
“For the last time, there is no story.”
“Don’t you understand, Annie? Women around the world are going to be jealous. If they’re not already your readers they will be, because, my dear, you’ve been noticed. So, I repeat, this is wonderful news. And right in time for Murder on Exhibit. No matter what you think, it’s a spectacular stunt. Our publicity department could not have done better.”
A publicity stunt? That was what Winnie had suggested. But if it had been one for Simon . . . why with her? Annie thought about the picture on VineyardInsiders . . . obviously the one in the Times was the same. How did it make it to the Entertainment front page so fast? Sometimes she hated how information—especially the hostile kind—now spread faster than the speed of anything, and not just around the island. “I doubt that Simon is desperate for a ratings bump, Trish. Even if he is, he wouldn’t get one from me.”
“Never underestimate yourself,” Trish reprimanded.
Then a cold, dull ache nagged at Annie’s gut, as reality finally comprehended. She knew that all the talking in the world, all the speculating over whodunit and why, was not going to unravel the answer. She needed to get to the bottom of this, and she needed to do it alone. Because no one else had as much to lose.
As she watched the sunlight glimmer on the rippling water, Annie calmly said, “I’m sorry, Trish. I have to go. I’ll call you later.”
Quickly disconnecting, she stared out at the wharf and the water, at small groups of ice-cream-cone-licking children and adults who were not at the beach or the fair or in a sailboat circumnavigating the island. They were summer people, on vacation. Perhaps they thought, the way Annie once had, that one day, if they were lucky, they, too, could move to “fabulous” Martha’s Vineyar
d and leave all their troubles behind.
* * *
Once back on Chappy, Annie didn’t go home. Instead, she drove to the Indian Burial Ground, her favorite place to go for what she called “a good think.” The first time she’d been there had been on Christmas Eve, not long after she’d moved to the Vineyard.
There was nothing fancy about the graveyard. It was a small plot of land atop a short hill that overlooked Cape Poge Bay. Not many summer people knew about it; hardly anyone ventured there, though sometimes they stumbled upon it when hiking the island. It was quiet and modest, with only sixteen gravestones indicating the graves of members of the long-ago Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribe; fewer than a dozen other markers were unreadable, though it was thought that they, too, were Wampanoags, and several unadorned fieldstones were thought to honor their earlier ancestors.
A narrow path separated a couple of dozen other stones from the Wampanoags; they were from later years—several were Earl’s ancestors, and, of course, John’s. And Lucy and Abigail’s. A few were unmarked; two only had initials—G. P. and D. B.—but Annie hadn’t been able to see those in late December, as they’d been covered by a thick cloak of snow.
She’d gone to the burial ground that first time with Earl. Curiously, a path had been plowed, allowing them to trek to the Lyonses’ stones. Earl had brought a miniature, potted fir that was decorated with a string of popcorn and small red birds fashioned out of birdseed and was topped with a star that was shaped out of suet; he set it on the ground in front of the memorials to his ancestors: Orrin, Patience, Silas, and others. Earl had removed his knit hat, knelt in the snow, and bowed his head.
It turned out that John had been there earlier that day and had plowed the path for Earl’s visit. It was their family tradition. At the time, Annie hadn’t yet met John, but she’d been touched by his caring and his respect for his father and for those who had come before them. Perhaps more than that, she’d been moved by the act that was between father and son, done in private in such a remote place, with no need to impress anyone.