by Jean Stone
But in spite of her diligence, Annie didn’t find a shred of detail about the accident, just a lone copy of Brian’s obituary that sent a lightning bolt straight from her head to her toes. Other than that, the only significant thing that happened was that both of her legs became cramped from crouching.
Closing the lid and locking it tightly, she wobbled to the nightstand to return the key to its place.
With a sigh of disappointment, she turned to leave the bedroom. Which was when she spotted Simon’s messenger bag on the floor next to the bed. It looked like fine leather, soft and expensive. And old. A well-worn, well-used case.
Stepping closer, Annie wondered if it was a classic, the kind of item Donna would have loved to have had in her antiques shop. A small brass nameplate was fastened between two brass buckles; she bent to see if it might be the name of the designer—perhaps it was a Vuitton, like her trunk.
Instead of a name, she saw three initials.
AJS.
As in Andrew (whatever-his-middle-name-was) Simmons.
She stood for a moment, staring at what might be confirmation of who Simon Anderson really was. Or had been. But while her gaze drilled into the nameplate, she did not hear the front door to the cottage open, or footsteps crossing the braided rug and stepping onto the hardwood floor in the bedroom.
“Annie?” the voice asked. “Aren’t you a little old to be snooping?”
Chapter 23
She might have reacted more casual, less contrite, if Simon wasn’t downright red-faced angry.
“I’m sorry,” Annie said, willing her voice not to tremble, though she knew it was on the verge. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I needed to get something out of my trunk. You weren’t here and the door was unlocked.” Did that sound plausible? Acceptable? “I must have forgotten to ask you to please lock the door when you aren’t here. Our crime rate is pretty low, but I wouldn’t want to give everyone free rein to my personal belongings.” She knew that her mouth was off and running, spewing out blah-blah-blah words again, something that often happened when she was embarrassed. Or nervous.
Why the heck was she nervous? This was her Inn. This was her cottage. There was no need to be nervous.
She was, however, standing with her back to the corner, with Simon blocking the doorway. Which made her feel like a trapped animal. A skunk. A raccoon. An opossum.
If he would say something—anything—maybe she’d relax.
“I wasn’t looking through your things,” she continued rambling. “I was looking through mine. And I came across something interesting.”
He responded with a steady glare from those teal blue eyes.
Then Annie had an unpleasant thought: Had Simon come to the island not to bring her information, but because he wanted to reveal her unhappy backstory to her fans? To boost his ratings with an exposé of a mystery writer’s painful past? Annie’s best friend might have whispered that she was reaching, if Murphy—the one voice she relied on more than anyone’s—wasn’t otherwise occupied doing God only knew what. Come on! Annie’s thoughts muttered toward the ceiling. Stop cavorting up there and pay attention to me!
Then, at last finding her nerve, she returned Simon’s glare and said, “I know who you are.”
He shifted on one foot. His eyebrows scrunched. His mouth tightened, and he spoke through his teeth. “I’m the guy you watch every night on the news.” As if it were a given that everyone in every household in America and beyond, would not miss the evening news with Simon Anderson.
She decided not to contradict him. “How did you find me on the Vineyard? And, for God’s sake, why?”
His right eye developed a slight tic. “You’re a popular woman. A best-selling author with a new business on Martha’s Vineyard. What makes you think I wouldn’t want to stay here when my work brought me to the island?”
“Bull,” she said.
“No, it’s not. I like to learn about people and places and connect them in ways that my viewers don’t always get to know simply by watching the day-to-day news. Not to mention that I really am passionate about climate change. Some people call it having a global conscience.”
It was hard to tell if he was schmoozing or preparing to do battle. She decided to play his game and wait for him to say more.
But he didn’t.
So Annie finally nodded, hoping that would help her manufacture another layer of courage as she asked, “You’re Andrew Simmons, aren’t you?”
He gestured toward the messenger bag. “That’s an antique, you know. Belonged to my uncle Harry’s father. He owned a manufacturing plant. Textiles.”
Neither of them had moved, though Annie longed to, stuck as she was in the cat-and-mouse game.
“I’m surprised I didn’t recognize you,” she finally said. “From when you interviewed me. About when my husband was killed.”
He bowed his head, then. Using his fingers he rubbed one eye, then the other, as if an eyelash or a grain of sand was scratching at them. But when he raised his head again, Annie realized why she hadn’t recognized him: it hadn’t been because she’d been so overwhelmed by grief that she hadn’t paid close enough attention to the young reporter. It was because those striking teal blue eyes weren’t teal blue at all. They were brown. Natural, ordinary brown. Now, he looked like an older version of Andrew Simmons. Andrew J. Simmons. Whatever the “J.” stood for.
He held out his hand, displaying the tinted lenses. “This color makes me look better on camera. At least that’s what the ratings’ folks say.” He bent his head again and popped the lenses back in.
It occurred to her that she should make a note to use the disguise in one of her plots. The change was so simple, yet quite effective.
“If you were one of my characters, I’d say that’s a great way to travel incognito.”
He looked back at her, his eyes teal again.
“You stopped taking my calls,” she said. “And you never called back. Had you learned something you didn’t think I should know? Something that might upset me more—as if that were remotely possible?” In her darkest hours, more than once she’d made herself ill rewinding the details of the accident, how the impact of the car must have felt, what might have happened to different parts of Brian’s body—his arms, his legs, his handsome, still youthful face. While writing her books, she still had trouble including words like shattered, squashed, spurting. Remembering that now, Annie swallowed, unable to hold back tears.
He stiffened. “I was in grad school. I was an intern at the paper. When the summer was over, I left.”
She looked back at the messenger bag. “Still, you could have called. I was desperate for answers . . . I was only in my twenties . . .”
“So was I, dammit!” His tone was sharp, his irritation flaring. “What did you expect? Did you think I was Sherlock Holmes? Or did you want me to make something up so you’d feel better?”
Annie shrank closer to the wall. Her throat started to close. “I only . . .”
“You ‘only’ what?” He was shouting now. “What did you know?”
“Stop!” she shouted back, her tears stinging, her voice cracking. “What are you talking about?”
His eyes narrowed into slits.
That’s when she felt sure he was not there out of kindness. And that she had no other choice. She stood up straight. “Get out, Simon, or Andrew, or whoever you are. Get out of my house and off my property.”
“I paid for this place.”
“I don’t give a damn. GET OUT. Now!”
Then another figure stepped into the room. Simon blocked Annie’s view; she only saw two arms: one was raised, its hand clenched in a fist; the other was holding up what looked like a gun.
“Do what the lady said.” The voice was stern. And commanding. And it was Kevin’s.
Dear God, Kevin was home.
Before she could speak, Simon spun around and grabbed Kevin’s arm, the one holding the gun. They wrestled. They struggled.
“Stop!”
Annie cried. “Please! Both of you!”
Then the gun went off. Of course it did. That’s what guns did, didn’t they?
Annie screamed. Her hands flew to her face. Please, please, let it be Simon who’s been shot.
But the man who landed with a thump on the floor wasn’t Simon. It was Kevin. And bright red blood was spurting from his chest.
* * *
“He attacked me,” Simon said to John, who had come from out of nowhere, along with the EMTs who hustled around Kevin, phoning his vitals into the hospital, lifting him onto the gurney. He was unconscious. There was a makeshift pressure bandage on his wound; it was high up, closer to his shoulder than his heart. Annie had a vague memory that Simon had put it there. The same kind of vague memory that Simon had also called 911.
All she knew for sure was that there were too many people in her small bedroom. Too much commotion. And too much blood. Her brother’s blood.
“He . . . came in . . . with . . . a gun. I . . . tried to grab it from . . . him . . .” Simon was stuttering.
It looked like John was taking notes. It was hard to keep everything straight from where Annie still stood, her back glued to the wall next to her bed, the messenger bag still at her feet. She had a quick flash of Brian in the road, how he must have been bleeding. She pushed it back, way back into the recesses where dark thoughts needed to burrow.
Then she had a vision of Joe Nelson in the fire station and how, after mentioning Simon’s impending arrival, he’d said, “Here’s hoping Mr. Anderson’s visit won’t trigger any ambulance runs to your place.”
Annie wondered if she would go to hell for wishing that Simon, not Kevin, was the one strapped onto the gurney.
“Do you want to ride in the back of the ambulance with him?” It was John. Her John. The guy who once had been her friend, her lover, her fiancé. He was talking about Kevin, who was her brother, not Brian, who’d been her husband.
“Yes,” she said.
But it was hard for Annie to move. Until John handed her the sandals she’d left outside by the front door.
“Thank you,” she thought she might have added.
He put an arm around her, as if they were still a couple. Maybe he was only trying to steady her while she slipped into her sandals.
The next thing she was aware of was sitting in the back of the ambulance, holding Kevin’s limp hand, wishing, praying that the driver would go faster.
But it was still August, a Saturday evening no less, so the streets must be clogged with traffic. The flashing lights, the siren, the blasting horn made little difference.
“Can’t everyone get out of the damn way?” she cried to the EMT who sat opposite her, holding onto the tubing that snaked from an IV bag into Kevin’s arm, his eyes fixed on a small monitor that was attached to white plastic circles pasted on Kevin’s chest. An electrocardiogram, Annie supposed.
“We’ll get there,” the EMT responded. “Your brother’s fairly stable, so that’s good.”
She searched his face to see if he was telling the truth, but she could not be sure. Then she looked back at Kevin. His face was peaceful, his hazel eyes that were exactly like hers, exactly as their mother’s, were closed. If Annie could only see his eyes, she might be able to tell if he was in pain.
“Kevin, are you okay?” she whispered. “Don’t be scared, I’m right here.”
His breathing was a little raspy. Was that indicative of someone who was “fairly stable”? Annie had never done much research about medical trauma—in her books the victims were already dead. She supposed that was how she’d averted the shattering and squashing and the rest.
“Don’t be scared,” she repeated. “Don’t be scared.”
Then she gasped. Medical trauma. The only one she knew of who’d gone through such a thing was Meghan.
Meghan. Who was back at the Inn, packing or not packing to leave, not knowing that her husband had returned.
“I need a phone,” Annie pleaded with the EMT. “Can I use yours?”
“Sorry. It’s not for public use. We’ll be at the hospital spoon enough.” He was nice but not helpful. Meghan needed to know what had happened. And she needed to hear it from Annie, before someone else on the grounds of the Inn told her first. If anyone other than them had been on the grounds.
Leaning toward the closed window that connected the driver from the action in the back, Annie shouted, “Hello? Hello, up there? Can you hear me?”
“He can’t,” the EMT said. “He has to focus on the road.”
“But . . . can’t you ping him or something? Please?” She wanted to say that her brother’s wife needed to be told what had happened. But she was afraid if she said that much, everyone would find out the rest.
He shook his head. “Sorry,” he repeated, then checked the EKG again.
She didn’t know where they were, how far from the hospital. She couldn’t see out the back, as there were no windows. And though she squinted, she couldn’t see through the small window to the front seat and all the way out the windshield. It didn’t help that they were driving into the sunset.
So Annie bolted up, banging her head on the ceiling. Then she stooped and lunged toward the window, knocking on it with insistence. She’d moved so fast the EMT couldn’t thwart her.
“Help!” she shouted through the glass. “I need a phone!” Her eyes were fixed on the back of the driver’s head. Which made it all the more surprising when a man sitting on the passenger side suddenly turned and was eye to eye with her. It was John. Again.
Why the hell was John there? He was a cop, not an EMT.
He opened the window a couple of inches.
She shook off her surprise. “I need to make a call.”
“You don’t have your phone?”
That’s when she realized she didn’t even have her purse. What had she been thinking? Then she remembered she hadn’t been able to think. “No,” she replied.
“I can call someone for you. You want my dad?”
Dear God, no, Annie thought. She couldn’t very well tell Earl that the woman he knew as Mary Beth was really Kevin’s wife. Not now, anyway. Then she remembered that she’d told Francine. “Francine. I want Francine. Ask her to check on Mary Beth Mullen. Tell Francine what happened. And that I’ll be at the hospital with my brother.”
“Do you know her number?”
She did not. Damn cell phones, where links had erased the need to know details like that.
“You don’t want me to call my dad?”
“Not yet, okay?” How could she say she didn’t want Meghan to find out about Kevin from Earl. Francine knew the facts. Francine would know how to handle it. “I had plans with Mary Beth tonight,” she said. “I don’t want a guest to think I’ve stood her up.” It could have been the stupidest lie Annie had ever told. But it was all that came to mind. Meghan had to be told. Meghan had to know. If Kevin didn’t make it . . .
Annie started to cry. She slinked back to her seat and took Kevin’s hand in hers again. His palm was warm, callused from the manual labor that he worked at so hard. He looked a little tanned. Perhaps Hawaii had been good for him.
“Don’t be scared,” she said again. “I’m right here.”
Her tears felt like the steady trickle of the water that passed from an upper shady spot at Mytoi Japanese Garden on Chappy, down to a lower pond. Slowly, methodically, never-ending.
She was grateful that the EMT didn’t scold her for jumping up the way she had, for bothering the driver who was focused on the road.
John looked back through the window. “How about if I call my dad and ask for Francine’s number? He’ll have it, won’t he?”
But Annie’s brain had become fuzzy again, and she was having trouble trying to process if that would work. Then she remembered she could not control every outcome of every situation; that she could not always protect those she’d grown to love. John, however, had offered to help. If nothing else, she knew she could trust him. So Annie nodded, becau
se it was easier than speaking again.
Then the ambulance made a sharp right turn. Annie grasped her seat; she knew it meant that they were now on County Road. And that it wouldn’t be much longer before they reached MV Hospital. God knew she’d done this before.
If there was one thing Kevin hated it was a bumpy ride. This one was a beaut. Whoever was driving was going too fast and hitting every bump in the damn road. Not to mention that he kept seeing bursts of light. And something was squeezing his shoulder and he felt like he was being squished and he couldn’t see anything.
It reminded him of the Fourth of July when he’d been five and he’d gone with his mother to the fireworks on the Esplanade on the Charles River where the Boston Pops was playing what he later learned was the 1812 Overture. He’d been scared then. He was too short to see over the heads of the people, so he couldn’t tell what was going on. And people kept bumping into him, stepping on his feet, and the music kept booming, hurting his ears, but he didn’t want to cry because he wasn’t a baby.
Besides, his mother was having a good time. Taking his hand in hers, she said, “Kevin, are you okay? Don’t be scared, I’m right here.”
He heard those words again now, over and over, in what sounded a lot like his mother’s voice. He felt her hand in his. And he wasn’t scared anymore. Because she was there.
Chapter 24
“I need to take your statement.” John had joined Annie in the waiting room, where she’d sat too many times over the past couple of years. This time was the most difficult. He was her brother, after all, her last remaining blood relative. Her true family.
She flinched. “Is that why you rode in the ambulance? Not to be here for me, but to do your duty?”
His gray eyes became quizzical, as if he did not understand. “No,” he said. “I mean, I came for . . . both.”
Annie nodded, wishing she could fully believe him. She looked around at the smattering of people in the room. “Where’s Simon?”