The Widow

CHAPTER 28

An uneasy silence had settled in Abigail’s back room, which had finally been swept and wiped clean of any police presence. She’d ripped out the last of the old wallboard.

So many questions, she thought, tugging a red bandanna off her hair and shaking off the plaster dust.

Owen tied up a trash bag of the last of the debris and carried it back to the kitchen. Abigail watched him. He was a rock, as solid a man as she’d ever known. But how could she fall for him?

How could she fall for him here?

MattieYoung had camped out in his childhood friend’s garage. Where was he now? Doyle hadn’t known he was there. Lou Beeler obviously believed the chief’s explanation-with Katie gone for most of the summer, he and the boys didn’t use the garage on a daily basis. It wasn’t as if Doyle’d had time in recent days to mow the lawn or trim the roses. He simply hadn’t needed to be in the garage for anything.

As far as anyone could tell, Mattie had slipped in there for shelter. If he’d thought about knocking on Doyle’s door and turning himself in, fine, but he hadn’t done it.

He could have gone anywhere from Doyle’s house. Into Acadia National Park, onto the ocean. He could have slipped into someone else’s garage or broken into a vacant summer home, or he could have crawled under a rock somewhere.

He’d avoid the police and anyone who’d recognize him. Although news of his disappearance had hit in the media, tourists on Mt. Desert would be relatively insulated from such goings-on. Mattie could have walked past hikers and campers, and they wouldn’t necessarily pay attention or recognize him as the man the police were looking for.

Abigail walked out to the porch. She and Owen had driven around, trying to spot Mattie. They’d checked his party spot in the old foundation. Nothing.

It would be a warmer, more humid night than last night, but cool for July, very cool in comparison to Boston. Far out on the water, she could see the lights of expensive yachts. Did one of them belong to Jason Cooper? Had he chucked his family’s problems and gone off to enjoy his wealth, be alone?

She became aware of Owen’s presence behind her, on the other side of the screen door. “I’ve changed in the past seven years,” she said without looking around at him. “I haven’t wanted to admit it. I keep thinking that if I did, I’d also have to acknowledge that Chris might not want me the way I am now.”

The door creaked open and shut. Owen brushed away a mosquito floating in front of her face. “His death pulled you up off the path you were on and hurled you back down onto a different one. But you’re the same Abigail.”

“I don’t blame Doyle Alden and the Coopers for resenting me.”

“You’ve had every right to push for answers.”

“I’ve done more than push for answers. Every time I come here I’ve reminded them of Chris. I won’t let them forget him.” She pushed her hands through her hair, her short curls more pronounced with the increased humidity. “I don’t even have to do anything. I’m his widow. That’ll never change. It’s like having a circle drawn around me wherever I go that keeps people at bay, that reminds them I lost my husband on our honeymoon.”

Owen placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’re not keeping me at bay.”

She smiled. “Maybe I should. Hell. I can’t believe I’m telling you all these things about myself. I suppose if I’d remarried sooner…”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

She looked back out at the dark water, the yachts gone now. “For seven years, I’ve thought if I’d just gone with him on those errands-if I’d taken a walk on the rocks or stopped in at Ellis’s garden party-that he’d still be alive. Now, I’m not sure that’s true. I’m not sure I could have done anything to keep him from getting killed.”

“The break-in, the attack on you-”

“An opportunity. Something the killer could capitalize on, but not the cause of Chris’s death.” She kept staring into the darkness, her eyes adjusting, picking out stars, seeing outlines and silhouettes of rocks and trees. “He didn’t tell me what was going on.”

Owen didn’t respond.

“It wasn’t about who I was. If I’d been a homicide detective seven years ago, he still wouldn’t have told me. He wasn’t keeping secrets from me so much as just not talking. It was his personality.” A firefly sparked in the trees to the side of the house, where the Alden boys had hidden just a few days ago, convinced they’d seen a ghost. “And what did I know of his relationships with the people on this island? I knew him for eighteen months. We weren’t even married a week.”

“Abigail…”

She seized Owen’s hand, intertwined her fingers with his. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

“You don’t have to be.”

She raised his hand to her lips. “Not here. I can’t stay with you here.”

A nightmare woke her. Lying in the dark, Abigail didn’t know where she was.

She heard an owl outside on a nearby tree and felt the cool breeze from an open window and the warmth of the soft blanket over her, and she remembered the slick heat of tangled limbs and thrusting bodies, hers and Owen’s, as they’d made love long into the night.

She reached across the bed and touched his shoulder, thinking he was asleep. But his hand covered hers. She edged closer to him. She felt as if she’d known him forever, and yet there was so much more to find out about him, to the point that he might well have been a stranger.

“You don’t know anything about my real life,” she whispered. “I investigate homicides in Boston. I’m not just the widow out here on the rocks. And I know nothing about your real life.”

“There’s time for that.” He rolled onto his side, pulling her to him. “Plenty of time.”

She ran her fingertips over a scar on his shoulder and upper arm. “Where did this scar come from?” She eased her hand over his chest, unable to see, just to feel the firm flesh, another scar. “And this one…and this one…?”

“I don’t remember where half my scars came from. I don’t think about them.”

She rolled him onto his back and climbed on top of him, straddling him. “You don’t think about them, but you remember how you got them.” She scraped her fingernails along his hips and sides, feeling him shudder with desire under her. “Every single one of them.”

She lifted herself above him, and when she came down again, he was inside her, his arms around her as she drew down hard onto him, pulling him in as deeply as possible. She moaned, sinking her chest onto him, her orgasm instantaneous, racking her to her core.

He whispered her name, thrusting into her, shuddering with his own release.

The cold night wind gusted over their heated bodies, but neither made a move to pull the blanket back over them. Abigail laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes, hoping once she fell asleep again, there’d be no more nightmares.