TWENTY-SIX

  

It was during the first weekend of what Eleanor had begun to view as her captivity that she found the first of the outbuildings in the woods. It was a sturdy affair, consisting of a concrete block foundation and heavy timber walls. Thick metal chains and a chunky metal padlock blocked entry, as did its positioning. Placed within a dense area of pines and deep into the woods, it wasn’t visible from the road, the driveway or the house.

She’d gone for a walk in the woods, as much to clear her mind as to get away from Doris and those dogs. The shed intrigued her. Was it Doris’s? It did seem to have her father’s handiwork, and she wouldn’t have put it past him to build it out here in order to store ammunition or valuables or even guns. But upon closer inspection, Eleanor realized the shed wasn’t on Doris’s property. A tree a hundred yards away had been tacked with a “Keep Out—No Hunting” sign and another marked the area as private property. Doris had no such signs. And taking the time to mark the perimeter of her property would take energy and effort, two things Doris seemed to lack.

Then whose shed was it?

Eleanor pulled at the lock. It wouldn’t budge. The metal was rusting and the padlock showed signs of weather and age. The fact that it was still intact, though, said these woods were pretty deserted. Otherwise, kids would have broken in long ago and used the shed as a place to hang out, smoke pot or screw. Eleanor walked on.

Within another half mile, she came upon another building, a stone cottage of sorts situated in the midst of an overgrown clearing. Its rotting roof had fallen in and two of its eight windows were broken, with vines that wove their way around the exterior like a living shroud. Portions of the vegetation surrounding the building seemed denser and shorter than the others, and these shorter portions formed a swath that led from the cottage. She got down on hands and knees and felt underneath the weeds. Bingo. Blacktop. Cracked, faded and marred by plants growing up through the fissures, but blacktop nonetheless. There had been a road leading to this cottage. The road, though, looked like it headed farther into the woods. To where?

Eleanor pictured the area in her head. This must be the back side of Dunne Pond Resort. Growing up, it had been a place where wealthy Boston families summered. Now, it was abandoned.

The sun was sinking into the western horizon. The woods, so lush and full of peaceful promise in the summer months, felt cold and eerie. A harsh wind whipped through the trees, leaving Eleanor breathless. She pulled Doris’s down parka tighter around her midsection, her mind swirling with possibilities.

She needed to get to her money and plan some type of escape. She couldn’t hide at Doris’s forever. But how? She had no doubt the authorities were looking for her, and after what she’d done, she had no doubt others were looking for her, too. Her sister was proof of that.

Eleanor scanned the clearing. It helped to know her surroundings. If things got bad, at least she’d have somewhere else to go. Somewhere away from Doris. Somewhere safe.

  

Allison had dropped Mia off at her car three hours ago, and now she found herself wandering aimlessly through her house. She’d changed into workout clothes and tried to go for a walk, but that didn’t help. Instead of feeling calm or inspired, she felt more agitated. She wanted to do something, something that would put an end to the uncertainty about Scott and these photographs.

Upstairs, she placed a call to her sister’s rehab center. She’s doing the program, they told her. No, she couldn’t talk to her, they told her. The woman on the other end of the line was sympathetic but reserved. She managed to give Allison almost nothing of substance.

Next, Allison called her sister Faye to check on Grace.

“She’s doing great,” Faye said. “Mom and Dad adore her.”

Even Brutus was busy not needing her. The dog and his new best friend, Simon the cat, were curled around one another on her bed. When Allison slipped into her room to change into jeans and a sweater, Brutus opened one eye, thumped his tail stub on the comforter, and resumed his snoring.

“You’re both worthless,” Allison muttered. But she gave each of them a stroke before making her way to the office.

There, she called Jason while she flicked on her computer. Jason didn’t answer. Disappointed, she left a voicemail and settled in to do some searching on the web.

A search on Eleanor turned up the same material she’d seen before: a Facebook page she couldn’t access and dozens of race finishes. Eleanor’s profile picture showed a grinning woman in her late thirties or early forties climbing the side of a cliff. Thin and muscular, Eleanor had the tan skin and bleached hair of a woman who spent a lot of time outdoors.

But there was a hardness in her eyes, even in her profile picture. She wore no helmet, and her bright blue eyes stared at the cameraperson with an almost startling intensity, as if she were daring them to say or do something.

Allison thought about Eleanor in the context of Scott’s lovers. Unlike Leah, Eleanor didn’t seem remotely academic. In fact, she seemed the antithesis of Leah’s bookish, slightly arrogant persona. And where Julie was all soft curves and feminine smiles, Eleanor appeared sinewy and fit.

Allison changed her search terms and revisited Leah, Transitions, Doris Long, even Brad Halloway and his wife. She found nothing new…until she searched using terms related to Scott’s murder. On a local news site, she saw the headline, “Three Arrested in Murder of Local Businessman.”

The three kids suspected of killing Scott had been detained.

Allison stared at the photo. Three boys, all black, all between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. Two looked scared—terrified, really—and one had the deadened look of someone who hadn’t cared in a long, long time. Such a tragedy, Allison thought, to have lost all hope and joy before your twenty-first birthday. Edith Myers had been right about one thing. What were we doing to our youth?

But then it struck her: these boys would go to jail, where they would be housed with hardened criminals. The likelihood of reformation was low. The likelihood of learning new antisocial behaviors, of becoming even more hardened to others’ suffering, was high.

This is wrong, she thought.

Allison unlocked her filing cabinet and pulled out the file in which she kept the photographs and other information she’d accumulated on Scott’s murder. From within, she pulled out the business card Detective Jim Berry had given her so many days before. She placed the file in her laptop bag and grabbed her phone and car keys and dialed Detective Berry’s number on her way out the door.