CHAPTER 3
Morgan Maguire ran his hands over the cocker spaniel’s belly. Rufus. Rufus was fifteen years old. His black fur had begun to mat and fall out in places, and he was covered with benign moles, but besides that, he was healthy. His owner, a man named Ervin, clutched at the arms of a chair as Morgan went through a routine exam.
“I brought in a fecal sample,” Ervin said.
“We can test it,” Morgan said. “But I don’t know what for. Nothing’s wrong with Rufus besides the indignities of age.”
In a year or two, the conversation would be a different one, a much more difficult one. One that Morgan wondered whether Ervin would be able to handle. Ervin brought the dog into the vet office in Cambridge’s Central Square practically every week and had for the past two years, ever since his wife had died. He had to be in his late seventies and had begun to look like the dog, with his own moles and thin hair. Morgan imagined the two of them, at home alone, on the sofa, watching Jeopardy!. He imagined their walks around a neighborhood that had transitioned as friends moved away. He lifted the dog to the ground. Rufus found his footing and walked gingerly over to Ervin, who scratched him behind the ears.
“I worry,” Ervin said.
“I know,” Morgan said. “Come in whenever you want.”
Morgan had months worrying, even since he’d walked into that hospital room in New Hampshire and seen Hester’s broken body. They hadn’t been the same since, not the two of them. They couldn’t be, really, not with Kate living with them or with Daphne off doing whatever she was doing. A part of him had wondered if Daphne would contact him today—it was their birthday after all, something they’d hated sharing as kids but had grown to love—but most of him dreaded hearing from his sister too. Morgan and Hester needed to find a way to heal, and Daphne would only make that more difficult.
“You take really good care of Rufus,” Morgan said, hating the platitude even as he said it. What Ervin wanted, and what Morgan couldn’t give him, was to go back to a time when his wife was healthy, his children were young, and Rufus’s belly was pink and translucent. He wanted a time when life was happier.
It was the same thing Morgan wanted.
Now, as he walked Ervin and Rufus to reception, his phone rang. He took the call, and when he was done, he made another call.
“I need your help,” he said. “Tonight.”
* * *
Annie grasped the lobster boat’s washboard, waiting for the next trap to emerge from the roiling Gulf of Maine. She wore yellow oilskins and thick rubber gloves to keep the lobsters from snapping at her fingers as she worked the lines off the coast of Finisterre Island, with nothing but gray water between her and Ireland.
“Hey, Red. Keep moving.”
Annie turned to the boat captain, Vaughn Roberts, who had an eye toward the dark western sky. His black lab, Mindy, wound her way across the deck, nosing at Annie’s gloves. Annie hated being called “Red,” a name that brought up memories of playgrounds and mean girls who mocked her red hair and fair skin, but she reminded herself that Vaughn was the boss for the day and being nearly homeless meant even worse humiliations. Besides, Lydia Pelletier had gone out on a limb to get her the job, and Annie couldn’t afford to lose the money she’d earn, or the sole friend she’d made all summer living on the island.
“Got it, Boss!” she said.
As the hauler lifted the next trap from the water, Vaughn cut seaweed off, using a six-inch knife with a blue hilt. While he moved down the line, Annie worked methodically, reaching into the trap to pluck out one of the writhing creatures. Its claws snapped helplessly as she measured the carapace at three and a quarter inches, the smallest length possible for a legal catch. A fraction of an inch shorter and the lobster would have gone back into the gray waters for another day, but luck wasn’t on its side. Annie tossed it into a waiting tank and flipped through nine more lobsters, discarding six, including one female, whose tail she notched. When they finished the line, Annie banded the claws on the catch while Vaughn maneuvered the boat through the waves, Mindy standing on the bow, her black ears blowing in the wind. “Think that storm’s coming?” he asked. “We need to clear these traps in case it does.”
“Who knows?” Annie said.
“You never do,” said Vaughn, who was salty and windblown, what Annie expected in a lobsterman, even one as young as he was. But Vaughn also had a soft mouth made for talking and a Down East accent he worked hard to tame. “How do you know Lydia, anyway?” he asked.
All day, he’d peppered Annie with questions that she’d managed to parry away. “I don’t really,” she said. “How about you?”
“You know everyone when you’ve spent your life on an island like this one,” Vaughn said. “Everyone except who you don’t. But Lydia and I, we grew up here. Took the boat to the mainland to go to high school during the week. Even went to the same college. Now we both wound up back on the island, for better or worse. We can’t seem to get away from each other. You must know Trey, too, her husband.”
“Why would I?” Annie asked, realizing too late that she sounded defensive.
“Why wouldn’t you?” Vaughn said after a pause. “When everyone knows everyone? Where are you from, anyway?”
“By Dog Cove,” Annie said. “On Little Finisterre. There’s an old Victorian out there.”
“That dump by the lighthouse?” Vaughn said. “Most of the people who squat there have BO worse than five-day-old fish guts. I’m glad you don’t. You living off the grid for a while?”
Most everyone who lived in the house was off the grid. They didn’t have a phone there, let alone Internet service. Let alone anything else.
“Only the two of us out here,” Vaughn said when Annie didn’t respond. He steered the boat through the choppy surf. “How about trying? You know, I ask where you’re from, you tell me. You ask me the same question, and I tell you I’m from here, that I got away for a few years and moved to Portland, but now I live on the island because my ex-wife banished me from our house two months ago, and you say, how can a handsome guy like you possibly be single, and I say I’m not handsome, and you say, yes you are, you really, really are. You know, that kind of thing.”
In truth, Vaughn wasn’t bad on the eyes. He was thirty. Maybe thirty-five. Definitely a few years younger than Annie. He had premature salt-and-pepper hair and blue eyes that peered out from under the hood on his slicker. Annie was thirty-seven, maybe too old for Vaughn, but perspectives changed, right? Beds got lonely and cold. How long had it been since his divorce? How long had he gone without sharing a bed with a woman? She’d have to play his game, for a bit at least. She got ready to track her answers, to remember her truth. “I’m off the grid,” she said. “But it’s temporary.”
“I’m surprised anyone’s still at that house,” Vaughn said. “It usually clears with the summer crowd.”
When Annie had moved in that June, every room but one in the house had been full. Since Labor Day, though, it had emptied till she’d been the only person left. Then, two weeks earlier, a woman named Frankie and her four-year-old son, Ethan, had set up camp.
“Are you planning to stick around?” Vaughn asked. “Brave the winter? Only the hearty do. Or the stupid. That place gets cold once the snow comes. Take my advice and move into town. Rents get cheaper real quick around here. And winters are long enough, even with heat and running water, but you’ll always be from away if you can’t handle a Maine winter. What brought you here anyway?”
Annie thought for a moment before answering. “Luck,” she said.
The boat lurched in a swell. Annie gripped the washboard with one hand, and Mindy’s collar with the other. A sheet of frigid seawater swept over her, sucking the air from her lungs. She swiped water from her face, the salt lingering on her lips.
“You okay?” Vaughn asked.
The summer had taught Annie not to complain. She nodded and told him to keep going.
“You have good sea legs,” he said.
“I don’t know anything about boats.”
“Could have fooled me.”
He cut the engine back to idle speed, scanned the horizon with a pair of binoculars, and caught a purple and blue buoy with the gaff. “One more stop,” he said, hooking the line to the hauler.
Annie scanned the horizon, too, as Mindy leaned into her leg with her whole body. The buoys they’d spent the day pulling had all been yellow and orange, and Annie knew enough about lobstering to know what not to do—especially when it came to molesting other lobstermen’s gear. She also knew enough to keep her mouth shut and took her place behind Vaughn, ignoring the feeling of dread in her stomach, or that the easygoing man she’d spent most of the day with had grown tense and aware. What other choice did she have? She was on the water with him, alone. And at the end of the day, Vaughn would pay her with seventy-five bucks and a pair of chicken lobsters, more money than she’d had in months.
The first trap emerged, and Vaughn examined it. Then he let it fall back into the sea without taking the lobsters out. He did that at the second trap, and the third. Only at the last trap did he pause. “Hot dog!” he said. “Look at that baby!”
The lobster barely fit in the trap. Vaughn pulled it out, glancing across the choppy sea as if to check that they were still alone, before dangling the lobster in front of himself while Mindy snapped at its tail. It must have weighed more than twenty pounds with claws twice the size of Annie’s hands.
“Jesus, this’ll get me on Chronicle if it doesn’t swallow the two of us whole!” Vaughn said.
“She’s beautiful,” Annie said, watching the lobster struggle against Vaughn’s celebration. “How old do you think she is?”
“Got to be forty, fifty years old,” Vaughn said. “Imagine, outsmarting us for all these years! Hold her. She’s strong. She might rip apart the rest of the catch.”
Annie held the lobster beneath its claws. This was a creature someone would pay good money for, the kind of illicit catch that would make it onto a centerpiece and into the trash. And it wasn’t fair to her. Not after all this time. Not after surviving.
Annie tossed the lobster overboard.
Vaughn clutched at the empty air. “Oh, fuck!” he said, kicking at the side of the boat and spinning around. He seemed as if he might jump in after it. “Fuck. Jesus! Oh, you fucking . . . that was a huge fuckup!” he shouted.
Annie glanced toward the island, perched on the horizon. She had no idea what Vaughn was capable of, but she did know that he was angry. She remembered Lydia, who’d insisted Annie was worth a chance. “I’m sorry,” she said.
It was all she could manage.
“That’s what I get for hiring a flatlander,” Vaughn said. “I’ll think better of it next time. Fifty bucks. That’s what that lobster was worth, and that’s what your little stunt cost me.”
“That lobster was too big,” Annie said. And poached from someone else’s trap, she nearly added.
“And she was female,” Vaughn said. “Already notched. Didn’t you see? She would have gone back into the water anyway, if you’d given me a minute. Biggest lobster of the year gets first prize from the lobster pound and a fifty-dollar payout, but I need a photo to prove it. Now no one will believe me. I’m taking the money out of your wage.”
Fifty dollars. Oh, how Annie needed that money. How could Vaughn possibly know that Annie was down to her last five-dollar bill, that she was desperate, more desperate than she’d ever been in a life of desperation. But Vaughn must have seen it in her threadbare clothes and yellowed nails. He must have known he could do anything he wanted with her here, that she was powerless. She took in a deep breath to keep from begging or losing her last scraps of pride.
Vaughn punched at the air. “Great cap to the day.”
“It wasn’t yours,” Annie said, softly.
“Say that again.”
“It wasn’t yours to claim,” Annie said. “That fifty dollars belongs to someone else.”
Vaughn turned the boat and revved the engine as they headed toward the island. The waves had grown higher as the weather had turned, but Vaughn steered the prow of the boat into the surf with the light touch of someone who’d seen worse, focusing on the task at hand and treating Annie like the hired help she was. She’d hoped he might ask her to work for him again. Now, she’d ruined any chance of that happening.
A swell smashed the starboard side, lurching them off course and filling the hull with water. “Youza,” Vaughn said as he struggled at the helm. “Hold on to the dog! We should have gone in an hour ago.”
Annie gripped Mindy’s collar and struggled across the deck, tying down anything loose, happy for the diversion. As the boat arced around Bowman Island and toward the harbor, the water calmed a bit. Vaughn cut the engine back and cruised at headway speed, keeping to the channel. Ahead, blue lights from the island’s sole police Jeep flashed, and for a moment Annie wondered if a search party had launched to find them. She wondered what it would feel like to be missed, but more than that, she wished they were still out at sea. At times during the day, she’d forgotten about the world away from the boat, away from two people working in tandem, and now she wanted more than anything to be far from what those flashing blue lights would bring.
“Ferry’s still here,” Vaughn said, checking his watch. “It’s after four. It should have left twenty minutes ago.”
He pulled the boat along the dock, and Annie jumped to the planks with a line. It would take another half hour to unload and weigh the catch, but Vaughn leaped after her, tied off the boat, and headed up the gangway without looking back, Mindy at his heels. Annie ran after him. “Let’s unload,” she said.
“There’s something wrong,” he said. “The ferry runs like a clock.”
Annie stopped short at the top of the gangway, right as the skies opened and huge drops of warm rain filled the air. Rory Dunbar, the local deputy, leaned against his Jeep. A man wrapped in a blanket sat in the Jeep’s back seat and stared out the window like an abandoned dog. Annie recognized him from his visits to the Victorian.
“I saw your boat in the harbor and came to meet you,” Rory said as Mindy tried to jump on him. “You been out all afternoon?”
“Yep,” Vaughn said, glancing at the man in the back of the Jeep. “He okay?”
“He’s fine,” Rory said, his voice short, shoving the dog away. “See anyone else out there?”
“Not really. And if they are still on the water, they’ll be in trouble soon. What’s going on? Why didn’t the ferry leave?”
Rory crossed to where Annie waited, looking her over like a piece of trash. She felt her stomach clench. Had he come for her?
“The island’s on lockdown till the state cops get here,” Rory said. “Another boy is missing.”