Page 57 of The Summer Guests

“Okay,” Jo said, and rose to her feet. Their statement should be easy enough to verify. A phone call to the hospital, to the pharmacy, would confirm what Abigail had just said. “I guess that’s all for now. If I have any other questions, I’ll be back.”

“And we’ll be right here. Where else are we going to go?” said Abigail. “Oh, and please say hello to Owen for me.”

Jo turned back. “You know my dad?”

“From high school. I always liked your father. He was one of the good ones. The other kids wouldn’t even look at me, sitting in this wheelchair, but Owen, he used to help push me up the ramp and into the building. I never forgot that. A real decent man.”

Yes,thought Jo.Yes, he is.

Back in her patrol car, she sat staring for a moment at the Tarkins’ residence. She was still imagining what it was like for Abigail, living in that tiny house, confined to a wheelchair and relying on her brother to keep her alive and fed. As far as she knew, Reuben was not gainfully employed.What a sad household,she thought. A disabled sister, a bitter and angry brother, both of them recluses. A lifetime of self-imposed exile, set off by the atrocities their father committed half a century ago.

The four people who perished in the massacre on Main Street were not Sam Tarkin’s only victims,thought Jo.In that house are two more.

Chapter 27

Reuben

“It will be all right,” said Abigail. “Everything will be fine.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it’s true, as long as we don’t talk about it. Wecan’ttalk about it.”

He turned to his sister. “And look where that’s gotten us.”

“What it’s gotten us is a roof over our heads and food on the table. That’s worth something, don’t you think?”

“Not anymore.” He turned to look out the window.So that’s the lie they’re spreading about me,he thought. Thathe’dbeen the one who drove away Anna. That he’d scared her, pursued her, when all he’d done was try to be her friend.

Gazing across the pond at Moonview’s dock, he could still picture her sitting there, as she had been the first time he’d seen her, her head bowed as if in prayer, her bare feet dipping into the water. It was a morning in June, with mist curling over the pond and the water streaked with gold from the first rays of dawn. Few people were awake at that hour, and as he’d kayaked across the pond, the only sounds were the occasional cry of a loon and the splash of his paddle as his bow cut through the water. Dawn was his favorite time of day, when he could avoid the stares, the whispers behind his back. He knew what peoplewere saying about him. They were afraid of him. They knew what his father did.

But Anna was not afraid.

The first morning he saw her, she was wearing a thin cotton nightgown, and her black hair was in glorious disarray, as if she’d just climbed out of bed and wandered barefoot to the water. Glimpsed through the mist, clothed in her white, diaphanous garment, her black hair tumbling across her shoulders, she had not looked real. No, this was a vision he’d conjured up from the morning vapor, and he’d wondered if all the years of loneliness and longing had finally driven him insane, like his father. He blinked, half expecting the girl to vanish. But there she still was, gazing down at the water and so deep in thought that she did not notice him drifting closer. Suddenly, she looked up and saw him, and for a moment, they stared at each other across the dissipating curls of mist. He expected her to react like everyone else did when they saw Reuben Tarkin. That she’d scramble to her feet and retreat into the house. But the girl did not retreat, did not shrink away. Instead, she raised her hand and waved. And she smiled. She smiled athim, the monster’s son.

“They can’t blame you for that missing girl,” said Abigail. The sound of his sister’s voice was like a stone, dropped into the mirrored surface of that memory. The image of Anna dissipated like ripples in the water, pulling him back to this joyless present. “All Jo Thibodeau has to do is call the hospital. She’ll know we told the truth.”

Reuben turned to his sister. “When has the truth ever helped us?”

“She’s Owen’s girl,” said Abigail. “I have to believe she’ll do the right thing.”

Chapter 28

Jo

Jo always looked forward to her weekly dinner with her father, because it was their chance to catch up with the latest news, and because Owen was a far better cook than she would ever be. When she arrived at his house that evening, she found his front door unlocked, as usual. That unlocked door never failed to irritate her, but Owen Thibodeau grew up in an era when nobody in town locked their doors because bad things just didn’t happen here, or so he claimed. She could give him a list of all the bad things thatdidhappen nowadays, but she knew it wouldn’t shake Owen’s naive faith. He trusted his neighbors, his town, and so far, no onehadbroken into Owen’s house.

Probably because they knew his daughter was a cop.

She walked into the kitchen, where Owen was standing at the stove, mashing potatoes in a pot.

“There you are,” he said, without turning to look at her.

“You know, I could’ve been a burglar sneaking up behind you.”

“But you aren’t.”

She lifted the lid of another pot and inhaled the savory steam of simmering sauerkraut and Polish sausages—four huge ones. “Which army are you feeding tonight?”

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