Page 58 of The Summer Guests

“I’m going to freeze some for Finn. He’s coming to visit for a few days, and you know how your brother likes to eat. There’s beer in the fridge, if you want one.”

She grabbed a bottle of Shipyard Summer Ale and popped off the top. Leaning against the kitchen counter, she watched her dad drop a whole stick of butter into the mashed potatoes. So much for watching her diet tonight; dinner with her dad meant calories and more calories, almost always delicious ones. Even when her mother was still alive, it was Owen who’d get up early in the morning to cook the kids’ breakfast, Owen who gave them their first taste of coffee, although well diluted with milk.

“I spoke to someone you knew in high school,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Abigail Tarkin. She said to say hello. Said you were nice to her back then.”

“I try to be nice to everyone.” He scooped sauerkraut and sausages onto two plates and carried them to the kitchen table. “Especially to Abigail. Kids that age, they’re heartless. They showed her no mercy.”

“Because she was in a wheelchair?”

“That’s one of the reasons.”

“Why does she need it?”

“She had some kind of tumor in her spine when she was a kid. As long as I’ve known her, she’s been in that wheelchair.” He placed the pot of mashed potatoes on the table, and they both sat down. “Then after that thing happened—oh, Abigail went through some rough times. Both those kids did. For months, no one would talk to them. No one would even look at them.”

“You mean after what their father did.”

Owen nodded. “Abigail was old enough and levelheaded enough to deal with the aftermath, and she managed to carry on with her life. But Reuben, the kid was only twelve years old. That’s a tender age, especially for a boy. Having to deal with the shame, the humiliation. The out-and-outhatred.” Owen sighed. “The kid just retreated into hisshell and never came out again. You hardly ever see him around town. He and his sister just hide out in that shack on Maiden Pond.”

“God, it must have been awful for them,” said Jo as she scooped potatoes onto her plate. “Having a crazy father.”

“Sam Tarkin wasn’t crazy.”

“He killed four people.”

“Well, that’s true. He did.”

“If he wasn’t crazy, then what was he? Evil?”

Her father didn’t answer right away, but sliced off a piece of sausage and chewed it as he considered his next words. “Not everyone fits into a nice, neat category. Sam certainly didn’t.”

She looked up from her plate. “You knew him?”

“Yes, I did.”

“How well?”

“Sam Tarkin helped my father build this house. He worked side by side with your grandpa, putting on this roof, laying down this oak floor. I saw that man here almost every day for nearly a year, hammering and sawing with my dad. He was always friendly, always reliable. Never a bad word out of his mouth. Your grandma, she wasn’t one to warm up to people easily, but she liked Sam Tarkin. Liked him well enough to feed him lunch whenever he was working here. And that’s about as high a recommendation as a man could have.”

“You never sawanywarning of what he’d do?”

“Not a one. Sam worked with builders and contractors up and down the coast, and no one ever complained. He was a fine carpenter too. Built that cabinet right over there.” Owen pointed to the kitchen cupboard, something she’d probably opened and closed a thousand times. Now she looked at the cabinet door and thought:A killer’s hands built that.

“So why did he do it? Why kill those people?” she asked. “Something must have made him snap.”

“We all asked ourselves that question. Everyone who knew him, especially your grandma. Two of the people he ran over were completestrangers to him. Just tourists, here on a nice summer day, strolling down the street. He’d have no reason to kill them. He did know two of the victims, including the police officer, but he’d never had a problem with them.”

“What about his wife? Did she have any idea he’d do this?”

“She said she didn’t. Sure, money was tight in their family, with Abigail’s medical bills and all. But money’s tight for a lot of people around here. Maybe the stress caught up with him. Maybe something just tipped him over the edge. People who saw it happen said that after he shot the police officer, he was waving the gun around, yelling about monsters. He might have shot more people if he hadn’t been killed first.”

“That sounds to me like he had a psychotic break.”

“That’s what they said later, some sort of psychiatric crisis. Maybe money troubles finally got to him. Those medical bills for Abigail. Plus, his old van had just died, and he had to take out a loan to buy the new one. All that pressure, it could have set him off.”

---