Page 82 of The Summer Guests

“No one else has?” Maggie said.

“You’re the first, outside of my own family.” She looked at the young man. “And Bertie here. But he’s like family.”

Bertie smiled. “We fight like family, anyway. Shall I bring some tea, Cathy?”

“Yes. And the butter cookies. No one ever turns down butter cookies.” She looked at her visitors. “Please, sit down.”

As Bertie headed into the kitchen, Declan and Maggie settled into chairs. For a moment, the only noise was the kettle being filled with water and the clink of chinaware. Cathy was studying them with her head cocked, as though peering at some unfamiliar species that had suddenly landed in her living room. “Tell me why you want to know about my sister. How did you even hear about her?”

“There was a news article in thePurity Weekly, 1972,” Maggie said. “It was about your sister, who went missing. It said you were the one who alerted the police.”

Cathy nodded. “Vivian planned to drive down to Boston and stay with me for a few days, before going on to Washington. That night, I expected her at my house in time for dinner. I had the guest room all made up, a roast in the oven. I waited and waited, but she didn’t show up, didn’t call. That wasn’t like her, not at all. If Vivian said she’d be somewhere, you could count on it. At midnight, when she still hadn’t arrived, Iknewsomething had happened to her. So I called the police.”

“In Purity? Or in Boston?”

“Both. For all the good it did,” she added bitterly. “They told me that she hadn’t been missing long enough. That she’d probably gotten tired and pulled off the road to take a nap. Or maybe she’d just changed her mind, as if she was some silly woman who couldn’t stick to a plan. I told them Vivian wasn’t like that, but I don’t think they believed me.It took them two whole days before they finally took me seriously.” She turned to look at the photos on her wall. “By then, my sister was lying comatose in a hospital in New Hampshire.”

“New Hampshire?” Maggie stared at her. “So shedidmake it out of Maine.”

“Barely. She was just this side of the New Hampshire border when she had her accident. She lasted three long years in a coma, before ...” Cathy’s voice faded.

“Then your sister—she’s deceased?” said Maggie.

Cathy nodded. “I scattered her ashes in the sea, off Nantucket.”

Chapter 38

Vivian Stillwater was not the lady in the lake.

Maggie looked at Declan and saw that he was just as taken aback as she was by this new information. Ingrid’s search for Vivian’s fate had turned up no record of any hospitalization or cremation, no death certificate. The woman had effectively been erased from all official records.

“How did she end up in the hospital?” Declan asked. “You said she had an accident.”

Cathy nodded. “It’s a strange thing. We know she managed to drive all the way from Purity, because her car was later found abandoned in a ditch on the New Hampshire side. She must have gotten confused or lost, because the police said she was walking barefoot on a road a few miles away when she was hit by a car. At the time she had no purse, nothing to identify her, so she was admitted to the hospital under the name Jane Doe. I didn’t find out where she was until days later.” Cathy paused, said quietly: “She never woke up from her coma.”

Maggie looked at the photos on the wall and focused on an image of two young women, their red hair windblown, their eyes crinkled in midlaugh. “Is that you and your sister?”

“Yes. Our girl trip to the Grand Canyon. She was a big hiker. Me, not so much. But she talked me into going down the Bright Angel Trail. It turned out to be the best day of my life.”

Bertie returned to the living room, carrying a tray of teacups and a plate of Danish butter cookies. The tragic story of Cathy’s sister hadcast such a dark shadow over the room that the plate of cookies sat untouched. They were silent as Bertie poured the tea, fragrant with an exotic blend of jasmine and coconut, and handed out the cups.

“It is a sad story, isn’t it?” said Bertie. “I’m sorry I never met Vivian.”

“Oh, she would’ve loved you, Bertie,” said Cathy. “She adored saucy young men, almost as much as I do.” She gave a rueful shake of the head. “Which probably explains why I’ve been married three times.”

“After she was admitted to the hospital,” Maggie said gently, “who came to visit her?”

“Not a soul. Only me. When it became clear she wouldn’t improve, she was moved to a long-term care facility. Her health insurance covered all the expenses, thank God, because I certainly couldn’t afford it. And that’s where my beautiful sister ended up. Lying in a coma for three years, shriveling away to this—thismummifiedversion of Vivian. It upset me to see her like that, but I never stopped visiting her. Every weekend, I’d sit by her bed, hoping she’d respond to my voice. Squeeze my hand, blink her eyes,something.” Cathy sighed. “Then one morning, they called to say she’d passed away during the night. Three years in a coma, and she was gone. My beautiful, brilliant sister.”

Bertie took her hand. It was clear from the way they looked at each other that he was more than just a nurse’s aide; he was family, and they were comfortable, simply sitting together and not saying a word.

“You said your sister had health insurance,” said Declan. “Was this from her job?”

“Yes. Some government research institute in Washington.”

“Washington? Where she was planning to drive, after visiting you.”

“Yes. I think she was going to meet someone about a new job. I know she wasn’t happy about the work she was doing in Maine. There’d been disagreements with her colleagues, especially the man in charge.”

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