The Cabin

She turned up Gran’s narrow street of mostly big, multifamily homes built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Iris Dunning had managed to buy one of the few single-family houses on the street, an 1896 two-story stucco with a glassed-in front porch, an open back porch and a detached one-car garage, not that common in crowded Somerville. She’d planted flowering trees and perennial gardens, battling skunks, cats, raccoons and the occasional neighborhood miscreant.

Susanna kicked off her boots in the front hall and found her daughters doing their homework in the dining room. Gran was already off to Jim’s Place for clam chowder. She never missed chowder night.

“Dad called,” Maggie said. She was wrapped in a 1950s shawl she’d found in Gran’s attic and had on fingerless Bob Cratchit gloves. Drama, Susanna thought. Gran liked to keep the house cool, but not that cool. “He wants you to call him back. He said to call him on his cell phone.”

Ellen looked up from her laptop. “We told him about the snow. Mom, can you believe less than a week ago we were in south Texas and now it’s snowing? I hope they cancel school.”

Susanna smiled. “Be careful what you wish for. Gran’ll put you to work shoveling.”

She grabbed the portable phone off the clunky dining room table and sat in a chair badly in need of refinishing. It was a comfortable, lived-in room with its dark woodwork and flowered wallpaper. Her parents liked to tease Gran about coming in and redoing the place, stripping the wallpaper, tearing up the rugs, getting rid of all her tacky artwork, but she paid no attention. She was happy with her house just the way it was. As long as the roof didn’t leak, she didn’t plan to change a thing.

Susanna dialed Jack’s number, and he answered on the first ring. “I’m on the patio,” he said, laying on his slow, deep Texas drawl. “It’s a beautiful night.”

“Liar. It’s in the fifties and raining.”

“Ah. You checked.”

“Only because we’re tracking a nor’easter. Thank God it didn’t blow in last week when the girls were flying. What’s up?”

“I wanted you to know Alice Parker is out of prison. She took a room in San Antonio for a few days. Now she’s gone. Her friends in prison say she was obsessed with Australia. Maybe she’s headed in that direction.”

His voice was businesslike, but not matter-of-fact. Susanna glanced at the girls, both pretending not to be listening. Maggie was frowning over her math homework, Ellen tapping keys on her laptop.

“She’d need a passport, money—” Susanna took a breath, noticing that Maggie and Ellen were no longer making any pretense of studying. “Jack, are you worried she’ll come after you? You investigated her. She thinks it’s your fault no one’s ever been charged in Rachel McGarrity’s murder.”

“Alice Parker isn’t required to tell me or anyone else where she is or what she’s doing. Provided she doesn’t break the law, she can do whatever she wants.”

Susanna frowned. “Then why tell me she was released from prison?”

He didn’t answer at once. “No particular reason.”

What was that supposed to mean? Jack Galway didn’t do anything for no reason. Everything he did and said had a purpose. He was the most deliberate man Susanna knew. She felt hot, jittery, as if he had her in an interrogation room and she was lying to a Texas Ranger, not just having an ordinary conversation with her husband. “Well, I hope Alice Parker gets her life back on track. Do you want to talk to the girls?”

“Sure,” he said, his tone impossible to read. “Put them on.”

She handed the phone to Ellen and ran into the kitchen, diving into the half-bathroom. She splashed her face with cold water. Her eyes were hot with tears. She was shaking, her reflection pale in the small oval mirror. She touched her lips with wet fingers and could almost imagine it was Jack touching her. She’d loved him so hard, so long. What had happened?

Susanna, Susanna...you don’t believe I killed my wife.

Beau McGarrity. She could still hear his cajoling, hurt voice that day in her kitchen. He’d never made an overt threat against her or her children. It was in his gesture, his tone, the fact that he had walked into her kitchen from her patio, without knocking. She’d been doing a tai chi tape in the family room. The girls were at theater and soccer practice. She hadn’t thought to lock the patio door.

She’d started the recorder, not knowing what he meant to do or say. At first, she didn’t even know who he was, except that she’d spotted him twice before that week, once in town, once at the school. Susanna had told herself it was coincidence and chided herself for starting to think like a jaded law enforcement officer, taking the routine oddities of life and turning them into something potentially sinister.

She hadn’t known Alice Parker was being investigated—or that Jack would arrest her that afternoon. Giving her the tape when she showed up at her front door had made sense at the time.

Saying nothing to Jack about Beau McGarrity’s visit had, too.

When he came home that evening and told her about Alice’s arrest and never mentioned the tape, Susanna assumed the tape was no good, completely irrelevant—and that Alice hadn’t mentioned it to him. Why should she? She was on her way to prison, her career ruined. If there’d been anything useful on the tape, she’d have turned it over, if only to nail Beau McGarrity and prove herself right.

Jack had been so taciturn that night, even more uncommunicative than usual. He was glad to have the Alice Parker investigation over with. The local police department would continue with the investigation into Rachel McGarrity’s murder. He’d opened a beer, took a long drink and laid back his head, shutting his eyes.

All Susanna could think about was how he’d react if she’d told him Beau McGarrity had been to their house. His work had never touched his family this way. Never. They were both accustomed to her being afraid for him. But not for herself, not for their daughters.

She’d found herself unable to tell him what had happened. She didn’t know what he’d do.

Her own fear was irrational, visceral. Just pretend everything was okay and go to Boston with the girls, let the dust settle, clear her head...then tell him.

Now Alice Parker was out of prison, and Susanna still hadn’t told her husband what had happened on that hot, confused day over a year ago.

But she loved him.

Oh, God, she loved him.

“Mom!” It was Ellen yelling. “Dad wants to talk to you!”

Susanna dried her face and hands and slipped out of the bathroom. The girls were in the kitchen, and Ellen handed her the phone, whispering, “We told him about the cabin. We thought he knew.”

“He’s pissed,” Maggie added, more as a point of fact than a warning.

Susanna nodded and ducked back into the half bath. She wanted total privacy for this conversation. “A cabin in the Adirondacks,” she said cheerfully. “Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?”

“When were you going to tell me?”

There was nothing calm, professional or deliberate about him now. This was Jack Galway at his stoniest. “I don’t know. I hadn’t even thought about it.” But that was an outright lie, and when she caught her reflection in the mirror, she saw the guilt. “I’m sorry. It was a spur of the moment thing, but I should have told you—”

“Don’t be sorry. I don’t give a damn what you do.”

He hung up.

Susanna stared at the dead phone. Then she hit redial. He let his voice mail take the call. She hit redial again. More voice mail. On her third redial, he picked up, but didn’t speak. She did. “Damn it, Jack, did you hang up on me?”

“Yes, and I’m going to hang up on you again.”

“And I’m going to keep calling you until you knock it off!”

“That’s harassment. I’ll have you arrested, even up in Boston.”

No one could get under her skin the way he could. “Just try.” She took a quick breath, decided not to fight fire with fire. This once, she could be reasonable. “I can see how you’d look at the cabin as a thumb in your eye, but that’s not what I was thinking when I bought it. Truthfully, I wasn’t thinking—it was like it was meant to be. I couldn’t resist. It’s in the most beautiful spot, right on Blackwater Lake. Gran grew up there. You’ll have to see it.”

“Why?”

“Why?” she repeated dumbly. The man drove her mad. He knew the worst, most awkward, most difficult and probing questions to ask her. But he was a trained interrogator. He could get people to confess to murder, never mind to why they’d bought a cabin in the Adirondacks.

“Yes. Why do I have to see it?”

“I don’t know—it makes sense. You’re my husband.”

“It’s an open invitation?”