“And what exactly is that?” asked Annie.
“Giving false hope to a trusting old lady.”
“I don’t see how. From where I’m standing, Mari is doing just fine out of our arrangement. She’s going to get twenty percent of everything I make from the kiosk and the café without having to lift a finger. If anything, I’m building her a little nest egg ready for when she comes home.”
“She’s not coming home!”
“Says who?”
“Says me!”
“Shouldn’t Mari decide whether she gets to live in her own home?”
“You have no idea of the relationship I have with my aunt or the discussions we’ve had about her future.”
“Are those the ones where you sell her home out from under her to a business fat cat for mega bucks?” Even Annie was surprised by her brazenness.
John puffed out exasperatedly. “He’s a builder, I’ve known him for years. Despite what you may have heard, his plans are very sympathetic of the land.”
“But not so sympathetic of your aunt’s wishes.”
John ran his hand through his hair and sucked air in through his teeth.
“You are determined to think the worst of me,” he said curtly.
It occurred to Annie that she may not have been entirely fair, but while she racked her brain for something conciliatory to say, John took her silence as confirmation.
“Enjoy your Sunday,” he said, turning to walk down the steps. “Perhaps if you would appraise me by my actual actions, rather than what you presuppose my intentions to be, you might judge me less harshly.”
“Presuppose?” Annie called after him. “Who even talks like that? Oh, wait a minute, the 1870s just called, they want their vocabulary back!”
John didn’t look back. In three long strides, he had reached the gate and let himself out, fastening the latch carefully behind him. He climbed into his Range Rover and drove away.
Annie was struck by how quickly the conversation had turned. Was he right? Was she determined to think the worst of him? It was true that she had felt riled by John from the very first with his snitty e-mail. And now, she found herself stuck in a kind of spite-rut, where whenever she saw his face, she felt overwhelmingly compelled to be rude to it.
Chapter 44
Halloween has always been a big deal in Willow Bay, what with its shady past and dark history. The village itself is named after the Willow, a ship which ran aground on the rocks out past the peninsula on October 1st 1502. Before that it had been known, somewhat unimaginatively, as Fish Beach, a rather out-of-the-way place that didn’t get much in the way of visitors. The story goes, a ferocious storm had raged for three days and nights and on the fourth night, lost and confused by the starless night and the squalling tempest, the Willow sailed in close by the bay. The villagers ran to the beach waving flaming torches to warn the ship that it was too close but it was too late, either the crew didn’t see them or couldn’t change course in time. The Willow sailed headlong into the bay and was dashed against the rocks. The villagers gathered to help （or pilfer the cargo, depending on which accounts you read） but there were no survivors （again, this depends on which version of events you can stomach; there were accounts of sailors being drowned so they couldn’t make a claim on the cargo）。 Either way, bodies continued to wash up on the shore for days and weeks after.
The villagers were a superstitious bunch. Though the name had been changed to All Hallows’ Eve by then, the old Samhain belief that the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest between the last days of October and the first days of November was still very much alive. As you can imagine, the village was gripped by a fear that they would be overrun with the souls of dead sailors, so they carved scary faces into turnips and swedes and built fires along the beach to ward off any evil spirits looking for a spot of revenge.
Later on in the dubious history of Willow Bay, the smugglers used the nights between All Hallows’ Eve and Guy Fawkes Night—with the lighted fires on the beach and the near-constant celebrations—as a mask to cover their illegal transportation of whiskey and tea into the tunnels beneath Saltwater Nook; it was said to be their most prolific week of the year! At an agreed signal, the residents of the houses in the hillside would drop ropes down to the beach from the bottoms of their gardens and the smugglers would emerge from the Saltwater Nook cellar under cover of darkness with their hoard. They’d tie the ropes around the contraband barrels, and the goods would be hauled up through the undergrowth and hidden within the village.