“I’m not going to tell you,” Bruce said. “It might ruin your dinner.”
“You can tell me after dinner.”
“Sure,” Bruce said, smiling, and she was pretty sure he wasn’t going to.
Abigail cut a small piece from her single tortellini, sprinkled with slivers of black truffle, and took a bite. She immediately concluded it was the single best thing she’d ever put in her mouth.
After dinner, a little bit uncomfortably full, but mainly sleepy, Bruce and Abigail got up from their table and walked back into the hall.
There were a few men around the bar.
“Nightcap?” Bruce asked.
“Oh God, no,” Abigail said. “But you should get one.”
“Maybe I’ll order a whiskey at the bar and have it sent to our room. You sure you don’t want anything? A Baileys?”
“Thank you, no, I’m fine.”
She stood in the center of the hall, immediately under the chandelier, which seemed dimmer somehow. Maybe the candles had burned down or maybe they weren’t candles after all, just an elaborate illusion. She stared at it, but she didn’t have her distance glasses with her and the chandelier was blurry. The periodic sense of unreality that she’d been feeling since meeting Bruce flooded her again, but this time it was accompanied by an empty feeling. It was the combination of extreme luxury and the feeling she couldn’t quite shake that Bruce was still somehow a stranger. There was something else as well. It was the emptiness of this resort; it reminded her of a theatrical set after the season was over. It echoed.
She looked toward the bar, where Bruce was waiting to talk with the bartender. Her vision blurred drastically, a sign she was very tired and a little drunk. She heard footsteps, loud against the stone floor, then soft, then loud again, someone walking across one of the scattered rugs. Then she realized the footsteps were coming toward her, and she turned, expecting to see Jill or Alec, or else another employee pushing an after-dinner drink on her.
But it wasn’t Jill or Alec, or an employee of the resort. It was Scottie from California, a tentative half smile on his face.
Abigail’s legs went weak, and for a second she thought, I’m going to faint, right here in the middle of this hall.
Scottie stopped, and then he must have seen the color leaving her face because he immediately moved toward her again, closing in as though to catch her from falling.
Abigail raised a hand, though, and he stopped short of actually touching her. She regained some of her composure, and said, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Shh,” he said.
“Don’t shh me. What are you doing here? I’m on my honeymoon.”
“Look,” he said. “I got your email, and I’m sorry if you were telling the truth, but I just didn’t believe you. I just need … I want an hour of your time.”
Abigail turned toward the bar, where Bruce was now talking with the bartender. “Seriously, you need to leave.”
“Walk down to the pond tomorrow morning, early, and I’ll be there. Please.”
Abigail turned from him and walked, on unsteady legs, toward the bar, and came up behind Bruce, placing a hand on the small of his back. “Oh, hi,” he said.
“Can you make that two whiskeys, Bruce?” she said, her voice shaky-sounding, at least to her. “I changed my mind.”
CHAPTER 12
When she could see the faint light of dawn begin to penetrate the drawn curtains of the bunk, Abigail got out of bed, pulled a sweater on over her pajamas, and quietly opened the doors that led to the veranda. She stepped outside into the cold misty morning, and looked down toward Heart Pond, wondering if Scottie, or whoever he really was, was already there.
She’d already decided that she wouldn’t meet with him. She was tempted, figuring that maybe if she was forceful enough she could talk him into leaving her alone, leaving the island, never contacting her again. But, down deep, she knew that going to meet him alone would only lead him on. It might even be dangerous. He’d stalked her across the country. He’d probably come to her wedding. And he’d actually followed her on her honeymoon. What else was he capable of?
She hadn’t slept at all. Walking with Bruce from the lodge to their bunk, each with their faux-lantern, she could feel herself start to shake, a delayed reaction to the appearance of Scottie in the hall of the lodge.
“Cold out here,” she’d managed to say, the lanterns carving out small pockets of light in the blackness of the night. Above them the sky was filled with more stars than she’d ever seen.