And rich, Abigail, don’t forget that.
Yes, and rich. There would be a time for Abigail to try to understand just how much that had played into her decision, but now wasn’t the time.
And maybe there is a good explanation? Maybe Bruce isn’t part of it?
Spoiled bitch.
Abigail stood. As much as she wouldn’t have minded staying longer in the woods, alone, she had made a plan and it was time to enact it.
The bunk was empty. It was what Abigail had been hoping for. She knew that she’d eventually have to face Bruce, but she didn’t mind putting it off.
She went to the refrigerator and pulled out a container of fruit salad, plus the plate of cheese and meats that had been sitting there since they’d arrived. Then she grabbed a raspberry lime seltzer, taking a long swig directly from the bottle. She ate all the cheese that was on the plate, then picked the fruit she liked from the salad and ate that, too. After changing into pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, she crawled into bed, putting the seltzer bottle next to her. When Bruce came home, she’d just tell him she wasn’t feeling well and that she wanted to stay in the bunk until the plane was on its way.
She couldn’t sleep, so she propped herself on two pillows and watched as an oblong of light coming from the west-facing window worked its way across the duvet cover. She got out of bed, cracked the door, and peered around its edge so that she could see up to the lodge, wanting to make sure that Bruce wasn’t coming down the slope toward the bunk. She didn’t see anyone, so she shut the door and went to the closet that Bruce was using.
He’d hung his clothes, but she couldn’t immediately see where he’d put his empty travel bag. She looked on the shelf at the top of the closet, but it wasn’t there, and then she found it on the floor of the closet, pushed toward the back. The closet was much larger than she’d thought possible; it was deep, and there was an alcove on the side with extra shelves. Abigail knelt, unzipped the leather bag, and ran her hands along the inside. His cell phone was there, and she pulled it out, turning it on. He’d changed his backdrop picture to one of the photographs from the wedding, a candid shot, both of them laughing on the dance floor. It felt like a moment that had happened in a different lifetime. She checked to see if the phone was locked, and it was. She’d watched him punch in his four-digit passcode a few times, but she couldn’t remember it now.
Besides, what was the point of unlocking his phone when there was no service on the island?
She put the phone back in the bag and felt around for anything else in the zipped-up side pockets. There was one paperback book, something academic called Hierarchy in the Forest. Abigail thumbed through the pages. There was an inscription inside the front cover:
To Bruce,
Good stuff here—
Your brother, Chip
Abigail assumed that was Chip Ramsay. After all, how many Chips did Bruce know? Not that it meant much to her. The subtitle was The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. She put the book back.
There were more items in the other interior pocket. An engraved lighter, an unopened package of Altoids, and an ornate silver ring of a man’s face constructed of leaves, just like the face she’d seen on the sign in the woods. She stared at it, mesmerized and disturbed. The words “green man” popped into her head. She could picture a sign hanging in front of a bar somewhere, or maybe it was a pub sign from the trip she’d taken with Ben to England after they’d graduated from college. She couldn’t quite put it all together, except that she now knew for sure that whatever was happening here at Quoddy Resort was tied in with her husband. It couldn’t be a coincidence that he owned a ring—a ring he kept hidden from her—that had the same image on it as the sign leading to that clearing in the woods.
She returned the ring to its pocket in the travel bag and slid the bag back into the closet, careful to make sure it looked like it hadn’t been disturbed. Whatever the ring meant, Abigail didn’t want to spend the next eighteen hours alone in the bunk with Bruce. She didn’t know where else she could go, but she didn’t want to be here. She changed back into jeans and a sweater, looked through the window to see if she could spot him on the lawn, but it was empty. Even the archery targets had been taken down. A sudden horrible feeling passed through Abigail, more like an image, actually. That all of them—everyone here at the resort— were up at the lodge meeting to discuss what to do about Abigail.
That’s why it was so quiet outside, even on this beautiful day.
Her against them.