“Officers are on the way already,” he said. “Don’t worry.
Whatever happened to you, we’re going to sort it, okay? In the meantime, I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”
Unable to stop herself, Abigail brought her hand up and pressed a finger and a thumb against her eyelids. She cried solidly for about two minutes while Detective Mando waited. There was nothing she could do to stop it from coming out of her. She’d been wound so tight for so long and now everything was unspooling, her body out of her control.
When she eventually stopped crying, he pushed a box of tissues across the table toward her and said, “Okay. Let’s start at the beginning.”
EPILOGUE
Abigail received the email on Friday afternoon, but didn’t open it until Sunday, after she’d brought her laptop onto her back patio. It was a beautiful late April morning, one of those rare warm spring days in Massachusetts. All the remnants of that winter’s numerous snowstorms were gone, and crocuses and daffodils had just started to appear. The email was from the wedding photographer.
Dear Abigail, I didn’t know if I should send you these pictures, but then I figured that that was your decision, and not mine. I was very sorry to hear about what happened after the wedding. I hope you are doing as well as can be. For what it’s worth, it was great getting to know you and your family and friends a little bit over that weekend in October. The attached link will allow you to look at all of the photographs （almost 500!）， if you choose. If you do end up wanting higher res versions of any of these, please let me know. But other than that, no need to respond. All the best and take care, Natalie Ramirez She remembered the photographer, a woman so tiny that eventually you almost didn’t see her, wending her way around the various wedding events with a camera that looked enormous in her hands.
Abigail wondered what Natalie had thought when she first heard about the events on Heart Pond Island. The initial news reports had been somewhat vague. “Police Investigating Multiple Suspicious Deaths on Honeymoon Island.” Then, later, “Inside the Alleged ‘Cult’ That Punished Wives for Infidelities.” At that point it was a federal case, and the story had broken nationally, leading to a deluge of reporters descending on Boxgrove, where Abigail was now living. She hadn’t returned to New York City after what had happened on the island. She’d returned home, sleeping in her mother’s bed for a while, then in her childhood bedroom. A month earlier she’d moved half a block away to a small rental house, already furnished. Her parents thought it was silly for her to get her own place, but her own place made her feel she was moving in the right direction.
It had been more than six months of talking. To her parents, to Zoe, to a succession of therapists. And, of course, constant interrogations, some under oath, with both federal agents and a slew of attorneys. In the midst of all this she’d somehow managed to work on her novel, about the twins in New York. She knew it was less than stellar but didn’t mind. Involving herself in that fictional world, no matter how dark that world was, was preferable to thinking about what had happened in her actual life.
Two months earlier, Charles “Chip” Ramsay III had been arrested in Mexico, where he’d fled after his indictment. Eric Newman, last Abigail had heard, was cooperating with the federal investigation into what was now being called the Silvanus Cult, a small group of men with ties to other men’s rights groups, and with a history of testing their girlfriends and wives for fidelity. Some of the wealthier members, such as Bruce, were also partners in a limited liability corporation set up by Chip Ramsay called Silvanus Incorporated, named after the Roman god of the woods and of wild nature. That corporation had purchased Heart Pond Island and the defunct summer camps on it, as well as a similar island in the Puget Sound, the place where Bruce had gone for his bachelor weekend. Once the floodgates had been opened, a surprising number of current and ex-employees of both these places had stepped forward to give testimony, along with multiple women, all with stories about being elaborately punished for their transgressions. Chip Ramsay’s own wife had disappeared two years earlier, and that disappearance was now being treated as a potential homicide.
Mellie, whose full name was Melanie Nadeau, had turned herself in as a cooperating witness, claiming that she had been coerced against her will by Chip Ramsay to work on Heart Pond Island. Porter Conyers, the man from Bermuda who had once been involved with Jill Greenly, had somehow managed to entirely disappear. Jill’s husband, Alec Greenly, the producer, had committed suicide in his jail cell in February by hanging himself with a bathroom towel.