“Sure, Stan,” she said to him. “I’ll think about it and call you in a few weeks, then.” But she knew she’d never go back to the paper. Her work there was wrapped up in her relationship with Kevin. She couldn’t possibly continue in her job without her marriage, too. And with every day that passed, she realized what a mistake that marriage had been.
After Kate and Simon finished laughing and crying about the scene at the Tavern, Simon took Kate’s hands.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m going to say something that sounds very callous and mean.”
“That’s nothing new,” she snorted.
“Seriously,” he said, squeezing her hands. “Don’t get mad at me for bringing this up, but you got quite an inheritance when Granny died, just like I did.”
“And?”
“And—I certainly hope you got a pre-nup.”
“It’s written on stone tablets, I think,” she chuckled. “That was the one thing my dad insisted on when I told my parents we were getting married after such a brief courtship.”
“Thanks, Uncle Fred.” Simon smiled. “What are the terms, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“It stipulates that, in case of a divorce, our marital assets would be divided—what we earned and accumulated together after our marriage, in other words—but the trust was off-limits.”
Simon had a dark thought. “What about if you died?”
“The trust would go to any children we had. If we had no children, half would go to Kevin and half back to my parents.”
Simon squinted at her over the rim of his coffee cup.
“I didn’t want to leave him with nothing if he were a grieving widower.”
As Simon brought their dishes into the kitchen, he was suddenly very glad his cousin had come to Wharton. He made a silent vow to keep her safely under his roof until those divorce papers were filed.
Johnny Stratton’s team was running into a brick wall with their investigation of the murder. They knew only the cause of death. Nothing more. No missing persons reports, no clues as to who the woman was, who killed her, or how she had ended up in the lake. Kevin Bradford’s polygraph proved that he had nothing to do with this woman or her baby—DNA results might tell them otherwise, but those weren’t in yet.
There was no love lost between Johnny and Kate’s husband, but Johnny was literally breathing easier since he saw the man’s polygraph. If Bradford didn’t know this woman and wasn’t the father of that baby, then Kate had no motive for killing them.
Still. He knew Katie was hiding something. He had seen it clearly in her eyes that morning at Fred’s kitchen table. It was a cloud, the same cloud he had seen seep into the eyes of hundreds of liars even as they were professing the truth. If it were anybody else, he would have kept after her until she told him what it was. But Katie Granger? He was tempted to just let sleeping dogs lie. And because of that, he knew he needed to step back from this case. He was too close.
He dialed the number of the precinct in Wharton.
“Nick Stone.”
“Stone! It’s Johnny Stratton. How are you settling into police work in a small town?”
“Keeping Wharton safe from jaywalkers and speeders,” Stone said, a chuckle in his voice. “And getting to know everyone in town. It’s a nice change, actually.”
“That’s the spirit,” Johnny said, knowing why the cop had requested a transfer from the city. “But I’m calling to change all of that, I’m afraid. I’ve got a murder case I need your help with.”
CHAPTER TEN
Great Bay, 1901
October 30
Dear Jess,
I find myself wondering about you constantly. I’ll be walking through town thinking, Does he like his courses? Has he made friends? What is the university like? Most of the time, I’m not even looking at what’s in front of me, so entranced am I in the world that I am imagining for you. I’m even wondering about what you’re eating. Do they have different, wonderful foods in the city that we don’t have here?
As you can see, I’m still a curious cat.
Life at home is the same as it has always been, with one major difference: you are not here. You can’t imagine how odd the same old life seems without someone who was always there by my side. The school year has started, as you probably know, and our new teacher, Mrs. Patterson, is fond of piling on the work.
I have reluctantly had to put the bicycle away for the winter. I’ve so enjoyed it these months, even though my father says it’s not ladylike.
Well, that’s all for now. Please write and let me know how you’re getting on.
Your friend,
Addie Cassatt
Addie folded the letter into its envelope and walked out of the house toward the post office, buttoning up her coat all the way to the neck, winding her scarf snugly around her head, and pulling on her hood for good measure. The first gale of the season was upon the tiny fishing village, and, as with many late fall storms on this Great Lake, it was punishing.
Snow and hard pellets of sleet plummeted down, coating everything they touched in a slick layer of ice. Worse even than that, the wind caught those tiny frozen shards in its breath and blew them in fierce gusts into the faces of those fool enough to venture outdoors. After walking in one of those ice storms, it was not uncommon to find one’s face covered in razor-thin cuts.
Any sensible person would be safe and warm inside, reading by the fire or cooking in front of a hot stove. Indeed, many eyes were delivering sidelong glances from their warm rooms behind frosty windowpanes, wondering what that foolish Cassatt girl was up to now, out walking on this kind of day. But for Addie, she was finished with her letter, and that meant it was time to walk to the post office. The weather simply didn’t enter into it.
She had been waiting almost two months for a letter from Jess. Why hadn’t he written immediately as he’d said he would? Addie ruminated on this for a while and concluded that he must be consumed with his new life, his college classes and a roommate, everyone and everything around him fresh and new and exciting. Home must seem quite dull indeed.
Addie had imagined they would be writing letters to each other as fast as the post could take them, and through those words and descriptions, she would experience a bit of his newfound life. She had further imagined that waiting for those letters—words from a faraway love—would add some excitement to her everyday existence. It was a romantic notion of a na?ve young girl. Waiting this long for letters that never came was a tedious exercise in frustration. At this rate, Jess’s four years of college would drag out to eternity for Addie.
Head down, eyes nearly closed, Addie slogged her way through the punishing sleet to the post office. Grateful for the brief respite indoors, she mailed the letter, exchanged a few pleasantries with the postmistress, and headed back outside toward home. She was distracted midway by the waves on the lake, enormous whitecaps roiling and bubbling on the surface of the water only to crash mightily and furiously onshore. Addie loved the lake in all its moods, but perhaps its fury most of all. The anger and power of the waves made her shudder. She felt small and helpless in the face of such power, yet she knew somehow that she would always be safe within it. She scrambled down the rocky embankment toward the lakeshore, and there she sat just out of the water’s grasp.