“Why?”

“Bad dreams.” He shrugs. “Maybe this house is too quiet. I can’t remember the last time I had nightmares like this.”

Slowly I sit down at the table and study him. “What kind of nightmares?”

“There’s nothing less interesting than someone else’s dreams.”

“I’m interested. Tell me.”

He takes a deep breath, as if just the recounting of his nightmare requires the marshaling of nerves. “It’s as if he was sitting on my chest. Trying to squeeze the breath out of me. I wondered if I was having a heart attack. I actually felt his hands around my throat.”

He. His.

“I tried to fight him off, but I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed, the way it always happens in dreams. And he kept choking me until I really thought…” He takes another breath. “Anyway, I couldn’t go back to sleep after that. I just lay awake, listening for him. Half expecting him to come back.”

“Why do you say him?”

“I don’t know. I guess I could just as well say it. I only know it had me by the throat. And here’s the weird thing, Ava. When I woke up, that feeling of being choked was so vivid, I was desperate for a glass of water. I went into the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror, and just for an instant I could have sworn there were marks on my neck.” He gives a sheepish laugh. “Then I blinked and of course there was nothing. But that’s how shaken up I was.”

    I stare at the exposed skin above his shirt collar but I see nothing unusual. No bruises, no marks left by phantom fingers.

He drains his coffee cup. “Anyway, I might as well hit the road early and beat the traffic back to Boston. I’ve already packed my bag.”

I walk him outside to his car and stand shivering in the crisp sea air as he loads his bag into the trunk. Birds trill overhead and a monarch butterfly sketches colorful zigzags through a clump of milkweed. It is going to be a glorious day, but Simon seems desperate to escape.

He turns to give me a goodbye peck on the cheek, and I see him cast a nervous glance at the house, as if he doesn’t dare turn his back on it. “Now finish the damn book, Ava.”

“I will.”

“And get back to Boston, where you belong.”

I can’t help but feel a sense of relief as I watch him drive away. The house is mine again, it’s a beautiful summer morning, and the whole day lies ahead of me. I hear a noisy meow and look down to see Hannibal sitting at my feet, tail twitching, breakfast no doubt on his mind.

Food is on my mind, as well.

I turn back to the house. Only as I climb the stairs do I notice the FedEx package sitting on the porch swing. The driver must have left it yesterday afternoon, while I was busy inside preparing for Simon’s arrival. I pick it up and recognize my own handwriting on the address label. It’s the same FedEx package I sent to Charlotte Nielson last week and I stare at the reason it’s been returned to me.

Three Delivery Attempts.

    I stand on the porch, ignoring Hannibal’s meows, as I consider this bounced-back package. Remembering what Donna Branca had told me: Charlotte hasn’t returned any of my emails and she hasn’t been answering her phone. I’m more than puzzled by this. I’m now thoroughly alarmed.

There is so much I need to ask Charlotte, so much I need to know about her stay in this house. About why she left so abruptly. Was it the ghost who drove her away?

Her address is on Commonwealth Avenue, not far from my own apartment in Boston. Surely there’s someone in her building who can tell me where she has gone, and how I can reach her.

I glance at the kitchen clock: 7:47 A.M. If I leave now, I can be in Boston by one.

Nineteen

It’s a beautiful day for a drive, but I scarcely pay attention to the views of glittering water and tidy seaside cottages; my mind is scrolling back through the odd details that have added up over the weeks since I arrived in Tucker Cove. I think about the cookbook and the bottles of whiskey in the kitchen cabinet, the lone flip-flop under the bed, and the silk scarf bunched up on the floor of the bedroom closet. When Charlotte Nielson abruptly packed up and left, she still had two months on her lease, a detail that now takes on troubling significance. What made her leave Brodie’s Watch so abruptly?

I think I already know the answer: She left because of him. What did Captain Brodie do to you, Charlotte? What finally sent you fleeing from the house? What should I be afraid of?

Only last month I’d driven this same road north, fleeing Boston. Now I’m on my way back to ground zero where everything went wrong. I’m not coming to repair the damage, because it can never be repaired and I can never be absolved. No, this is a different mission entirely. I’m coming to meet the only other living woman who has lived in my house. If she too has seen him, then I’ll know he’s real. I’ll know I’m not going insane.

    But if she hasn’t seen him…

One step at a time, Ava. First find Charlotte.

By the time I cross the border into New Hampshire, traffic has thickened and I join the usual stream of tourists heading home after a vacation of boating and hiking and feasting on lobster. Through windows I glimpse sunburned faces and backseats piled high with suitcases and coolers. In my car there is only me, carrying no luggage except for the emotional baggage that will weigh me down for the rest of my life.

I roll down my window and am startled by the heat that blows in. After a month in Tucker Cove, I’d forgotten how suffocatingly hot the city can be in early September, a concrete oven where tempers easily boil over. At a stoplight, when I pause just a millisecond too long after the traffic light turns green, the driver behind me leans on his horn. In Maine, almost no one honks, and I’m startled by the blare. Thanks for the welcome back to Boston, asshole.

As I drive down Commonwealth Avenue, a knot tightens in my stomach. This is the way to Lucy’s apartment, the way to Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving turkey and Sunday brunches. The way to the person I love most, the person I never meant to hurt. The knot in my stomach turns to nausea as I drive past her building, past the apartment I helped her move into, past the olive-green drapes I helped her pick out. It’s one P.M. on a Saturday, so she’d be home from making her usual rounds in the hospital, alone in that spacious apartment. What would she say if I knocked at her door now and blurted out what really happened New Year’s Eve? But I don’t have the courage. In fact, I’m terrified that she’ll glance out the window, see me driving past, and wonder why I don’t drop in to visit the way I always used to. Just as she wonders why I fled Boston for the summer, why I avoid her phone calls, why I have all but excised her from my life.

    I’m too much of a fucking coward to tell her the truth, so I just keep driving, heading west toward the block where Charlotte Nielson lives.

By the time I pull up in front of her building, my hands are unsteady, my heart racing. I turn off the engine and sit still for a moment, taking deep breaths to calm myself. I notice two teenage boys loitering on the front steps of the building, watching me, no doubt wondering why I’ve been sitting so long in my car. I know they’re probably harmless, but the sheer size of teenage boys, with their giant shoes and hulking shoulders, is intimidating, and I hesitate before I finally step out and walk past them to the building’s entrance. I push the buzzer for Charlotte’s apartment. Once, twice, three times. There’s no response, and the front door is locked.

The boys are still watching me.

“Do either of you live here?” I ask them.

They give simultaneous shrugs, which mean…what? Don’t they know where they live?

“I live here sometimes,” says the bigger one. He has sun-bleached hair, and if he lived in California, he’d probably be hauling a surfboard. “Mostly in the summer, when I’m staying with my dad.”

So it’s one of those families.

“Do you know the other people who live in this building? Do you know Charlotte Nielson?”

“The lady in 314? Yeah.” The boys exchange knowing smirks. “I’d sure like to know her better,” he adds, and they both laugh.

“I really need to reach her. Can you give her this note? I’d like her to call me.” I pull a notepad from my purse and jot down my phone number.

“She’s not here. She’s up in Maine.”

“No, she’s not,” I tell him.

“Yeah, she is.”

    “She was in Maine, but she left a month ago. Didn’t she come home?”

The boy shakes his head. “I haven’t seen her since June. Just before she left for the summer.”

I think about this for a moment, trying to reconcile it with what Donna Branca told me—that Charlotte left Brodie’s Watch because of a family emergency. If she hadn’t returned to Boston, where had she gone? Why wasn’t she answering her emails and phone calls?

“So what’s up with Charlotte?” the teenager asks.

“I don’t know.” I stare at the building. “Is your dad at home?”