Neither will I.

“When she passed on, I don’t remember any questions being raised about how she died,” says Mrs. Dickens. “The one thing I do remember is that she’d been dead for a few days when her nephew found her.” She grimaces. “That must have been an awful sight.”

“Her nephew is Arthur Sherbrooke,” I tell Maeve. “He still owns Brodie’s Watch.”

“And he hasn’t been able to get rid of it,” says Mrs. Dickens. “It’s a beautiful piece of land, but the house has always had a bad reputation. The fact his aunt’s body was lying there for days, decomposing. Then Jessie’s accident. When his aunt died, the house itself was already falling apart. I’m sure he’s hoping that after all these renovations, he’ll finally find a buyer to take it off his hands.”

“Maybe he should have just burned it down,” says Maeve.

“Some people in town have suggested that, but Brodie’s Watch has historical significance. It would be a shame to think of a house with such a pedigree going up in flames.”

I imagine those grand rooms consumed by fire, the turret lit up like a torch as a hundred and fifty years of history are reduced to ashes. When a house is destroyed, what happens to the spirits who linger? What would happen to the captain?

    “Brodie’s Watch deserves to be loved,” I say. “It deserves to be cared for. If I could afford it, I would buy it myself.”

Maeve shakes her head. “You don’t want to own that house, Ava. You don’t know enough about its history.”

“Then I’ll ask someone who might know. The man who owns it, Arthur Sherbrooke.”

* * *

—

Brodie’s Watch stands dark and silent in the fading twilight. I step out of my car and pause in the driveway, looking up at windows that stare back at me like glassy black eyes. I think of the first time I saw Brodie’s Watch and the chill I felt, as if the house was warning me away. I feel no such chill now. Instead I see my home, welcoming me back. I see the place that’s sheltered and comforted me these past weeks. I know I should be disturbed by what happened to those who lived here before me. The house of dead women, Maeve calls it, and she advises me to pack up and leave. That’s what Charlotte Nielson did, yet she ended up dead anyway, at the hands of a flesh-and-blood killer who squeezed the life from her and tossed her body into the sea.

Maybe if she’d stayed in Brodie’s Watch, she’d still be alive.

I step inside and breathe in the familiar scents of home. “Captain Brodie?” I call out. I don’t expect an answer, and I hear only silence, yet I feel his presence all around me, in the shadows, in the air I breathe. I think of the words he once whispered: Under my roof, no harm will come to you. Did he whisper those same words to Aurora Sherbrooke and Margaret Gordon, Violet Theriault and Eugenia Hollander?

In the kitchen, I feed Hannibal and take a pot of leftover fish chowder out of the refrigerator. As the chowder heats on the stove, I sit down to check my email. Along with a note from Simon, who adores the latest three chapters of The Captain’s Table (hooray), there are emails from Amazon (new titles you may be interested in) and Williams Sonoma (get cooking with our latest new kitchenware). I scroll down and stop at an email that makes me go still.

    It’s from Lucy. I don’t open it, but I can’t avoid seeing what is written in the subject line: I miss you. Call me. Such innocuous words, but they are like a shout of accusation. I only have to close my eyes and once again I hear the pop of champagne corks. The shouts of Happy New Year! The screech of Nick’s car pulling away from the curb.

And I remember the aftermath. The long days of sitting with Lucy in Nick’s hospital room, watching his comatose body shrivel and fold into itself like a fetus. I remember the appalling sense of relief I felt on the day he died. I am the only one alive with the secret now, a secret that I keep caged and hidden, but it is always there, feeding on me like a cancer.

I close the laptop and shove it away. Just as I’ve pushed Lucy away, because I cannot bear to face her.

And so I sit alone in this house on the hill. If I were to collapse tonight, the way Aurora Sherbrooke did, who would find me? I look down at Hannibal, who’s already cleaned his plate and is now licking his paws, and I wonder how long it would take before he’d start feasting on my flesh. Not that I would blame him. A cat’s gotta do what a cat’s gotta do, and eating is what Hannibal excels at.

The seafood stew is bubbling on the stove, but I’ve lost my appetite. I turn off the burner and reach for a bottle of Zinfandel. Tonight I need liquid comfort, this bottle is already uncorked, and I crave the bite of tannins and alcohol on my tongue. I pour a generous serving into a glass, and as I lift it to my lips, I catch sight of the recycling bin in the corner.

It is overflowing with empty wine bottles.

I set down my glass. My craving is still as powerful, but those bottles tell a sad story of a woman who lives alone with her cat, who buys wine by the case and drinks herself into oblivion every night, just to fall asleep. I have been trying to drown my guilt, but booze is just a temporary fix that destroys your liver and poisons your brain. It’s made me question what is real and what is fantasy. Does my perfect lover really exist, or is he nothing more than a drunkard’s delusion?

    It’s time for me to learn the truth.

I empty my wineglass into the sink and climb the stairs, fully sober, to bed.

Twenty-Three

By noon the next day I am in my car driving south toward Cape Elizabeth, where Arthur Sherbrooke lives. He is the late Aurora Sherbrooke’s only living relative and the one person who probably knew her best—if, indeed, anyone really knew her. How many people, after all, really know me? Even my own sister, the person I love most, the person I’m closest to, does not know who I am or what I’m capable of. We keep our darkest secrets to ourselves. We keep them, most of all, from those we love.

I grip the steering wheel and stare ahead at the road, eager to focus on something else, anything else, besides Lucy. The history of Brodie’s Watch has been a welcome distraction, a dive down a rabbit hole that keeps me digging ever deeper into the lives and deaths of people I have never met. Do their fates foreshadow my own? Like Eugenia and Violet, Margaret and Aurora, will I meet my death under Captain Brodie’s roof?

    I have visited Cape Elizabeth once before, when I spent the weekend at the home of a college classmate, and I remember handsome homes and manicured lawns sweeping to the sea, a neighborhood that made me think if I ever won the lottery, this was where I’d retire. A tree-lined road leads to a pair of stone pillars where Arthur Sherbrooke’s address is mounted on a brass plaque. There is no gate barring my way so I drive down a road that winds toward a salt marsh, where a coldly modern concrete and glass house stands overlooking the reeds. The house looks more like an art museum than a residence, with stone steps leading through a Japanese garden to the front door. There a wooden sculpture of a fierce Indonesian demon stands guard—not the friendliest face to greet a guest.

I ring the bell.

Through the window, I spy movement, and the pebbled glass makes the approaching figure look like a spindly alien. The door opens and the man who stands there is indeed tall and lanky, with chilly gray eyes. Although Arthur Sherbrooke is in his early seventies, he looks as fit as a long-distance runner, and his focus is laser-sharp.

“Mr. Sherbrooke?”

“Professor Sherbrooke.”

“Oh, sorry. Professor Sherbrooke. I’m Ava Collette. Thank you for seeing me.”

“So you’re writing a book about Brodie’s Watch,” he says as I step into the foyer.

“Yes, and I have a ton of questions about the house.”

“Do you want to buy it?” he cuts in.

“I don’t think I can afford it.”

“If you know anyone who can, I’d like to get rid of the place.” He pauses and adds, “But not at a loss.”

I follow him down a black-tiled hallway to the living room, where floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the salt marsh. A telescope stands at the ready, and a pair of Leica binoculars sits on the coffee table. Through the window I spot a bald eagle soaring past, followed by three crows in hot pursuit.

    “Fearless buggers, those crows,” he says. “They’ll chase away anything that invades their airspace. I’ve been studying that particular corvid family for ten generations, and they seem to get more clever every year.”

“Are you a professor of ornithology?”