Chapter 2 - The Woman in the Bait Shop
June Mercer opened her truck door, saw the blood running down my wrist, and stopped asking questions.
"Inside," she said. "Now."
June had owned the bait shop since the seventies and had once dragged a drunken county commissioner out by his belt. She wasn't easily shocked. But when I told her Daniel had pushed me into the lake, she set down her coffee mug so hard the handle snapped.
"That boy used to sleep on your kitchen floor when thunderstorms scared him," she said.
"I remember."
"I'm going to need a minute to hate him properly."
She wrapped me in an old quilt and fed wood into the stove. My left leg throbbed. My lungs felt full of broken glass. But I was alive, and across the road sirens were beginning to scream.
June turned off the shop lights. Through the blinds we watched a sheriff's cruiser, an ambulance, and two volunteer rescue trucks descend on my dock.
"Call the state police," I told her.
"We can. But first, you need to see something."
She dug through a drawer and produced an envelope with my name written in Robert's blocky handwriting. The sight of it nearly stopped my heart.
"He gave me this two days before he died," June said. "Made me swear I'd hand it over if anybody started asking about your competency. Thought he was being paranoid."
Inside was a key, a receipt from a storage company in Ashford, and a note: IF I DISAPPEAR, DON'T TRUST THE COUNTY REPORT.
My husband had known.
A phone buzzed on the counter. It was June's, not mine. A message from my granddaughter Wren lit the screen.
GRANDMA EVIE IS GONE. DAD SAYS SHE FELL. SOMETHING IS WRONG.
I grabbed the phone with numb fingers and typed, I'M ALIVE. DON'T TELL ANYONE.
Three dots appeared, vanished, then returned.
Wren wrote, I KNOW. I SAW STACEY PUSH HIM TO DO IT.
Before I could answer, another message came.
SHE'S IN MY ROOM. I HAVE TO GO.
And then a photograph arrived: my dining table covered in documents, with a petition for emergency guardianship sitting on top.
May you like
Across its first page, in bold type, was a date.
Tomorrow morning.
