Unhinged (34 page)

The sound faded but Sam’s lips kept moving. I wondered what he was going to do without Maggie.

I wondered if he cared.

“. . . the past is provolone.”

But not all of it, unfortunately; the
don’t ask, don’t tell
policy that Bob Arnold had chosen to apply to my father couldn’t last forever. It’s a funny thing about secrets; the good ones may lie low for a long time, maybe even forever. But the bad ones always fester into something ugly, sooner or later.

And my father was a proud man. I only hoped he wouldn’t be too stiff-necked to let me help him, when the time came.

Wade got up. “Coming in?” Delicious smells floated from the cabin: lasagna, garlic bread. Salad with the last of Ellie’s red garden tomatoes.

The last for this year. “In a minute.”

After he’d gone I sat watching the stars fill the night sky, their glow turning the lake to a milky glimmer.

In it I saw that young cop’s face again and wished he could know how it all ended, that the questions he’d asked his whole life on my behalf had at last been answered. I wondered if he did know, in some way perhaps that living people cannot fathom.

A loon laughed, out on the lake.

SARAH GRAVES lives with her husband in Eastport, Maine, where her mystery novels featuring Jacobia Tiptree are set. She is currently working on her seventh novel,
Mallets Aforethought.