“Yes. They started long before your husband was killed.”
And before she turned up on the scene. Although he didn’t say as much, Abigail knew Walt must have thought it. She, the FBI—they’d taken Chris away from the island and his friends. At least in their minds. But Abigail knew that Chris had always considered Mt. Desert Island home. Since she’d moved a lot growing up, that was fine with her.
Owen stood behind her, not crowding her, but not going on his way, either. “Has Mattie brought any new work in lately?” he asked Walt.
“Not recently, no. It could help us sell his older work.” The older man unlocked the drawer and opened it, gesturing at the contents. “Mattie has an incredible, unusual talent. You’ll see. These photographs are some of his best work. The earliest were taken when he was a teenager. They’re not as refined as his later work, of course, but his eye is there. Well, I’ll leave you to them.”
Walt withdrew to the outer room, and Abigail lifted a black-and-white print from the drawer. She took a breath, immediately recognizing the cliffs just down the waterfront from her house. Mattie had captured the dramatic beauty of the sheer granite face and the white-capped waves crashing onto massive rectangles of rock.
But the danger was there, too, palpable, unrelenting. The cliffs and the sea would be unforgiving of a carelessly placed foot, a reckless paddler, a poorly dressed hiker—a fourteen-year-old girl, Abigail thought, upset after a meaningless fight with a friend.
“Mattie took that picture the day Doe drowned,” Owen said.
“This picture? You’re sure?”
“He had his camera with him on the boat with Chris and his grandfather. This was later, after they’d gotten Doe to the harbor. He went back to the cliffs.”
“But there are no police—”
“They’d gone. Everyone had gone by then.”
“Were you with him?”
Owen shook his head, staring at the stark photograph. “No.”
“Then how do you know—”
“Chris told me years later. He didn’t want Mattie to put this particular photograph out into the public.”
“Mattie?”
“He didn’t agree.”
“But no one’s ever bought it,” Abigail said, setting the photograph on top of the cabinet and digging back into the drawer for more of Mattie’s work.
Owen touched a corner of the old photograph. “Would you buy it, if you knew the circumstances of when it was taken?”
“No. I wouldn’t. But you never know what some people will do. Besides, most tourists wouldn’t have a clue.”
“I suppose so.” He kept staring at the scene of the cliffs. “I convinced myself I wasn’t alone out there that day. I thought someone followed Doe and me to the cliffs, or was there already, hiding in the trees.”
“Someone who could have helped her,” Abigail said.
He shrugged. “At least someone who could have screamed for help. I couldn’t—I tried, and no sound came out.”
“What an awful memory to live with.”
“I know now it wouldn’t have made a difference. Doe hit her head on a rock, and had early-stage hypothermia. She fell in a tough place to get to by land or by boat. Help wouldn’t have arrived in time.” He pulled his gaze from the picture, his gray eyes taking on the color of the gloomy afternoon. “Doe was a gentle soul. She never liked difficult, scary hikes. The cliffs terrified her. She never meant to fall.”
“But she was upset that day, wasn’t she?”
“Grace Cooper had teased her about backing out of a hike up the Precipice Trail.”
“It’s not my favorite trail, either,” Abigail said. “If I have to use rungs, it’s too vertical for me.”
“Not going to turn you into a rock-climber, are we?”
“No way.” She saw that her humor had broken through his darkening mood. “Did your sister go down to the cliffs to prove herself somehow? Or just because she was upset and wanted to get away from everyone?”
“I don’t know why she went down there. She was used to Grace teasing her. Doe would tease her back.” He shook his head. “It’s been twenty-five years. Hard to believe. The truth is, what happened wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
“Grace must feel guilty, even if she knows your sister’s death was an accident.”
“She’s never said one way or the other, at least not to me. The Coopers aren’t ones for big emotional displays.”
“I suppose not.” Abigail remembered how she’d clawed at Owen, trying to get to Chris’s body. She’d never been repressed, but she’d learned self-control. “Mattie was just a teenager himself.”
“Seventeen.”
She glanced at the picture once more, imagining Chris and Mattie and Owen as boys, all of them trying to make sense of what had happened to pretty, gentle Doe Garrison.