And he’d recovered bodies of people who’d died of it, too.
Both boys’ color had improved, and they’d stopped shivering. Owen knew they’d warm up fast, but he probably shouldn’t have let them stay out in the chilly Maine water that long. Their father, though, wouldn’t care—Doyle had grown up on Mt. Desert Island and had a healthy respect for the elements, but he wasn’t afraid of them. And he wouldn’t want his boys to be afraid.
Sean and Ian pulled on sweatshirts and sweatpants but balked at wearing shoes because of the sand stuck between their toes. They ran ahead of Owen up to the parking lot and his truck. He wrapped the extra stuff in the blanket—untouched chocolate bars and water, sunscreen, bug spray, shoes, extra towels—and followed the boys. He could still feel the adrenaline that had sustained him through the past two weeks of nonstop work. It’d be a while before he could relax.
This had been a long year of disasters. He knew he needed to rest.
He tossed the blanket in the back of his truck. He had a full range of emergency supplies and equipment there. If anything had happened down on the beach, he’d have been prepared.
He liked being back on Mt. Desert. A third of the island’s 82,000 acres formed the bulk of Acadia National Park, protecting its glacial landscape of pink granite mountains, finger-shaped ponds, evergreen forests and rockbound coast. Owen was a part-time resident, often away for long stretches, but he knew a part of his soul would always remain there.
The boys had fallen asleep by the time Owen reached the private drive off Route 3 where his great-grandfather, a visionary and an eccentric, had built a stunning “cottage” in 1919 that burned in the great fires of 1947. The mammoth conflagration consumed thousands of acres and hundreds of summer mansions, its path still marked by younger deciduous forests. After the fire, Owen’s grandparents built a smaller house on the ledge behind the original site, above the Atlantic. Now it was eccentric Ellis Cooper’s summer home. But when his family sold their Mt. Desert property after Doe’s death, Owen had talked his grandmother into saving a chunk of waterfront for him. It was where he’d built his own Maine place, working on it on and off over the past ten years.
He turned down the narrow gravel road that led to his house and, up the headland, the Browning house. Will Browning had often helped Owen work on his house. When he was home, Chris would pitch in. He’d lost his parents to the sea as a toddler, and his grandfather, a solitary man, had raised him.
Originally, the Browning house had been a guest cottage, but Owen’s great-grandfather had sold it to Will after he’d worked tirelessly, for days, trying to save the island during the great fires.
Now, the house belonged to Chris’s widow.
Abigail.
Owen pushed her out of his mind and parked at his house. The boys, re-energized from their car nap, ran down to the rocks to investigate what the outgoing tide had left behind in the quiet pools of periwinkles, mussels, lichens and seaweed. But the temperature was even cooler out on his granite point, and Owen filled up the woodbox and rummaged in the cupboards for something hot for the boys to have for dinner.
No one believed he’d last the summer in Maine. If a disaster didn’t call him away, Owen would usually find something that did.
Doyle Alden arrived at dusk to collect his sons. A big, fair-haired man, he and Owen had become friends as boys, when they’d go off hiking and fishing together, when where they were from and who their families were didn’t matter. Sometimes, Chris Browning would join him and Doyle. Chris had always been driven, determined not to live the life his father and grandfather had. As much as Owen knew he respected his family, Chris didn’t want to be a lobsterman or a handyman, and he’d worked hard to have a different future. He’d gone to law school and become an FBI agent, and he’d married the daughter of a man everyone had known would become the next director of the FBI.
And if Chris had chosen another spot for their honeymoon, he might still be alive. Instead, he’d taken his bride home to Mt. Desert Island.
Doyle had been Chris’s best man. Sean had been the ring-bearer.
Owen had arrived in Maine on a two-week leave from the army three days after the wedding.
In time to find Chris’s body.
Doyle’s voice brought Owen back to the present.
“Katie e-mailed me,” Doyle said, staring out the French doors at the water. The boys, finished with dinner, had gone back out. “She says she’s settling in. Says the flowers in England are beautiful right now.”
“She’d notice,” Owen said.
“The six weeks will be up before we know it.”