Lost In Time (Blue Bloods Novel)

The fourth time, she was already awake when it happened. She felt around the nightstand for her glasses, put them on, then stared at the glowing bulb and frowned. She definitely remembered turning off the switch before going to bed. She watched as it slowly burned out, leaving the room dark once more. Then she went back to sleep.

Another girl would have been scared, but this was Hannah’s third winter on Shelter Island and she was used to its “house noises” and assorted eccentricities. In the summer, the back screen door never stayed closed; it would bang over and over with the wind, or when someone walked in and out of the house—her mother’s boyfriend, a neighbor, Hannah’s friends whose parents had houses on the island and spent their summers there. No one ever locked their doors on Shelter Island. There was no crime (unless bike-stealing was considered a crime, and if your bike was gone, most likely someone just borrowed it to pedal down to the local market, and you would find it on your front doorstep the next day), and the last murder had been recorded sometime in the 1700s.

Hannah was fifteen years old, and her mother, Kate, was a bartender at The Good Shop, a crunchy, all-organic restaurant and bar that was only open three months out of the year, during the high season, when the island was infested (her mother’s word) with city folk on vacation. The summer people (also her mother’s words) and their money made living on the island possible for year-rounders like them. During the off-season, in the winter, there were so few people on the island it was akin to living in a ghost town.

But Hannah liked the winters, liked watching the ferry cross the icy river, how the quiet snow covered everything like a fairy blanket. She would walk alone on the windswept beach, where the slushy sound of her boots scuffing the damp sand was the only sound for miles. People always threatened to quit the island during the winter. They’d had enough of the brutal snowstorms that raged in the night, the wind howling like a crazed banshee against the windows. They complained of the loneliness, the isolation. Some people didn’t like the sound of quiet, but Hannah reveled in it. Only then could she hear herself think.

Hannah and her mother had started out as summer people. Once upon a time, when her parents were still together, the family would vacation in one of the big Colonial mansions by the beach, near where the yachts docked by the Sunset Beach hotel. But things were different after the divorce. Hannah understood that their lives had been lessened by the split, that she and her mother were lesser people now, in some way. Objects of pity ever since her dad ran off with his art dealer.

Not that Hannah cared very much what other people thought. She liked the house they lived in, a comfortable, ramshackle Cape Cod with a wraparound porch and six bedrooms tucked away in its corners—one up in the attic, three on the ground floor, and two in the basement. There were antique nautical prints of the island and its surrounding waters, framed in the wood-paneled living room. The house belonged to a family who never used it, and the caretaker didn’t mind renting it to a single mother.

At first, she and her mother had moved around the vast space like two marbles lost on a pinball table. But over time they adjusted and the house felt cozy and warm. Hannah never felt lonely or scared. She always felt safe.

Still, the next night, at three o’clock in the morning, when the lights blinked on and the door whooshed open with a bang, it startled Hannah and she sat up immediately, looking around. Where had the wind come from? The windows were all storm-proofed and she hadn’t felt a draft. With a start, she noticed a shadow lingering by the doorway.

“Who’s there?” she called out in a firm, no-nonsense voice. It was the kind of voice she used when she worked as a cashier at the marked-up grocery store during the summers and the city folk complained about the price of arugula.

She wasn’t scared. Just curious. What would cause the lights to blink on and off and the door to bang open like that?

“Nobody,” someone answered.

Hannah turned around.

There was a boy sitting in the chair in the corner.

Hannah almost screamed. She had been expecting a cat, maybe a lost squirrel of some sort, but a boy? She was fast approaching her sweet-sixteen-and-never-been-kissed milestone. It was awful how some girls made such a big deal out of it, but even more awful that Hannah agreed with them.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Hannah said, trying to feel braver than she felt.

“This is my home,” the boy said calmly. He was her age, she could tell, maybe a bit older. He had dark shaggy hair that fell in his eyes, and he was wearing torn jeans and a dirty T-shirt. He was very handsome, but he looked pensive and pained. There was an ugly cut on his neck.

Hannah pulled up the covers to her chin, if only to hide her pajamas, which were flannel and printed with pictures of sushi. How had he gotten into her room without her noticing? What did he want with her? Should she cry out? Let her mother know? That wound on his neck—it looked ravaged. Something awful had happened to him, and Hannah felt her skin prickle with goose bumps.