He chuckled. “I’m guessing it’s pretty cold most of the time.”
“Yes, but we do have summer. The days are long and filled with warm air that starts to fade after only a few weeks. And it’s always chilly in the evenings. Very different from here, but still very beautiful. There’s nothing like a blueberry field in winter. The fall turns the plants a bright crimson, almost like blood against the white snow. It seems like another world to me sometimes. Or another life, really.”
“Do you think you’ll go back?”
I shook my head. “No. I needed to move forward. My father was a pilot and spent his entire life traveling, yet I’d never been outside of Maine. And when I was going through my grandmother’s books and found a travel guide to South Carolina, it seemed almost serendipitous when I learned I’d inherited a house here, too. To be honest, I didn’t even give that much thought to it—maybe because I thought if I did, I’d change my mind. I just knew it was time to leave, and where I went seemed immaterial.”
“Cal was like that, too. He’d never left the state until he left for good. He lived in California for a while, and I heard from him from time to time, how he’d started out being a bar bouncer and then decided to become a fireman. And then I didn’t hear from him anymore. I guess at some point he decided to move to Maine, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
I felt him watching me, and I turned my head to look at him and saw moonlight reflected in his eyes. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“You were my brother’s wife, which means you’re part of my life now, too, whether you want to be or not. You don’t seem very forthcoming with details about yourself, and I got tired of waiting.”
I looked away. “There’s absolutely nothing to know. Nothing that interesting, anyway.”
“I know that you’re very brave. I know very few people who would leave everything they’ve always known, pack up their car, and head to a new town where they know nobody. But I have a suspicion that you have no idea how brave you really are.”
“Because I’m not. I just did what I thought I needed to do. Here was this house I’d never known about, and this place where my husband had been born and raised. The museum where I’d worked was downsizing, and my husband was dead. It’s not like I had a lot of options.”
“Sure you did. You just picked the hardest one.”
“According to Loralee, the easy road is the fastest way to hell.”
He smiled, but it seemed he was holding part of it back. “She’s a smart woman.”
I looked down at the jar in my hands, where the blinking had slowed to a somber pulse, almost as if the fireflies were waiting for some sort of sign. “I’ve been thinking about that Sandy Beach woman we met the other day. Did Cal really date her?”
“Yeah, unfortunately. That was the type of girl he normally went for.”
I felt his eyes on me again, but I couldn’t meet them. He didn’t need to explain to me what “the type of girl” meant. However she might be described, the most obvious way would be not like me.
“I don’t blame you for not believing my story of how Cal and I met. Especially after meeting Sandy. I agree—it doesn’t make sense. I’m just left to wonder, Why me?”
“We can’t always choose who we love.”
A corner of my mouth twisted upward. “You’re starting to sound like Loralee.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
We listened to the sound of Owen running through the garden, shouting out his victory with each captured insect.
Gibbes cleared his throat. “I brought over the folder I’ve put together about the plane crash. I thought you might be interested.”
I remembered my initial excitement at the thought of discovering more about the ill-fated flight. But now I could see no purpose to it. One of the few treasures Cal had brought from his childhood home had been a bolt from the plane. It had once meant something to him, but he was gone now.
I shook my head. “Not really. Not anymore. Now that I know why the plane was up in my attic, I feel there’s really nothing else to know. Your grandmother had an affinity for crime investigation, and perhaps believed there was more to the story than what the police came up with, but apparently there wasn’t. Case closed.”
“I think I have a thousand!” Owen called out.
“I think he’s going to win,” I said with a smile as I faced Gibbes.
He was looking at me closely, his expression serious, and my smile faded.
“Did Cal ever hit you?”
I remembered once as a child when I’d climbed too high in a tree, despite my grandmother’s warnings not to, and couldn’t find a way down. Unwilling to have to admit that she was right, I’d decided to shinny down the tree the way I’d seen monkeys do on TV. I’d fallen about ten feet onto my back, miraculously not breaking anything, but knocking the air from my lungs. I felt that way now, gasping for air that seemed too thick to breathe.