“Your time is up. Let’s go.” His voice was deep but affected. Edythe thought he probably practiced his cop voice in his cruiser every day.
“I can walk by myself, thank you very much.” She tried to jerk out of his grip, but he dug his fingertips in harder.
“Now, don’t give me any problems, missy.”
“Missy?!” she squeaked.
He pushed her out of the town hall, and she tripped, dropping her bag. The deputy didn’t wait to see if she was okay, merely shut the door behind himself, leaving her alone on the old stone steps of the hall. She bent down, collecting her bag. She swiped her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ears and wiping her arm across her forehead. She made sure to flip her middle finger back at the town hall before starting down the steps and walking across the parking lot to her car.
In the years since she’d left, the town had changed. It used to be rundown. There had been one drugstore, a few gas stations, and a seasonal store that sold prom dresses in the spring. The downtown of her childhood was boarded up and broken.
Not anymore.
Now it was the perfect beach town. The sidewalks were laid with cobblestones and the storefronts shingled and painted. Along with the tourist traps selling overpriced t-shirts, there was a sweets shop, a clothing boutique, an art gallery, and a coffee shop. Fifteen years was a long time away.
Edythe was glad for her hometown. It was a beautiful spot.
For other people.
For her, each spot was tinged with sadness and fear. When she passed by the library, she remembered her mom hefting a tote bag full of mystery books to tide her over for the week. At the bank, she remembered getting a lollypop after each deposit her mother made.
Her drive from her job in Woods Hole, up Route One into Maine, and her hometown had given her a lot of time to think.
And she thought about Linc.
After her mother and father’s death, she’d moved in with her great-aunt, a kind older woman with grown children, who really didn’t care what she did, as long as she was quiet.
“I’m tired, Edythe,” her aunt had said. “I’ve already raised four boys. I trust you to do the right thing.”
She had, for the most part. She was too late an addition to her classes to make many friends, but middle school and high school weren’t bad. No one was mean to her. She was just lonely and confused.
The police said both her parents died in the fire that destroyed her home; her father rescued a sleeping Edythe, but was overcome with smoke and died when he went back for her mother.
There were explanations for everything. The cage in the basement had been for the wild animals in his experiments. They said the fire burned so hot, so quickly there was nothing left of her parents to bury.
When she swore up and down her father had kept a boy in the basement and tortured him, the police dismissed it. It was impossible.
When she’d claimed the boy had scales her father ripped off, they looked at each other and nodded, as if there was their explanation. She had a nightmare; she was traumatized. None of it really happened.
She learned quickly to keep her mouth shut. No one wanted to hear her story, they just wanted to move on. She made it worse with make-believe.
Linc was the reason she went into marine biology, and the reason she returned here, after all this time. Because she was afraid if they destroyed the marshes and the beach, it would be the end of him.
She knew he existed. Sometimes, she even thought she could feel him, a tiny glimmer in the back of her mind that, try as she might, she could never grasp.
Linc’s words continuously echoed through her mind, “I can’t leave.”
Somehow, she knew it was her fault he’d stayed in the cage, and her fault he was hurt so badly. Memories of his torture kept her from returning. She couldn’t risk coming back, finding Linc, and someone seeing him like her father had. She couldn’t risk someone experimenting on him, testing the limits of his pain and healing.
He was safer without her.
So Edythe mourned her mother, and she even mourned her father, but she grieved for Linc. She longed for him with her entire soul, even though, in the fifteen years since that night, Edythe hadn’t been back. His absence was an ache which never seemed to go away.
But tonight she’d failed him. In a week, dump trucks would trample the delicate cordgrasses and sea lavender. The birds would fly away, and the crabs would suffocate. He could be discovered.
Her heart pounded, and she hurried to her car. If he was there, she would find him, and she would warn him. She turned the key, the engine grinding, and she threw the car into reverse, squealing out of the parking lot. Her brain yelled at her, and it threw her back in time. Hurry, hurry, hurry. They were the same words she spoke to herself the night she helped Linc escape.
Chapter Four