She shrugged. “Suit yourself. I assume you’re here about the blasted photo.” So Caroline had called her too.
She led me through a swinging door into an old-fashioned kitchen. The inn’s extensive renovations didn’t extend to this room that guests would never visit. The cabinets were metal painted a dull beige color, the countertops faded Formica. The wallpaper was covered in garish brown roses. Sheila sat at the dinged-up maple kitchen table and gestured for me to join her. “Michael’s in Portland for the day.”
I pulled the copy of the photo out of my tote bag.
“Ah, there it is.” Sheila didn’t sound sad or nostalgic. Her voice was tinged with anger.
“You’re with Phil Bennett in this picture.”
“We were dating back then. He was my first and only boyfriend. After college we were married for three years. We had a huge reception at the Inn & Resort at Westclaw Point.” She paused, reading my face. “I see nobody told you that. Deborah and Phil always pretended it never happened, like it could be wiped away with a giant eraser. Life doesn’t work that way. At least, my life doesn’t.”
I was dying to know what had happened. I could imagine a number of reasons a woman’s husband would wind up married to one of her childhood friends, but all of them would be painful. I couldn’t think of a way to ask.
“That night at the restaurant, you acted as if you didn’t know Phil,” I said. It was one thing not to recognize the others, who had all aged. Or Deborah after her face was rebuilt. But not to recognize a former husband? I couldn’t believe it.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Sheila said. “I didn’t even know he lived in the area. Last I heard, they were in Connecticut. I truly didn’t recognize Deborah. I was halfway into the dining room before I saw Phil. Michael saw him at the same moment, spun me around, and marched me to the opposite corner. The meal was endless. And then to be stuck there by the accident. It was torture. All I wanted was to go home to my bed.”
I pointed to the photo. “Your husband Michael is with Fran Walker.”
“That ran its course. He was in law school in Connecticut. She stayed in Maine. The truth is, all the boys had crushes on her at one time or another, but it wasn’t going to last. She was a high school graduate. We were all from professional families.”
My parents had made it work. My father had waited out the years my mother was in college. But perhaps that was part of what made their relationship so extraordinary. “Why did you and Michael tell me, and tell the police, that you didn’t know the others?”
“We don’t know them. Not anymore.” Almost exactly what Caroline had said but even less believable. As a former federal judge, surely Sheila would know the consequences of lying to the police. She must have had a strong motivation for shading the truth. I wanted to know what it was.
“Do you know the man who was murdered in my restaurant?”
“Absolutely not. I’m certain I’d never seen him before that night.”
I wondered if that was true. After all, the last time I’d seen her she’d denied knowing people she’d grown up with. “Why did you move back to Busman’s Harbor?”
“I didn’t want to, but the last few years of my husband’s professional life were disappointing. He fell out of love with the law. He talked more and more about coming back here to Maine, owning a B&B. I thought it was a fantasy. But then his firm forced him to retire and he started making trips up here, looking in earnest. This place came on the market. I begged him to find an inn in another town, one without so much history for us. But he’d fallen in love with this house. I was eligible to retire too. I put in my notice. I wasn’t ready, but Michael had supported my career and me over the years. It was my turn to support him.” So she wasn’t older than Michael, as I’d suspected. They must be close in age. Yet he looked younger, more vital. She looked dried up.
“But you hate it here,” I said. She’d never tried hard to disguise it.
“I do. I came down to breakfast every morning this summer to find my dining room full of hungry strangers. That’s a special kind of hell, let me tell you. No privacy. No part of the house that’s entirely my own. I couldn’t wait for the season to end. But now that the horrid summer is over, this town is so tiny, I don’t know what to do with myself.” She plucked a paper napkin from a holder on the table and shredded it as she talked. “I just want to go home. But this is Michael’s dream. And we’ve sunk all our money into this place. I no longer have another home to go to. I am well and truly stuck.”