“And then Sheila married Michael?”
“Yes, stole him right out from under Fran. Sheila started working on Michael at the New Year’s Eve party. She got stumbling drunk, elbowed Fran out of the way, and kissed him, open-mouthed, on the lips on the stroke of midnight.” Caroline stopped talking and looked at me, as if she was still shocked by Sheila’s behavior. “I knew Sheila and Michael had married,” she continued. “She sent me a wedding invitation, but Henry was deployed, and I didn’t have the heart, or the nerve, to go alone. I wasn’t ready to see any of those people again. Later, she wrote me that none of us had come.”
“You told me the first time I came that you stopped sending Christmas cards to Sheila because her life was so sad, but it sounds to me more like Sheila got what she wanted and Fran was left out.”
“You might think so,” Henry answered for Caroline. “But Michael wasn’t his father. He was never going to work in his dad’s Wall Street law firm. Michael became a public defender. According to Sheila’s letters, they lived in a roach-infested coldwater flat in the East Village.”
“But mostly,” Caroline took up the tale, “Sheila was brokenhearted because she couldn’t have children. Henry and I had three daughters in six years. I couldn’t stand to rub her face in our happiness any longer. I stopped the correspondence, and our last tie to the Rabble Point set was gone.”
“As for Fran,” Henry finished, “we never saw her after that New Year’s Eve. Sheila reported she was living at a commune on a farm outside Belfast, Maine. I couldn’t have been more surprised when she walked through the door of your restaurant with Barry Walker.”
“I went out to Rabble Point,” I told them.
“Sad, isn’t it? After Mr. Lowe bulldozed the cottages, any hope that we would ever get over the trauma of Howell and Madeleine’s deaths and be friends again disappeared along with Rabble Point,” Caroline said. “It was like being cast out of Eden. I always believed that if those of us who were left had kept going to Rabble Point in the summer, if our children had grown up together, we would still be friends today.” She sighed, lost in the what-ifs. “I have no idea who owns the land now.”
“I know,” I said. “The Bennetts own it. They live in the Lowes’ old house. They’ve renovated it extensively. Even moved the front door so it faces Eastclaw Point Road, instead of Rabble Point, but it’s the same house.”
“Isn’t that something?” Caroline’s eyes were wide. “I’ve longed for Rabble Point ever since my last summer day there. Henry left the navy to finish college and go to medical school. He thought that was what he wanted, and I pictured myself as a physician’s wife, settled in some suburban town. But he missed the navy terribly, and after med school he reenlisted and stayed in for twenty years until he went to Johns Hopkins Hospital.” She took a deep breath, fighting off tears. Henry patted her shoulder and she continued.
“During the navy years, I got quite good at setting up our house and making new friends. But I never got over longing for Rabble Point, and for the friends who knew me when I was young and unformed, and anything was possible.” Tears cascaded down her cheeks, tracing rivulets through powder. “I miss my old home. I miss my friends. I have never again felt as surrounded by people who cared about me. I have never felt as known.”
Henry gave her his handkerchief. His pain at seeing her pain was obvious in his eyes.
“Your friends are here,” I said. “You can call them. Visit them.” I thought of Sheila Smith, so obviously in need of friends, and Deborah Bennett, living her isolated life out on the point.
Caroline shook her head. “I can’t. Ever since that New Year’s Eve . . . I just can’t.” She dabbed at her eyes with Henry’s white hanky.
I wanted to go. I felt terrible that I stirred up so many deeply unhappy memories for Caroline, but I had to bait the hook. “While I was in Guilford, I met with the Lowes’ insurance agent,” I said. “He gave me the insurance company’s report on the fire.”
“Does it come to any conclusion?” Henry asked. He didn’t seem rattled or fearful.
“I don’t know,” I lied. “I haven’t looked. The agent gave me his original in a sealed manila envelope. I don’t want to disturb it. It’s evidence. I’m handing it over to Lieutenant Binder tomorrow when he’s expected back in town.”
Caroline looked at me. “I want to know what it says, but I’m afraid to know.”
“The police will know what’s in it soon enough,” I said.
I said my good-byes, and Henry saw me out. “What does the report say?” he asked as we stood on the front stoop.