“Barry showed up three years later. He’d called my mother to find out where I was. He was a natural for the commune. He moved in on his first visit. When the commune finally went belly-up, we were among the last to leave.”
“Enid and I had announced our engagement at the New Year’s Eve party,” Barry said, unaware I already knew. “But after everything that happened, it was clear she was going to devote her life to that little boy. On top of everything else, she was broke. Austin’s grandfather had left everything in trust until he turned twenty-one. Old Mr. Lowe never anticipated the kid’s parents would die so young, and then he died himself before he changed his will. I tried to stick with Enid, to support her, but I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and fewer prospects. She finally told me she needed to focus only on Austin. I was heartbroken, but I understood.
“After we broke up, eventually, I wondered why I was hanging around in Connecticut. My heart was in Maine. When I arrived in town, I called Fran’s mother. I expected to hear that Fran and Michael were married. Instead I got an earful about boys From Away who use local girls then shirk their responsibilities. But she did relent and tell me how to find Fran. From ten minutes after I walked into that drafty, rickety commune farmhouse, I wondered why I hadn’t been with Fran all along. And Quinn . . .”
Fran put her hand over mine. “Those days after the fire were the darkest of my life. I was alone, traumatized, broke, pregnant, and cut off from my friends. But now, when I look back on it, everything turned out the way it should have. Michael was an immature man, dominated by his parents and rebelling in unproductive ways. I couldn’t see it then, but I see it clearly now. He used to complain to me about how hard his life was. His life! With his prep school and his Ivy League education. The crazy part is, I fell for it. I was head over heels for him.” She released my hand and turned both of hers hands palm up, as if willing me to believe. “Barry is ten times the man Michael Smith could ever be. Ten times the father. Ten times the husband to me.”
“Aw, luv.” Barry kissed the top of her head, pulling more strands of hair out of her bun. I doubted he heard sentiments like that very often from his acerbic, Mainer-to-the-bone wife.
“Does Quinn know?” I asked.
“She knows Barry isn’t her biological father. She could handle it if we told her. But Michael . . .” Fran shivered. “I don’t fear Michael. I fear the wrath of Sheila.”
“Which is what makes it so scary that someone else knows. Right, Barry?” I asked.
Barry studied a crack in the table, tracing it with his finger.
“Tell her,” Fran said. “She’s already guessed.”
“When Phil came into the store that first time, Quinn was here. He recognized her resemblance to Michael instantly. He’s a portraitist, after all.” Barry sighed at the inevitability of this collision. “The second time, when Phil and I went to lunch together, he asked me flat out if Michael knew. I said neither Fran nor I had heard from Michael in decades.”
“I had heard some people named Smith bought the Fogged Inn,” Fran added. “But it’s such a common name. I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Phil felt strongly that Michael should know,” Barry continued. “That’s when he told me that Michael had married Sheila and they were here in the harbor. They’d been unable to have children. Phil swore he hadn’t seen Michael in years, but he seemed to know an awful lot about how Michael and Sheila’s lives had gone. It struck me as curious at the time. As if he’d been keeping tabs on them all these years.”
“Since that day, that lunch, Barry and I have been worried that Phil would go to Michael. I’ve lost so many nights’ sleep, I can’t tell you,” Fran said. “But if Phil did tell him, Michael’s given no indication. Sheila doesn’t know. I’m certain of that. She never could have hidden it that night in your restaurant. I almost died when she and Michael walked in right behind us. But after that man was murdered, my worries seemed petty.”
“Do either of you have any idea who started the fire at the Lowes’?” I asked.
Fran looked at the floor. “No one knows,” she said. “But all these years, I’ve feared it was me.”
“Why you?”
“I sat on that sofa most of the evening. They weren’t nearly so strict about smoking during pregnancy then. I’d cut way back on the drinking. I think I only had a glass of wine at dinner and sipped a little champagne for the toast. But I was so livid at Michael and Sheila, I was smoking furiously all evening, especially as it got later and their shenanigans escalated.”
Barry got up from his stool and put his arm around Fran. “Oh, girl, I’ve told you so many times, you can’t worry about that. No one knows who it was.”