“When you left her for Sheila, you mean.”
“Yes. My parents objected to Fran. Vehemently. They always had, but as my law school graduation got closer, they really put the pressure on. When I saw Sheila again the night of Howell and Madeleine’s party, she was available and interested. She and I were both in Connecticut. Fran was here in Maine. The long-distance thing was killing us. Once Sheila was back in the picture, my parents found ways to throw us together. Sheila and I took the path of least resistance. She wanted to show Phil she was desirable to someone, even if she no longer was to him. And she wanted to be married. The path for a single woman wasn’t nearly so clear in those days. I was tired of fighting my parents. I caved. I didn’t fight nearly hard enough for Fran. Or for myself.”
“But then something changed.”
“The world changed. It felt like overnight. My generation came to the foreground, and my parents and their stifling rules and restrictions faded to the back. I woke up married to a woman I didn’t love. I vowed never to let my parents push me into anything again. I never joined my father’s law firm. I became a public defender. I was radically transformed by the lives of the people I defended. I’d always known, of course, in the abstract, that many people lacked my advantages. But confronting it head on was an eye-opener. I grew my hair. I made some questionable friends. But more than anything, I believed. I believed in the rightness of what I was doing.
“My parents assumed I’d grow out of it. Sheila did too. Truth be told, she’d gotten nothing of what she signed up for when she married me. She wanted to be the county club wife of a rising associate at a prestigious law firm. Instead we ate soup from a can and macaroni and cheese from a box. She hated it.”
“But you stayed together.”
“My job wasn’t the worst of it. Then came the real blow. Sheila was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, late onset. At the time, the popular advice was against having children. So now she had a serious disease that had to be managed and no prospect of children. In the beginning, we stayed together because she was sick. She was afraid, and I didn’t want to be the jackhole who left his seriously ill wife.”
Type 1 diabetes. So Sheila and Michael Smith presumably had access to insulin. Did Binder and Flynn know this? Probably not. Proof they were closing the investigation too soon. “Then what happened?” I asked Michael.
“Then things changed. I give all of the credit to Sheila. She was the first of the two of us to grow up. She accepted her situation. She had a chronic illness, she was advised not to have children, and she was married to a guy who was never going to make much money. She went to law school, made law review, and joined my father’s firm. It wasn’t easy for her in that boys’ club, but she was ten times the lawyer I would ever be. She became the son my father never had. Seventeen years ago, she was appointed to the federal bench.
“Our marriage started as a disaster. One person on the rebound and the other knuckling under to his domineering parents. But we found a path to happiness.”
“Why did you come back to Busman’s Harbor?”
“I left the public defender’s office when I was in my forties and joined a small law firm. I did criminal defense work for the few people who could pay, and some family law. When my billings could no longer cover the rent for my office, my partners forced me out.
“I’d always dreamed of running a B&B, so when I retired I looked around for one. I found the Fogged Inn and talked Sheila into it. As to why this town—because we’d always loved it. We felt like it was destiny.” He paused. “When Phil told me about Fran’s daughter, I nearly fell apart. I can’t bear to think of what it might do to Sheila.” He used a finger to trace a path through the salt on the tabletop. “I think we’ll leave town soon anyway. Sheila hates the inn.”
So he knows that too.
We heard the sound of a car going up the drive. A door slammed, and footsteps came across the deck. The back door opened, and Sheila came into the kitchen, shedding her coat as she did.
“Well, hullo,” she said when she saw me.
“Julia dropped by for coffee.” Michael told one of the least convincing lies I’ve ever heard.
“Then maybe you should offer her some?” Sheila seemed more amused than suspicious. “Would you like coffee?” she asked me.
“No. I have to get going. I had a long day yesterday. Drove all the way down to Guilford, Connecticut.”
She turned from fussing with the coffeemaker to face me.
“I know how the Lowes died,” I said.
Sheila sat down heavily in a kitchen chair. “I can still barely think about it.”