laughed so hard that James fell off the backseat and bruised his hip. We kept at it, though, telling ourselves that we’d seen every good movie that was out that summer, and the hookups passed the time. On our last night together before my father was going to pick me up and drive me to Connecticut, James said, “It was nice knowing you.”
“Um, we’ll see each other at Thanksgiving.”
“No, I know. I just assume you’ll have some rich boyfriend by then and won’t even talk to me.”
“I’ll talk to you,” I said.
But he was right, and we barely saw each other again after we each started college. I only ever thought of him when I came back to Maine. I wondered if he knew how rich I was.
“You ever hear anything about the Audets?” I asked my mother after we’d cleared the breakfast things, and moved to the living room with the high bay windows that looked out over the Methodist Church adjacent to the graveyard.
“Their son Jim got married. You knew that. He works at a bank in Bangor, and I heard his wife’s pregnant.”
“He goes by Jim now?”
“That’s what Peg calls him. I haven’t seen him since he was in high school. He’s still short, I hear.”
My cell phone rang. I recognized the number as Detective Kimball’s from the night before. A pulse of fear went through me. “Mom, I need to take this.”
I answered the phone while walking toward the kitchen.
“Mrs. Severson?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Detective Kimball again. How are you doing?”
“All right,” I said in a raw voice.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m going to need to request that you return to Boston.”
“Okay. Why?”
“A neighbor of yours thinks she saw the man who may have killed your husband. We have a sketch, and we need you to come down and take a look at it.”
“Why? Do you think it’s someone I might know?” I said, immediately regretting my tone. I sounded defensive.
“Not necessarily. We’re still treating this as a burglary gone wrong, but we need to rule out every other possibility. It’s a possibility that whoever did this was someone who wanted your husband dead, and if that’s the case, then you might be able to identify him.”
“I’ll drive back down this afternoon.”
“That’s great, Mrs. Severson. I know it won’t be easy for you, but any help—”
“It won’t be a problem.”
The detective coughed about six times in a row. “Sorry, cold. One more thing. Any luck on coming up with anyone your husband might have known in Winslow? Remember, I’d asked you about it last—”
“No. I thought about it, but nothing. I’m sorry.”
“Just wondering. Please call me when you’re back in Boston. I can bring the sketch to you wherever you’re . . .”
“I’ll call you,” I said and hung up.
I could hear my mother talking on her own phone in the living room. All I could make out was the word terrible repeated several times. I stared out the window. The afternoon had turned dark, the fast-moving clouds swollen and inky, a rainstorm approaching. Because of the darkness outside, I could make out my reflection in the kitchen window. I stared at myself, thinking hard about Winslow. I knew I knew someone who lived there . . . was it someone from high school, or someone from Mather? And then it came to me, and I suddenly knew who it was I was thinking of. It was Lily Kintner, that spooky girl from Mather who was with Eric Washburn when he died in London. I remembered hearing that she’d been living in Winslow, working at the college as a librarian. But she didn’t know Ted. At least I didn’t think she did. Was it possible they had met once, years ago, when I ran into her in the South End? Was it her that Ted was visiting?
My mom was still on the phone, whispering loudly, as though I couldn’t hear everything she was saying, and I went upstairs to pack for my return to Boston.
CHAPTER 20
LILY
Ted had told me that Cooley’s was a dive, and he was right. It was a bar that had gotten its look and feel from years of accumulated kitsch, to the point where it looked fake. If this place were in New York City or Boston you’d almost think that some enterprising hipster had opened it the year before. But here, the World of Schlitz light fixtures were coated with a genuine film of grime, and the grumpy bartender was in an