leaving them collectively, three young men on the cusp of adulthood. The reason they hadn’t gone after her was that they saw it differently. They’d begun seeing things differently back in 1969, in the Theta house’s hasher room, where on a small TV they’d learned just how alone they really were in the world. They’d entered that room all in the same loud, raucous boat only to drift away silent and solitary, envy and fear making it impossible for them to look one another in the eye. No, the love they bore Jacy was not communal but individual. She wasn’t leaving her Musketeers collectively, but rather individually—Athos, Porthos, Aramis.
Forever, as it turned out.
Lincoln
There was a Wi-Fi router at the house, but Lincoln wouldn’t be able to discover the password until Monday morning, when the management company opened. Out in Chilmark he’d have one bar of reception at best, so he decided to check his e-mail in the Tisbury Village parking lot before heading back. In addition to the usual crap—relentless appeals for funds from organizations he’d already unsubscribed from multiple times, inducements to travel (Secret prices, Lincoln, just for you!), the usual clickbait (You Won’t Believe What Happens Next)—a couple agents in his office were looking for advice on transactions. Nothing that Andrea, his office manager, couldn’t have dealt with, except that the agents in question, both men, had coveted her position and were now showing their displeasure by doing end runs around her. While he was tapping out curt responses, a text message from Anita came in: Arrived Dunbar. Guess who’s still full of beans? You owe me, buster. He texted back: I know. I know. The guys say hey. When he pressed SEND, the phone vibrated in his hand, an incoming call this time, another local number.
“Lincoln? It’s Marty calling.” Ah, his realtor. “Look, I was doing some research on your place and came across something interesting. Are you in Chilmark?”
“Vineyard Haven. Just about to drive out there, though.”
“Want to swing by before you do?”
“Why not?”
Before he turned his key in the ignition, Joe Coffin emerged from his apartment, went down the stairs and made his way across the parking lot to a battered old gray pickup, the vehicular equivalent of its apparent owner. “You don’t drive anymore, Joe,” Lincoln said out loud to himself as the other man unlocked the door and climbed in. “You told me so yourself.” Which suggested that he was either going someplace urgently or to a place he didn’t want Beverly, his usual chauffeur, to take him. Lincoln watched as the truck shuddered to life and backed out of its space. When Coffin hung a left onto the Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road, Lincoln started up his rental car and put it in gear. Leaving the lot, he also turned left, telling himself that he was just heading into Edgartown as promised, not following anybody, though he took care to remain several car lengths back. Up ahead was a convenience market and Lincoln half expected the pickup to turn in. Having offered his unexpected guest coffee, maybe Coffin had run out of milk or something. Maybe he didn’t consider running a quick errand as driving. But no, the pickup sailed right on by. Katama, then? To see if his favorite hawk in that photo was perched on its accustomed telephone wire? Had he somehow gotten it into his head that he might not make it off the operating table, and wanted to see the bird one last time before his surname proved prophetic? Coffin hadn’t seemed all that concerned about his upcoming surgery, but neither did he come across as the sort of man to let on if he was.
As they approached the Barnes Road rotary, Lincoln slowed, grateful for the two cars between him and Coffin. The last thing he wanted was to get spotted in the guy’s rearview. What would his suspicious cop’s brain make of that? Lincoln figured the man would go halfway around the circle and stay on the Edgartown Road, or else take the next turn into Oak Bluffs. But again Coffin surprised him by taking the first exit off the rotary, the route you’d take to the airport.
Or to Chilmark. Lincoln suppressed a shiver. Was he headed up island to warn Troyer that someone was sniffing around about Jacy’s disappearance? Strange, now that he thought about it, that Coffin hadn’t come clean about their relationship—that they’d nearly grown up together—until Lincoln pressed him.
There was another reason