it was—was to simply tell Bruce this afternoon that she needed to leave the island right away. She hadn’t quite figured out what she was going to say to him yet. She considered just telling him that she was having panic attacks, being so cut off from civilization, but was worried that he’d try to get her to confront her fears instead of calling for the plane to get them. Maybe she’d complain of severe stomach pain, try to convince him she had appendicitis. Or she could go with the idea she’d already considered when making the phone call—telling him that Zoe was in crisis. If she could convince him that it was bad enough, then he’d be forced to get her off the island. She hated the idea of doing that—of all the lying—but she now realized that getting off of Heart Pond Island was what needed to happen. It would solve the problem of Eric Newman, at least temporarily.
“I’m going for a walk again. You want to come along?” Bruce said, after finishing his eggs Benedict.
“Sure,” Abigail said. “Just so long as we get back here around ten-thirty.”
After leaving the bunk, they walked down a well-trodden path to the edge of Heart Pond, then out along a wooden dock. Up close, the pond seemed larger, almost like a lake. Abigail lay down on her stomach on the warmed wooden slats of the dock and peered into the clear water. A fish darted by and Abigail ran her fingers along the surface of the pond, the water surprisingly warm. “We could swim in here,” she said.
“Well, you could,” Bruce replied. “I’ll go sailing.”
Abigail turned over and sat up. She’d forgotten her sunglasses and shaded her eyes as she looked around the edges of the pond. There was a boathouse, probably where the sailboats were kept, and next to the boathouse there was a stack of kayaks, plus a few canoes. It was all pretty rustic, and Abigail was surprised. Considering the renovations made on the main camp, she’d imagined that there’d be top-of-the-line boating equipment down at the pond. She kept moving her eyes along the shoreline and spotted another boathouse on the other side of the pond. Above it loomed a lodge, shrouded by dark woods.
“Is that the other camp?” she said.
“That was the girls’ camp, yes. We’re going to start renovating that in the spring.”
“Then you can put all the women there and you won’t have to have any at your camp,” she said, raising her eyebrows at Bruce.
“That’s the idea,” he said.
“Can we go over there and look around?”
“We’re not supposed to, I think, because it’s unsafe.”
“You’re part-owner here. You should be able to check it out.”
“Whatever you say,” Bruce said. “But let’s walk to the cliff first so I can show you the views.”
They walked along the shoreline past the boathouse and picked up another path that took them up along a ridge through spruce trees and birches, then turned away from the pond and emerged from the woods onto an open bluff. They were high enough so that the Atlantic Ocean, sparkling in the morning sun, spread out all around them.
“Wow,” Abigail said.
“Yeah, not bad.”
They walked across the bluff along a barely visible path. On either side were low shrubs, several with red berries. A large bird hovered above them in the sky, and Bruce pointed it out, said it was an eagle that was nesting over near the pond. When they got to the edge of the bluff, they met up with a wider dirt path that skirted the cliff edge, dark gray outcroppings that sloped down to a rocky shoreline. “Can we get down there?” Abigail said.
“It’s about a half-mile walk but there’s a path.”
They walked along the cliff edge, the breeze off the ocean suddenly gusting. They reached a copse of twisted trees, then picked their way down a steep path that deposited them in a cove. Large rocks, slick with seaweed, spread out into the ocean. The beach itself was covered with medium-sized rocks, black, gray, and green. Here and there were deposits of seaweed or the remains of a gull. Bruce picked up several small stones, then found a strategic location where he could skip them out along the water. “It’s slack tide,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s gone all the way out, and there’s this brief period before the tide starts to come in again. It’s called a slack tide.”
Despite growing up in New England, and then living