understanding. There were only two possible answers. Either he’d forgiven her and decided to overlook the infidelity, or she was here to be punished. And if Bruce was so jealous that he set up some kind of fidelity test, then he was definitely not going to forgive her for cheating. So that left only one option. She was here to be humiliated and punished. And if she was here to be punished, then he must know that as soon as they got back from their honeymoon they’d have to go through a divorce, or more likely an annulment. It would be messy, whatever it was, so why had Bruce gone through with the marriage? There was a small voice in her head …
He’s going to kill you.
She stopped and put her hands on her knees and filled her lungs with air. A single sob came out of her, one that hurt her ribs.
No, she told herself. I know Bruce well enough to know he isn’t a killer.
But did she? She obviously didn’t know him well enough to think he’d ever pull a stunt like he had in California.
You failed the test, and he’s going to kill you.
No, Abigail thought. There has to be some other possibility. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t Bruce who set up the test in California. Maybe one of his colleagues did it, someone he worked with who was worried that Abigail was a fortune-hunter. Or maybe Eric Newman was making it up and this was all part of his plan to win Abigail away from Bruce. She didn’t think so, though it felt like the truth.
She was walking again, the woods thinning out a little, and she spotted a path, recognized it as the one that led down to the pond. She followed it, trying to slow down her thoughts, trying to concentrate on the fresh air and the colors of the trees around her. If she calmed herself, then maybe she’d be able to think more clearly. The path brought her to the pond, empty except for a single canoe on the west side, its single occupant fishing, casting into an area of the pond shaded by trees. The canoe was too far away for Abigail to see who was in it, but she did know one thing. It was a man. It had to be. What she would give for it to be a woman, some guest she hadn’t met yet, maybe one of the women from Atlanta Chip said were scheduled for a visit.
Yeah, right, a bunch of women are coming to the island today.
She walked down to the edge of the pond, then took the shore path to the right, her eyes on the boathouse on the other side of the pond, and the lodge above it. Maybe it was only to have a destination, but she suddenly decided that she wanted to see the other camp. She knew it hadn’t been occupied for years and that it hadn’t yet been renovated, but she allowed herself a glimmer of hope that maybe it had an old functioning landline, or a CB radio, or anything that might help her communicate with the outside world. She picked up her pace, occasionally jogging, as she worked her way along the narrow gravel path that skirted the shore. She reached the boathouse, built near a tilting pier that jutted out twenty yards into the pond, and peered inside. The wood was rotten and speckled with dark moss. There were no boats inside, just a pile of old life jackets that looked as though they’d been chewed apart and turned into some animal’s nest.
Retreating back to the path, she walked up a short incline toward the lodge. Like its neighbor across the pond, it was fronted by a large swath of lawn, this one now choked with weeds. There was a cluster of bunks adjacent to the lodge. They all looked decrepit—half were smothered by vines—but the lodge, maybe because it was primarily built of stone, looked sturdy and habitable. Abigail waded across the lawn. As she neared the lodge, she noticed that some of its windows were boarded up and that the handles on the front doors were entwined with chains and secured by a combination lock. She walked up to the doors anyway, tugged at them, and was able to peer through an inch-wide crack. It was dark inside but not impenetrable, and what she saw at first confused her. She was looking at trees,