Once Upon a River Page 0,45
was wrapped in her tarp in the sand. And then King was beside her, licking her face. Margo studied the beautiful eyes and perfect dark nose. She pushed her fingers into the dog’s fur, but when she saw a man standing over her, she stood up, stepped into her boat, and fumbled with her oars. “I’m sorry,” Margo said.
“Sorry for what?”
“For taking your dog.”
He shrugged. “Dogs are loyal. You feed them, and they come back to you.” He nodded upstream toward her cabin. “If you’re hiding from this guy, you can come to my house. Once the sun rises, he might see you if you stay out here.”
With the sun rising behind him, the man’s face was in shadow, but he seemed harmless. He hadn’t bothered her about his dog, even. Unsure what else to do, but sure she did not want to be seen by Paul, she decided to trust him. She checked the rope and knot she’d tied around a fallen maple, a clove hitch, according to Brian’s book. She had also learned the name of the knot on the ring at her boat’s prow: round turn and two half hitches. The spray of leaves along the branch would camouflage the boat so long as no one was looking right at it. So long as Paul hadn’t replaced his glasses, there was nothing to worry about. She carried her oars and the bag from the store and followed the man along the river path. The dew that coated the weeds and grass soaked the bottom of her pant legs. Where the poison ivy had climbed to the tops of trees for sunlight, she saw those triple leaves had already turned blood-red. Autumn was coming.
Margo put down her oars, food, and ammunition before they entered the yellow house by the side door. She found herself in a kitchen with white walls, yellow countertops flecked with black and white, and a glossy wooden floor. But the baseboards were missing, revealing an uneven gap at the bottom of the wall around the room. Though the kitchen counters were clean and orderly and the floor was swept, the table was comfortably messy with newspapers and books. “Bathroom’s through there if you need it. Do you drink coffee?” the man asked.
She nodded and ventured through the kitchen, into what should have been a living room but contained a big bed with an unwrinkled bedspread. She walked around it and looked through the sliding glass door. Upstream, parked at the dilapidated green cabin on stilts, was the Playbuoy. She unlocked the glass door and tugged it open a few inches, to assure herself she could leave that way if she needed to.
The top drawer of a dresser at the foot of the bed was open a few inches, exposing a cache of white bras and underwear. She traced her finger along the scalloped lace edge of a bra. These were the kinds of fancy underthings her mother used to like to wear, and now probably wore all the time in Lake Lynne. Luanne had complained about how the iron in the water stained her white clothes, just as she had complained about the green mold that crept over her leather shoes in the closet.
When the man appeared in the doorway, Margo hurriedly shut the drawer.
“Oh, don’t worry. She’s long gone. I guess she left those for my next girlfriend.”
“I’m sorry.”
The man handed Margo a mug of coffee, light with cream. She and Brian drank their coffee strong and black, and what they had at the cabin was instant. She inhaled the aroma from the cup so deeply that she had to touch the dresser to steady herself. She had eaten potato chips from the gas station in Heart of Pines yesterday, but nothing else.
“Do you want to take a shower?” he asked.
“No, thank you.”
“You can’t wear those wet clothes. Take something of Danielle’s.”
Margo looked at the dresser and back at him.
He laughed. “I was going to throw all her clothes in the river, anyway, let them float downstream. Go ahead and take anything you want out of there.”
Margo kept her eyes on the fishing dog lying on a rug at the foot of the bed, and after a minute the man went back into the kitchen. She took a long draw of the coffee, which tasted so good she didn’t want to swallow.
She looked for a place to rest her cup, but she didn’t want to leave a ring on the dresser top. In