Thursday, August 8, 2024, starts like any other morning—and that’s the thing that haunts me later.
I’m in the kitchen at 5:20 AM, hands deep in scone dough, when Agnes comes downstairs. She’s dressed and pressed and perfect, same as every morning, but there’s a crease between her brows that I haven’t seen before.
“Mr. Crane is leaving tomorrow,” she says, pouring herself coffee. “He’s confirmed his checkout.”
“That’s good, right?” I shape the dough into a round and reach for the knife. “You said he asks too many questions.”
“He does.” Agnes sits at the farmhouse table. Clover jumps into her lap and Agnes strokes the cat absently, her eyes on the window. “But the questions are getting more specific. Last night at dinner — it was just the two of us — he asked about George’s study. Whether I kept George’s personal papers there. Whether anyone had been through them since George died.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him George’s study is private and none of his concern.” Her voice is steel. “I told him the same thing I’ve told him every time he’s asked. And then he smiled that smile of his and said, ‘Of course, Mrs. Hawthorn. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to overstep.’”
She takes a sip of coffee. “That man is not writing a travel article, Miss Daly. I don’t know what he’s doing here, but it isn’t that.”
Victor comes down for breakfast at 7:30, same as yesterday. He’s dressed in his usual navy sport coat, and he greets both of us with that wide, practiced smile. I serve him eggs, toast, fruit, and a blackberry scone. He compliments the scone, as always.
Agnes watches him from the kitchen doorway with the intensity of a hawk tracking a field mouse.
After breakfast, Victor goes for a walk. He returns at noon, pops his head into the kitchen to ask if there’s more coffee (there is), and then goes up to his room. At about 2 PM, I’m in the hallway upstairs, delivering fresh towels to the Honeysuckle room, when I hear his voice through the Lavender room’s closed door.
He’s on the phone again.
“—the original, not another copy. After Thursday dinner, I’ll know whether he can explain it. If not, the police get everything. All of it.”
A pause.
“No. Not yet. I want to hear him say it first.”
Another pause.
“I’ll call you when it’s done.”
A chill runs through me that has nothing to do with the drafty hallway. He. Who is he? And what does Victor need to hear someone say after Thursday dinner?
I deliver the towels. I go back downstairs. I knead bread dough and try not to think about the phone call, but the words are lodged in my brain like a song you can’t stop humming.
The afternoon passes in the ordinary rhythms of the B&B. I prep for dinner — roasted chicken, seasonal vegetables from the garden, fresh bread. Agnes irons napkins. Clover sleeps in a patch of sunlight on the parlor floor. The conservatory is warm and green and silent, the orchids glowing in the late afternoon light like lanterns.
The shortbread is baking. Before putting it in, I cut the dough into narrow fingers and pricked a single line of holes with a skewer. Agnes watches and says her mother always used a fork twice.
“Your mother didn’t have to ice two hundred wedding biscuits by herself,” I say. “I developed opinions about unnecessary holes.”
She takes a broken end. “Keep your opinions. These are good.”
It is the first time she has said good without making me translate.
At 5:30, Victor returns from his walk. He goes straight to the conservatory with a book, settling into the wicker settee with the ease of someone who has sat in that exact spot before. I bring him a cup of tea. He thanks me, opens his book, and reads.
At 6:15, the front doorbell rings. I answer it, and Lily Bancroft is standing on the porch in a green dress, her auburn hair loose around her shoulders, her expression a complicated mix of determination and dread.
“I’m here to see Victor,” she says.
“He’s in the conservatory.”
“I know where he is.”
She brushes past me and walks through the house with the confidence of someone who grew up in it. I hear the conservatory door open and close, and then voices — low at first, then rising. I can’t make out the words, but the tone is unmistakable: one voice is pleading and the other is deflecting. The temperature of the conversation climbs until it’s unmistakably an argument, and then — at 7:10, by the kitchen clock — the conservatory door bangs open and Lily walks out.
Her eyes are red. She’s clutching something in her hand — a tissue, or a scrap of paper — and she doesn’t look at me as she passes through the kitchen and out the front door. The door closes behind her with a sound that’s too gentle for the emotion behind it.
I stand in the kitchen with a dish towel in my hands and a cold feeling in my stomach. Whatever just happened in the conservatory was not a conversation between casual acquaintances.
At 6:45, before the argument ended, Dale Musgrove had arrived for his Thursday dinner. I heard the kitchen door open and close, heard his boots on the tile, heard him call out “Evening, Agnes!” from the hallway. He helped himself to a beer from the fridge — “Agnes keeps a few in here for me,” he explained with a wink — and settled into a chair at the farmhouse table to wait.
“Where’s our guest?” he asked.
“In the conservatory,” I said. “He has a visitor.”
“Lily?” Dale raised his eyebrows. “She’s been hanging around him a lot this week. I saw them at the Crab Pot on Tuesday, heads together like a couple of teenagers.” He took a long pull of his beer. “Victor Crane. That’s a man with a lot of questions.”
“You noticed?”
“Honey, the man asked me about the history of land ownership in this county at dinner two visits ago. What kind of travel writer cares about land records?” Dale shook his head. “I like him. He’s interesting. But Agnes is right to be cautious.”
At 7:30, the four of us — Agnes, Dale, Victor, and I — sit down to dinner in the dining room. The table is set with the blue-and-white china, candles are lit, and the roasted chicken is golden and fragrant. It’s the kind of scene that belongs on a postcard: the warm room, the flickering candlelight, the sound of silver on china, the old house settling around us like a held breath.
Victor is quieter than usual. The argument with Lily has left marks — his smile is thinner, his responses shorter. Dale carries the conversation with easy anecdotes about the town’s upcoming Harbor Days festival and the fishing tournament he’s organizing for the Rotary Club. Agnes contributes her usual dry commentary. I eat and serve and listen, feeling like a guest at someone else’s dinner party, watching a performance I don’t fully understand.
“Beautiful chicken, Tess,” Victor says. “You’re wasted as a B&B cook, you know. You should have your own place.”
I flinch. He doesn’t notice. Dale does — he catches my eye across the table and gives me a small, kind nod, as if to say, It’s okay. You’re here now.
Dinner ends at 8:30. Dale pushes back from the table and stretches. “I should get going. Melissa and I need to talk about Emma’s college tuition.” He catches himself. “My ex-wife. We’re… managing.”
“Give Melissa my love,” Agnes says.
“I will. She’ll be thrilled.” Dale grins, kisses Agnes’s cheek, and heads for the front door. “Night, everyone. Tess, that chicken was extraordinary. Don’t let Agnes tell you otherwise.”
He leaves. I hear the front door close, and then a moment later, the sound of a car engine starting in the drive.
Victor lingers in the dining room, then drifts toward the conservatory. “I’ll take my tea in here,” he says. “If you don’t mind, Tess.”
“Of course.”
I go to the kitchen and prepare the evening tea tray — Agnes’s herbal blend, honey, lemon, a plate of shortbread biscuits I baked this afternoon. I carry it to the conservatory at 8:40. Victor is in his usual spot on the wicker settee, his book open, Clover curled at his feet.
I set the tray on the sideboard. “Can I get you anything else?”
“This is perfect,” he says. “Thank you, Tess. For everything.”
There’s something in his voice — a weight, or a finality — that makes me pause. But he’s already looking at his book, and the moment passes.
I return to the kitchen. I wash the dinner dishes. I wipe down the counters. I put away the leftovers. Agnes appears briefly, says goodnight, and disappears toward her sitting room at the back of the house.
At 8:55, I’m in the pantry, organizing supplies for tomorrow’s breakfast, when I hear the kitchen door open and close. I assume it’s Agnes, coming back for something. I don’t look up.
At 9:15, with the pantry finally in order, I climb the narrow stairs to the attic. I wash my face, set my alarm, and sit on the bed with the wildflower book open in my lap. The harbor is dark beyond the window.
A few minutes later, while I’m still awake, I hear it.
A sound from below — from the direction of the conservatory. Not loud. Not a crash. Something worse: a thin, high, distressed yowl that I’ve never heard Clover make before. It rises and falls and rises again, an animal sound of confusion and fear, and then it stops.
I lie in the dark, listening. My breath catches. I tell myself it’s a cat thing. Cats yowl. They chase things. They have moods.
No one answers the sound.
I pull the covers over my ears. I close my eyes. I tell myself that tomorrow is Friday, and that I have breakfast to cook, and that whatever Clover was upset about is not my concern.
But the sound stays with me — thin and high and wrong — and it’s a long time before I sleep.