Opening the Google app, she typed his name, then added District Attorney’s Office, Boston. The search prompted a quick response—complete with a photograph of Larry Hendricks, Assistant District Attorney for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Annie’s heart started to race; her breathing turned to rapid staccato, in, out, in, out, in, out. She flung her phone on the sand as if the mere fact that she’d Googled Larry would set off alarms from Chappy to Boston then to wherever pond-scum Mark was hiding.

She said a few of the words that, when she’d been seven or eight, had resulted in her mother threatening to wash Annie’s mouth out with soap.

Her eyes ticked back to the horizon where night was quickly setting in. She knew she should leave before it would be too difficult to navigate the path back to the Jeep. Unless she used her flashlight app.

Stuffing her hands into her pockets, she stood, rocking in the sand, not unlike the way she’d rocked when she’d melted down in front of Claire.

She understood why Kevin didn’t want to contact Gina. If Annie never told him about Larry Hendricks, he’d blame himself if time ran out for opening the Inn. But now that Annie had told Claire about Larry, would Claire tell Earl? Would Earl tell Kevin? Had Annie dug her own self-centered grave?

“It seems like you have nothing to lose,” Claire had said. But Annie did. She could lose her peace of mind. And John.

Even if she did do it, they could lose the Inn anyway. Earl and Kevin would have squandered a lot of money and wind up with a mountain of undeserved debt. Annie knew what that felt like. But she also knew that the sooner they found out, the sooner they could all stop wondering and worrying, and begin to deal with the reality, whatever it might be. As Annie’s dad once said, “It’s the what-ifs that will kill you long before the knowing-for-sures.”

And then she heard the echo of Claire’s words: “. . . sometimes it’s worth taking a risk to achieve a greater good.”

With those thoughts in mind, Annie reached down, picked up her phone, blew off the sand. And called the number listed for Larry Hendricks.

* * *

Losing the trunk had been the best thing that could have happened to her. The day Donna had seen it, she’d known it had to be hers. Its image had stuck in her mind the way Kevin’s image of his dad had stuck in his.