“Do you think he left?”

“I have no idea. I don’t care. I have no intention of seeing him. Ever. Again.”

“Mom said he really scared you.”

Annie looked back at him. “Kevin, please. I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

“Oh, sure. Is it easier to talk about Mom’s cancer?”

She set down her fork. “We don’t know for sure she still has it. We don’t know that she’s not doing exactly what she said: recuperating.”

He chewed at a thumbnail. “Should we ask her?”

“I don’t know.” She thought for a moment, then said, “No. If it isn’t true, can you imagine how much it would upset her? And if it is . . . we should let her keep her dignity. Let her decide when—if—she’s ready to tell us.”

Kevin looked at his plate. “I don’t feel like eating.”

“Me either.”

He paid the check, and they left the restaurant. If they’d been in Edgartown, Annie would have walked back to the ferry. The exercise might have helped to clear her head. But it would be a long walk from Oak Bluffs. So they rode in Kevin’s truck, sitting next to each other in rare silence, the latest news simply too big to absorb.

* * *

After checking on Donna, who was still asleep, Annie made another thermos of tea, and then grabbed her laptop and sneaked back through the scrub oaks on the path to the Flanagans’ place. She needed distraction; she needed to work, to engage her mind with the made-up murder in the made-up museum and not have to think about the real world. Not about real-life cancer. Or Mark.

“She’s still sick, isn’t she?” Kevin had asked.

Annie didn’t know. But if it were true, why didn’t she? Why didn’t Kevin? Why couldn’t the child be able to tell if the parent was seriously ill? Wasn’t there a sensor in the genetic code that made it obvious? Like when a parent intuitively knew when his or her child was sick?

And now the greater question was: Instead of having come to the Vineyard to recuperate, had Donna come there to . . . die?

Annie stared at the wall.

Then she wondered: What about Mark?

He wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to find Annie again. Would he?

Doubtful, Murphy said. He always was a weasel. Then, as if she couldn’t help herself, she added, I never liked him, you know.

“Yes, I know that,” Annie replied. “Please don’t rub it in. Not now.”

So Murphy went mute, which Annie appreciated.