Annie went to the kitchen window. The view had changed since she’d lived there; last fall, the new owners had old shrubberies removed; newer, smaller, flowering ones had been organized by a landscape architect and planted by a professional crew; the driveway had been updated from clamshells to neatly arranged pavers. And the weathered shingles on the house had been replaced by white clapboard. It now almost looked as if it were on North Water Street rather than on Chappy. She supposed that next they’d tear down the cottage and replace it with a stylized playhouse for small children. Like the children Mark had made sure that he and Annie never had. Intellectually, she knew she should be grateful for that now. But she was not.

She folded her arms and turned back to John. “Never,” she said. “I will not forgive him. And I will not forgive myself for having believed his lies. Not in this lifetime, or in the next. Feel free to pass that on when you let him go. And, by the way, can you tell me when that might be?”

“Seriously? I have the guy who nearly destroyed the woman I love in an interrogation room, sweating his . . . well, sweating a lot, and you think I want to let him go? But I can’t keep him there, Annie. I’m sorry, but, like I said, he didn’t do anything illegal.”

“Thanks for being sorry. I would have loved to stand beside you and watch him sweat, too. As for his claims about a woman trying to shoot him . . .”

“A woman?” John asked. “Trying to shoot him? What claim? I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He then went toward the window, kissed her briefly, and said he had to get back to the barn, which Annie had learned was cop slang for when they returned to the station, their second home.

* * *

“So that’s the latest,” Annie told Kevin after she’d packed up her laptop and returned to the Inn where she’d found her brother painting one of the upstairs bedrooms. “I’m not sure if it’s true, but our so-called ‘case’ might have been moved to the head of the class.”

“I think it has to be. I can’t imagine why your ex would have come out of hiding after all this time if they’d made that up.”

Annie hadn’t considered that. “Maybe he thinks I have money now? Maybe he’d hoped to try for another stab at me?”

“If the Inn were in jeopardy, I’d expect he’d know that, even if you had money, you’d lose it if we didn’t open.”

“Good point. And I suppose it would seem pretty farfetched to think he could enlist Larry’s help so he could fleece more out of me.”

“Yup. Farfetched. For one thing, from what you told me, he never ‘fleeced’ you. More like he stuck you.”