Chapter 1338

• Reserved-
• The house was one of those old summer homes on the bay: one big room with a porch and two smaller rooms off the back. It was no treat in the winter when the wind blew off the water with a damp chill and the lack of insulation made the house hard to heat, but in the warm weather the rickety house was full of charm. The view was all grandeur: an expanse of water held in the wide curve of the bay, the mountain rising from the foot of the far shore, cloaked now in the brown grasses of summer, with the darker green of oak and bay in the gullies and the lighter green of willows growing in the streambeds.
• Jackson didn’t own the house. He was renting. Abigail parked on the road and walked up the narrow drive. Common wrens twittered in the bushes and out in the marsh she could see an egret standing on one leg, stately, looking for lunch in the tall reeds. They were friends. They’d met, had a few beers, gone hiking. She liked him, but she wasn’t sure how much. He hadn’t put on the hard press. He was even-tempered, reserved. Maybe he was waiting for something. Abby didn’t know; he hadn’t told her. The door stood ajar. The house was quiet and cool. She didn’t call out, thinking he was working outside. The house was somebody’s second home. When he had time, Jackson paid the rent in labor. He cleared brush, fixed fences, replaced broken windowpanes. He liked to sit in a wooden chair in the evenings with a beer in his hand, watching the marsh and cataloguing his next round of chores.