Nobody's Hero. Carrie Alexander

cars but in his first day on Osprey he’d quickly learned that Shore Road was well traveled by both day-trippers and the seasonal locals, many of them creative types with two occupations—art and socializing. Two neighboring cottagers had already shown up at his door offering invitations, which he’d declined. Even in top form, he wasn’t the cocktail-party type.

      Pine Cone Cottage belonged to a woman named Alice Potter. She’d removed many of her personal belongings, including photos, so he had no idea what she looked like. From the modest cottage and her polite e-mails, he pictured a middle-aged lady, pleasant and plump. She owned a cat; he’d noticed a bag of kitty litter in a bathroom cupboard. No doubt there was also a close circle of island confidants, but no man, unless the voluble gent next door was not as gay as his beret.

      The absent Miss Potter was currently fifty miles outside of Phoenix, enjoying the desert’s baking heat and the air-conditioned comforts of his parents’ place. She’d written that she was looking forward to her first cactus.

      Sean tilted back in the lawn chair, his neck still prickling. The girl spy had crept closer and was positioned off his left shoulder to watch him through the picket slats.

      He gave her another minute, then suddenly twisted around. “Gotcha.”

      She gasped. Her red head popped up from behind the fence. She wanted to escape. He saw that in the angle of her body and the way she nervously clutched her schoolgirl tablet to her chest.

      Instead, she stood her ground and screwed her round, freckled face into a knot. “You knew I was here?” Her voice was high and flutey.

      “Of course.”

      Her eyes darted between him and the wood. “Who are you?”

      “Don’t you know?”

      “Not yet.”

      He settled back again, closing his eyes and crossing his arms over his chest. “Then I’ll leave you to find out.”

      That was stupid. Almost a challenge, when he wanted only to be alone. But the girl’s solitary preoccupation was somehow amusing, at least for the moment. If she continued lurking, he’d have to put a stop to the intrusion.

      He’d seen her several times already. First, trailing him from the ferry. Then poking into Alice Potter’s mailbox at the end of the front yard’s fieldstone walk. And once peering through the vine-covered kitchen window when he’d been putting away the groceries he’d picked up at the Osprey Island general store.

      Few children seemed to live on the island. He imagined she was bored. And, therefore, overly curious.

      His son, Joshua, had once been like that—bright and inquisitive. Before he’d turned into a prickly thirteen-year-old who hated his dad for living thousands of miles away. Although Sean regretted the miles between them, he knew there were even worse distances. Endless, un-crossable ones.

      He shut his eyes tight, gutted by the thought of one particular child who would never have a father again.

      Josh lived with his mother, a stepfather, two half sisters. That Sean’s only son had a separate family outside of his father’s was cold comfort, especially during the weeks when monosyllabic phone calls were all they shared. But comfort all the same.

      The other child had no one left except a messed-up mother who’d screamed like a banshee over the body of her dead husband in the roadway. Sean would be haunted by the torn sound of those screams forever, by the lights of his patrol car illuminating the pool of blood on the pavement, but most of all by the sight of a small boy’s face pressed to the back window of the family’s car, taking in the entire scene.

      That made two boys missing their fathers.

      And he was responsible for both.

      Sean’s thigh seized. He winced and began to ruthlessly knead the tight muscles with his knuckles, letting the pain of the tender gunshot wound cut through the heavy layers of his guilt and regret.

      Gradually the muscle let up. He exhaled, his head hung low on his chest, his eyes closed. Maybe the solitary, isolated cottage hadn’t been such a good idea. Not exactly what the police psychologist had in mind when she’d told him he needed to work through his issues regarding the routine traffic stop gone tragically wrong.

      Easier said than done, anyway.

      When Sean finally remembered to look up, the redheaded girl was gone. For good, he hoped, doubting that he’d be so fortunate.

      Pippa Bradford’s Book of Curious Observations

      CONTINUING SURVAILANCE of Subject #4.8:47 a.m. Tuesday morning, Pine Cone Cottage, Osprey Island, Maine. No visitors or phone calls. Subject drank coffee standing at window, then went out to back garden. Patrolled perimeter. Picked up a pinecone, threw it into woods. Carried chair from front yard. (Sunbathing?)

      This is boring and my bug bites itch.

      Update: Mission aborted!!! Future observation at risk.

      “SONOVABIRCH,” Connie Bradford said when she saw the cluster of five-gallon English boxwoods, still not planted. She’d asked Bill Graves, the full-time gardener, to take care of it when she’d first arrived at the Sheffield estate to oversee the grand opening of the garden and maze she’d designed.

      This was her biggest job ever. She’d begun work on the project almost three years ago, a scant month after her husband had passed away. But if she wanted perfection, she’d have to see to it herself.

      Typical. She set aside her clipboard and picked up a spade.

      Connie was halfway through the job when a trio strolled out of the house onto the porch, which overlooked the sloping green lawn. “Connemara,” called Kay Sheffield. Her slender arm waved back and forth in the brisk ocean breeze. “Hello! Come meet my guests.”

      Connie lifted a hand in acknowledgment of the summons while muttering “Oh, yay” to herself. She stabbed the spade into a half-dug hole and dusted her hands off on her pants. Time to schmooze. She’d wanted to step up her clientele, but hadn’t counted on how much of her workday would be spent catering to the social niceties of the jet set rather than to their gardens. She was far more talented at coaxing forsythia into bloom.

      “What on earth were you doing?” Kay asked as Connie approached. Connie felt disheveled in the presence of the well-groomed Mrs. Sheffield. The woman spoke through her nose with clenched teeth, a silly affectation she’d apparently picked up from old Katharine Hepburn movies. “We have Graves for that.”

      The gardener had been notably uncooperative toward Connie. She shrugged. “There’s a lot to do before the party.”

      “I’m certain you can manage without getting your hands dirty.” Kay turned to her guests, a squat man and a leggy blonde. “Harold, Jillian, this is Connemara Bradford, our up-and-coming garden designer. Connemara, Harold and Jillian Crosby. He’s in real estate, she’s in Prada.” Kay tittered at her witticism.

      “Hal,” said the man, extending his hand.

      “Connie.” They shook briskly.

      “No one calls me Jillian,” the wife announced in a bubbly soprano voice. “I’m just Jilly.” She, like Kay, was greyhound-lean, bottle-blond and clad in head-to-toe designer labels. The two women might have been twins, except that Kay Sheffield was coolly beautiful while Jilly had an unfortunately long nose that shadowed her narrow lips.

      “How do you do?” she asked in a more formal manner.

      Connie smiled. “Quite well, thank you. I’m excited to be back on Osprey Island.” While she’d made the trip several times from her home office in Bridgeport, Connecticut, most of her work for the Sheffield estate had been done at the desk and computer. A far cry from the early days of her business, when she’d designed suburban backyards, carting, digging and planting all on her own.

      “This is my first visit.” Jilly’s buoyant personality bobbed back to the surface. She