Tips for Living(13)

“It’s all yours,” I said, trembling.

Pulling my collar high under my chin, I started across the waterlogged grass for the woods and picked up the muddy hunting trail in a few yards. I slogged ahead, still trying to absorb the fact that Hugh was dead. I thought of the time he almost died and how intensely scary that was. He went into cardiac arrest during routine hernia surgery. I wasn’t his wife yet, so the hospital called his next of kin. Hugh’s brother flew up from Virginia to take charge. Tobias Walker was a born-again Christian and a real challenge for Hugh. “A fanatic,” Hugh called him. He’d chafed at finding Tobias by his side when he woke up.

The rain was coming down hard again, slashing through the pines as I trudged along. The oaks that replaced them closer to the shore offered little protection. The storm had stripped off most of their leaves. Icy water ran down my hair, dripped beneath my coat collar and trickled down my neck. I picked up my pace, kicking through the dead leaves and skirting sinkholes of mud. Freezing, I shoved my hands in my pockets. Two fingers worried the leather strap of Lada’s opera glasses.

I wasn’t sure what was driving me. Was this a sign of trauma? Part of the shock reaction? I kept moving, squinting through the rain and walking faster, breathing hard. I’m miserable, but at least I’m alive. I could feel the sting of the icy rain, the cold air biting my lungs. I could see the trees and hear the wind and smell the sea. What could Hugh and Helene experience anymore? Nothing.

“Hugh and Helene. Hugh and Helene.” What happened to “Hugh and Nora?” How did it all go so wrong? Had our brief marriage meant anything to him? We wed a few months after Hugh recovered from the surgery. But it wasn’t simply so I’d be empowered in a health crisis to save him from the care of his zealot brother. We could’ve signed a health care proxy for that. We’d always talked about marriage in relation to having children, and after Hugh’s brush with mortality, he turned to me in bed one morning, misty-eyed.

“Nora, let’s do it. Let’s get married and have a kid,” he’d said.

I’d gladly accepted on both counts.

At last the scrub oaks thinned out and the view opened up. Down the slope at the end of the trail, thick, wheat-colored seagrass and reeds lined a ragged coastline. Beyond the grass, a channel of dark, windswept water churned. And because I knew exactly where to look amid all the vegetation, I spied the brown corner of the small wooden duck blind a few yards from the water’s edge. Grace and I had spotted it on one of our hikes after a punishing nor’easter flattened the seagrass enough to expose the roofline.

I kept my head bent and tried to prevent the rain from pelting my eyes as I ran down the hill, tripping on roots and slipping on mud. I lost control and stumbled off the trail, careening through the high grass, finally stopping by shoving my hands out as I crashed into the back of the shelter. I caught my breath and checked myself; I wasn’t hurt, just sore and winded. I pushed on the door. Sopping wet and shivering, I stepped inside the tiny wooden room and stood there, dripping puddles on the floor. This is insane. Leave. But I couldn’t. I had to set eyes on the murder scene. As if it would prove to the disbelieving part of my brain that this had actually happened.

The dark interior of the blind smelled of wet cedar and sweet grass. Three walls had no windows. The fourth faced the water and was completely open except for the roof’s extended overhang, which shrouded the inside in shadow. It rendered any hunter who sat there invisible to his prey. Friends or relatives of Mr. and Mrs. Duck might be coasting across the sky, feeling the warmth of the sun, enjoying a lift on a thermal when . . . Boom! Someone playing God would decide to end a life.

The blind had no furniture, no lighting. No heating device. Only a roughhewn wooden bench with an old army blanket folded on top. Removing Aunt Lada’s glasses from my pocket, I stripped off my wet coat and wrapped the scratchy wool blanket around my shoulders. I sat down on the bench and tried to stop my teeth from chattering by clenching my jaw. Finally, I lifted the glasses to my eyes and peered across the inlet, missing the mark at first, getting lost in the choppy water before moving up into the trees. There it was on the opposite shore, perched on high ground in the wetlands of Pequod Point, glass walls and wooden beams soaring up through the pines. Hugh’s house.

I’d never seen it in daylight before.



I’ve never told anyone that I spied on Hugh and Helene. Not even Grace.

I spied on them the same day I found out they’d moved here, when Lizzie walked into the office with the town clerk’s real estate list.

“Pequod Point sold for two point five million,” Lizzie said, unwrapping a black-and-white Palestinian scarf from around her neck and setting down her backpack.

“The Miami developer who built the house last year as his summer escape couldn’t pay off his construction loan. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Walker’ bought it from the bank. I bet you it’s that famous artist Hugh Walker.”

“What?” I gasped. “Can I see that list?” I couldn’t fathom that Hugh would be cruel enough to add that much insult to injury by moving here.

“The property is great for a painter. There’s a gigantic art studio—the developer’s wife made pottery. I took those photos of her with her weird, misshapen urns. Remember? We ran them in Lifestyles? I call dibs on the feature story if I’m right,” Lizzie said.