Chapter 41
Sabine Drew spent the night in Portland.
She stayed at the Inn at St John, where a value room with a shared bath was within her budget and the parking was free.
While she could have managed the round trip from Haynesville to Portland and back in a day, she preferred not to drive after dark because her night vision was poor.
Also, an evening in Portland was a treat, so she took in a movie at the Nick and was out in time to order a Miller High Life for a dollar ninety-five at Dock Fore, the best happy hour in town, where she listened to the old geezers jawing while she read a magazine.
She then ate a hamburger in Rosie’s, drank another beer, and worked off some of the calories by walking the mile and a half back to the inn.
In her room, she unpacked her purchases from Pinecone+Chickadee—she’d picked up a neat cotton bag featuring a seven-eyed cat—before watching some TV and going to sleep.
During all that time, she tried not to think about Scott Theriault or Mallory Norton.
They were not her concern, or so she told herself—except they were, because even to care a little made them so.
But the private investigator did not want her help, and she understood why, though she did not for one moment regret having poisoned that dreadful man, and neither had he ever troubled her by appearing in her visions.
Unlikely as it sounded, it might have been that his soul was now at peace; that, or God, if He existed, hadn’t liked him either, and consigned him to the void.
Someone had once asked Sabine whether, with her gifts, she possessed any insight into the nature of God.
Sabine replied that she’d never caught sight of Him, only the pain He left behind, like coming across wreckage at sea in the wake of the storm that caused it.
Sabine slept soundly in her comfortable bed, and what dreams she had did not stay with her come morning.
But as she watched the sunlight brighten the edges of the drapes, and listened to the sounds of waking life on Congress Street, she thought of drowned boys and missing girls, and of Mallory Norton’s parents waking to that same dawn, waking to unknowing.
Sabine got up, showered, harvested free fruit and pastries from the breakfast nook, and drove to The Plains.