Chapter Fifteen
Willow awoke to a bright shaft of sun through the skylight, a wet nose in her face, and a feeling of being fully rested that she had not experienced in a long time.
Finn expressed an immediate need to go outside, so she dragged herself out of bed to let him out; after anointing another wild rosebush, he informed Willow in no uncertain terms that it was time for his breakfast. Oh no, she thought, dog food.
I don’t have dog food. “Sorry, dude,” she said.
“I’ve never had a four-footed roommate before, and I have no idea what you guys eat.
And I didn’t get to shop properly yesterday. We may be out of luck.”
But when she stepped into the little kitchen, Willow realized that, along with last night’s dinner makings, Rina had stocked the kitchen with some basic groceries: eggs, milk, yogurt, and juice.
A loaf of fresh bread on the counter beside a jar of obviously homemade blueberry jam.
Coffee, creamer, and a box of little oatmeal packets.
The small kindness made Willow’s heart swell again.
She opened the refrigerator with one hand, searching “what to feed your dog when you run out of dog food” on her phone with the other—but before the first results had time to come up, Finn himself pushed past her to the fridge.
Propping himself against the shelf with one paw, he made a beeline for the plastic container of leftover pasta Willow had not realized was there.
Delicately maneuvering it into his large corgi jaws, he pulled it out and carried it over to the corner of the kitchen.
Before Willow could react, Finn pried the lid off the container with the technique of one who had done this many times before; within seconds, he had enthusiastically scarfed down the last of Rina’s pasta marinara.
It wasn’t a very big breakfast, even for a medium-size dog like Finn, but he seemed to enjoy it.
Willow’s shock soon subsided into something like admiration; if she had ever found a man with this much character and resourcefulness, she might not be in her mid-twenties and still completely single.
Finn even brought the container back to her when he had finished; his look told her he would have been happy to wash it himself if he could reach the sink, but his legs were too short, and she would need to take care of that part.
Finn, she was coming to realize, was an extremely cool dog.
There was one leftover brownie from the evening before, neatly covered in cling wrap on a plate on the counter.
Willow concluded it was as good a breakfast food as any—though she would have gone for the pasta herself if the dog hadn’t beaten her to it—and munched away as she waited for her coffee to brew in the small French press from the corner cabinet.
The connection Willow had made before drifting into slumber had stayed with her, as though her brain had gnawed on it as she slept.
Sue’s death. Geralt’s apparent poisoning.
Effie Cameron’s passing. The clamor of island preservationists, alongside the covert plotting of eager developers with their aspirations for new hotels and luxury B maybe the red-haired librarian would know something about the author.
Before she had opened the front door more than a couple of inches, Finn slipped out and loped down the stairs. He stopped at the coastal path and looked at her expectantly. Well? Are you coming? Day’s not getting any younger.
Apparently Finn would be coming with her, and who was she to argue?
Willow breathed in the salt-pine-sweet air of a perfect Maine morning, her feet crunching on the pine needles of the coastal path, listening to the raucous calls of the gulls and crows wheeling overhead.
An old-fashioned lobstering dory made its way along the shoreline, moving buoy to buoy, pulling up its pots.
The battered wooden boat had been dark blue once, but most of the color had worn away, and four or five lobster pots were piled in the stern.
The captain looked younger than his boat but fully as weathered; he stood at the helm, a messy tousle of dark hair fighting its way out from beneath a fisherman’s hat.
It was an unusual sight; every lobsterman Willow had ever seen used much larger flat-bottomed inboard motorboats with power winches.
This one looked completely low-tech, with only buoys and oars and pots—the kind of boat lobstermen had used for centuries off the Maine coast.
Willow realized the fisherman had caught her staring. She froze, then awkwardly put up her hand to wave in greeting. He looked puzzled, returned the wave, and went on with his day’s work.
My life’s encounters with men in a nutshell, Willow thought wryly. Awkwardness, puzzlement, brief acknowledgment, and then they moved on with their lives and promptly forgot about her.
As they rounded the curve in the path that passed near Cameron House, Finn gave a quick, happy bark and ran up the front walk, ducking easily past the yellow police tape across the porch.
Willow called him back, but he ignored her, pawing at the outer screen till his paw could slip behind it.
Willow watched aghast as he wedged his body into the opening, pushed his nose against the front door, and slipped inside.
Alarmed, Willow followed, but stopped short at the fluttering barricade of yellow tape. She had no business going inside, but how was she going to get Finn otherwise? And why on earth was the door ajar? Didn’t anyone close or lock anything on this island?
The responsible thing to do would be to call the police, or Nick, to explain that Finn had gone into the house and ask for permission to go after him.
She pulled out her phone, and her thumb hovered over the Call button …
then she muttered, “Nope, not happening,” and put her phone away.
Willow gingerly grasped the porch railing and swung her leg over the low X formed by the two strips of tape, pulled her long sleeves down over her fingers so at least she would not leave obvious fingerprints, and followed Finn inside.
Stepping through the doorway into Cameron House was like crossing a threshold into another dimension, as though the house held its own distinct reality within its walls.
She could hear the rumble of the ocean outside and the faint call of the birds, but the sounds were distant, removed.
In here, it was so quiet that Willow imagined she could hear the motes of dust as they flickered in and out of shafts of morning sunlight.
She looked up to the second floor; in the chaos of the day before, Willow had barely noticed the giant stained glass panel crowning the landing, but today, its abstract swirls cast shafts of sea colors and sunset hues over floor and staircase and Willow herself.
To Willow’s left, Miss Effie’s sitting room overlooked the sea; to her right, a pair of glass doors loomed ominously at the entry to the shadowy library.
Willow reached out a hand to try the library door, but before she could touch it, a flicker of movement inside the room startled her into backing away.
When her breath had slowed, she stepped back up to the library doors and peered into the room; it was dark and motionless.
A waft of sound behind her, like a quiet chuckle, made her whirl around—but the foyer was empty.
Just Finn, heading nonchalantly to what was clearly his favorite spot next to Effie’s rocking chair in the sitting room.
The dog did not seem to sense anything in the house beyond the two of them—at least, nothing that worried him—so Willow decided she must have been imagining things; it seemed she had Finn’s approval to be here, though if Nick or the other cops came back, she didn’t think they were likely to consult with the corgi.
She knew she should grab the dog, leave the house, and get on with her day.
I should, yes, but … as long as I’m inside …
She wouldn’t explore the whole house; she didn’t quite have the nerve, and besides, it would take too long. But she wanted to find the dormer window she had seen last night.
The dog curled up in a rectangle of sunlight; he gave a single thump with his feathered tail and closed his eyes. You do what you need to do; I’m going to have a little nap, if you don’t mind.
Willow climbed to the second-floor landing and looked both ways down the shadowed hallways.
To her right, an unbroken length of corridor led to a pair of double doors inlaid with stained glass; there, the passage angled off to the left toward the rear of the house.
The hall to her left was lined with doors—bedrooms, probably, she surmised, imagining the sumptuous decorations and heavy antique furniture that would lie behind them.
Willow hesitantly stepped up to one and turned the knob; this wasn’t what she was here for, but she couldn’t resist a peek.
Gently, she pushed the door inward to open it.
With an abrupt jerk, the door wrenched itself out of her grip and slammed shut in her face.
She gasped and jumped back, almost losing her balance and falling back down the stairs; she clutched the smooth wood of the newel post, gasping.
The jeweled lights of the foyer had dimmed as if a cloud had moved over the sun outside (But there were no clouds, she thought desperately), and the spring warmth had been replaced by a bone-chilling cold.
Don’t, the house seemed to be saying. Just don’t.
Adrenaline still surging, Willow thought in a panic, Oh my God what is this place I should leave I will leave right now.
Forcing her hands to release their grip, Willow began her descent to the first floor and back out of the house.
She half expected some specter to explode in her face or push her down the grand staircase; instead, she heard a gentle rustling from the landing above; a single sheet of paper floated from the third floor and settled halfway down the staircase, half a flight above her.
Willow craned her neck in an unsuccessful attempt to see where it had come from, then cautiously climbed the steps to where it lay.
She picked up the ordinary sheet of white paper, with a single line of type, faintly uneven, as though from a manual typewriter. Willow examined it, squinting at the words on the page.
Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall
The line of poetry was vaguely familiar, but she could not place it. Willow’s eyebrows knitted together in puzzlement. Coincidence? she thought. A little too on the nose for that. She turned the paper over to look at the back. At the bottom was one more line of text:
If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all
“All right then,” she murmured to herself or anyone else who might be listening. “Challenge accepted. Upward it is.”
Taking a deep breath, Willow started back up the staircase.
Whoever or whatever had objected to her opening doors on the second floor seemed to have no problem with Willow opening the third-floor doors, a row of modest bedrooms with white cloths draped over what was probably fine antique furniture.
But the views of Sue’s cabin were not quite right; this was not the part of the house she was looking for.
At the end of the third-floor hallway, in the largest of the house’s turrets, she found a small open parlor, its curved walls lined with bookcases all around, one of which had swung open to reveal a narrow hallway.
Willow had read that hidden corridors were often built into houses like this, ostensibly so servants could move around in seeming invisibility to those they served, but she had never seen one herself.
I wonder who moves around Cameron House without being seen these days? Willow thought, and a chill zinged up her spine.
She stepped through the concealed doorway into a dim passage, paneled in the same rich wood as the rest of the house; up ahead, a high window let in light.
A small stairway, a sharp turn, and a short stretch along a brick-paved wall; she realized the shadowy journey was taking her around one of the house’s massive chimneys.
Another turn, another stairway, twisting ever upward.
If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all …
Willow suddenly wanted to go back, to retrieve Finn from the bright, unthreatening sitting room and head to the safety of the village, where there was sunlight and humanity and no mysterious hands slamming doors or enigmatic typed notes—she did not want to see where this passage went.
But before she could turn to head back, she became aware of a rustling behind her, the brush of fabric against walls, near-silent footsteps. The sound of light breathing.
It was her imagination, of course. And all she had to do to prove it was turn around and confront the empty passage behind her. That would settle the question, wouldn’t it?
Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall …
She did not turn around.
Soon whatever sounds she might have heard in the passageway were overtaken by the hollow whistling of wind in the eaves; she was certainly up too high by now for the dormer window she sought.
The journey was steep now. Willow could feel the stairs swaying slightly beneath her, and she tightened her grip on the handrail, forcing herself to continue.
The staircase at last emptied her onto a small, bright landing and a tiny room. A glass-paned door opened to a broad rooftop deck at the very top of the house.
She hadn’t located her lamp-lit dormer window, but she had found the widow’s walk.