The Secrets We Carried by Mary McNear

Author:Mary McNear
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

When Quinn drove over to Gabriel’s cabin the next afternoon, his pickup truck was gone and he didn’t answer the front door. She looked through one of the windows. Nope. Nobody home. The living room looked as impersonal as it had the last time she’d been here. She checked her watch. It was four o’clock. She was right on time. He, on the other hand, seemed to have disappeared into thin air. And you thought that was your trick, Quinn, didn’t you? she chided herself, knocking again.

Still, something was bothering her. Something other than Gabriel not being here. Why hadn’t they exchanged phone numbers yesterday? That would have been the normal thing for two old friends to do. She gave up on knocking and stuffed her ungloved hands into her jacket pockets. The problem was, their friendship wasn’t normal. Hence, the normal rules did not apply. What was more, she now understood, Gabriel wouldn’t have given her his number anyway. He didn’t trust her. Not yet. And he didn’t know if he wanted her back in his life.

Rather than let this knowledge deflate her, though, she paced a little. She had always been lousy at waiting. After a few minutes she walked around to the back of the cabin. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she wanted to take a closer look. Was she looking for some clue about Gabriel and his life here? Maybe. That was a journalist for you. Part detective. And part voyeur, she admitted, climbing onto the cabin’s back steps and looking in at the kitchen window. But once again, there was nothing to see. Not even a coffee mug on the counter. It was strange. Even her room at Loon Bay, which she’d occupied for less than twenty-four hours, showed more signs of human habitation than this cabin.

She left the back door, planning on returning to her car—she was getting cold—but she caught sight of a shed in his backyard and went to investigate. It was a woodshed, and it was full to overflowing, with more wood stacked at its side and covered under canvas tarps. Was he selling the wood? she wondered, noticing the woodcutting stump he used to split logs on. He certainly wasn’t using it himself. He’d had stacks of wood on either side of his fireplace, when she’d first visited him a couple of days ago. But his cabin had been chilly and there’d been no sign of him having had a fire there recently.

She left the woodshed now and headed back around the side of the cabin, passing what she assumed was his bedroom window. It was too high up for her to see into easily. She stopped, kept walking, and stopped again. Damn it, she was so curious. And if he came back while she was trying to look into his window? Well, she’d hear him. She glanced around for something to stand on, and, when she didn’t see anything nearby, she hurried back to the woodpile and chose a wide-bottomed oak log from it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.