Chapter Twenty-Five

SHAUNA STOPPED IN the middle of the sidewalk, stunned, it seemed, by an invisible force. Her feet simply slowed, and then were stationary, and her gaze locked on the muddled horizon of stores closing, restaurants opening, Manchester-by-the-Sea rolling gently toward night. All that had happened in the past twenty-four hours swept over her. The murder. The cleanup. The first close call at her home with the men who had come to her garage, and the second close call at Bill Robinson’s house. She had been going through tasks mindlessly, in an exhausted haze. Dropping Robinson’s car at the Manchester beach house. Going out to get supplies—food, painkillers. Now suddenly the path ahead seemed empty. There had been a plan, and now there was none, and she found herself staring at her own reflection in the window of a thrift shop. She looked impossibly worn, hard-edged and hollow. But there was something else there, too. Something new in her eyes. The last Shauna she had imagined had been a woman full of life and joy, sailing the coast, taking tourists along the glittering edges of the horizon. Before that, there’d been another Shauna in production: the nursing home version, boring long-suffering attendants with stories. Now she was looking at a Shauna completely unfamiliar to her. A wounded being, filled with fury. A killer. A liar. A criminal. The hopes and desires of those other Shaunas had been so clear. But this new one? There was no telling what she would do next.

Shauna lifted her eyes to the mannequin dominating the front of the thrift shop. It was a young woman’s figure, ridiculously slim, like the woman Shauna had murdered. The mannequin was dressed in jeans that were torn at the knees, a T-shirt from some band Shauna had never heard of, and a dusty leather jacket.

Shauna stared at that jacket.

When the shop attendant got it down for her, Shauna ran her fingers over the battered but strong stitching in the shoulders, the scratched zipper and purple satin lining. A faint smell of cigarette smoke lingered on the garment. The jacket was heavy, protective, loaded with a history Shauna could somehow sense was violent and dark. She pulled it on.

The shop attendant was hovering nearby, loading freshly washed clothes onto racks.

“For your granddaughter, is it?” she asked, glancing over.

Shauna didn’t answer.

“No returns on sale items,” the woman chirped. Shauna waited until the attendant had walked back to collect more washed items before she zipped up the front of the jacket, opened the door to the store, and walked out into the night.