Repair to Her Grave

When I first moved to Maine, I missed my friends from the city so much that I would invite them to visit me. Shamelessly I lured them, promising steamed lobsters and blueberry pies, while they grumbled about the long drive and the probable absence of Starbucks mocha latte once they arrived. Well, they were right about the Starbucks. Soon enough, though, they caught on: Eastport (population 2,000), located on Moose Island at the northeastern tip of the Maine coastline, is so remote it might as well be on Mars. And that, if you are a high-powered executive type most of my friends had the kinds of jobs in which Maalox extra-strength is known only half jokingly as Vitamin M can be a selling point. Before I knew it, all my bedrooms were booked from the first of June right on through Labor Day weekend, and I began thinking of summer as a fine time to stock up the refrigerator, put fresh sheets on the beds, and leave town. But this summer, I had decided, would be different. Anyone who angled for an invitation was told that the plumbing in my old house had exploded, and by the way, I was sure that it was only a coincidence, but also we all had hepatitis. So on the morning when the whole awful business began, I was feeling pleased with myself. The guest rooms were empty and I had stripped down the faded old wallpaper. Armed with paint, brushes, rollers, and rags, I was about to begin giving the rooms a much-needed face-lift, the first they had received in decades. Climbing the stepladder in the smallest room I was also replastering a section of the dining room wall that summer and felt concerned about biting off more than I could chew I began removing the screws that held up the cut-glass light fixture, a lovely old item that I did not want to get spattered with paint. But when two of the screws had come out the fixture shifted, and with my arms extended it took both hands just to hold it up there. In this position I could not get the other pair of screws removed, or the first two back in. So it was a screw stalemate. Just then my black Labrador retriever, Monday, wandered into the room looking bored until she spotted me up there on my perch. Instantly her tail began wagging and the back half of her body began slamming into the ladder. That was also when someone came up the back porch steps and knocked shave-and-a-haircut! on the back door. Monday whirled to race downstairs and greet the visitor, in her haste delivering a final body blow to the ladder. I searched wildly with my feet, finding only thin air as the ladder toppled. Falling, I recalled from the martial arts movies my teenage son, Sam, is so fond of that I should roll when I landed. So I did, and that, I imagine, is why I hit the wall so hard. But the stars I saw on impact were nothing compared to the sight of that lovely antique ceiling fixture beginning to fall. Pushing off from the wall, I skidded on my back across the hardwood floor, arriving just in time for the heavy glass sphere to land hard in my solar plexus. "Oof," I said. "Nicely done," remarked somebody from the doorway. "Who the hell are you?" I inquired irritably, sitting up. He was tall, mid-thirties or so, wearing a white shirt open at the collar and faded denims. Shoving back a shock of straight blond hair that kept falling down over his forehead, he came in. "Raines. Jonathan Raines? We spoke on the phone, you said I could come and stay here...." He stuck out his hand, peering at me through a pair of thick wire-rimmed eyeglasses. Good heavens. I remembered his call. But I certainly didn't remember telling him any such thing. "Mr. Raines, if I did invite you, that was back in January. And since then I haven't heaGraves, Sarah is the author of 'Repair to Her Grave' with ISBN 9780553582253 and ISBN 0553582259.