Janet Purcell
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Matthew Callahan, an artist, goes to Cape Cod in winter to try to put his alcohol-wrecked life back together. He takes a job assisting an aging Princeton scholar and, during time off, stumbles on an abandoned cabin in the woods. He breaks into it and finds blood stains on the floor, a skeleton tucked neatly in bed under rotting covers, a 150-year old journal telling of the couple who lived in the cabin all those years ago, and the murder that ended one life and destroyed the other. There are sub-plots involving rebuilding family relationships, a tragic auto accident, a tender love story, and a shocking final chapter.
Janet Purcell, an award-winning journalist, writes a weekly fine arts column and feature stories for The Times of Trenton, the capital of New Jersey's leading newspaper. She writes about interior design for regional and national magazines and freelances travel stories to major newspapers and other publications. This is her first work of fiction and another is soon to follow. She is also a professional artist. Visit her at
www.janpurcellart.com .
~Chapter 1~
The locals wondered about him. Joggers and dog walkers slowed their pace each day as they passed him on the lonely stretch of beach. The dogs felt a tug on their leashes if they tried to venture too close to him to get a sniff.
He was there every day walking along the water’s edge. Sometimes he’d pick up a shell and turn it over in his hand to study it before he tossed it back onto the sand with an air of rejecting something more than a mollusk or a scallop shell.
No matter what the weather, blustery or calm, rain, or the chilled clear sunlight that often teases Cape Codders in the early spring, he sat on that same weather-beaten bench at the foot of the dune and watched the gulls, the rolling surf.
Had it been July, the locals would have glanced at him, thought “tourist” and been on their way. But this was early April and they carried their speculations about him from one day to the next.
But he was oblivious to their speculation. Matthew Callahan knew who he was and why he was there and it never entered his mind that he might be a mystery to others.
In fact, he was doing some speculating of his own one late morning as the fog lay low on the dune. He was absent-mindedly rubbing it into his hands when he noticed an old man making his slow way along the edge of the surf, leaving wavering footprints and the mark of his crooked walking stick behind to be filled by the incoming tide.
As the figure got closer, Matthew saw the man was bent, wizened, and looked unfriendly. He’d focused on Matthew, headed right at him, and stopped short about six feet in front of him. He planted his walking stick firmly in the sand and stood there and stared for what seemed a long time.
“Got a powerful telescope up there,” he said jerking his head to the side and looking up at a house nestled in sand and rock on a high promontory. “Been watching you for days. You walk and then sit on my bench doing nothing. Can’t for the life of me figure out why you come here every day interrupting what I’m doing.”
Curiosity got the best of Matthew. “What am I interrupting every day? What’re you doing ?"
“Looking,” was the unflinching response
“Sorry about that,” Matthew said poker faced as he drew in his long legs and got up to leave. “Looks like it’s time for me to mosey along and let you get back to your—looking.
When he was a few yards down the beach he turned and, as expected, the man was still planted firmly in the sand, bent over his walking stick, watching him. Matthew raised his hand in a jaunty wave and laughed quietly as he saw the man turn abruptly away.
