CHAPTER 1
It was a chilly predawn morning when Anthony Strauss eased Sweet Caroline, his seventeen-foot Boston Whaler, from the trailer into water so dark it was indistinguishable from the sky. To the east, the rising sun raced along the riverbank, igniting the shoreline of Lake Winnipesaukee in a buttery glow. Anthony cast his lure about twenty feet out and was beginning to slowly reel in his line when he noticed a fellow boater some forty yards off his starboard.
In the early-morning darkness, the boat had been nothing but a black shape on dark water. The sunrise revealed a Starcraft Starfish, a great lake-fishing boat. The discovery was mildly disappointing. Anthony had thought he was alone out here and enjoyed feeling like he was the most dedicated fisherman. Still, it was polite to wave, and Anthony’s hand went up almost reflexively. Nobody waved back. On second inspection, Anthony discovered that the figure he believed to be the boat’s captain was, in fact, a dog.
Guiding his vessel closer to the Starcraft, Anthony watched while the dog—a golden retriever, he could now see—gazed forlornly toward land as though its owner might emerge at any moment from the dense forest abutting the rocky shoreline. The Starcraft, to Anthony’s recollection, did not have a below-deck cabin, so he was surprised when he couldn’t see anyone else in the boat with the dog.
The engine was off, but gusty winds pushed the unmanned vessel across the choppy gray water. The dog kept perfectly still while Anthony glided by, its black eyes locked on the same spot on the shoreline, golden fur rippling in the steady breeze. Where is the captain? What if he’s suffered a heart attack? What if he’s fallen overboard and drowned?
Anthony turned the wheel on his Whaler, steering the boat in a tight circle to make a second pass. As he neared, he called out: “Hello? Is anybody there?”
His barrel chest and solid build gave him a booming voice that should have attracted anyone’s attention, but still only the dog looked his way. Slowly, the animal’s gaze drifted back to the shoreline, as if it had assessed Anthony and determined he could be of no real help.
Steering the boat for a closer approach, Anthony hooked a set of bumpers onto his port side. As he neared, the dog moved, greeting Anthony with a wagging tail and lolling tongue. Gripping the gunwale with one hand, rope in the other, Anthony fastened the two boats together, using the bumpers to protect their respective hulls.
The dog barked three times in quick succession, as if trying to say something of great importance. Anthony appraised the animal thoughtfully before turning his attention to the Starcraft’s interior. The deck was covered in deep red. How odd, Anthony thought, until his mind clicked over. A gasp rose in his throat as a sickening realization set in.
Anthony had gutted plenty of fish in his day, but none had ever bled like that.
CHAPTER 2
SEVENTEEN MONTHS LATER …
Nina told herself everything would work out fine. A cloudless August day gave the sun free rein to scorch the earth dry and bake her olive-toned skin a shade darker. She stood on the brown grass of her new lawn, facing the thirty-foot Ryder truck that held the majority of her life’s possessions, all carefully packed inside corrugated boxes that were stacked neatly between the small pieces of furniture moved without the help of professionals. The bigger items were coming later.
“Anybody see the box cutter?”
Using her hand as a visor against the sun, Nina glanced at her feet and around her general vicinity, but did not see a box cutter. She did, however, catch the harsh look her thirteen-year-old daughter, Maggie, sent Simon, the new man in their lives, who was fumbling about the truck in search of the missing tool. That single glance reconfirmed Nina’s greatest fear, that this move wasn’t going to go as smoothly as she dared to dream. It was not a look of pure contempt, not the scathing, narrowed-eyed death stare any middle-school-aged girl could serve with the speed and accuracy of a pro tennis player, but still it smoldered with an unmistakable hostility.
Poor Maggie had so much on her plate, so many reasons to be angry, and for sure Nina was partly to blame, because she had opened her heart and soul to another man—a man who was not her daughter’s father.
“Found it!” Simon yelled, holding up the box cutter like he was wielding a broadsword. As it turned out, the missing tool had been hidden in the tall grass of the sloping front yard, which needed mowing as much as it did water. Somewhere, buried deep inside that truck, was the mower.
Nina was familiar with her new neighborhood because it was still in Seabury, New Hampshire, a few miles from where she had lived only this morning. Even so, she had no friends nearby, and maybe for that reason it felt foreign here, as though she’d moved clear across the country. She was used to living near her very dear friends Susanna Garston and Ginny Cowling, but pop-in visits would be less frequent now that they lived fifteen minutes across town. For whatever reason, it felt much farther than that. Of course she’d adjust, and eventually she’d be as comfortable here as she’d been in the place where she’d spent the last fifteen years raising her children. She understood it would take time and effort for things to feel normal for everyone, and that applied to her new relationship as much as to her new home.
But today it all felt eerily unsettling.
At the far edge of her lawn a splendid oak tree growing near her property line spread its thick branches from the neighbor’s yard into hers, providing pockets of shade where a bold chipmunk escaped the August heat and observed the move with curious dark eyes.
Copyright © 2020 by D. J. Palmer
Excerpt from The Perfect Daughter copyright © 2021 by D. J. Palmer
