Susan’s face colored. “Actually, Tom and I had invented that story, oh, I don’t know how many years ago. He had said I should go ahead and make friends and get involved with people in town. Then, if anybody pried into my business, I could explain things that way. But I was too scared. I just wanted to stay at home and keep out of sight.”
“Tom must really love you to try to protect your secret all that time.”
“Oh.” Susan bit her lip, and there was a hint of a smile in her eyes. “He wanted me to apologize to you for him.”
“Apologize?”
“He’s the one who sent you that first note. I didn’t know he’d done it until he told me in the hospital. He said he felt kind of stupid doing it in the first place, but he was just trying to protect me.”
Annie smiled. “I know.”
Susan returned her smile, her blue eyes almost dreamily serene as she looked out over the ocean. “Do you know what? Besides being scared, I was really mad at you when Archer showed up at my house. I was mad at you for snooping around and bringing everything up again when I thought it had all been safely buried twenty years ago.”
“Susan—”
“No, let me finish. I guess I had lived so long being afraid of him, always thinking I had to hide, I didn’t realize how much I wanted to finally be free again. But you—” Tears sprang to her eyes. “You cared enough about a little girl you once knew to find out what had happened to her. And then, no matter how often I told you to go away, you cared enough about a stranger to make sure that she was all right. And even though he used it to try to hurt us both, you talked to Archer because you cared about him too. I always prayed that something could happen that would set me and Tom free. Now I can see that even the painful things were all part of the answer.”
Annie nodded. She had prayed, too, for Susan and for Sandy … and even for Archer Prescott. Susan was right, and her own missteps had all been part of a grand scheme to unlock that prison of fear.
“You know what else?” Susan ran her fingers through her short dark hair. “I believe I’ll let my hair grow out. Even if there’s a little gray in there now, I think it’s time I was a blonde again.”
She laughed, and her laugh brought Annie back to those days on the beach when two little girls built sand castles and played in the surf and learned they weren’t such outsiders after all. She seemed so different from the frightened woman from a few weeks ago, and Annie knew why. She had found the Susan she had been searching for.
“Come on, Susan,” she said with a smile. “Let’s enjoy these muffins and catch up on the past twenty years.”