Page 4 of The Oligarch's Daughter

Grant Anderson was an excellent craftsman of wooden boats but not a great businessman. Which was ironic, since he used to be a finance guy. One problem was that he took only cash, and a lot of people preferred to pay with a credit card. Another was that he underpriced his work; he knew that. He felt lucky to have any work at all.

He’d arrived in Derryfield five years ago looking for a carpentry job and managed to get hired by Old Man Casey, a boatbuilder looking for an assistant. John Casey had spent his life building boats but had grown tired of sanding and painting and scraping and sweeping floors.

Grant swept and sanded and scraped and painted and, along the way, learned how to build boats. Old Man Casey wasn’t much of a teacher, but he would answer questions.

Grant had invited Sarah over for dinner again, and he wished he hadn’t. But he had to keep on living a normal life, as if nothing had happened. In the afternoon, he had filleted the striped bass and marinated it in olive oil and garlic and lemon juice, and now he was searing it on the charcoal grill behind the house. Fish this fresh, especially striper, was always delicious. But he had no appetite.

He kept seeing the dead man’s face, the slack mouth, the ruined throat. He kept replaying that terrifying moment when the bang stick at the end of the speargun had struck Newman’s jaw and fired off a round. He couldn’t forget the feeling of the man’s hot blood running down his fingers as he lifted the body toward the side of the boat and slid it overboard.

He wasalmostcertain no one had seen him with Frederick Newman, but he couldn’t be sure. There was a possibility someone had seen them together, at the marina or out on the water. He wasalmostcertain no one had seen him slide the body overboard—he had been out on the water a good distance from anyone—but there was always that nagging possibility.

There was too much he didn’t know, that was what was tormenting him.

Was it the traffic cam? Derryfield had recently installed its first traffic camera. Maybe an image of his face had gone out. Maybe that was how he’d been discovered after so long. After he’d been so careful. Had he been sloppy?

A lot of people were looking for him, he knew—they’d been looking for five years. But in this small town in New Hampshire, away from any big city, he was hiding in plain sight.Live like you’re supposed to be here, he’d once read. He was Grant Anderson, carpenter and boatbuilder and good citizen of Derryfield, New Hampshire.

He flipped the fish over to get some grill marks on the other side and moved the serving platter closer. He was thinking about his go-bag, his “bug-out bag,” as it was called in the books he’d read, on a shelf in the workshop. He’d have to check through it tonight, make sure everything was still good. He kept another bag in his truck; he should check that one over, too.

And he wondered if tonight would be the night he told Sarah.

And if so, how much should he tell her?

The striper had come out perfectly. Grant could tell by looking at it. Sarah had set the table and put out a salad and some boiled tiny new potatoes.

Tonight, she looked tired, but still as pretty as she’d been when he first met her at the Starlite Diner in Derryfield five years earlier. She was playing a bouncy, upbeat Taylor Swift song—“Shake It Off”—loud, on his speaker system, but Grant wasn’t feeling it.

“How’s Mr. Madigan’s boat coming along?” They sat at the kitchen table.

Distracted, he didn’t respond. She put down her knife and looked up for a moment. “Earth to Grant? You there?”

“Oh, sorry. Yeah, not sure—this last batch of epoxy isn’t curing right.”

“So what happens next?”

“I’ll check it out again before I go to bed. May have to reapply.”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“Shouldn’t be. I told Madigan November sometime. I’ll make it.”

“This is delicious, Grant. What did you do with this?”

“The usual. Caught it this morning, so . . .”

“Well, it’s great.”

He had to maintain a normal façade, keep Sarah from having suspicions, and tonight it was taking considerable effort. “Report cards coming along?”

“They’re called ‘progress reports,’ and they’re taking forever.” She put butter on her potatoes. “Plus, I had an annoying email to deal with.”

“Oh?”

“Atticus’s mom. Remember Atticus?

“Yeah, sure. The kid who’s always wearingStar WarsT-shirts?”

“That could describe half the class. They all wearStar WarsT-shirts. Anyway, his mother is worried because he keeps telling her he doesn’t want to go to school. This kid Atticus is the happiest kid, I swear. Like, the happiest kid in the class.”

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